GOOD-BYE TO SUMMER 225 



in plain brawn coats, continue to flock sparrow- 

 wise about the meadows until say, the tenth. 

 Then they go chink-chinking down the marshes 

 southward by way of Florida to Central America. 

 Yucatan and the delta of the Orinoco may be 

 lonely places in summer, but I do not think one 

 need to be homesick there in mid-winter with all 

 these intimate friends sitting about on the palm 

 trees and chatting about the way things went in 

 my meadows and woods a few months before. 



As our summer residents go and the passing 

 migrants arrive and depart we may begin to ex- 

 pect the winter visitants. I am looking for 

 myrtle warblers now. Their usual date of ar- 

 rival is the twentieth, and if I do not find them 

 here it is probably my fault. The pastures are 

 blue now with bayberries, which seem to be their 

 favorite food. Feeding on these the myrtle 

 warblers should be spicy, sprightly creatures, full 

 of quaint romance, as indeed they are. The 

 junco may come as early as this, according to the 

 best authorities, though I confess I never have 

 any luck in finding him much before November. 

 The junco is a snowbird, anyway, his colors 

 match leaden skies, and he seems to me out of 

 place without a fellow flock of snow flakes. 



