190 DAYS OUT OF DOORS. 



June found most of them with nothing to do but gather 

 in the damp nooks and corners, and eat. Time hung 

 heavily upon their wings. The season had proved favor- 

 able in all respects, no nest-destroying storms occurring ; 

 so, by June 20, the songs at dawn had largely dwindled to 

 twitterings of robins and plaint of fretful pewees. There 

 was not that absolutely songless condition that might be 

 inferred from the writings of many ornithologists as com- 

 mon to summer after nesting was practically over a con- 

 dition that never occurs but the vigor of the May-day 

 concerts was wanting. Then, late in June, came the rains, 

 the fogs, the phenomenal temperature. The upland fields 

 became meadows; the meadows, marshes; the marshes, 

 weedy ponds. A tropical luxuriance characterized all 

 vegetation. Insect life responded to these conditions, and 

 besides mosquitoes, forms available as food for birds were 

 abundant and widely spread. Instead of the limited 

 range that a drought causes, the birds were as well off in 

 one spot as another, and soon their spring-time vigor re- 

 appeared. First, the songs at day-break were renewed ; 

 then the old nesting-sites were revisited, and many 

 species that ordinarily nest but once, nested a second 

 time ; this being true, I think, of all such birds as place 

 their nests in comparatively sheltered places. The orioles, 

 on the contrary, made no such attempt, and, more strange- 

 ly still, the grakles, that colonized the pines about my 

 house as usual, did not relish the constant winds, rain, 

 and electrical storms, and sought the sheltered meadows 

 after the first brood were strong upon the wing. This I 

 never knew them to do before. 



The change in habits among mammals was not notice- 

 able, except in the case of the musk-rat, which wandered 

 into the upland fields and ensconced himself in little 

 hollows, ordinarily dry but now miniature lakes. The 

 marsh turtles shared the fields with the box-tortoise ; the 



