Why Birds Come and Go 



The males of only a few species, that sleep in club- 

 like roosts even at the nesting season, must be ex- 

 cepted. Indeed, so silent and moping are the vast 

 majority when molting that they seem to have en- 

 tirely disappeared. In the course of a walk through 

 the midsummer woods we may neither see nor hear 

 one. But with the proud consciousness of new 

 clothes and the return of energy with the cooler 

 weather, out they come from their rest-cure retreats, 

 refreshed and even tuneful again, ready to welcome 

 as friend any bird of the same feather, to collect into 

 family parties, or join any passing band of good fel- 

 lows which receives not only individuals but small 

 roving flocks, one after another, day after day, until, 

 perhaps, many thousands so assemble. Now the 

 meadows and marshes are alive with swallows, and the 

 telegraph wires, strung with them, look like bars of 

 printed music-scrolls stretched across the sky. Now, 

 robins, chewinks, and thrushes congregate along 

 woodland borders, to feast on dogwood or whatever 

 bright berries cling to the trees and bushes waiting 

 for just such distributing agents as they. (For how 

 much of the earth's beauty are not birds, the seed- 

 carriers, responsible !) Mr. William Brewster de- 

 clares that he has found as many as twenty -five 

 thousand robins sleeping together in one roost. It 

 is well known that crows, likewise, roost in enormous 

 numbers. At the approach of cool weather even the 

 English sparrow, although at no time a shy recluse 

 exactly, becomes intensely gregarious. Great num- 

 bers of sparrows sometimes a sprinkling of the 

 rarer cousins in the flock settling on the lawn, 

 speedily clean off the seeds of whatever grasses may 



157 



