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The Prairie Chicken Foundation 
By Mrs. Howard Shaw 
Recent committee action resulted in the naming of the 20-acre Kincade tract 
in the Bogota area as the Max McGraw Sanctuary. An additional 40 acres will 
soon be added to our present 157 acres. We are moving ahead in our efforts 
to obtain suitable undisturbed nesting areas. As the Prairie Chicken “‘booming”’ 
season is now here, we would like to urge visitors to refrain from trespassing 
on the sanctuaries. Permission to use blinds may obtain from Joe Ellis, 
Bogota, Illinois. 
Some Prairie Chickens will soon be liberated in the Forest Preserve 
District of Cook County as part of Dr. Shoemaker’s project at the University 
of Illinois. The Prairie Chicken Foundation of Illinois has extended an in- 
vitation to the Pinnated Grouse Technical Council to meet in Olney in 1967. 
Thus we have moved ahead in our struggle to save the Prairie Chicken. Our 
1964 year-end statement showed a balance of $226.28. 
R. R. #2, Olney, Hlinois 
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A NORTH AMERICAN NEST-RECORD PROGRAM 
By Olin Sewall Pettingill, Jr. 
Beginning in January, 1965, the Laboratory of Orinthology at Cornell Uni- 
versity will operate a nest-record card program on a continent-wide basis 
and would like the assistance of as many members of The Illinois Audubon 
Society as possible. 
Through the cooperation of Dr. David B. Peakall and the Onondaga 
Audubon Society, the Laboratory has carried on a nest-record card program 
on a local basis for two years. The aim of the program, which is similar to 
one used in Britain (see Mayer-Gross, 1962, Bird Study 9:252-258), is to 
collect specific data on bird reproduction in a form convenient for statistical 
analysis. The results of this two-year trial have been so gratifying that we 
are encouraged to make the program continent-wide. 
For this to be a success we will need the cooperation of all bird ob- 
servers in all parts of the continent, particularly the United States and 
Canada. We will also need — because we are certain that regional centers 
ean handle the distribution of data cards and their return to the Laboratory 
better than individuals — the cooperation of all bird clubs and other societies 
whose members make field observations of birds. 
The Laboratory will provide bird clubs or individuals with cards. The 
observers will record the contents of each nest found on a separate card 
and make dated notations on the same card for each subsequent visit to 
the nest. Each card will then contain all the data from a single nesting. 
While one observation of a nest will be valuable, additional observations 
over a period of days or weeks will increase the worth of the record. 
Our goal is to have hundreds, possibly thousands, of cards containing data 
| on each species from all parts of its range. 
