6 HOE A*U>D\U 5B 0OIN; (BU lee ae 
To attract cardinals to one’s feeding shelf is the height of ambition of 
most northern feeders. A pair of them plus a young one come to our shelf 
several times a day. The Florida cardinal is smaller but more intensely 
red than the northern one, that is the male; the female and young are 
darker than the northern form. They seem to look reproachfully at me 
because there is no sunfiower seed on the shelf; they do not know that you 
cannot buy it for love or money. 
That too is the reason why the tufted titmouse, Baeolophus bicolor, does 
not come as often as at first. They do not seem to like the chicken feed 
that is now on the shelf. Mild and gentle as they are, they leave the scene 
when others come. 
The brown thrasher also is the same one as in Illinois. It is songless 
now, but, no doubt, will soon begin to warble its fine song. It affects a 
hermit-like behavior, sticking to dense shrubbery and the ground below 
trees. Unlike its first cousin, the mockingbird, when it comes to the shelf 
it rarely goes to the top, but stays on the ground, where it fiercely goes 
after any blue jay that may be there. It makes the dry leaves below trees 
fly, not with the feet, but with the bill. An odd behavior is that it raises 
its body from the ground by straightening the legs in order to give its 
blows to the ground more purchase. 
My tamest, most confiding boarder is the white-eyed towhee. Its call 
and song are similar to the red-eye’s up north, but higher pitched and 
softer. It would not be difficult to get it to feed out of one’s hand. 
Windermere, Florida, September 15, 1943. 
ft ft ft 
From Friends in Military Service 
AGAIN WE ARE INDEBTED to Dr. Alfred Lewy, member of our Board of 
Directors, for permission to quote portions of three letters received by him 
from men in service who are very much interested in the birdlife they have 
met in distant lands. The first, from Major Robert Lewy, his son, will 
make most of us envious, as he evidently intended it should. 
“IT am writing this letter with a threefold purpose: I want to continue 
to write weekly, I wish to make the ornithological mouth water, and you 
will have to guess at the third. Yesterday we went out to the swamp 
(about a fourth the size of McGinnes Slough). Major Miles Baker went 
along—his brother is one of the directors of the National Audubon Society. 
With one sweep of the field glasses, traversing about 45 degrees, we saw 
Australian duck, chestnut teal, black swan, royal spoonbill, plumed egret, 
and straw-necked ibis (flock of 15). I wonder if there is any place other 
than a zoo where such would be possible. It certainly makes the birds here 
interesting and those at home rather tame by comparison. This was not 
all; we also saw several species of shorebirds, kingfishers that were only 
four inches long, the pale-headed rosella, the scaly-breasted lorikeet, 
gallinules, Australian blue crane, etc., in the brief period that we were out. 
The spoonbill was a new experience for me. In all we saw 22 species in an 
