yg STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 



while in August you will seek in vain for your bobolink, though 

 the meadow be full of them. 



This Protean accomplishment of the bird has led to much 

 misconception, not only in the popular mind, but among the orni- 

 thologists as well, the dual guise suggesting two distinct species, 

 a common supposition even yet among those who have not wit- 

 nessed the metamorphosis. Bob, moreover, pays a severe penalty 

 in this relinquishment of his merry motley of cap and bells. 



In his annual September migrations, from Maine to Florida, 

 he runs the gantlet of the gourmand guns aimed at those two 

 prospective bites from his plump breast ; for whether as " reed- 

 bird" in Pennsylvania or "rice-bird" in Louisiana, the appearance 

 of his flocks is a whet to the epicurean appetite and to wholesale 

 slaughter. Go to our market -stalls, not only in the South, but 

 here in the very haunt where his song has barely ceased in the 

 meadows, and see the sickening traffic in these plucked and man- 

 gled little bodies. "Reed-birds, twenty-five cents a bunch!" Alas! 

 there would seem to be a hundred of our population who enjoy 

 their bobolinks on toast to one who realizes the song that will be 

 forever missed. 



My hill-top piazza affords a rare opportunity for observing the 

 aerial play of the nighthawks. Regularly every afternoon, in the 

 interval between four o'clock and sunset, they awake from their 

 day-dozing, and one by one join the revellers aloft now climbing 

 the heavens with rapid spiral flight, whence with a sudden dip 

 and folded wings they plunge headlong down, down, as though to 

 dive into the glassy mill-pond in the valley below; and now, with 

 a sweeping curve of magnificent grace and proportions, skimming 

 the tree -tops in buoyant upward glide, while we catch the vibrant 

 twang of the cleaving wings. 



How has that mysterious sound puzzled the investigators! 

 What is its source ? I have attributed it to the wings ; but all 

 of our ornithologists have had their guess at this " boom," as it is 

 called. Wilson Flagg apparently considered it a vocal effort, as 

 implied in his remark that " it utters a singular note, resembling 

 the twang of a viol string." Others have laid the sound to the 



