some, & Usb ror ener UTS EfoleN 15 
and down in a graceful glide to the base of a large oak where it clung 
watching me for some time. Then as I approached it scurried up 
among the thick branches and was soon out of sight. 
These woods are much the same as they were when I roamed 
through them as a carefree lad—the same aspen thicket, the same 
clump of willows on the border of the marsh and a goodly number of 
dead snags. 
As the sun was setting I turned my steps homeward, or perhaps I 
should say to the Wisconsin farmhouse that I once called home. My 
attention was attracted by some newly hewn chips at the base of an 
aspen snag and looking up I discovered a newly excavated hole near 
the top. I could not resist the temptation to knock at this open door- 
way. A Sharp beak and a pair of beady black eyes appeared in the 
entrance. I had found the winter roosting hole of the hairy wood- 
pecker. She blinked sleepily at me a few moments and then backed 
down out of sight. As I walked away I had a mental picture of her 
clinging to the wall inside the snug winter quarters with her head 
tucked under one wing. 
The sun swung low and red in the west as I made my way along 
the familiar trail in the lengthening shadows. 
Chicago, Ill. 
FIELD NOTES 
By Mrs. AMY G. BALDWIN 
THERE IS a beautiful spot in Palos Park introduced to me by friends 
who love it very much as “Paradise Valley.”” Here we found a rather 
wide ravine with a high bluff to the south and a smaller one on the 
north. A refreshing, cold, clear spring flows freely for all who would 
drink. A good sized brook flows throughout, winding in and out 
among the trees and shrubs, with banks covered with mosses, lichens, 
wild ginger and many other kinds of flowers and grasses. 
There was a wealth of spring flowers—jack-in-the pulpits, spring 
beauties, marsh marigolds, several kinds of violets, sweet William, 
Dutchman’s breeches, May apples and many more. Ferns also were 
abundant. 
Birds were there too and it was a joy to find such a variety: 
wood ducks, woodcocks, red-shouldered, sharp-shinned, and Cooper’s 
hawks, crows, yellow-billed and black-billed cuckoos, wood thrushes, 
also olive-backed and gray-cheeked thrushes, bank swallows, wood 
pewees, crested and olive-sided flycatchers, tanagers, rose-breasted 
grosbeaks, red-eyed, warbling and yellow-throated vireos, towhees, 
catbirds, brown thrashers, dainty blue-gray gnatcatchers and many 
of the warblers, the outstanding ones being mourning, Connecticut, 
pine and golden-winged. 
Here were beautifully constructed nests of the towhee and field 
Sparrow. The towhee’s nest was made on the ground with a canopy 
of grasses but the field sparrow’s was made in a small weed just off 
the ground. Four eggs made up the clutch for the towhee but the 
