XXV The Return of Song 



BIRDS' seasons for silence and song do not coincide 

 completely with the general course of the year's 

 increase and decay. As the days grow shorter in 

 early autumn, the earth is cleared of its harvests, 

 and the dense foliage of later summer begins to 

 yield steadily and unmistakably to the onset of 

 deadening winter. But, by the time when the 

 first elm-boughs are touched with gold, and the 

 mists strike cold at evening by the river-side, the 

 song of the birds shows an increase rather than a 

 decline ; and, although the numbers of the autumn 

 singers are comparatively few, and the whole volume 

 of their song but small, this resumption of the 

 music which they lost in the heats of July brings 

 a strange underlying contradiction, a note of hope, 

 to the pageant of the declining year. 



The end of each bird's song-time is marked by few 

 ears in comparison with those which welcomed its 

 beginning ; and, amid the abounding fullness of 

 flower and insect life in July, the familiar singers 

 of the garden fall, almost unnoticed, into the 

 silence of their moulting-time. Even for those who 

 study birds closely, it needs careful vigilance to fix 

 the exact day on which each bird is heard for the 

 last time. But, even if we have been conscious 

 in July, while the blossoms opened on the limes, 

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