BY THE WAYSIDE 
61 
SCHOOL BRANCH DEPARTMENT 
Every Wisconsin School Branch is required to subscribe for at least one copy of BY THE WAYSIDE 
Letters to this department should be 
written on only one side of the page, should 
give name, age and address of the writer and 
should be mailed by the first of the month; 
Illinois writers sending to Miss Mary Drum¬ 
mond, Spring Lane, Lake Forest, Ill., and 
Wisconsin writers to Mr. Roland E. Kremers, 
Madison, Wis. To each writer whose letter 
is published will be sent a beautiful colored 
picture of the bird of the m nth. For the 
best letter each month we will send “Winter 
Picnics’ by Ruth Marshall, Preference will 
he given to letters about the bird study 
for the month and to original observations. 
The wren button which is the badge of the 
Audubon Society, costs two cents and can be 
bought from Miss Mary Drummond, or Mr. 
Kremers. 
Any Wisconsin society may, by paying 
the express, have the use of the Gordon and 
Merrill Libraries of bird books by applying 
to Mr. Kremers. 
A set of colored bird slides with a type¬ 
written lecture may be rented from Roland 
E. Kremers, 1720 Vilas Street, Madison, 
Wis. Illinois Schools may use, without ex¬ 
pense, a library or a lecture with lantern 
slides, by applying to Miss Bunnel, Academy 
of Sciences, Chicago. 
The Bohemian Waxwing 
The other day I saw for the first time 
; this winter the Bohemian waxwing, 
| which suggested to me that they would 
he a fit subject for study this month. 
| As the Bohemian waxwing does not go 
much farther south than northern Illi¬ 
nois, I am going to include the Cedar 
waxwing. On first glance the birds 
appear very similar. The Bohemian 
waxwing is the larger; also its under 
| tail coverts are rufous chestnut , while 
I those of the Cedar waxwing are white 
Keep your eyes open for these two 
j especially, but also be on the look out 
for other winter visitants. The north¬ 
ern shrike, the evening grosbeak, the 
crossbills, the longspurs and snowflakes 
and other northern species form for me 
at least a most interesting field for 
study. 
Michigan Prize Letter 
Traverse City, Mich., Dec. 10, 1910. 
Dear Wayside:— 
1 heard from a friend that you had 
not received for several months a letter 
from Michigan and I sat right down 
to write one. 
I think that I can tell you some in¬ 
teresting facts about birds. 
The sparrow is an every-day bird and 
is with us throughout the year. If you 
should put out feed for them during 
the winter weather you would most 
generally find them there at the same 
hour the next day waiting for you to 
give them another meal. They tease 
the robin a great deal and many times 
have I seen the two birds quarreling. 
The robin is an every-day bird also 
of which I am quite familiar, but they 
only stay with us through the summer. 
I think they have the prettiest eggs of 
anv bird that I know of. They are so 
little and have such a pretty shade of 
blue on them. The robin appreciates 
the thread, cotton, bread and meal 
thrown out to him and after he is done 
he resumes his work with a merry chirp. 
Today T noticed a nuthatch. It 
*/ 
seemed merry and gay. It was chirp¬ 
ing away as if it were midsummer. And 
T wondered as I watched him if he had 
had enough to eat and I hurried into 
the house to get a bit for him, but when 
T returned to the spot the little fellow 
was gone. 
The red-headed woodpecker is another 
bird which I am real familiar with. I 
know of a woodpecker and his family 
that have lived in a tall tree that has 
been deprived of its limbs for at least 
