MIDSUMMER MELODIES. 113 
voluntaries almost every day at the border of the 
woods until about the twentieth of August. Still 
more lavish of his melody was the indigo-bird, which 
on several occasions was the only songster, besides 
the wood-pewee, heard during a long stroll through 
the woods. An irrepressible minstrel, he is the most 
cheery member of the midsummer chorus. My 
notes say that the Maryland yellow-throat was sing- 
ing in splendid voice on the first of August, but I 
am positive I heard him later in the month, as he 
is one of our most rollicksome midsummer choralists. 
The goldfinch sang cheerily on the first, eighteenth, 
and nineteenth of August, and I cannot say how 
often in July and August I heard the loud refrain 
of the Carolina wren. 
On the tenth, twelfth, fourteenth, eighteenth, 
and nineteenth of August, the Baltimore oriole piped 
cheerily, though he had partly doffed his splendid 
vernal robes, and was beginning to don his modest 
autumnal garb. The cardinal bird fluted frequently 
during July and August, and, besides, regaled me 
with a vocal performance on the third of September. 
The last record I have of the towhee bunting’s 
trill is the tenth of August; but before that date 
he was quite lavish of his music. On many of 
my tramps to the woods the sad minor whistle of 
the black-capped chickadee pierced the solitudes, 
making one dream of one’s boyhood days, — 
“ When birds and flowers and I were happy peers,” 
as Lowell would phrase it. 
