200 In Touch with Nature. 



their wings as they suddenly turned aside and 

 heard that whish! that means mischief when a 

 collision does occur. 



Later, there was another feature of bird-life over 

 the river and high overhead that spoke more elo- 

 quently of the dying summer than did the skim- 

 ming swallows : the blackbirds were already flock- 

 ing. In little companies of a dozen or more the 

 grakles flew by from shore to shore, and then a 

 great gathering of red-wings went hurrying west- 

 ward. Not merely passing from near-by point to 

 point, but journeying to some new meadows they 

 had in mind, or wending their way to another 

 river valley. A flock of blackbirds is a familiar 

 feature of an October landscape, but in August it 

 is sadly suggestive. For the birds at least there 

 has come a change of season, and the merry 

 nesting days, the flowery upland thickets, the 

 heyday of grassy meadows when the year was 

 young, — all is now but a memory. 



I would that those who for some vague reason 

 or through ignorance deny birds a language in 

 the ordinary acceptation of that term, and who 

 deny them everything else that cannot be squeezed 



