pee eA DIB ON. BU tL Ee rN H) 
In 1956 the Academy issued a revision of the 1934 publication. This was 
undertaken by Mr. Ford with the assistance of Philip A. DuMont, ornitholo- 
gist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which was then stationed in 
Chicago. Mr. Ford died early in 1951. Mr. DuMont was transferred back 
to Washington, D.C., and the revision of the booklet fel] toe DrecHarold 
K. Gloyd, then Director of the Academy. He was helped in the final prepara- 
tion of the manuscript by Charles T. Clark, Mrs. Isabel B. Wasson, Mrs. 
John M. Shawvan, Dr. Margaret Morse Nice, and other active birders. 
The Chicago area was re-defined in the 1934 publication, extending 
in size the area adopted by Woodruff in 1907. The Chicago area is still 
delimited as follows: Walworth, Racine and Kenosha counties in Wisconsin; 
McHenry, Lake, Cook, Kane, DuPage, Kendall, Will, Grundy, and Kankakee 
counties in Illinois; Lake, Newton, Porter, Jasper, LaPorte and Starke 
counties in Indiana; and Berrien County in Michigan. The 1934 publication 
was an annotated list of 371 species and subspecies, with records of their 
occurrence in the area. The 1956 revision includes 382 species and sub- 
species, plus eight species in a Hypothetical List. This version contains a 
compilation of all published notes, going back as far as Robert. Kennicott’s 
“Catalogue of Animals Observed in Cook County, Illinois,’ published in 
1854 by the Illinois State Agricultural Society. Another early report was 
Edward William Nelson’s BIRDS OF NORTHEASTERN ILLINOIS, pub- 
lished in the “Bulletin of the Essex Institute” in 1876. Robert Ridgway’s, 
THE ORNITHOLOGY OF ILLINOIS in two volumes, published by the 
State Natural History Survey in 1889 and 1895, contains references to 
Chicago area records. 
These old reports have some fascinating entries. Back in the 1870’s 
and 1880’s, turkeys still nested in Cook and Lake counties, Illinois. They 
were last noted in LaPorte County, Indiana, in 1886. The Whooping Crane, 
“once an abundant migrant” according to Nelson, was last seen about 1887. 
Kennicott included the Passenger Pigeon in his list of birds “known to nest 
in Cook County.” Kennicott “took Carolina Paroquets in the middle of the 
19th century, and one was observed in the Indiana Dunes in 1912. Both 
Kennicott and Nelson recorded the Great Gray Owlas a “rare winter visitor.” 
Benjamin T. Gault reported seeing eight Eskimo Curlews in Lincoln Park 
on May 22, 1923. 
The many accidentals in the old records all seem to have been “taken” 
or “collected” to authenticate their identification. Birders today take a dim 
view of killing their prize “write-ins.” It seems unreasonable, for example, 
to reject the sight record of any bird as conspicuous and unique as the White 
Pelican. What else could it be! A White Pelican was seen in the summer 
of 1967 and also in the summer of 1965, both birds at Lake Calumet. Yet 
a newspaper article on the 1967 bird quoted Dr. Emmett R. Blake, Curator 
of Birds at Field Museum, as saying that there has been no authentic 
Chicago record of the bird since the 1880’s. This pelican was probably “Old 
Pete,” who was shot and injured in 1883, and was sold the following year 
fo the Lincoln Park Zoo. He died 40 years later, in 1924. 
The greatest rarity of my 20 years of birding did not have the good 
-ortune, or perhaps it would have been bad fortune, to be authenticated. 
. must admit I am miffed at the editors of Ford’s Bulletin for placing our 
uarge-billed tern on the Hypothetical List. Granted it was a wildly im- 
Irobable creature to appear in Chicagoland, but no bird was ever more 
varefully studied. It was discovered by Albert and Lee Campbell on Lake 
-alumet at 103rd Street on July 15, 1949. I wrote an article on the bird, 
