16 OUR FRIENDS, THE ‘BIRDS. 
The Crows go through a sort of drill, in the 
autumn, as if they were preparing for the long jour- 
ney. One old leader gives the commanding ‘‘Caw- 
caw,” and the others fall into companies and battalions 
and away they go, only to swing and whirl and coun- 
termarch (or counterfly) back to the starting point, 
where they alight amid a perfect din of ‘“ Caw-caws” 
and “ Haw-haws.” 
After a few days of such maneuvers, they settle 
upon a time when the real start is made. 
The flight of the Wild Geese is well known to . 
be in an orderly and exact manner, with a leader ir. 
front, while the others follow in the order of one or 
both sides of a wide V. 
They never go in “Indian file,” one immediately 
behind another, but in this form that enables each one 
to keep the leader in sight as well as to see which 
way they are going. 
Many birds migrate only at night. When the 
nights grow cool a restlessness may be observed among 
the birds; a moving and chirping and low calling to 
each other in the darkness that is never heard in 
the summer nights. 
On some dark night a sound of many bird voices 
is heard, a sound that seems far away and yet over- 
head; then we may know that a vast company of our 
summer friends are passing, under the cover of dark- 
ness, away to a land of sunshine and plenty. 
The morrow may find the winds whistling through 
