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sanctuary on this waste land. Here would be a park for Chicago unlike 
any other in this area and making use of a wasteland which has performed 
its commercial duties. 
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Two Amateurs Pursue Western Birds 
By Mrs. BERTHA HUXFORD 
WALT AND I LEFT EVANSTON for the Pacific coast the evening of the Fourth 
of July. We took the Challenger, a tourist train of twenty-three cars. It 
labored its way west through Omaha, Cheyenne and Ogden to San Francisco. 
We were soon pleasantly surprised to see that it was not too difficult a task 
to identify a few birds through the train windows and at the longer stops 
along the way. We kept ourselves bird conscious by spending some time 
in studying “The Western Bird Guide” by Reed, Harvey and Brasner, 
“A Field Guide to Western Birds” by Peterson, and “Birds of the Pacific 
States” by Ralph Hoffman. We gave special attention to the lists made, 
when they had visited California, by Mrs. A. H. Knox and Mrs. Charles 
S. Braden, members of the Evanston Bird Club. 
The many doves flying through the air or perched on telephone wires 
also kept our thoughts turned to birds. Almost any time we wanted to look 
out of the train windows (most of the time they were not too dirty) we 
saw a couple or more doves. Then, while traveling through Wyoming, came 
our first new acquaintance. It was a black bird with a very long tail and 
large patches of white showing on its wings and belly, the American 
magpie. Shrikes claimed out attention, first the white-rumped, later the 
California. While our long heavy train crawled over Great Salt Lake and 
the adjoining Flats I began to have an eerie feeling and was glad to center 
my attention on the Franklin’s gulls standing about on the salty bars. 
Herring gulls, California gulls, blue herons, snowy egrets, and cormorants 
were the only ones we were able to identify among the many shore and 
water birds which we saw on small bodies of water as we came closer to 
the Pacific ocean and San Francisco. 
House finches or linnets were the first birds to greet us when we looked 
out of the windows from the room assigned to us at Hotel Durant in 
Berkeley. One block from this hotel, on the University of California campus 
(shrubbery, trees, grass, hills, small stream) we found the California jay, 
western robin, English sparrow, western song sparrow, barn swallow, 
western mourning dove, Brewer’s blackbird and western flycatcher. In the 
afternoon, while taking a Gray Lines tour of the city of San Francisco, 
we saw a California yellow warbler, eastern sparrow hawks on the slope 
of Telegraph Hill, and when we visited Cliff House we found Farallon 
cormorants, California brown pelicans, California gulls and western gulls. 
Leaving the gulls and other water birds until we visited the coast 
farther south, we journeyed inland via the San Joaquin daylight train to 
Merced. From here we rode in a bus to Camp Curry in Yosemite Valley, 
Yosemite National Park. The following day we toured the park in an 
