86 Twelve Months With 



The tuneful spills that e'er did fall 

 From vocal pipe or evermore shall rise, 

 He snarls, and mews, and flies." 



Despite his strange preference for mewing, 

 when possessed of so fine a song, he is a very 

 friendly, interesting bird, well worth cultivating 

 and cherishing as one of the most intelligent, and 

 delightful of our common summer residents. 



I took a June walk of rather unusual interest 

 along the banks of Bailey Creek, a shallow stream 

 which empties into the Vermilion River near its 

 junction with the Illinois, and my adventures on 

 this occasion might be offered as an example of the 

 pleasures which await the bird student at this sea- 

 son of the year, if he will but seek them. In dis- 

 tance the walk did not exceed a mile, — but when 

 in search of birds or their nests, one should saun- 

 ter, and, when a bird is seen, stop and watch it 

 long enough to observe the details of its plumage 

 and its habits. Therefore I sauntered this mile 

 up Bailey Creek, taking three hours for the trip, 

 and fifteen minutes for the walk back. Just 

 before the creek joins the Vermilion River, it 

 plunges over a precipitous rocky ledge, to a fall of 

 some thirty or forty feet, called Bailey Falls, below 

 which the water tumbles over huge boulders into 

 the river. My walk began at this point. I saun- 

 tered along at the edge of the water, which here 

 was very shallow, running over a wide bed of flat 

 shale rock. Before I had advanced a hundred feet 



