14 THE AUDUBON BULLETIN 
Hen. Personally, | have little hope of seeing this bird alive again, but, 
nevertheless, next April another well-organized search will be made for 
the Conservation Department of Massachusetts to locate either the living 
bird or its remains. On April 1, 1931, the bird was trapped and-an alumi- 
num band number 407880 was placed on the tarsus of the left leg and a 
copper band number A-634024 was fastened to the right leg. “hese bands 
will serve as a positive identification in the event the bird is found. If the 
bird is not seen by next June it will then be reasonable to infer that the 
Heath Hen is extinct. 
The experiment on Martha’s Vineyard to save the Heath Hen, which 
cost the State of Massachusetts many thousands of dollars, has not been in 
vain. This unprecedented effort to prevent a bird’s extinction has given 
the ‘Last Heath Hen” a very wide publicity that has served to fire the 
imagination and to arouse a greater public interest in conservation. ‘The 
going of the Heath Hen has awakened the sportsman to the realization of 
the fact that other game birds will be in danger if we continue as we have 
in the past. The “Last Heath Hen” is a dramatic warning against further 
neglect of wild life. 
The Cardinal Chorus 
By Frep §. LopGE 
In August, 1923, the late noted author-naturalist, Dallas Lore Sharp, 
was on the Chautauqua program at the writer's old home town in central 
Illinois, and it was arranged for him to arrive a day early so that a night 
could be spent at my brother’s cabin in the woods nearby. 
In driving out to the woods in the late afternoon Sharp remarked thae 
he hoped he would get to hear a Cardinal sing. As he was a New Englander 
and seldom got into the South, he had rarely heard the song. We prom- 
ised he should surely see one, but it was seldom, if ever, that the song was 
heard in mid-August. 
‘The cabin stands in a little clearing on a high bluff of the Sangamon 
River. The night was cool for. August; in fact, a fire in the fireplace was 
most comfortable as we sat and chatted on nature, religion, politics, De- 
mocracy in Education and so forth until nearly midnight. At last we 
bedded down on the floor of the big screened porch with our heads near 
the wire so that we could lcok up at the stars and, as Sharp said, “be ready 
to be wakened by the birds.” I think of Bernard Shaw’s remark to Ham- 
lin Garland after inviting him out into the country to hear the Nightingale: 
“The Nightingale is a very unreliable bird. One night he sings, and the 
