With such unmistakable signs made manifest to the eye and ear the summer
signals its fullness and decline, that one awakening now from a sleep
that fell upon him months ago might be assured of the season with the
first touch of awakening.
To the first aroused sense comes the long-drawn cry of the locust fading
into silence with the dry, husky clap of his wings; the changed voice of
the song birds, no more caroling the jocund tunes of mating and nesting
time, but plaintive with the sadness of farewell.
The bobolink has lost, with his pied coat, the merry lilt that tinkled
so continually over the buttercups and daisies of the June meadows;
rarely the song sparrow utters the trill that cheered us in the doubtful
days of early spring. The bluebird's abbreviated carol floats down from
the sky as sweet as then, but mournful as the patter of autumn leaves.
The gay goldfinch has but three notes left of his June song, as he tilts
on the latest blossoms and fluffy seeds of the thistles. The meadowlark
charms us no more with his long-drawn melody, but with one sharp,
insistent note he struts in the meadow stubble or skulks among the
tussocks of the pasture and challenges the youthful gunner. What an easy
shot that even, steady flight offers, and yet it goes onward with
unfaltering rapid wing-beats, while the gun thunders and the harmless
shot flies behind him. The flicker cackles now no more as when he was a
jubilant new comer, with the new-come spring for his comrade, but is
silent or only yelps one harsh note as he flashes his golden wings in
loping flight from fence-stake to ant-hill.
The plover chuckles while he lingers at the bounteous feast of
grasshoppers, but never pierces the August air with the long wail that
proclaimed his springtime arrival. After nightfall, too, is heard his
chuckling call fluttering down from the aerial path, where he wends his
southward way, high and distinct above the shrill monotony of crickets
and August pipers. The listening sportsman may well imagine that the
departing bird is laughing at him as much as signaling his course to
companion wayfarers.
The woodland thrushes' flutes and bells have ceased to breathe and
chime, only the wood pewee keeps his pensive song of other days, yet
best befitting those of declining summer.
The trees are dark with ripened leafage; out of the twilight of the
woodside glow the declining disks of wild sunflowers and shine the
rising constellations of asters. The meadow sides are gay with unshorn
fringes of goldenrod and willow-herb, and there in the corners of the
gray fences droop the heavy clusters of elderberries, with whose purple
juice the flocking robins and the young grouse, stealing from the
shadowed copses along this belt of shade, dye their bills.
The brook trails its attenuated thread out of the woodland gloom to gild
its shallow ripples with sunshine and redden them with the inverted
flames of the cardinals that blaze on the sedgy brink. Here the brown
mink prowls with her lithe cubs, all unworthy yet of the trapper's
skill, but tending toward it with growth accelerated by full feasts of
pool-impounded minnows. Here, too, the raccoon sets the print of his
footsteps on the muddy shores as he stays his stomach with frogs and
sharpens his appetite with the hot sauce of Indian turnip while he
awaits the setting of his feast in the cornfields. The hounds are more
impatient than he for the opening of his midnight revel, and tug at
their chains and whimper and bay when they hear his querulous call
trembling through the twilight. They are even fooled to melodiously
mournful protest when their ears catch the shriller quaver of the
screech owl's note.
The woodcock skulks in the bordering alders, and when forced to flight
does so with a stronger wing than when a month ago his taking off was
first legally authorized. Another month will make him worthier game; and
then, too, the ruffed grouse need not be spared a shot, as full grown
and strong of pinion he bursts from cover; nor need the wood duck, now
but a vigorous bunch of pin feathers, be let go untried or unscathed,
when from his perch on a slanted log or out of a bower of rushes he
breaks into the upper air with startling flutter of wings and startled
squeak of alarm.
Summer wanes, flowers fade, bird songs falter to mournful notes of
farewell; but while regretfully we mark the decline of these golden
days, we remember with a thrill of expectation that they slope to the
golden days of autumn, wherein the farmer garners his latest harvest,
the sportsman his first worthy harvest, and that to him that waits, come
all things, and even though he waits long, may come the best.