Cer epg OUL brOeNee Se wUai ls Gel al N 20 
\zlaucous gull—Alton. Second year bird seen, February 3. A first year bird 
was spotted on the 8th. Arbor and Sarah Vasse. 
Iceland gull—Alton. February 15. Earl Comfort, Vasse, Arhos. 
Great black-backed gull—February 15. Portage Des Sioux. Comfort, Vasse, 
Arhos. 
Black-backed kittiwake—Immature at Alton on February 8. Arhos & Vasse. 
Bird remained until at least March 10 and was seen by many. (Could 
be same bird that left the Tri-City area in January. E.F.) 
Myrtle warbler—One or two at Evanston on February 3. Clark. 
MARCH, 1968 
Barrow’s goldeneye—One at Nauvoo. This was a male. Edwin Frank and 
William McKinnis, Western Illinois University. 
Sandhill crane—Clinton County. March 23. Judith Joy. 
SPRING IN ILLINOIS 
The other day one of our men went downstate to meet the 
advancing spting. He returns reporting findina the redbud at its 
peak, ltlac already in blossom—spring beauties and violets and 
triltum and all that. But his happiest experience of all was meeting 
a nesting wood duck at the Chautauqua national wildlife refuge, 
near Havana.. . 
.... Ihe manager there climbed a ladder to one of many rocket- 
shaped sheet metal nesting boxes, tipped up the cone-shaped roof, 
and reached in to bring out a bird so tame her good-natured dign‘ty 
could not be ruffled. Even when her human friend pulled on her 
bill and her wingtip to show off her plumage fully, she made 
not the slightest protest. After visttors’ eyes had inspected the more 
than a dozen eggs nestled in down at the bottom of the box, and 
the netting by which the ducklings would climb to the hole from 
which they would jump the many feet to the ground, the manager 
returned his still uncomplaining friend to her brooding duties. 
Dr. Doolittle and his housekeeper, Dab Dab the duck, could not 
have had greater confidence in each other. 
Female wood ducks breeding for the first time begin nesting 
later; on this same day there were courtship flights thru the woods, 
two males after one female. Home no doubt will be yet another 
of the squirrel-proof mint-rockets provided by the refuge. 
We continue to find a profound satisfaction tn the cycle of 
the seasons, especially the coming of spring, and in seeing that 
destructive animal man for once benevolently helpful as another 
species launches yet one more annual generation into this troubled 
but unfalingly beautiful world. 
—A\n editorial in The Chicago Tribune, April 24, 1968 
