40 
BY THE WAYSIDE. 
of them will be glad to have them sometime 
this coming winter or spring. 
Two beautiful gulls have just flown over 
us and I wonder if they live on Duck Island. 
That is an island not very far from here 
where many gulls have their nests and bring 
up their little ones in the way they should. 
You may not know that all along the 
coast now, that committee with a name al¬ 
most long enough to reach from Maine to 
Illinois, the “Bird Protection Committee of 
the American Ornithologists’ Union,” has 
wardens that look after the nests of the sea 
birds and try to keep men from coming onto 
the islands where they live and killing them. 
Some of these men are keepers of the light¬ 
houses and they are doing much good work 
for the birds. Perhaps some day Mr. Clark 
will let us print his little story, “Catharine 
Gray’s Chickens,” in the Wayside, and then 
you will know the sad little story of so 
many of the lovely sea gulls. 
Good-bye, dear children, all. I hope you 
are having a happy summer and learning 
more about the birds, and I do hope, very 
much, that our Illinois children are going 
to write many more letters for the Wayside 
this next year. Mrs. Peckham writes me 
(and I know she feels very proud about it) 
that she has so many letters from the Wis¬ 
consin children, and then Mrs. Scudder 
writes me she only had one Illnois letter! 
I wonder and wonder what is the matter. 
Why don’t some of you write and tell me 
why you don't write? Couldn’t you do that? 
We want our birds to sing! I’m sure the 
Wisconsin birds cannot sing any better than 
the Illinois birds, nor the Wisconsin chil¬ 
dren write any better than the Illinois ones 
—of course not! 
Always your friend 
Mary Drummond. 
Illinois Prize Letter. 
Galena, Ill. 
My Dear Miss Drummond: The Audubon 
society met this afternoon at Miss Gardner’s 
school. Miss Gardner read to us that those 
who wrote the best letter would get a prize, 
so I took a notion to try my best to get one, 
though I don’t think I will succeed. I love 
birds. One day on my way to school I saw 
eight robins all hunting a place to build 
their nests. They were all so fat that they 
looked like rubber balls. In the summer¬ 
time I put a saucer of water out for the 
birds and scattered bread crumbs around 
the saucer. 
I joined the Audubon Society when Miss 
Gardner first spoke of it. I think it is a 
mean shame the way boys shoot birds just 
for two cents, and the way women think 
they put style on when they have birds on 
their hats. I think a hat looks nicer with¬ 
out birds. Don’t you? Mamma never 
wears birds in her hats and I think they 
are always nice. 
A neighbor of ours planted some sun¬ 
flowers and wild canaries came and sang 
for us. Coming home from school I heard 
a “caw, caw.” I loked around and saw a 
crow. He semed to be enjoying himself. 
I am in the 5th grade and am eleven years 
old. I think I have written enough go I 
will close, hoping to get the prize. 
I remain your friend, 
Hortense Guggenheim. 
Wisconsin Prize Letter. 
Antigo, Wis. 
Dear Wayside: I have been studying 
birds for two years and like it very much. 
I know twenty-eight different varieties of 
birds. Papa and mamma, my little brother 
and myself are living in a cottage on our 
farm during vacation. 
There is a pasture just east of our cot¬ 
tage and there are quite a few cow-birds 
in it. They are a little smaller than a robin 
and resemble the blackbird. The male is 
much darker than the female. They are so 
lazy tlmy will not hunt their own food, but 
follow the horses and cattle around and eat 
the bugs and worms that they scare up 
when they walk about. They are very fear¬ 
less. One day when papa went up in the 
pasture to catch old Charlie, our buggy 
horse, a cow-bird was riding around on his 
back. 
We have a great many trees in our yard. 
