oung brush turkey or moundbuilder of
the antipodes. Hatched six or eight feet under ground, merely by the heat
of decaying vegetation, no fond parents minister to his wants. Not only
must he escape from the shell in the pressure and darkness of his
underground prison (how we cannot tell), but he is then compelled to dig
through six feet of leaves and mould before he reaches the sunlight. He
finds himself well feathered, and at once spreads his small but perfect
wings and goes humming off to seek his living alone and unattended.

It is September--the month of restlessness for the birds. Weeks ago the
first migrants started on their southward journey, the more delicate
insect-eaters going first, before the goldfinches and other late nesters
had half finished housekeeping. The northern warblers drift past us
southward--the magnolia, blackburnian, Canadian fly-catching, and others,
bringing memories of spruce and balsam to those of us who have lived with
them in the forests of the north.

"It's getting too cold for the little fellows," says the wiseacre, who
sees you watching the smaller birds as they pass southward. Is it, though?
What of the tiny winter wren which spends the zero weather with us? His
coat is no warmer than those birds which have gone to the far tropics. And
what of the flocks of birds which we occasionally come across in
mid-winter, of species which generally migrate to Brazil? It is not the
cold which deprives us of our summer friends, or at least the great
majority of them; it is the decrease in food supply. Insects disappear,
and only those birds which feed on seeds and buds, or are able to glean an
insect diet from the crevices of fence and tree-trunk, can abide.

This is the month to climb out on the roof of your house, lie on your back
and listen. He is a stolid person indeed who is not moved by the chirps
and twitters which come down through the darkness. There is no better way
to show what a wonderful power sound has upon our memories. There sounds a
robin's note, and spring seems here again; through the night comes a
white-throat's chirp, and we see again the fog-dimmed fields of a Nova
Scotian upland; a sandpiper "peets" and the scene in our mind's eye as
instantly changes, and so on. What a revelation if we could see as in
daylight for a few moments! The sky would be pitted with thousands and
thousands of birds flying from a few hundred yards to as high as one or
two miles above the earth.