SUMMER BIRDS 117 



A wandering family may, however, visit 

 the garden or orchard occasionally and 

 give us a morning's pleasure in making 

 their acquaintance, or an owl may take up 

 his abode in our clump of pines for a fort- 

 night and at sunset silhouette himself 

 against the soft pink afterglow and whin- 

 nie mournfully at intervals till our blood 

 stands still in our veins. 



We may amuse ourselves, perhaps, by 

 calling a bob-white and her covey within 

 sight of the piazza or draw a company of 

 screaming jays over your head with a 

 " birch call." The dragonflies about the 

 ponds, the butterflies in the meadows, the 

 housing of the bees at twilight, the meet- 

 ing of caterpillars on the footpath fill in 

 the moments between the few birds we see 

 on a ramble. 



We broaden our studies more, we be- 

 come botanists, entomologists, geologists, 

 as well as ornithologists for the time being ; 

 we look into minor matters that during the 

 migration and nesting season we had no 

 time for. A longer pause is made to 

 watch a soaring hawk or to examine a 

 grasshopper's locomotive machinery. 



In the latter part of July the bobolinks 



