AUTUMN VISITORS. 



For some reason many of the song birds became silent 

 earlier than usual this year : the extended drouth may 

 have had something to do with it, but from the first 

 week in August till the 10th of September there was so 

 universal a hush among them that the woods and fields 

 were lonely places, lacking their greatest charm. The 

 middle of September brought a change, and for a few 

 succeeding days glad voices rang out again in favored 

 places almost as joyously as in leafy June. Kobins, 

 blue birds, song sparrows, gold finches and vireos took 

 up their songs again, and gave us a real touch of spring. 

 The high-hole uttered his melodious love call from his 

 perch in the dead tree top, and the cuckoo sent his sono- 

 rous coo, coo ! echoing through the woods only a day 

 or two before the autumn equinox. Some of these birds 

 come back to their old haunts and sing in the trees 

 where they nested months before. These few days of 

 song become a kind of second spring, just as the soft, 

 hazy days that come a little later are the second, or 

 Indian summer. They are the precious days of the 

 naturalist, who visits, or longs to visit, all the old 

 familiar places that were so dear to him earlier in the 

 season. 



