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OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE WISCONSIN AND ILLINOIS AUDUBON SOCIETIES 
One Year 25 Cents ILLINOIS NUMBER Single Copy 3 Cent»s 
Published by the Wisconsin Audubon Society, at. AppleLon, Wisconsin. 
Entered as second-class matter May 16, 1904. at Appleton, Wis., under the act of congress of Mar. 3, ’79 
VOL. VIII MAY, 1905 No. I 
THE HERMIT THRUSH. 
Behind this leafy screen 
Which keeps the world away, 
A fores! bird unseen 
C * 
To music sets one lay. 
Sometimes his voice is mute; 
He ponders things divine; 
Then sounds his magic flute. 
And makes the woods a shrine. 
He chants of life above. 
This realm that mortals know; 
He dreams of purer love 
Than human souls bestow. 
0 priest and choir in one! 
Still lend to earth thy wings, 
And show beneath the sun 
One heart that soars and sings. 
—Mary Thacher Higginson. 
FRIENDS THAT NEVER CHANGE. 
I mean the birds. You are young now, 
perhaps; but some day you will be old. Some 
day most of your human friends will have 
been absorbed by other interests, moved away, 
or died. Your native village will have be¬ 
come a little city. The old creek where you 
fished and went swimming, will have shrunk¬ 
en to a mere runlet. The woods in which you 
loved to roam, hunting May-apples or hick¬ 
ory nuts, will have been converted into lum¬ 
ber or cord wood. The marsh, so full of 
plant and animal life, and so mysteriously at¬ 
tractive to a boy, will have been drained in 
the interests of agriculture. 
All these changes will tinge you with sad¬ 
ness, if your heart is in the right place. Yet, 
if you are a bird-lover you will have conso- 
lations that others know not of. The creek 
may dry, but the phoebe which built under the 
bridge will still return every spring, after the 
last of the snow is gone, with its simple lit¬ 
tle ditty. The woods may be sacrificed to nec¬ 
essity or greed, but the vireo and the scarlet 
tanager will still be left. The marsh may be 
converted into meadow, corn-field, or build¬ 
ing lots; but the red-winged blackbirds will 
remain unchanged, though you will have to 
so to some other marsh to find them. And 
the robin which hails the morning of your 
eightieth birthday will not differ in one feath¬ 
er or note from the one which hailed your 
eighth birthday. 
Surely it is worth our while to throw out 
this anchor against the swift tide of change 
in our lives. Surely anything is valuable 
which will make us forget that we are grow¬ 
ing old—yea, which will keep us from grow¬ 
ing old. To get acquainted with the birds 
costs you nothing save a little time, for 
which you will be compensated a thousand¬ 
fold. Watch the birds, see how they build 
their nests. Above all, learn their names— 
from some friend, if you are lucky enough to 
have such a one; if you haven’t, then from 
some manual like Chapman’s “Handbook.” 
Do not be content to invent a name for the 
birds you see, or to accept some local name, 
for unless you know a bird’s real name, the 
treasurers of bird literature will forever be 
closed to you. For instance, if you call a cer¬ 
tain bird a “sugar-bird,” as is done in some 
sections, you may read about the Tufted Tit¬ 
mouse all your life, and yet never know that 
he is only your little sugar-bird, with his 
loud, cheery Peter-peter-peter! 
Wien I look back to the time when the 
birds and the flowers meant nothing to me, 
when I knew not their names, or the time of 
their coming and going, I feel as if I might 
as well have been deaf and blind. I neither 
saw nor heard. I moved through a world 
which' God has thicyly sown with treasures 
