is perhaps the rule with our Mniotiltidae ( food Warblers 
and that most of the Fringillidae ( Finches, Sparrows, etc. 
and Icterids.e (Blackbirds, Orioles, etc. ) "drop out" 
gradually (that is, as individuals). 
Heard my first Cicada to-day, in oak woods. What 
a heat-suggesting sound! 
I reached home at 6 P. M., sailing all the way 
from Fairhaven and meeting no adventures worth recording on 
the way^J 
Evening Walk to Su nset Pasture . 
Birds singing 
at and after 
sunset 
After tea I walked up the Estabrook road to 
Clark’s pasture, where I smoked a cigar and watched the sun 
set and darkness fall, sitting on my favorite boulder near 
the middle of the field. 
The evening was calm and peaceful but the life 
and sparkle of the morning were gone and in their place a 
dull apathy possessed all nature. The influences-which 
work such a change are often subtle but in this case they 
were apparently a bank of gray clouds rising in the west 
and the presence ofmuch smoky haze in the atmosphere. 
There were intervals, sometimes of a minute or 
more in length, when not a bird sang. Then I would hear, 
one after another, Robins, Song Sparrows, Field Sparrows, 
Chippies, Grass Finches, Meadow Larks, Quail, and occasionally 
