28 THE AUDUBON BULLE RT iy 


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Out-or-poor Dintnc Room, Ripceway Home, OLNEY, ILLINoIs 
tropical luxuriance. Not only are there many rare plants found growing 
in Bird Haven but plants of different families have hybridized so that 
new varieties have been formed which puzzle the botanists. More 
varieties of trees, shrubs, and woody vines are now found in the eighteen 
acres of Bird Haven than in almost any other locality of like area in the 
United States. Many plants that are not native to the country have 
also been brought in and are found growing to ideal conditions. At 
Mr. Ridgeway’s home every inducement for the comfort of the birds 
has been thought of. Feeding shelves for the seed-eating birds, a sawed 
off tree trunk in whose dead trunk holes have been bored which are kept 
filled with suet, are visited by the woodpeckers. While sitting at lunch 
on the fifteenth of May five of the six woodpeckers that visit the region 
came to the bird table and helped themselves. Brown thrushes, cat- 
birds, robins, mourning doves, and many other birds nest on the place. 
The call of the bob-white is as familiar a sound as the song of robin. 
The Carolina chickadee comes down to the bird shelf and fusses at any 
careless individual who may be too near for its comfort. Mr. and Mrs. 
Ridgeway keep all of the feeding shelves constantly supplied with food. 
Peanut and other nut meats are generously supplied and no feeding sta- 
tion is allowed to become empty. Last winter thirty-six varieties of birds 
were boarders at the Ridgeway Bird Hotel. 
No finer example of how birds learn to know when they are loved 
and protected can be found in the state of Illinois. In the nursery at 
