16 
BY THE WAYSIDE 
black, tail yellow with a few black stripes. 
The underside is yellow with brownish 
stripes. Its habits are like the warblers. 
This year I have seen a scarlet tanager 
and its mate. They are very pretty 
birds. I have seen a number of even¬ 
ing grosbeaks. 
The court-yard is full of redstarts and 
other birds. I have seen two catbirds. 
There is a house wren building in our 
woodpile. 
This spring I have seen a bluebird, 
ruby-crowned kinglet, brown creeper and 
a number of warblers. 
There is a pair of golden orioles build¬ 
ing by our house. I have seen sixteen 
nests this year I have seen all the wood¬ 
pecker family, a song sparrow and a 
ground sparrow. 
I have picked cow-slips, violets and 
mayflowers. 
Yours truly, 
Kenneth Grubb. 
Little York Ill., April 26, 1907. 
Dear Wayside: 
The song sparrow is one of our prettiest 
sparrows. I have never seen it before 
this spring. It sings in the hedge near a 
stream of water when I come to school. 
It is about as long as an English sparrow. 
It is brownish black on the back and has 
dark brown or blackish streaks below the 
throat. There is one large spot in the 
middle of the breast that is easy to see 
when it faces you. There are beautiful 
markings on the shoulders and in the 
front. It has been singing nearly every 
day for three weeks. It is a shy bird 
and flies lower down into the hedge or 
onto the ground when I come near. I 
saw it once quiet and watchful on the 
ground for eight or ten minutes, then it 
began to feed on worms and bugs. After 
awhile it flew to the top of an elderberry 
bush, covered with tangled vines. Then 
it sang a beautiful song. It says, u Tree, 
Tree, Tree,” all in the same note. Next 
came trills and quivers in its song, some¬ 
times sounding more like some of the 
notes of the brown thrasher than a spar¬ 
row. Hazel A. Maley. 
Appleton, Wis., Columbus School. 
Dear Wavside: 
Do you want to hear about two beauti¬ 
ful warblers that I saw? The 14th of 
May, as I was going to school I noticed 
a bird up in the tree, which I had never 
seen before. It was about five inches 
long. It had white above the tail and 
wings, and all the rest of the back was a 
dark slate-colored. The breast was white, 
and the face was a bright red, and the 
red blended into an orange. I came to 
school and told my teacher about the 
bird, and she said that she thought it 
must have been some kind of a warbler. 
The next day she saw the same bird. 
She looked it up and found it to be the 
red-faced warbler. The redstart was the 
other one I saw the next morning. I 
did not know what it was. We looked 
it up and found out that it was the red¬ 
start. It has a v-shaped spot of orange 
on each side of his tail, and a light 
orange on the wings, and dark orange 
under the wing, and the rest is dark. 
Two girls saw it first, and they thought it 
as a humming bird. When I went to 
see it, it would go round and round the 
tree, but at last it perched itself on the 
branch nearby where I could see it 
plainly. 
Aged 13 Hulda Strassburger. 
