4 THE AUDA Bi@2Ne 2B Usa terens 
William Isaac Lyon 
WILLIAM ISAAC LYON, since 1921 a Director of the Illinois Audubon 
Society, died suddenly at Waukegan, Illinois, June 13, 1938. Mr. 
Lyon was born in Waukegan, Aug. 19, 1874. His paternal grandfather 
was an early citizen of Waukegan where he settled in 1847. The 
village was then known as Little Fort. 
Throughout his life Mr. Lyon’s home was in the city of his 
birth. The region at hand, known generally as the “Waukegan Flats,” 
was the playground of his youth and the scene of many of his activi- 
ties up to the day of his death. Always he was interested in animals. 
Among the incidents of his boyhood he records breeding Passenger 
Pigeons in captivity and the successful raising of a young bird. He 
kept pets of all sorts and writes of the astonishing number and variety 
of those which were his charges from time to time. 
In 1913 bird-banding came to his attention and from that time 
to the last day of his life he followed this pursuit with amazing pur- 
pose and vigor. In 1922 he became secretary of the newly formed Inland 
Bird Banding Association. In 1924 he was elected president and held 
that office until his death. 
During his 25 years of banding he marked approximately 100,000 
birds. The routine of trapping and banding on the grounds about 
his home—some three acres planted and arranged to attract birds— 
was seldom interrupted. However, he looked forward, from year to 
year, with especial relish and enthusiasm, to the annual adventure, 
beginning in 1922, among the gulls, terns and other water birds on 
their breeding grounds on the islands of the Great Lakes and in the 
marshes of Canada. . 
More recently Lyon became interested in the “homing instinct” 
of Cowbirds which he trapped and shipped in numbers to widely 
divergent destinations in the United States and Canada, there to be 
released. Similarly he caused other Cowbirds to be trapped at long 
distances from Waukegan and shipped to him for release. The results 
of these experiments have been extraordinary. Many of them have 
become known to those attending the meetings of the Illinois Audubon 
Society and to the public in general through newspaper accounts. 
Mr. Lyon’s work as a Director of the Illinois Audubon Society 
was most practical. He delighted in telling schools and clubs how to 
attract birds by planting and how to keep them by feeding. His 
“banding station” was a laboratory in which he conducted many 
experiments and he was able to speak with authority on this phase 
of Audubon procedure. He became a deputy game warden and per- 
sonally took into custody many violators of state and Federal laws 
pertaining to game and migratory birds. 
His “bird-mindedness”’ is disclosed by the list of the societies in 
which he has been active: He was one of the first members to be — 
elected to the Council of the American Ornithologists Union; he 
was a life member of the Chicago Academy of Sciences and of the 
Illinois Academy of Sciences; President (1928) of the Chicago Orni- 
