6 TOH“E? AOD U BrOGN@ BU i is et oe 
The 1954 Wisconsin Meeting’ 
By DoroTHY HELMER 
THE WISCONSIN SOCIETY FOR ORNITHOLOGY held its annual meeting at the 
University of Wisconsin in Madison, Friday through Sunday, April 30- 
May 2, with eight members present from the Illinois Audubon Society: 
Paul and Eleanor Downing, John and Dorothy Helmer, Bertha Huxford, 
Irene Buchanan, Raymond Mostek and Karl Bartel. The Downings and Karl 
are old friends of W.S.O. bird banders. 
Papers were read by members of the W.S.O. on studies they had made in 
Migration, Behavior and Population Relationships, and Ecological Geogra- 
phy of Wisconsin Birds, with these main headings subdivided into many 
topics. Among these were distributional studies of the quail and prairie 
chicken, a ten-year breeding study of tree swallows and eastern bluebirds, 
various relationships between red-tailed hawks and great horned owls, the 
“hybrid” songs of meadowlarks, and the use of first arrival dates from 
amateur bird records in the study of migration. A reception and banquet 
in the Memorial Union accommodated 250 members from all over the state, 
with the Rev. Howard Orians of Milwaukee as toastmaster. Movies were 
shown by Howard Cleaves, Carl Buchheister and Cleveland Grant of the 
National Audubon Society. In an adjoining room flourished the club’s Sup- 
ply Center, with “Everything for the Hobby.” 
Field trips on Sunday began at 5:00 a.m. I.A.S. members chose the trip 
to the Leopold Memorial Forest near Baraboo, with the prospect of going 
later to the bottom lands of the Wisconsin river which are “very rich in all 
kinds of wildlife, due to the dominance of a big husky mosquito which keeps 
people out.” Our leader was Prof. Joseph J. Hickey of the Department of 
Wildlife Management of the university, who is president of the W.S.O. this 
year. He is one of the three trustees of the Aldo Leopold Memorial Trust, 
whose initial project has been the acquisition of the beautiful forest we 
visited, a native, wild preserve for education, research and recreation. 
Rain poured all day. Karl was unable to get his photographs of wild 
flowers and our bird list was short. However, the 60 birders, in three groups, 
saw a total of 132 species. Looking back, we find that our impressions may 
be the sharper for not being too crowded. 
During a stop at Devil’s Lake we saw sheer cliffs and broken masses of 
red quartzite of the Baraboo range and on the flats, huge red birches three 
feet in diameter, their dark limbs fringed with tiny catkins. Flocks of myrtle 
warblers and white-throats were singing in the rain, with occasional wisps 
of other bird song. There were two red-bellied woodpeckers, more abundant 
here than at home because they come up the river valleys; and in the dis- 
tance was the call, flicker-like but more rounded, of the pileated woodpecker. 
On the beach were some 200 myrtle warblers, the early mature males, eat- 
ing may-fly larvae (so we were told). Two black ducks rose from the lake. 
After this trial in the rain, Dr. Hickey ventured to take us up the high 
ridge of the Leopold Forest. There were no birds in sight here at all. Ruffed 
