22 THE AUDUBON BULVE-Tim 
DECEMBER 
Cardinals were singing on December 3, and the black-capped 
chickadee started singing his “‘pee-wee”’ song on the 7th. On the 8th, I 
saw a pair of yellow-bellied sapsuckers which made a very interesting 
addition to our winter bird residents. On the 15th, a local taxidermist 
received a snowy owl which was killed at Lima Lake where it attacked 
some decoys. From its smell it had had a previous meal of skunk flesh. 
Three distinct times, the last on the fifteenth, I have had woodcocks 
brought to me by hunters wishing to know their identifications. I believe 
I saw no more than one or two woodcocks from Ig10 to 1922. During the 
last three years I have found from three to eight nests yearly and this 
season I have knowledge of at least a half dozen birds that were killed by 
hunters who did not appreciate what they were killing. On the 24th, I 
received a letter from Astoria concerning the catching of a starling in a 
hayloft. A flock of thirty-seven was reported on January 8, one of which 
was killed by a sharpshinned hawk. Two more starlings were killed 
during the Christmas holidays out of a flock of fifty near Warsaw and I 
kept one starling brought to me January 11, as a captive for several days. 
There is no doubt that starlings have established themselves in Adams 
County and I estimate that at present there are no fewer than a thousand 
in our county. I shall watch with great care to get the first nesting 
record next spring. September 21, I saw a flock of several hundred black- 
birds in which there were over fifty starlings and a small flock of such 
birds has been feeding on a farm east of the city for the last three weeks. 
JANUARY 
On January 5, I saw a mockingbird on a farm east of Quincy, the 
owner of which told me that she had eight mockers on her farm during 
the summer and early fall. I feel that I can say that the mockingbird has 
definitely extended its range so that we have a scattering few nesting 
birds in the summer time and a dozen or so birds remaining here during 
the winter. A pair of bronzed grackles has spent the winter near one of 
the local feeding shelves. On Long Island, north of Quincy, there is a 
point on which many of the old oak trees were killed by fire. These have 
been honey-combed by woodpeckers. A trip to this location showed me 
more than fifty redheaded woodpeckers which were living in these old oak 
trees and were relying upon an abundant crop of acorns as their food. 
The quail had a good nesting season but endured a heavy mortality 
during the hunting season. I asked hunters to keep track of the relative 
proportion of male and female birds and found that in Adams County 
the sexes were distributed about evenly. The heavy snow and sleet of 
January 5 to 10 threatens extermination of our quail unless the activity 
of local conservationists is successful in securing relief throughout the 
county. Already some of the Boy Scouts and hunters have established 
stations where the quails are gathering in numbers. 
