12 THE AUDUBON BU Ei iaies 
is so packed with insect voices that there is no room to project their clear 
musical notes. What liquid shimmering song could go unshattered against 
the wall of rasping locusts, crickets and the cicadas, for this, as I promised 
long ago to tell you, Inquisitive One, is the hottest sound I know. It bores 
into one’s consciousness like a diamond drill, deeper and deeper, then sud- 
denly stops, leaving one in a vacuum of silence. 
SEPTEMBER 
The martin house is silent and deserted against the sky; even the spar- 
rows are no longer interested in the sign “To Rent” which seems written 
all over it. Passing blue jays argue with some pertinacious crow. Redheads 
protest raspingly at the disturbance. The ubiquitous grackle has departed 
with other August pests to more fruitful fields, if any there be. The only 
sweet notes I have heard for days are those of the goldfinches. In the 
numerous clumps of sunflowers the yellow creatures have a granary that is 
exhaustless, while they need it. A white-throated sparrow stopped in the 
elder bushes and pecked at the hanging berries while he hummed his little 
reminiscent tune. 
OCTOBER 
As is the case with the few stray vegetables in the garden, so the 
lessened number of bird voices increases their importance. Blue jays and 
towhees are plentiful and robins are our constant friends. Crows, flickers 
and redheads add color but no harmony to the landscape. Flocks of juncos 
and cedar waxwings fly up at my approach and black-capped chickadees 
announce themselves. Goldfinches haunt the ragged sunflower stalks. 
Belated warblers stop for a moment, and the white-throated sparrows pass 
through in small companies. * * * * 
Around the first bend of the low land I come upon a pleasant happen- 
ing. Standing in the tall grass at the edge of the water is a creature whose 
long legs and feet proclaim him a water bird. The bill, a prolongation of a 
flat head, is held high in the air and the giraffe-like neck is beautifully 
striped in buff and brown. As I rowed slowly back and forth within little 
more than an oar’s length, the beady eyes followed me but the body re- 
mained motionless. It was the American bittern, of the heron family, whose 
cry resembling a wooden pump I long have known. He is also called the 
stake-driver and “plum puddin’” from the fancied resemblance of his cry 
to these sounds. Not a musician certainly, but a useful bird in bogs and 
marshes where he hunts insects industriously. He is not easy to discover 
because of his protective coloring and curious habit of pointing his long 
bill skyward till it resembles the reeds in which he stands. 
The day would have been a memorable one for the gamut of color 
along the banks even if I had seen no bittern or heard no wild sweet songs. 
A few blind gentians and white turtle heads hung over the placid water. 
Few leaves, even the gorgeous sumac, can so illuminate a landscape as a 
scarlet woodbine. It glorifies everything to which it clings and makes a 
common fence post regal with beauty. Masses of reeds and sedges point 
their brown heads upward unmindful of their green feet in the water. 
Brilliant red seeds of the cockspur thorn and wild rose hips are destined 
to be strung and form a rosary of summer memories. 
