BY TEE WAYSIDE 
101 
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; 
I 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 b.rd of the m nth. For the 
best letter each month we will send ‘Winter 
Picnics” by Ruth Marshall. Preference will 
be given to letters about the bird study 
for the month and to original observations. 
The wren button which is the badgs 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. 
Wisconsin Prize Letter 
Mazom an * 1 e, Wi scon sin. 
May 26, 1911. 
My Dear Wayside:— 
I have seen the chimney swift quite 
often, but I have wondered why it was 
net c-n the ground. I looked it up one 
day, and found that its legs were so 
weak, that it could not get up if it got 
on th? ground. His color is kind of a 
scoty brown, changing to a gray at the 
liroat. Several pairs of swifts live to¬ 
gether in a colony. When the swift is 
o the air he is shaped like a bobbin, 
oluntly pointed at both ends. They 
nake their nests of twigs, and as they 
can’t fly to the ground to pick up sbeks, 
hey just fly right at the branch of an 
old dead limb and grab at the twig. 
Some times they fail, but they keep it 
ip, for their motto is, “try, try again.” 
It is lots of fun to watch them going to 
roost. First they gather in a Hock of 
about a hundred or more, then fly 
around in wide circles, keeping the chim¬ 
ney for the center, until the circle be¬ 
comes narrower, then one by one they 
all drop in. The chimney swifts’ food 
is mostly insects. If there is a fire in 
the chimney and there are young ones 
in the nest, the mother bird, if she can’t 
get the young out she stays in too. 
Yours truly, 
Buena' Talbot. 
Mazomanie, Wis., May 26, 1911. 
Dear Wayside :— 
One morning last week when I was 
getting ready for school a chimney 
swift flew in through the window. It 
did not know the way out again, so I 
caught it and took a good look at it. 
The back is a sooty brown, and the 
throat is gray. The swift’s body is 
shaped l’ke a bobbin. It has a stiff tail 
that it uses as a rudder when it turns a 
sham corner. 
The chimney swifts feed on insects 
wln’ch tbev catch while flying through 
the air. They have wide mouths which 
make it easier for them to get their 
food. 
At right they sleeo in chimneys or 
if they are in an unsettled region they 
stav in hollow trees. 
The swift builds its nest of twigs 
which are stuck together with their own 
saliva. They come in early spring and 
raise two broods a year. 
Yours truly, 
Helen Laws. 
Age 12. 
