40 
BY THE WAYSIDE 
Mazomanie, Wis., Oct., 1907. 
Dear Wayside: 
I have been watching the birds this 
fali as they go south. They are nearly 
all gone. I miss their sweet song but I 
shall hear the song of some birds all 
winter. I have tried to do all I can foT 
them. At school we have a bird phart. 
This winter when we have stormy 
■weather and I can t go out to play I 
shall look at the birds that live here. 
Then when spring comes I will know 
each bird as it returns. Some birds 
like the crow steal the farmer’s corn. 
Except for the birds the farmer’s corn 
would be eaten up by the insects. 
Where we used to live is a bird house 
and in winter we kept food there for the 
birds. One bird would find it and tell 
all the rest of them. Some times there 
would be about twenty-five at a time. 
One day last spring a naughty boy had 
robbed a bird’s nest. He had taken 
even the nest. The poor bird thought if 
at first you don’t succeed try, try again. 
So she tried several times and soon the 
boy thought it was wrong and left the 
nest alone. 
From your friend, 
Gladvs Farr. 
Mazomanie, Wis., Oct. 30, 07. 
Dear Wayside: 
I belong to a society and I like it very 
much. One day when a naughty boy 
was going to kill a robin, I told him it 
wasn’t nice to kill such a nice bird. It 
didn’t do him any harm. He said he 
did n’t care. One Sunday when I was 
taking my friend home I found a dead 
robin. I have lived in town now two 
years. I did live on a farm in Mounds’ 
Creek. When I was on the farm I found 
a bird with a broken wing. I took it to 
the house and bound it up and in a little 
while it was better. It would flv around 
us. One day it flew to the barn. One 
day it flew too far when it wing was not 
strong and a cat got it. My sister and I 
felt so bad we cried for the poor little 
thing. Violet Coldwell. 
Mauston, Wis., June, 6, 1907. 
Dear Wayside: 
Last Saturday afternoon I saw a flock 
of goldfinches and this morning when I 
was coming to school I saw another flock 
of goldfinches. I also saw a Baltimore 
oriole on one of our plum trees. I went 
out to look at it, and it flew away. This 
morning in school time a limb broke off 
of a tree and fell to the ground. It had a 
, r t n , . ^ ^ , , ■ , • 
Acker’s nest in it. The limb fell so that 
the flicker’s nest was upside down. My 
teacher sent some of the boys out to stand 
the limb up against the tree. Then the 
janitor went and put the little flickers in 
a hollow hole in a tree so they wouldn’t 
get hurt. But the flicker never came 
back to her young ones and the little 
flickers died. They must have starved. 
Yours trulv, 
Aged 12. Laura Wermuth. 
Mazomanie, Wis., Oct., 29, 1907. 
Dear Wayside: 
I built two or three bird houses. A 
robin built his nest in one of these 
houses. A bluejay built his nest in our 
tree and David robbed the nest with five 
eggs in it. Each egg had a little bird in 
it. This vear a robin built his nest in 
one of the trees. I used to give him 
straw and string to build bis nest with. 
I don’t think that I have ever killed a 
bird in my life. Once I bad a pair of 
pigeons. One of them fell in the rain 
barrel and the other one died. 
Earl Billig. 
