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BIRDS - YEARS APART 
By James S. Ayats, 
Ilinots Natural Histony Survey 
On August 20, 1906, two University of Illinois students, Alfred O. Gross 
and Howard A. Ray, began counting Illinois birds. They were working for 
the IHMinois State Laboratory of Natural History under the direction of Dr. 
Stephen A. Forbes. 
In counting birds, Gross and Ray used a special method called the 
strip census. They started out across country, walking about 30 yards 
apart and counting all the birds they saw in a strip about 50 yards wide. 
Gross and Ray made careful records of the kinds and numbers of birds 
they saw, and when and where (for example, hayfield, cornfield, orchard) 
they saw them. In 1906, 1907, and 1909, Gross and Ray counted birds in 
many places in many parts of Illinois and in all seasons. 
Gross soon moved on to advanced studies at Harvard University 
and later a teaching job and international ornithological fame at Bowdoin 
College in Maine. Many years passed before he and Dr. Forbes found time 
to complete the reports of the census work done in 1906-1909. 
Some people like to argue that the weather was colder, hotter, drier, 
or wetter in the old days than it is today. Some like to argue that there 
were more (or fewer) birds, fish, rabbits, and other wild creatures in the 
old days than now. Fortunately for the people who want to prove their 
points about the number of birds, Gross and Ray made careful counts and 
kept accurate records. In 1956, when Dr. Richard R. Graber and his wife, 
Jean, both with Ph.D. degrees in ornithology, began their work counting 
Illinois_birds, they had reliable figures for making comparisons with popu- 
lations of a half century before. 
Working for the Illinois Natural History Survey, successor to the 
Illinois State Laboratory of Natural History, the Grabers completed their 
field work in 1958 and published their results in 1963. Although Dr. Gross 
retired before 1956, he had kept his field notes and the photographs he had 
taken at the time of the first Illinois strip census. Very generously, he sent 
them all to Dr. and Mrs. Graber. 
Like Gross and Ray, the Grabers used the strip census method. How- 
ever, instead of walking from railroad station to railroad station as Gross 
and Ray had.often done, they drove their truck to a convenient spot, left 
it there, and walked the edges of a square, 2 miles on each side. When 
the Grabers had finished their strip censuses, they added up their figures 
and compared them with the Gross and Ray figures. As might have been 
expected, they found that the bird population of Illinois had changed 
in the half century between census periods. But some of the changes were 
not as might have been expected. According to the Graber calculation, in 
summer there were about as many birds in 1956--1958 as in 1906-1909; in 
winter, there were more birds in 1956-1958 than in 1906-1909. 
Between 1909 and 1956, Illinois agriculture had become more intensive, 
cities had become larger, highways had become wider, natural areas had 
become scarcer, and the human population had nearly doubled. Anyone 
looking with one eye at these changes in civilization and the other eye at 
the total bird figures of Gross and Ray and Graber and Graber might 
have exclaimed, “Aha! Then civilization is good for the birds.” 
