eae A Ut yu sby C) Nib eUel La be laleN, 
weed in wet places. Ihe Queen Anne’s Lace clusters make 
a dainty backdrop everywhere all summer long. 
My favorite bird patrol, in the Indiana Dunes, runs 
downhill through Veden Road’s dry woods where the 
Ovenbird calls and then along Furnessville Road's 
large swampy area. I’m more apt to see the Ovenbird in 
May walking in my yard in Chicago, but I hear him 
in these Dune woods until mid-August. Although he and 
I have roamed through here for years I’ve never found his 
dome-shaped nest. 
A stunning male Yellow Warbler sings from a wil- 
low top. I think he’s nesting in the big Norway Maple. 
The nervous Redwings scold me endlessly. What busy- 
bodies they are. | remember when our ornithology pro- 
fessor at MSU, Dr. Burt Munroe, made his squeaking 
noise at the edge of a big cattail bed and we immediately 
had about 25 alarmed Redwings diving and expostulating 
angrily right around our heads. Tempest tn a teapot! 
The bullfrog clunks and somebody else grunts. A 
pair of Mallards take wing. Could one of them have 
grunted? Walking along the edge of the very wet woods 
I watch while a beautiful late Black-throated Green Warb- 
ler bathes in a depression about the size of a mixing bowl. 
His boudoir is decorated with Marsh Marigolds, Sweet 
White Violets and the fiddlehead buds of Cinnamon 
Ferns. A Great Blue Heron deliberately beats his way over- 
head, probably returning from his morning fishing ex- 
pedition on the shore of Lake Michigan. I’ve seen two 
feeding there at water’s edge for thirty minutes at a time. 
An American Bittern klunks his pump back in the 
swamp near where the Woodcock was peening last week, 
but like the Ovenbird, I hear both of these birds twenty 
times to once that I see them. I’ve always thought there 
should be rails here, but I’ve never seen or heard one. A 
late White-throated Sparrow whistles his unmistakable 
“Poor Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody.’’ To me he’s 
more the voice of spring than even a Robin or a Bluebird. 
A female Cardinal flies up from a dense brushy tangle 
about 18” above the swamp water. It’s the third weekend 
in a row she’s flown from that spot, but no nest is visable. 
A male Cardinal whistles and whistles high in the tal- 
lest Cottonwood. 
The American Redstarts are calling emphatically and 
dashing hither and yon. One male’s coloring is strange— 
29 
