eloraebal B GOIN TB OM lelaN 25 
George B. Pratt 
NOTHER of the organizers of the Illinois Audubon Society has 
A been called by death, since the last issue of the BULLETIN. 
On the last Sunday in February many hundreds of Chicago 
Tribune readers were touched by the announcement that the Reverend 
George B. Pratt was gone. During his lifetime of eighty-five years he had 
spent the best in the service of the Episcopal Church in Chicago or in 
neighboring suburban parishes. 
From his boyhood, which was spent in Ohio, Father Pratt was in- 
terested in birds and while still quite young became a regular reader of 
“Thoreau’s Diaries of the Seasons.” While living in Hastings, Minne- 
sota, in 1880 he reported his bird observations for Wells Cooke. It was 
there that he made a marginal note in “Early Spring in Massachusetts”’ 
under date of April, 1880, ‘““Have seen Doctor Coues’ Key to Birds, 
and want it.” Two years later he penciled beneath the first note “And 
now have it.” Both books, worn as books are with many readings, 
are now among the writer’s dearest keepsakes. 
While living in Oak Park in 1886 Father Pratt established what was 
probably the first Audubon Society in Illinois. It was composed of him- 
self and nine choir boys of Grace Church in which he was officiating at 
that time. In 1890 it was he who presided at the meeting which devel- 
oped the present Illinois Audubon Society and for many years he remained 
a director. In 1900, Father Pratt’s church work took him to Porto Rico 
for a period of several years and his observations of bird migration were 
among his most interesting experiences in the field. About 1910 he came 
to live in Savanna, Illinois, and it was my rare good fortune to act as 
guide, taking him into my favorite bird haunts. On these trips he met 
his first Prothonotary and Cerulean Warblers. At the beginning of 1913 
he retired from active church work and took up his final residence on 
Lawrence Avenue in Chicago within easy walking distance of Grace- 
land Cemetery. Watching the birds in this vicinity he became a familiar 
figure in the neighborhood as he searched the trees, shrubs, and little 
lake until he proudly boasted fifty-six species within the cemetery 
walls. For fourteen years he patrolled a vacant lot on his street, alert 
for the first robin, and it was a significant and touching fact that the 
last week of his life was spent within easy binocular reach of that spot. 
Mrs. Pratt passed on in September, 1926, and after fifty-eight years 
of happy companionship he could not survive the separation. They 
lie together in Graceland Cemetery, his favorite bird sanctuary. 
NELLIE J. BaRroopy, 
Berwyn, Illinois. 
