AUTUMN VISITORS. 
For some reason many of the song birds became silent 
earlier than usual this year: the extended drouth may 
have had something to do with it, but from the first 
week in August till the 10th of September there was so 
universal a hush among them that the woods and fields 
were lonely places, lacking their greatest charm. The 
middle of September brought a change, and for a few 
succeeding days glad voices rang out again in favored 
places almost as joyously as in leafy June. Robins, 
blue birds, song sparrows, gold finches and vireos took 
up their songs again, and gave us a real touch of spring. 
The high-hole uttered his melodious love call from his 
perch in the dead tree top, and the cuckoo sent his sono- 
rous coo, coo! echoing through the woods only a day 
or two before the autumn equinox. Some of these birds 
come back to their old haunts and sing in the trees 
where they nested months before. These few days of 
song become a kind of second spring, just as the soft, 
hazy days that come a little later are the second, or 
Indian summer. They are the precious days of the 
naturalist, who visits, or longs to visit, all the old 
familiar places that were so dear to him earlier in the 
season. 
