BY THE WAYSIDE 
67 
J 
receive far less protection tlian is neces¬ 
sary to prevent their extermination. 
This being so, it must be obvious that no 
backward step should he taken in the 
advance toward the establishment of 
adequate game laws in all the states. 
a, 
— 
i 
The First Robin Not Yet Here 
■ 
The “first robin of the spring” usu¬ 
ally is the last one of the year before. 
From now on various papers will be pub¬ 
lishing reports of the return of robin 
redbreast. In many cases, no doubt, 
they are true. But even then, these are 
birds which, through misfortune or in¬ 
dolence, have decided to brave Wiscon¬ 
sin winter rather than make the long, 
wearisome southward journey. 
In 1909, on the seventh of January, 
just after we had experienced one of 
1 the coldest snaps of the winter, a plump 
; old robin that chirped as merrily as 
though the mercury were not lingering 
around the zero mark, hovered in the 
I 
cedars, pines and larches of this city. 
This bird certainly had not come up 
| from Dixie in the face of bitter north 
f winds. 
At other times the over-zealous watch- 
f ers for this herald of the spring are led 
to heb"eve they have seen a robin, when, 
in reality, it was some other redbreast. 
On the first day of February a numbei 
of years ago, a party of young people 
i- was tobogganing when some one said, 
“0, see the robins.” 
4 7 
There in a barberry bush were a dozen 
or more beautiful pine gros-beaks. 
i 
j They are gray on the back with breasts 
of pink—not brick red, like the robin’s. 
But to those gay young ornithologists a 
redbreast is a robin, even as “pigs is 
pigs. ’ ’ 
We have numerous birds with us the 
year ’round. In the city the note of the 
blue jay or the brown creeper is com¬ 
monly heard by those whose ears are 
trained to bird music. The sturdy 
“yank, yank” of the whitebreasted nut¬ 
hatch and the shrill cries of the down} 1 ' 
and hairy woodpeckers are equally 
familiar. Less commonly seen are the 
golden-crowned kinglet or the goldfinch, 
known to many as the wild canary. But 
they are with us throughout the winter. 
The goldfinch scarcely is recognizable in 
its sombre winter dress of olive green. 
In the country one may see until 
others of the feathered tribe,—the prai¬ 
rie horned lark and tree sparrow, the 
crow, the bob white or quail, the grouse 
or partridge, and hawks and owls of 
many kinds. These are found all winter 
in this region. 
However, our young naturalists need 
not watch for the spring birds till the 
end of February or the first of March. 
The bluebird, one of the vanguard of the 
migrating thousands, may he expected 
from February 25 to March 4. Other 
birds are due about as follows: 
Junco, March 1. 
Robin, March 4. 
Red-winged blackbird, bronzed 
graekle, rusty blackbird, March 6. 
Song sparrow, meadow lark, fox spar¬ 
row, March 12. 
Phoebe, March 18. 
Flicker, March 22. 
This little group is the first division ol 
the great spring migration. Some of 
these birds may come earlier or later 
than the above schedule shows; but that 
all depends on the weather of early 
March. 
