1 
Every 
BY THE WAYSIDE 
SCHOOL BRANCH DEPARTMENT 
Wisconsin School Branch is required to subscribe for at least one ccpy 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. Krcmers, 
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 badg i 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. ILinois Schools may use, without ex¬ 
pense, a library or a lecture with lantern 
slides, by applying to Miss Bunnel, Academy 
)f Sciences, Chicago. 
Bii d of the Month 
Already the birds are going south. 
'Mother Cary has warned her chickens 
At first we may find only a few, but 
soon more white-throated sparrows ar¬ 
rive until every pile of underbrush by 
the roadside shelters a flock of these 
friendly birds. All summer long the 
white-throated sparrow has been feeding 
on wild terries, but the berry season is 
now about passed and the “peabody- 
bird” must get its food elsewhere. The 
weeds that have been growing in farm¬ 
ers’ fields all summer have ripened their 
seeds. Here is an abundant supply of 
food for the white-throated sparrow. 
In the course of a year, more than four- 
fifths of its food consists of vegetable 
matter and nearly one-tentli of all its 
food is made up of the seeds of ragweed. 
We hope that all our readers may 
learn to know this useful sparrow. Tn 
Wisconsin it is a very common migrant, 
both spring and fall, and some stay to 
nest in the northern part. 
hat winter is coming and they have 
ibeyed her warning and are flying to 
heir warmer winter homes. Some birds 
lave arrived here and many more are 
joining. The white-throated sparrow 
jyill soon be here. This sparrow can 
>e easily known, by these markings:— 
Its crown is black, but is divided by a 
iarrow white stripe through the center ; 
n front of the eyes is a yellow streak 
nd back of them a white stripe; the 
hroat is conspicuously white, while the 
, reast and belly are gray. One can also 
jasily tell this sparow by its song. Tts 
otes are usually high, clear and plain- 
ive and to some one can set the word 
: peabody”, whence they are called the 
■peabody-bird”. 
Illinois Prize L<tter 
Shumway, Ill., Aug. 10, 1911. 
Dear Wayside :— 
1 want to write you my experience 
with a pair of house wrens. We set up 
two tin cans early in March with holes 
the size of a quarter-dollar, one near the 
house, the other farther away. A few 
weeks later we saw a pair of wrens 
hunting for a place to build their nest. 
They entered one of the tin cans and 
examined it but it did not suit them. It 
was fun to watch them go in any build- 
in sr searching for a good place to build 
but we were afraid we would not get 
tenants. After an hour searching they 
sided the other tin can which was in a 
more secluded place. They decided to 
