The Changing Status of Birds In Regard to Their 
Abundance 
By C. W. G. EIFRIG 
Every observer of the outdoors knows and notes with ever in- 
creasing wonderment that no two years are alike with things in 
nature. This is not only true of such obvious features as the weather 
with its many complications, but also of such phenomena as the be- 
havior and abundance of plants and animals. One year the beans in 
our garden do exceedingly well, the next year perhaps they are almost 
a failure even when no late frost had anything to do with it. One 
year certain trees, or all the trees of the neighborhood, are profuse 
with blossoms; the next year they are very sparing with bloom, again 
discounting the frost. One spring about ten or twelve years ago the 
wild hyacinth (Camassia esculenta) was very abundant at River 
Forest; it came up in places where no one would have expected it to 
occur. Since then only few or none have been noted there. What 
recondite forces and factors coaxed those deeply buried bulbs into 
activity that year and not since? 
This is also true of the animal world. The average citizen has 
the notion that things in nature are as they are, with little or no 
change, except where man interferes with a heavy, often frivolous, 
hand, sometimes wantonly and needlessly. As a matter of fact, noth- 
ing in the world of nature is stable and unchangeable. Everything 
is in a constant change or flux, as the ancient Greek philosopher said: 
Panta rhei, everything flows. Thus life forms seem to appear on the 
stage of life, do well for a while, then decrease and finally disappear. 
This is also true of organisms that we would very much like to have 
stay and increase in numbers, such as the birds. One must become 
conscious of the complexity of nature, of the intricate interplay of 
physical forces, and of their delicate balance and adjustment. 
In a state like Illinois, where so much work in natural history is 
done, it is desirable, I think, to stop momentarily once in a while and 
take a kind of inventory. In this present paper I should like to pre- 
sent a few facts regarding the decrease or increase in numbers of 
certain species of birds in the Chicago area, as they have been im- 
pressed on my mind during the last decade or so. I am not following 
any orderly arrangement, but begin with species in which a decrease 
is most noticeable. 
The lark sparrow has almost entirely disappeared from our area, 
and apparently from the eastern part of the country in general. Who 
can find the reason? Fortunately, the western subspecies is very 
abundant in its chosen range. 
A similar deplorable decrease is true of the cliff swallow. For- 
merly its colonies of gourd-shaped nests could be seen on the barns 
of many farms, but now only a few straggling colonies remain in 
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