THE AUDUBON (BU DUK 
“Our Last Cardinal” 
By JAMES A. BAILEY 
Mornings in early spring, I like to leave the house a 
few minutes earlier on my way to the office. I snoop 
around our small yard, noting the swelling of buds on 
forsythia bushes, locating the first pale spears of crocus 
and tulips as they emerge from the cold damp soil, and 
listening for the songs of birds. I particularly like the 
cardinal who sings from the tallest branch of the tallest 
osage in the hedge at the end of our street. He seems to 
sing because he loves the spring and we love the spring 
more because he does. 
One evening in late April I played a game with our 
cardinal. | teased him by imitating his own song as best 
I could. He responded by flitting from perch to perch 
and singing, it seemed to me, more often than before. 
I continued with my imitation and he continued to flit 
about and answer until finally — perhaps in despera- 
tion — he flew off to the top of a more distant telephone 
pole and out of reach of my whistling. I wondered if 
mere singing could drive a bird from its territory and 
decided to test my hypothesis with a tape recorder some 
day. What better way to spend a few April evenings? 
(I hope we still have cardinals in our neighborhood 
whenever I feel rich enough to purchase a tape recorder. ) 
But Urbana is a fast-growing city in central Illinois. 
The field along the osage hedge at the end of our street 
produced a crop of beans two years ago. The following 
spring we heard killdeers calling from its stubble — 
for the last time. The bulldozers and graders came, 
streets were laid, foundations set, and houses appeared 
one by one from out of big red trucks. Urbana grew 
larger by forty acres. 
It seems almost inevitable that the osage hedge 
soon will have to go — and with it our cardinal. [he 
chain saw will whine, a tractor will growl, and men 
will sweat and curse the thorny branches. The men 
will have nothing against cardinals; they merely will 
dislike the thorny row of osage. Soon the soil will be 
level, grass will be planted and someone will have to 
keep it mowed. Our cardinals will be gone, leaving us 
with houses and television antennas, all in a row, with 
