28 THE AUDUBON BULLE 

and the prothonotary warbler are among the more rare finds. Not many 
years ago a wood duck was shot less than a mile from Mud Lake. 
The first cardinals to come and stay, arrived by this route about 1900, 
and within recent years the tufted titmouse has also arrived in numbers. 
It takes very little imagination to picture the former great hosts of 
birds that must have used the “‘Le Portage” migration route, visiting 
the oak belt along the old lake shore lines, and the orchards of red haw 
and wild crab apple east of Mud Lake. Old settlers recall great flights of 
wild pigeons that roosted in the forest below Willow Springs. 
The accompanying picture was taken on Easter Sunday April 8, 1928, 
after one of the freak wet snow storms that so frequently occur in the 
Chicago region. In the leafless trees were many hungry birds, as the 
ground was well covered with snow, and in a sheltered bend of the river 
were flocks of robins, blue birds, rusty black birds, with numbers of 
titmice, chickadees, brown creepers and kinglets. 








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