78 
B Y THE WA YSJDE 
scribe for a cop) r of By The Wayside, so 
that the secretary can reach you all 
through your own paper. Then you are 
ready to begin. See how many birds you 
can identify, how many new ones you can 
see this year, and what you can find out 
about their habits and usefulness to man. 
Each new society formed is given a notice 
in the Wayside and the best letters from 
the boys and girls are printed. 
Who will organize a bird society this 
spring ? 
Yours sincerely, 
Ruth Marshall. 
Wisconsin Prize Letter. 
La Crosse, Wis., April 4, 1906. 
Dear Wayside: 
While I was looking for birds Monday 
night after school, I saw a bird which I 
thought was a female blue bird, but I 
was not sure of it. I walked out on to 
the bluffs and I noticed on a fence post 
the bird I wanted to see most. It was a 
i 
male blue bird. 
The bluebird is about seven inches 
long. The back is a very beautiful blue, 
while the breast is a chestnut fading into 
dirty white. The blue bird often builds 
its nest in an old woodpecker’s hole or in 
most any orchard. 
One of our neighbors had a Ruffed 
Grouse in a cage for two days. The poor 
thing tried so hard to get out that the 
tuft on his head was almost worn away. 
When T heard about the birds I tele¬ 
phoned to the man and asked him what 
he was going to do with him, as it is 
against the law to kill them. He said he 
thought he would let it go in a few days. 
I asked him if I couldn’t take it out to 
the bluffs after school and let it go, and 
he let me. 
I carried it out in a basket and then 
put it on the ground. It lay there so 
long I thought it was dead, so I poked it 
a little and it flew so suddenly that it 
scared me. I hope it got back to where 
it came from. 
Other birds I saw on Monday were the 
red-headed woodpecker, junco, chipping 
sparrow and the red-winged blackbird. 
We heard many birds singing but they 
were out in the marsh so we didn’t see 
them. 
Yours truly, 
Russell Pope. 
Illinois Prize Letter. 
Gross Point, Ill., March 23, 1906. 
Dear Wayside: 
One day last summer I was playing in 
front of the school house when I saw a 
bird fly into an old pump across the 
street. It was a bluebird. It had a nest 
in the pump all summer and then went 
awav. Bluebirds are not very small and 
not very large. Their backs are the 
color of the blue summer sky and their 
breasts are the color of the ground. 
Yours truly, 
Aged 12. Willie Wolf. 
The Bluebird. 
The bluebird is a beautiful songbird. 
It is a little more than seven inches long. 
It is rather common in Wisconsin, and 
one of the earliest to come in the spring. 
The male bird is brighter than the female. 
The eggs are greenish blue and there are 
usually five or six in one nest. The blue 
bird builds in hollow trees and boxes. 
One day a bluebird visited a hollow 
tree in our lot. A few days after they 
built a nest there of grass and a few small 
twigs. After they were nicely settled, 
