BY THE WAYSIDE 
45 
SCHOOL BRANCH DEPARTMENT 
Every Wisconsin School Branch is required to subscribe for at least one copy of BY THE WAYSIDE 
Letters for this department should be written on only 
oie side of the page, should give the name, age and ad¬ 
dress of the writer, and should be mailed by the first of 
tne month: Illinois children sending to Miss Mary Drum¬ 
mond, 208 West St,, Wheaton. III., and Wisconsin children 
to Miss Edith Edwards, Appleton, Wis. An honor badge 
will be awarded for each state every month, preference 
being given to letters about the bird study for the month 
(which is always on this page) and to original observa¬ 
tions. Any child who wins the honor badge twice will 
receive By the Wayside one year as a prize. 
The wren button, which is the badge of the Audubon 
Socie’y costs two cents and may be bought from Miss 
Mary Drummond or Mr Moyle. * 1 
Any Wisconsin School Branch may, without expense, 
have the use of the Gordon and Merrill Lioraries of bird 
books, by applying to Miss Sophia Schaefer, Librarian, 
679 North street Appleton 
A set of colored bird slides with a typewritten lecture 
mav be rented from Chas. E. Brown, State Historical 
Building:, Madison. Wis. 
Illinois Schools, may use. without expense, a library 
or a lecture with lantern slides, by applying to E. S. 
Adams, 439 Elm Street, Chicago 
t 
Suppose you were a bird and, instead 
of a comfortable bed, slept in an ever¬ 
green. Your meals during the winter 
must be mostly seeds because thednsects 
disappeared months ago. And then 
some cold morning in December you come 
out of your spruce bough bedroom and 
find all the weed seed upon which you 
have been living covered with snow. 
Have you noticed how, after a heavy 
snow, the chickadee and downy wood¬ 
pecker, and others that are shyer, come 
about the houses. Here is your chance. 
Go into business right away. There is a 
fine opening for a bird restaurant. 
I have a restaurant and picture gallery 
combined. It is located on the top of a 
post. The main building is a board 
about four feet long, and a foot wide, and 
weather-beaten. On the north end is 
the lunch counter. A fairly good lunch 
counter can be made out of a box about 
| the size of a cigar box. Cut a slit in one 
side near the bottom and fasten it so it is 
tilted toward the slit. Then the supply 
I of crumbs will come out the slit as fast 
as they are eaten. Pieces of fat are en¬ 
joyed by some birds. You can fasten 
this down to the board with some dou¬ 
ble-pointed tacks. On the other end of 
this board is a box large enough to hold 
a camera, and in the side toward the 
lunch counter is a hole big enough for 
the lens to look through. So far I have 
no pictures worth while, but there is a 
long winter to come yet. 
Why don’t you try a lunch counter? 
Are not the birds that stay here all the 
vear the ones we should care the most 
%/ 
for? Now-a-davs when we see a bluejav 
we stop to look at him, while he would 
go almost liunoticed in the summer. 
And the nuthatch with his continual and 
nasal “thank, thank” after each morsel 
dug from under the bark; and the rarer 
downy and hairy woodpecker,—do they 
not make a bright spot in our winter day? 
Chickadee. 
This is the time of year to renew ac¬ 
quaintance with the black-capped chick¬ 
adee, one of the most interesting of our 
bird citizens. With the crown of his head 
so black that w r e can easily imagine it is 
a cap that the chickadee can doff at pleas¬ 
ure, there is no mistaking him as far as 
he can be seen. But if vou are in doubt 
%/ 
his immediate announcement that he is 
c.hickad ee-dee-dee will settle your doubt. 
He is so insistent about it that I have 
wondered if he means it to be written 
Chickadee, D. D., and wears his black 
capas a modified mortar board. 
Chickadee has some very marked char¬ 
acteristics. To begin with, he seems to 
have almost no fear of man. Frank 
Chapman tells of one alighting on his 
hat. A photograph was published re¬ 
cently in a bird magazine of a chickadee 
