BY THE WAYSIDE. 
35 
up particles of food, the little ones bobbed 
and “teetered” across the mud flat and I 
walked on. 
About half a mile down the stream—which 
was not bordered by shrubbery—I saw sev¬ 
eral vesper and several song sparrows and 
heard their attempts at song. Were it not 
for some better music I heard later in the 
day I should have judged western sparrows 
to be very inferior songsters. 
Across the stream was a miner’s cabin and 
on the telegraph wires of the railroad that 
ran alongside the stream I noticed those old 
friends with their familiar ways,—the barn 
swallows. 
All I saw during the next four miles walk 
across the monotonous sagebrush covered 
hills was a sparrow hawk and the only bird 
music I heard came from a horned lark. 
When I reached Brown’s Gulch, however, 
(the one wooded valley I spoke of earlier in 
my letter), I was greeted by strange voices 
that issued from the thickest of willows. 
After beating through the bushes for a while 
I flushed a large crow-like bird with a white 
belly and white patches on its shoulders and 
wings. It was a magpie and I soon learned 
that it had uttered the strange calls. Later 
in the day I flushed several more of these 
minstrels that are much more often heard 
than seen. 
Farther up the valley I saw two morning 
doves but failed to hear their call. In an 
irrigated field there was a large flock of 
Brewers’ blackbirds feeding among the new 
mown hay. The males are black, about the 
size of our cowbird, and have conspicuous 
white eyes. The females are brown. In 
habits they resemble their near relatives. 
Next I learned to know the red-shafted 
flicker. I was attracted by the regular 
flicker call, the rapidly repeated guk, guk, 
guk,-“There was a whole family in a 
pine on one of the bluffs and had it not been 
for the red color on the under side of the 
wings and tail I should not have been able 
to tell them from our eastern golden winged 
species. 
Some distance farther a killdeer flew up 
calling his well known “kill-dee dee dee” and 
after flying about a while disappeared among 
the hills. 
In another part of the irrigated field I 
mentioned above I saw several western 
meadow larks. They possess all the char¬ 
acteristic marks of the eastern birds and 
hence are easily recognized by sight but 
their notes are so entirely different that one 
would never recognize them by sound. In 
fact twice—the second with success—I 
searched diligently for the author of a loud 
one-note call varied occasionally with a dove- 
like one of two notes that came from the 
tops of the shrubs bordering the spring fed 
stream which flowed through the valley. 
Just before I left the Gulsh on my way back 
to Butte I heard this famous bird sing and 
although those notes were uttered during 
the hot hours of a July afternoon they were 
of indescribable sweetness and I felt that 
bird students had given the songsters no un¬ 
merited praise. 
Aside from that good friend the chickadee 
the above mentioned birds were all I saw 
from 6 a. m. to 8 p m. 
Now while I am writing I hear night- 
hawks calling. Those and a Lay’s phoebe 
are the only birds I have yet seen within 
city limits. 
Before I close I must mention three birds 
notorious in the East, that I did not see—the 
English sparrow, the common crow, and the 
cowbird. A. F. M. 
Butte, Mont., July 27, 1902. 
Nature Study in the Public Schools of 
Chicago. 
Some years ago a new “Course of Study” 
was put into the hands of every grade 
teacher in our city schools. One of the new 
features of this course was the introduction 
of Nature Study into the curriculum. Ninety 
to one hundred minutes a week was to be 
given to it, but half of that time was to be 
devoted to physiology. The questions then 
arose: “What is Nature Study? How is it 
to be treated? ” An answer to this appeared 
as an appendix to the “Course of Study,” in 
which was given an outline for work; but 
it was very vague and very general. 
