The Summer of Fire and Bird Adaptation 



BY CORNELIUS WEYGANDT 



There were not so many birds to greet us at Buck Hill Falls 

 on our arrival on July 6, 1908, as on our previous summer 

 visits there. Our coming a month later than in 1907 and the 

 changes in the surroundings caused by the growth of the cottage 

 colony were both factors in diminishing the varieties that met 

 us on this visit. Barn Swallows were in the air around the 

 built-over old farm-house in which we were again to spend de- 

 lightful days, mid-summer days this year, affording decided 

 contrasts to the real spring days of 1907's June and the prevail- 

 ingly fall days of its September. Barn Swallows were in the 

 air about the clapboard cottage, while in its thickets of lilacs 

 and roses and in its low apple trees and in its little wood of 

 second growth, were many of those birds, mingled of door-yard 

 familiars and quiet wood-haunters, that we got to know so well 

 the previous year. Robin and Wren, Field Sparrow and 

 Chippy, Catbird and Chebec were there, and Ovenbird and 

 Solitary Vireo, but no Indigobird and no Chewink and no 

 Chestnut-sided Warbler and no Summer Yellowbird, and the 

 evening brought no honking Nighthawk or reiterant Whip-poor- 

 will. Four evenings passed before we saw Nighthawks tossing 

 far aloft, and it was one night later still before we heard the 

 first Whip-poor-will, and thereafter, from the house, we never 

 heard more than one at a time; and the Chewink and Chestnut- 

 sided Warbler, common birds in 1905, and still represented in 

 1907, did not visit us until July 12th; the Indigobird that was 

 a fixture the year before was a rare visitor this summer, and the 

 Summer Yellowbird, still common enough in the valley below, 

 never came to us at all. 



As the summer wore on it brought its little adventures with 

 birds. There was the frequent coaxing of a Chipping Sparrow 



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