88 
B Y THE WA YSIDE 
lie dot of .red on. his head. I could see 
„ • j . * i- 
it when it bent down to look under a 
branch. 1 think it hunts for insects all 
over the branches. It is called the 
Ruby Crowned Kinglet. I wish they 
.7 <?■_ •* , ' ' • 
would stay here all the time. 
Yours truly, 
Aged 11. Helen Swedlund. 
ing suit is of finely striped buff' brown 
and black. He goes to South America 
in Winter. He feeds on seeds, fruit 
and insects. He is now called “Robert 
• „ |- ! t , 
of Lincoln” or the seed or the rice bird: 
Yours truly, 
, Sadie Edmunds. 
?! 
i i; 
Gardner, Ill., April, 1909. 
Dear Mrs. Scudder : 
I will tell you about some of the birds 
I have studied about. Some of the 
birds I have studied about are the Robin 
and Bluebird. The Robins and Blue¬ 
birds are coming now. The young birds 
have their breast spotted. They are pe¬ 
culiarly American birds. 
The Thrushes and Bobolinks are some 
other birds. The Thrushes are soft 
birds. They are insect eaters. They 
are most valuable. They also eat fruit 
just like the Robins and Bluebirds. 
They are very quiet and their backs are 
yellowish brown with chestnut breasts. 
The Swallows are here in the middle of 
this month. When the Swallows come 
\ 1 * 
, it is the sure sign of summer. Their 
backs, are dark blue and their throats 
are white or a chestnut color. Their 
nests are made in the grass.(?) They re¬ 
main with us until the close of the 
summer. The Tree Swallows stay here 
until the end of October. There are 
six kinds of Swallows. There are the 
Barn Swallow, the Tree Swallow, the 
Cliff Swallow, the Bank Swallow, and 
the Rough-winged Swallow. All the 
summer long these birds are destroying 
our insect pests. . 
The Bobolink wears a remarkable suit 
of clothes. His head is jet black. He 
has a large yellowish patch on his Lack 
of his neck. His back is streaked with 
buff whitish over his tail. His travel¬ 
The Herring Gull. 
( Continuedfrom 'page 84.) 
last eggs being small in size and irregu¬ 
lar in color. ■ 
The fishermen are careful to disturb 
them but once and repay them many 
times over by dumping barrels of fish 
offal into the bay near their fishing 
shanties for the gulls to quarrel oyer. 
The young are little balls of grayish- 
white with irregular black spots on the 
head. Some of the young which we saw 
later left the nests near the beach, when 
no larger t han squabs, when approached, 
« and swam away, the parents hovering 
above and directing them with loud 
cries. In the more rocky places the 
young hid in crevices or beside frag¬ 
ments which their color closely resem¬ 
bled. 
When t hey are a bid 1 to fly instead of 
the beautiful plumage of the adult be¬ 
fore mentiontd, th^y • start off with a 
dull brownish ash color. The bill is 
bluish-black instead of the bright yellow 
of the adult. By the time they begin 
to scatter and reach the harbors of the 
Lower Lakes in the late fall, a majority 
of the gulls are in the dark plumage, 
but in the spring, to all appearances, 
they are as beautiful as their parents, 
and prepare to raise broods of their own 
although a few dark ones still appear. 
As late as’May 10th, 1 saw over one 
hundred on the Government Breakwater 
near the entrance to the Chicago har¬ 
bor, but. none were seen about the river, 
which they frequented all winter, after¬ 
wards, so they were evidently assembly- 
ing for the departure to the northern 
breeding'places. 
Frank S. Daggett. 
Oak Park, Ill., April 20, 1906. 
