84 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 



now busy feeding on weed seeds along the roads. 

 We saw one flock of about twenty-five and lesser 

 groups, welcoming tlie familiar ''I've cheated ye/' 

 ''I've cheated ye." One flock of six bluebirds 

 seemed to linger about a particular fence post as 

 if loath to leave it. When we approached quite 

 near them, four birds, perhaps the young, flew off. 

 Finally the other two left the perch, but one of 

 them rose and sank in graceful lines not far away, 

 soon returning to a telegraph wire just above the 

 post. In the post we found the nest — a perpendic- 

 ular hole in the top about three inches mde and ten 

 deep. This ' ' old home ' ' did not seem to merit so 

 much affection as the birds apparently felt for it. 

 The bluebirds are not always in melancholy mood 

 at this time of year ; one day we saw one chasing 

 another in lively playful manner, and on sunny 

 days they sometimes sing with somewhat of the 

 spring fervor. The horned larks are in the fields, 

 in flocks, tsipping and flitting from the ground as 

 one approaches, but we heard no sky song. The 

 killdeer was still here on the third, and juncos and 

 white-throated sparrows were in town in flocks 

 when the month opened. The sparrows sang a 

 little, which seems a rather rare favor in their au- 

 tumnal visits here. Today we heard a robin. The 

 solitary robins lingering into late October or into 

 November are very different birds from the first- 



