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OUTDOOR SUPPERS ARE FOR THE BIRDS 
ABOVE THE WINDING STREAM on the green hill each evening | set out my garden chair and large TV tray for the “show 
to go on.”’ For me, the props are always the same -- a copy of Thoreau’s WALDEN, home-made vegetable soup in a pheasant 
bowl, and some kind of fruit shortcake. But for the birds, the props vary. 
WITH HEAVY RAINS, 25 Ibs. of wild bird seed and four feeders aren’t much good if they’re underwater or have floated 
downstream. We have really had it this year. One day the stream is in its bed, flowing silently and slowly between two 
timbered banks of tall willows, poplars, maples and elder. The next day it’s a cocoa torrent far out of its banks, climbing half 
way up the hill. Quite a few drops of rain fall in 20 hours, and we'd need a boat to fill the hanging feeders in the trees, so 
they come off the list. 
Our second line of defense was a lantern type feeder, from which vandals had taken the pole to fight with, so we took the 
lantern-head and fastened its collar in the iron jaws of a barbeque grill, cemented into the picnic area ground five feet away 
from the stream, and filled the lantern with wild bird seed. After a three-day rain, the water rose so high, all we could see in 
the low picnic area was the surface ripple over the top of the bird feeder. We took bets on how long the grill could hold it 
against the downstream torrent. The feeder went during the first night,. . .. downstream with the picnic benches & horseshoe 
court frames. 
Our third line of defense for the birds is a chunk of oak log, set up-end, topped with flagstone, and impaled to the good earth 
with a TV pole, pounded through the log with a crowbar. Nothing can wash away this set-up, and in case of rising water in 
the picnic area, you can toss wild bird seed to the flagstone “‘plate”’ if your nerves are steady. Finally one evening we came 
home to supper to find the whole thing under water, with eight inches of the TV pole stemming the surface current. 
In the emergency, we sent for a feeder on a GREEN METAL NARROW POLE, clipping a coupon from a 5 Ib. sack (sorry -- 
10 Ib. sack) of SONG ‘N BEAUTY wild bird seed. It had a sunflower bright yellow hat and was supposed to attract birds on 
sight from the sky. We laughed that off, but with four cardinals on it 1% hours after putting it up, we murmured apologies to 
the manufacturer. This was it! The cyclinder top sunflower lifts off for E—Z filling. Just tip the hat. We could stick this 
sharp-pointed six-foot metal pole in the ground just about anywhere, and we did. It has been on every inch of our hill in the 
rainy season, from the golf sand-pit down below in the picnic area, up the side of the grassy hill, to the top of the mowed golf 
green. It was never more than twenty feet from our strawberry shortcake and copy of WALDEN. 
A FULL CAST for the supper show, whenever it stopped raining included: two red-winged blackbirds and song sparrows, 
always eating the fine seed; four blue jays and six cardinals, plus one pair’s step-son, a waddling ugly cowbird tenderly raised 
in the cardinal nest and still, at this date, being fed by one doting mama cardinal. How can she be so blind? The rest of the 
cast brought a beautiful indigo bunting poised in the low green willows, alder flycatchers or the Least ... regarding us 
seriously from the elders and nipping the air for our insects; one pair of blue kingfishers, killdeer, solitary sandpipers, 
northern waterthrushes; and in the sky: green herons flapping slowly above stream at sunset, 3 ducks that changed their 
minds and their course every few moments, martins, nighthawks, chimney swifts, and lovely burnt-orange-throated, dark blue 
barn swallows, fluid in the evening sky. WHAT DO YOU HAVE FOR SUPPER AT YOUR PLACE? WRITE US ABOUT THE 
BIRDS BEYOND YOUR DOORSTEP! 
OK KK OE 
Betty Groth 
NEW YORK COURT RULES AGAINST ENDANGERED SPECIES — The New York State Supreme Court has ruled 
unconstitutional a law which prohibited the sale of certain animal skins in the state, primarily spotted cats and 
crocodilians, on the grounds that the new law protects some species which are not really endangered. The law was 
challenged by a Syracuse, N.Y. shoe manufacturer; however, the National Audubon Society now plans to appeal the 
court’s ruling. An announcement from the fur workers’ unions recently declared that members would no longer work 
on the skins of leopards, cheetahs, jaguars, and ocelots. 
TREASURER HAS MAIL TROUBLE — The treasurer had a period of about six weeks in January and February when 
mail delivery was almost non-existent; the office in Downers Grove has also had mail troubles constantly. If any check 
for the Illinois Audubon Society has not been cashed for at least two months, we have, in all probability, not received 
it. Paul Schulze, Treasurer. 

CORRECTION — The date of the film, ‘Scandinavian Sage” was incorrectly listed in the October Newsletter. The film will 
be shown on January 3. 

