dd THE A U:D.U BON. BULL Base 
Notes from Waukegan Bird Banding Station 
The most noticeable event of the winter season was the be- 
havior of our Regular Boarder, a Fox Sparrow, who came to 
our yard on November 12 and came back again on November 
13, 14, 15 and 16. Then he was trapped twice and sometimes 
three times a day until his total was thirty-three at the end of 
the month, and still he stayed on, making a total of fifty-nine 
visits in December. During the last of January he skipped a 
few days but still held his attendance record up to forty-two 
times. February was warm and he got the spring fever and 
only came when the snow was on the ground or on stormy days. 
He made only thirteen visits for the month. In all his times of 
being trapped and released to March first totaled 149, but this 
does not count the times that he got his meals from the flat traps 
when no one was around to pull the string and catch him. We 
think he must have the record for the most trapped bird in the 
United States. 
Tree Sparrows visited our traps during the past winter sea- 
son for the first time. The two preceding years the traps 
were in the same places but for some reason failed to attract 
them, or they were not in the district to be caught. 
Chickadees also made their first visit in numbers. Last year 
we trapped just one, but this year we trapped twenty-eight, 
mostly in November. These repeated right along through the 
winter, so the trapping and banding proved that they remained 
in one place for the winter. 
Early last fall we observed a Nuthatch taking grain from 
under one of the traps and storing it under the bark of trees, 
just anywhere it found a place, but a few days later another 
was observed taking the grain and storing it in a knot hole. It 
made three trips. Then we pulled the string and trapped it, 
but a few days later we saw it again storing the grain in the 
same knot hole. We let it make twelve trips before it was 
trapped. On three more days the same bird made eight, ten and 
four trips to the same hole before we trapped it to read the num- 
ber and release as before, so we are sure that it was the same 
bird and it was really storing grain in the same place every time. 
During the mild weather there seemed to be hardly any birds 
around, but just as soon as a storm came they would be back to 
feed at the traps, so most of the trapping went by jumps. This 
applied to Juncos especially, but we were pleased by having two 
Juncos return with the old bands and one was back forthe third 
time. 
A Downy Woodpecker trapped and banded a year ago returned 
and was trapped again. Another Downy that was trapped and 
banded last year was found dead at the high school. We were 
successful in banding about a dozen more Downies. 
W. I. LYON. 
