tae ODE BONS BU Eels hi N 29 
get a Christmas dinner in the storm from a dish of choice food scraps 
which a mocking bird was claiming for his own. The starling seemed to 
be exhausted from hunger and made a poor showing in combat with the 
mocking bird but managed to get his fill before making off. 
MOUNT CARROLL 
Miss Blanche Cramer sends this interesting report from the southeast 
corner of ‘fo Daviess County and the adjacent region in the northern portion 
of Carroll County. 
December twenty-ninth my sister and I were walking across some 
weedy oat stubble when a flock of several hundred snow buntings flew 
up from the ground just a few rods ahead of us. They circled around over 
us then lighted on the ground and fed apparently on the ragweed seeds. 
We followed them for some time and noticed that they followed ravines 
where there were snow patches. The next day we found them on a hay 
field nearby feeding and following up the patches of snow. . We were 
impressed by their flights which made one think of leaves blown by the 
wind. They were very buoyant in flight and very restless when on the 
ground. When flying they would wheel about showing the white beneath 
and the sunshine on them made them look like snowflakes. A neighbor, 
Mr. Beyer, has reported seeing them in his fields for about a week previ- 
ous to our seeing them. I have seen them only once before. In October, 
1926, father and I were driving and two flew ahead of us down the lane. 
The next day we found one of them dead. On the above walk we saw in 
addition to the buntings, a cardinal, several juncos, seven chickadees, 
and two white-breasted nuthatches. The second day we saw a pair of 
chickadees and a white-breasted nuthatch. December thirty-first we 
walked about nine miles across fields and through woods and saw two 
tufted titmice in an oak timber, flitting about in the underbrush. These 
were the first I’ve seen in this vicinity. We flushed up a flock of sixteen 
quail in the open field and in the evening we heard them calling to each 
other as though they were saying good night. I thought this talking 
rather unwise as there are a number of horned owls and an occasional 
red-tailed hawk flying about dusk. We recognized several horned larks 
in the fields and saw a flock of about a dozen birds which acted and 
sounded like horned larks. At dusk they were also chirping a sort of 
evening song from the ground. We seemed to find a pair of chickadees 
in every wood lot we passed through. Very often we saw the chickadees 
and the white-breasted nuthatches feeding near each other. We saw a 
hairy woodpecker light on a corn shock. 
The hairy woodpeckers have been feeding about the farm buildings 
but do not come to the feeding shelf. The red-headed woodpecker does 
sometimes spend the winter with us but I haven’t seen him this year. 
He feeds at the corncrib. In 1928 the red-bellied woodpecker spent the 
winter about the barns and the wood lot nearby. Although he stays near 
