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THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. XLTI 



Illinois in August, one naturally looks to differences in 

 season, in the advancement of the crops, or in agricultural 

 operations as related to the haunts and habits of these 

 birds, for an explanation of their apparent shift from 

 meadows to pastures in July in central Illinois, and a 

 seemingly plausible explanation is suggested by the fact 

 that haying was mainly done during July in the central 

 part of the state, but was not yet fairly begun in southern 

 Illinois in June and was nearly over in northern Illinois 

 in August. 



Pasture Birds per Square Mile. Summer, 1907 



If, however, the meadow-larks were disturbed to this 

 extent by the operations of making and saving the hay 

 crop, one would expect to find the other distinctively 

 meadow birds similarly affected— a supposition which is 

 not borne out by the facts of our record. Besides the 

 meadow-larks, there were five common species more abun- 

 dant in meadows in one or another section of the state 

 than in any other important situation; namely, the red- 

 winged blackbird, the purple grackle, the vesper-sparrow, 

 the grasshopper sparrow, and the dickcissel. Each of 

 these species was, moreover, more abundant in meadows 

 than in pastures in each section of the state— in central 

 Illinois as well as in the other two— excepting only the 

 grackle in southern Illinois. Taking all five of these 

 birds together, there were in northern Illinois 200 to the 

 square mile in meadows and 50 in pastures, in central 

 Illinois 131 and 54, respectively, and in southern Illinois 

 371 and 120. In other words, for each hundred of these 



