n thrasher ceased
his long and brilliant solos from the treetops after the first week of
July. Next week the catbird's song was heard for the last time.
Because the first nest of the wood thrush was robbed by the blue-jays,
a second nest was built. This family was safely reared, and the wood
thrush sang until the third week in July, when one clear sunset night,
the sky all aglow with banners of golden red, he sang his farewell
solo. For seven weeks the Maryland yellow throat sang just at the turn
of the old woods road, where his mate had her nest in a low bush. As
the babies waxed large his song waned, and he was not heard during the
last week in July, nor since. Still the dickcissel, the lark sparrow
and the indigo bunting continued their trio. Evidently their babies
were somewhere over in the field nearby, a field that was corn last
year, and now is grown up thickly with smartweed. August came with a
rush of the mercury above the ninety mark, and there it has stayed. A
week of it was enough for this trio. They ceased their concert work,
but now and then the lark sparrow pipes up a feeble imitation of his
sweet notes in July. Like the song sparrow, he cannot wholly refrain
from expressing his satisfaction in being alive. Many men and women
are just like that. The vireos also ceased singing at the end of the
first week in August, but sometimes the red-eye gives a little
preachment from his leafy pulpits in the woods. Latest among the
singers are the chewinks, the wood pewees, the field sparrows, and, of
course, the goldfinches and the cuckoos. The young chewinks left their
nests in the pasture on the third, and the chewink's feelings
expressed themselves in song for two weeks after that. He out-sang the
field sparrows, whose young were hatched August third, and left their
nest on the twelfth. Apparently the field sparrow stopped singing and
went to work providing for his family of three. But the chewink was
not to be sobered so quickly. Why not sing with the work? The days are
long enough, happy enough, for both. Even now he gives occasional
bursts of song. Evidently this is the theory of the tanager also, for
he sang all through July, and here in mid-August his trumpet tones
occasionally ring through the leafy silences of the woods. The young
wood pewees which left their nests on the eleventh are now able to
shift for themselves; but the parents have much the same song as they
had when the three eggs lay in the nest, sa