102 
BY THE WAYSIDE 
Illinois Prize Letter 
Chicago, Ill., May 1, 1911. 
My Dear Miss Drummond:— 
I've had nothing to write about so 
far. I thought of a plan to help the 
birds. The house next door, which we 
own, has an attic and above the win¬ 
dow in the fancy part of the house are 
a few birds’ nests. I put some water 
in an unbreakable cup, and soaked some 
white bread in it. I put these and 
some lettuce on a board, opened the 
window a little, put the board out and 
shut the window as tight as I could, 
so the board wouldn't fall. I left the 
attic and came up the day after. Many 
of the birds had eaten from it because 
it was almost gone except a few crumbs 
of bread and some water. 
My father owns the house so I could 
j 
do this. 
Many times my friend and I would 
go into the attic and watch the birds 
o 
eat. 
1 had another experience when my 
brother and I were in the school yard 
on Saturday afternoon. We found a 
small bird without feathers. We wished 
to let its mother find it, so we 
put it back and then we hid. "But it 
was left there so long that we took it 
home and I got some crumbs of white 
bread and fed it with tha ,f and some 
water, a teaspoon fill at a time. It ate 
quite a bit and when T fed it, I had to 
noke it way back in his mouth with a 
thin stick, otherwise he couldn’t eat it. 
My friend enne over that night and we 
named it Dickie. Then we put it in a 
small Easter egg basket with some 
white cotton. In the morning it was 
dead. We did not think it would be, 
for it chirped so much the day before. 
Yours truly, 
Laura Scholpp, 
3258 Seminary Ave., 
Shumway, Ill., May 20, 1911. 
Dear Wayside:— 
A few weeks ago I saw a dickcissel 
which was about six inches long. It 
was a reddish brown bird with streaks 
cf black. The upper part of its breast 
was yellow with a black spot near the 
bill. It also had a yellow stripe near 
and below the eye and had a yellowish 
gray head. 
This morning I saw a nest made of 
mud o;i a rafter of a barn, which a 
friend told me was a barn-swallow’s 
nest. The nest was lined with chicken 
feathers which my friend told me were 
pulled out by the swallow when mak¬ 
ing its nest. There were six eggs in 
the nest, white with specks of reddish 
brown. 
Yours truly, 
Walter Laue. 
Age 9. 
Mazoma.nie, Wis., May 26, 1911. 
Dear Wayside:— 
I think the chimney swift is a very 
comical bird. Its wings are so long 
and its tail so strong. Its legs are 
weak and short. Its home is in the 
chimney. A little after sunset they can 
be seen flying around the chimneys. 
When they fly they use their tail for a 
rudder. Tts eggs are white. 
Sometimes when a pair of swifts 
have their nest in a chimney with some 
little ones in it, and the chimney should 
catch on fire the mother bird would 
trv to get her young ones out. Tf she 
couldn’t she would stav in the chimney 
with her babes and be burnt. 
Tt has two broods a year. Tf it 
should try to go down to the ground it 
couldn’t get up again on account of its 
w’ngs Some people make a mistake 
by calling the chimney swift the chim¬ 
ney swallow. 
