ILLINOIS AUDUBON BULLETIN inh 
Are You REALLY A Friend to Wildlife? 
JOHN G. WARREN 
Department of Conservation 
Spring and summer seasons bring a closer relationship between 
people and animals. Folks are in the out-of-doors, they’re working, 
playing closer to nature — animals, also, feel the languor that warmer 
temperatures bring and, coupled with a natural curiosity, they seem to 
enjoy a closeness to human beings. 
It is also the breeding season among the wild creatures. . . and for 
several months the trees, grasses and natural habitat are host to fled- 
gling, pup and kit of suburbia’s fields, forests and meadows. 
Too often suburbia’s outdoors is limited to your backyard, and that 
of your neighbor’s. Many’s the litter of young rabbits, squirrels, raccoons 
that come into this world not more than 100 feet from man’s doorstep, 
and spend entire wildlife liftetimes not more than this distance away 
from the knife, fork and spoon of civilization. 
The great attraction for living in a grove, for packing a house back 
among the trees, for artfully landscaping with shrubs and bushes that 
provide living habitat for wild creatures, is man’s latent but strong 
instinct for wilderness, for nature in all her magnificent grandeur. The 
rush to the suburbs for living quarters is but an example of man’s desire, 
at the end of each day, to return to the nature from which he sprang and 
into which he is inherently ingrained. 
As he walks daily among the wild creatures that live close at hand, 
man’s relationship with nature is ingratiating, satisfying. He does not 
know why, he doesn’t need to know why. Even the animals, the birds, 
seem to appreciate his distant closeness. It is when this “distant close- 
ness” is broken that we have trouble. 
Often, particularly in the spring, baby birds are brought into the 
house by children who feel sorry for them, by folks who believe they’ve 
