32 
BY THE WAYSIDE. 
BY THE WAYSIDE 
Published on the fifteenth of each month. 
The official organ of the Wisconsin and Illinois Audu¬ 
bon Societies. 
Twenty=five cents per year. Single copies, three cents. 
All communications should be sent to Mas. G. tV . 
Peckham, 646 Marshall St., Milwaukee, Wis. 
For the next three years the birds of North 
America are to be left in comparative peace 
and safety, and the protecting care of the bird 
lovers in this country stretches beyond our 
own shores. The Millinery Merchants’ Pro¬ 
tective Association has pledged itself not to 
import, manufacture, buy or sell, gulls, terns, 
grebes, humming-birds and song birds. After 
January 1, 1904, the same safety will be given 
to herons and pelicans. 
It has taken a surprisingly long time to 
arouse in women the feeling that they ought 
not to wear feathers, but at last that feeling 
has developed. Perhaps one aigrette is seen 
to-day in gatherings where a hundred waved 
ten years ago, and the woman who wears that 
one has usually an apology for it ready on 
her lips. The reform is accomplished, but 
whether it is to be lasting or not depends 
upon the attitude of the thousands of \ oung 
people who are growing up all over the land. 
It is comforting to think that the band of 
Wayside readers will stand ready to fight 
against the cruel fashion of feather-wearing 
when next it comes to us. 
From, the milliners our birds are safe for 
the present. What other danger threatens 
tnem? Thirty-one states have Audubon So¬ 
cieties, but only seventeen have passed the 
model law for bird protection. The low stan¬ 
dard of public opinion in the southern states 
is nothing less than appalling. When oui 
songsters, loved and protected in the north, 
leave us in the fall, what reception awaits 
them in the south? Take the robin as a good 
example of what happens to them all. Mr. 
Butcher says: “In central Tennessee are large 
tracts of cedars, the berries of which serve to 
attract myriads of robins in the winter. One 
small hamlet in this district sends to market 
annually enough robins to return $500 at five 
cents per dozen, equal to 120,000 birds. My 
informant naively says: Obey are easily 
caunlit at night in the roost in young cedars; 
we no to the roost with a torch and kill them 
o 
with sticks, others climb the trees and catch 
them as they fly in.’ One of the officers of the 
Louisiana Audubon Society furnishes the fol¬ 
lowing information regarding the robin slaugh¬ 
ter in his own state: ‘They are commonly 
killed for home consumption and for market¬ 
ing. a conservative estimate of the number 
killed annually being from a quarter of a mil¬ 
lion in ordinary years to a million when they 
are unusually plenty. During the past winter 
one gunner killed over 300 robins in one day, 
and in one village in the state the boys and 
voung men are vicing with each other for a 
record in robin killing, the present high record 
being 200 birds in one day.’ ’’ {Ed. Leaflet No. 
J/.) Ought we not to send down a band of 
our young people to civilize the boys of the 
South? 
Mrs. Ida E. Tilson, of West Salem, writes: 
“A pair of wild canaries are here the second 
year after our salsify seed, of which they are 
fond, and we are willing to divide. Two orioles 
nested two years near our peas. Again we 
were willing to divide. As they missed their 
opportunity this year we fear they are shot. 
They eat pea weevils and thus help pay their 
way. Have both male and female of the red¬ 
headed woodpecker red heads? There is a 
difference in other woodpeckers. How long 
before the young get red heads?” 
Both male and female have red heads, but 
the young ones have gray heads through the 
first season. 
A curious instance of bird deatn is re¬ 
corded by W. E. D. Scott in his recently pub¬ 
lished “Story of a Bird Lover.” He tells a 
story of a Kingfisher who was shot, pursued 
his flight, apparently unhurt, for two hundred 
feet, and then dropped dead. Still, when the 
body was examined, there was no mark of a 
wound upon it, which gave rise to the possi¬ 
bility that a wild bird could be frightened to 
death. “I have seen the same thing happen 
many times since,” continues the story. “I 
know now the reason for this. A single shot 
striking a bird in flight, penetrating the thin 
side of his body and entering his lungs, makes 
a very small hole and no external hemorrhage 
ensues. There is little or no shock to the 
bird; I fancy he hardly feels pain, but present¬ 
ly the internal hemorrhage from the great 
blood-vessels that have been severed makes him 
suddenly unconscious, and in a moment he is 
dead. The time, however, between the pene¬ 
trating of the shot and the internal hemor¬ 
rhage is sufficient to allow the animal to travel 
a very considerable distance, seemingly unin¬ 
jured.’” 
