BY THE WAYSIDE 
/ 
Maywood, Ill., April 19, 1906. 
Dear Wayside: 
The meadow lark is a beautiful bird. 
The bird is a lightish brown and its 
breast is yellow with a black stripe 
around the front of its neck. His legs 
are very strong. It lays its eggs in a nest 
on the ground and it is hard to find its 
nest. 
I have seen a bird and its color was all 
brown; its breast was lighter. It had 
red on its head. But I do not know its 
name. Will you please tell me what 
kind of a bird it is? 
Yours truly, 
Aged 11. Elsie Gesch. 
O 
This bird was probably the Flicker. 
Creedo, Colorado, April 19, 1906, 
Dear Wayside: 
The magpie is a bird that lives in the 
mountains and our altitude is 9000 feet 
above the sea level. The magpie is 
larger than a robin. They are black and 
have a little white on them. They are 
verv pretty birds. You can teach them 
to talk and they can call you. They are 
thieves and they will take anything they 
can lift. They build their nest in a tree 
in the mountains so cruel boys won’t 
steal their eggs or little ones. But some¬ 
times the boys go in the woods and take 
their eggs or little ones. They make a 
queer noise worse than a blue jay’s. If 
vou can catch them you can teach them 
to stav with vou and not leave vou or run 
x, %J * 
away and they will come home at night. 
Grade 6. Zella Blades. 
Elkhart Lake, Wis., April 19, 1906. 
Dear Wavside: 
I am very much interested in birds 
I will tell you a story of a bluebird which 
was in our cottage. There were three 
birds there; they had come in through 
the chimney and could not get out again. 
There was one oriole and two bluebirds. 
The oriole and one bluebird were dead. 
The other one was almost dead, but I 
took the live one home and fed him and 
then put him in a cage and kept him in 
a cage until morning. Then I took him 
outside and let him fly away. 
His color was a bright sky blue on his 
back and yellowish-brown on his breast. 
Bluebirds like to build in boxes or in a 
fence post where there is a hole. They 
lay from five to six pale blue eggs. The 
bluebird gets its name from its color. 
Mi ss Ida Diehl is my teacher. I am 
eleven vears old and in the sixth grade. 
Yours truly, 
Viola Laun. 
Medford, Wis., April 27, 1906. 
Dear Wayside: 
We all like to read The Wayside. 
We have a house of our own with a large 
yard and many trees. In the back yard 
we made bird houses. In our front row 
of large trees there are so many nests 
that we can hardly count them until the 
leaves have fallen. The robins have an 
old nest that they use every year. There 
are also many wrens here. We have 
sparrows but we do not know what kind 
they are; they are large and the male 
has a black necktie with some white. 
We have a kind of an ash tree that is 
covered with red berries in fall. No 
birds touch them but as soon as they 
are fully ripe a Hock of cedar waxwings 
will have a feast on them. Last fall we 
counted more than thirty. The gold- 
finches come and get the seeds. We 
have also seen a white-breasted nuthatch 
