ALAS Ie BaD OED MIRE AON ee 2 OR be Bid Ord bees OR) 
A Saga of Fifteen Years of Bird-Listing 
in 100x142 Feet of Suburbia. 
Proving That Anybody Can Reach a Hundred 
Simply by Trying Hard. 
by BOB VANDERPOEL 
Years ago | noticed that 100 is one of the magic numbers for us 
bird-list addicts. So one of my aims on every vacation was to 
record at least 100 species, and one day each May |’d patrol the 
Chicago area by car and on foot to crack the hundred barrier. 
But this proved too easy. Then | read of a family which had 
attracted 100 species of birds to their yard. 
Now here was a challenge. For at the time, my wife and | 
were just building a home in suburban Des Plaines. So by clever 
planting, winter feeding, and plain old eye power I'd rack up 
100 species. 
The prospects didn‘t seem good. Not a tree or shrub stood 
on our 100 by 142 foot lot. The nearest Forest Preserve was two 
miles away. There was no nearby water area. 
But in June of 1956 we moved and the first entry was made 
on the list—that spectacular fellow, the English Sparrow, alas. 
Yet in the ‘50s several birds we would never see or hear 
again were common. Just west of us stretched a large prairie 
that later would succumb to ranch homes and bi-levels, and it 
held thick populations of pheasants, Prairie Horned Larks and 
both Eastern and Western Meadowlarks. 
So by the end of the ‘50s | was more than half way to the 
hundred mark and full of high hopes, buoyed as our plantings— 
several spruce and pines, four Pin Oaks, three hawthorns, a 
dozen crab apples, two shadblows, a Mountain Ash and hosts of 
elderberry, buckthorn, viburnum, cotoneaster, honeysuckle, dog- 
wood and barberry—grew sturdier and began to attract birds. 
Seven new species in 1960 and 12 more in ‘61 brought the 
list to 71. And 1962 began spectacularly. On March 29 a flock 
of about 100 Bohemian Waxings invaded the neighborhood and 
stayed until April 7. At one time perhaps 40 feasted on the red 
berries of our two Washington Hawthorns. As 1962 ended, the 
list stood at 82 and the magic 100 seemed near indeed. 
