ed for all
time.

There was no bud, no bloom upon the bowers;
The spiders wove their thin shrouds night by night;
The thistledown, the only ghost of flowers,
Sailed slowly by--passed noiseless out of sight.
Thomas Buchanan Read.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

OCTOBER

------------------------------------------------------------------------

AUTUMN HUNTING WITH A FIELD GLASS

One of the most uncertain of months is October, and most difficult for the
beginner in bird study. If we are just learning to enjoy the life of wood
and field, we will find hard tangles to unravel among the birds of this
month. Many of the smaller species which passed us on their northward
journey last spring are now returning and will, perhaps, tarry a week or
more before starting on the next nocturnal stage of their passage
tropicward. Many are almost unrecognisable in their new winter plumage.
Male scarlet tanagers are now green tanagers, goldfinches are olive
finches, while instead of the beautiful black, white, and cream dress
which made so easy the identification of the meadow bobolinks in the
spring, search will now be rewarded only by some plump, overgrown
sparrows--reedbirds--which are really bobolinks in disguise.

Orchard orioles and rose-breasted grosbeaks come and are welcomed, but the
multitude of female birds of these species which appear may astonish one,
until he discovers that the young birds, both male and female, are very
similar to their mother in colour. We have no difficulty in distinguishing
between adult bay-breasted and black poll warblers, but he is indeed a
keen observer who can point out which is which when the young birds of the
year pass.

October is apt to be a month of extremes. One day the woods are filled
with scores of birds, and on the next hardly one will be seen. Often a
single species or family will predominate, and one will remember "thrush
days" or "woodpecker days." Yellow-bellied sapsuckers cross the path,
flickers call and hammer in every grove, while in the orchards, and along
the old worm-eaten fences, glimpses of red, white, and black show where
redheaded woodpeckers are looping from trunk to post. When we listen to
the warble of bluebirds, watch the mock courtship of the high-holders, and
discover the fall violets under leaves and burrs, for an instant a feeling