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OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE WISCONSIN AND ILLINOIS AUDUBON SOCIETIES 
One Year 25 Centos 
ILLINOIS NUMBER 
Single Copy 3 CenLs 
Published by the Wisconsin Audubon Society, at, Appleton Wisconsin. 
Entered as second-class mattes May 16, 1904 at Appleton, Wis., under the act of congress of Mar. 3, ’79 
VOL- VII NOVEMBER, 1904 p^oTiS 
THE FALL MIGRATIONS. 
MARY DRUMMOND. 
I. 
A rush of wings through the darkening night, 
A sweep through the air in the distant height. 
| ' 
Far off we hear them, cry answering cry; 
’Tis the voice of the birds as the Southward fly. 
From sea to sea, as if marking the time, 
Comes the beat of wings from the long, dark 
line. 
0 strong, steady wing, with your rhythmic 
beat, 
Flying from cold to the summertime heat; 
0 keen glancing eye that can see so far, 
Do you guide your flight by the Northern star ? 
The birds from the North are crossing the 
moon, 
I And the Southland knows they are coming 
soon. 
II. 
With gladness and freedom and music gone, 
Another migration is passing on. 
No long, dark lines o’er the face of the moon; 
No dip of wings in the Southern lagoon. 
No sweet, low twitter, no welcoming song; 
These are birds of silence that sweep along. 
Lifeless and stiff, with the death mark on it, 
This fall migration, on hat and bonnet. 
And the crowd goes by, with so few to care 
For this march of death' of the fowls of the air. 
A bier for dead birds—has it come to that— 
Must this be our thought of a woman’s hat? 
—Exchange. 
A WHITE ROBIN. 
The people of a little town in Illinois were 
one season favored with a very rare sight. It 
was noised about that there was a white robin 
in a certain clump of maple trees near a resi¬ 
dence. A pair of robins had raised a brood of 
albinos, one or two of which were mottled with 
both red and white, while one of them was en¬ 
tirely white. Seldom does this occur among 
birds of the air. There are a few records 
where robins, blue birds, field sparrows, blue 
jays, flickers and crows have shown this freak 
of nature. 
In Cleveland, Ohio, an albino robin returned 
for three successive seasons. 
In some cases one or two feathers have been 
white or abnormal, but rarely do we find a 
bird so immaculately and solidly white as 
this one seen in the little country village. 
It was pure white from the tip of its bill 
to its toe nails, having beautiful red eyes, be¬ 
ing plump in form, healthy and strong among 
its fellows. The Junior Audubons have much 
to study in the line of plumage. In the spring 
it is easy to detect all of the returning birds, 
for their colors are very vivid and strong, but 
in the fall migration it is not easy; the old 
birds are faded somewhat and the young birds, 
especially the warblers, have not donned th’eir 
perfect dress. 
By the time this article appears the fall 
migration will be nearly over with'. Most of 
the little creatures will have found their win¬ 
ter homes way down South, living in flocks so 
as to protect themselves and uttering not one 
single note of song. Bird song is of very short 
duration. By the Fourth of July many have 
ceased to prolong that grand exuberance of 
melody which bespatters the fields and re¬ 
sounds among the trees at earlier periods. 
There are only four months of perfect song 
periods, March, April, May and June. It is 
