OFFICI A L ORGAN OF THE WISCONSIN AND 1 LEI NO IS AUDI' RON SOCI ETIES 
One Year 25 Cent s 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. VII FEBRUARY, 1905 No. 8 
THE BIRD’S REPLY. 
Now I’ll sing you the live long day 
Of the dear Southern lands of the Sun, 
Where tiie trees are all strange and grey 
And the flowers are never done; 
And the air is so soft, and the wind of the 
night 
Rocks our cradles in shadow and gentle 
moonlight. 
Oh, I sing of our longing for home! 
As we waited and watched for the Spring; 
For the time of new leaves to come— 
For the long steady flight on the wing 
When guided by love, without glancing below 
Straight on to our nests with our mates we 
all go . 
Oh, I sing of my own little nest! 
My feathers are soft and warm, 
And I know I’m a welcome guest 
After the snow and the storm, 
And my dear little mate is sitting close by, 
And is resting, and happy and shy. 
—Ethel E. Hooper. 
EARLY BIRDS. 
The birds I mean are the ones that make 
an early start in the morning,- not the ones 
that come early in the spring. These birds 
did not seem to be in any hurry to catch the 
traditional worm, but devoted their whole en¬ 
ergies to singing. They seemed to think that 
the first hours of the day, or rather the last 
hours of the night, were the best in the whole 
twenty-four. One night in May I happened to 
wake up at a quarter past two, when I heard 
a catbird begin to sing softly to himself in 
the darkness, almost as if he were afraid 
of waking up the other birds.. He solilo¬ 
quized thus to himself for an hour or more, 
when the other birds woke up and drowned his 
voice with their chorus. 
The robin is often the first fellow to be astir. 
Air. Early-and-Late someone has called him. 
You will often hear his rapid “what-what- 
what?” after dark, when the other birds are 
all sound asleep, and then before the sun 
has so much as peeped above the horizon there 
he is again chirping away as if he had not 
slept a wink all night. 
I once heard of a man who shot a robin 
because it woke him up too early in the morn¬ 
ing singing that beautiful song of his. I sup¬ 
pose that same man would like to lock the 
sun up in a closet if he could, till nine 
o’clock in the morning. 
Birds that I am used to hearing about the- 
place don’t wake me up when they sing, but 
it’s a curious thing that when a new migrant 
sing outside my window ,up I jump, out of a 
sound sleep. .1 was so startled one morning, 
by hearing a loud, ringing whistle close to my 
window, “Cher-o-kee, clier-o-kee, cher-o-kee,” 
it said. He whistled the same three notes 
over and over in such a rollicking way that it 
made you feel gay just to hear him. It was 
a Carolina wren, I knew, for I had heard 
him down in Georgia, but never here on the 
shores of Lake Aficliigan. Have you ever seen 
him? He h'as such a short tail that bobs over 
his back as our house wren’s does, only he 
has a long dark line through his eye, which 
makes him look quite different. 
Perhaps some morning in February you will 
hear a sweet meandering warble from some 
tree near your window. It won’t last long and 
the singer will be off before you can say 
“Jack Robinson,” but if you have a chance to 
see a striped bird with a tinge of deep red 
to his feathers, and a sharply forked tail, 
you will know it is a Purple Finch. He is a 
glorious singer, but a Wandering Jew of a 
bird, never staying long enough in one place 
to let us get acquainted with him . 
Once I heard a Maryland Yellow Throat 
begin his “witchery, witchery, witchery” be- 
