8 THE; AUD U BOON SE Uaioe 
no thievery, etc. And apparently no “litterbugs” visit the site because the 
park is as clean as your back yard. To those of us who sometimes become 
discouraged over the public’s seeming lack of appreciation of things out-of- 
doors, a visit to Valentine Park can be most heartening. 
615 Rochdale Circle, Lombard, Illinois 
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Yellow Rail at Champaign 
By GARY CLAIRE PACKARD 
ABIDING BY THE OLD ADAGE that “it’s an ill wind that blows no one some 
good,” the severe winds accompanying a thunderstorm which struck Ur- 
bana-Champaign, Illinois, on the night of April 23-24, 1958, forced down a 
single yellow rail (Coturnicops noveboracensis) near the University of 
Illinois Men’s Dormitories. The following morning the bird was found alive 
near the Halls in a flightless condition and was subsequently captured by 
Mr. Fred Olin and this writer. Confirmation of this writer’s original identi- 
fication as a yellow rail was supplied by Dr. S. C. Kendeigh, professor of 
zoology at the University, and G. C. West, W. L. Gillespie and Richard 
Brewer, graduate students in zoology. 
Parmalee and Smith, in their Distributional Check List of the Birds of 
Illinois, describe the yellow rail as being a “rare migrant and summer resi- 
dent” in the northern part of the state. The most recent record of this 
species in Illinois was August, 1942 (W. P. Proctor). There is a mounted 
specimen of this species recorded in the Natural History Museum of the 
University of Illinois (UIMNH-Z608) which was taken in Champaign, 
April, 1890. There is also a record, but apparently no specimen, of a bird 
found dead on the University Campus, March 31, 1924. The present bird 
was kept alive in a cage until released May 7, 1958, at Buck’s Pond near 
Monticello, bearing U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service band number 5438-75110. 
No. 7 Barton House, Men’s Res. Halls, Champaign 
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RARE BIRD RECORDS FOR ILLINOIS 
Your AUDUBON BULLETIN is the logical medium for reporting rare or un- 
usual bird records for this state. Sight records are always welcome; 
scientific observations based on verified specimens, such as the reports of 
the Yellow Rail and the Phalaropes elsewhere in this issue, are doubly 
welcome. For example: we have recently received a report from Senator 
Jackson Boughner of Palatine on two exceptional sight records: a Blue 
Grosbeak and a Yellow-crowned Night Heron, both identified in Deer 
Grove Forest Preserve at the end of May. Send your reports to the Editor, 
but keep them brief, please — and confine the reports to birds rare for 
your area. : 
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