September days have the warmth of summer in their briefer hours, but in
their lengthening evenings a prophetic breath of autumn. The cricket
chirps in the noontide, making the most of what remains of his brief
life; the bumblebee is busy among the clover blossoms of the aftermath;
and their shrill cry and dreamy hum hold the outdoor world above the
voices of the song birds, now silent or departed.
What a little while ago they were our familiars, noted all about us in
their accustomed haunts--sparrow, robin, and oriole, each trying now and
then, as if to keep it in memory, a strain of his springtime love song,
and the cuckoo fluting a farewell prophecy of rain. The bobolinks, in
sober sameness of traveling gear, still held the meadowside thickets of
weeds; and the swallows sat in sedate conclave on the barn ridge.
Then, looking and listening for them, we suddenly become aware they are
gone; the adobe city of the eave-dwellers is silent and deserted; the
whilom choristers of the sunny summer meadows are departed to a less
hospitable welcome in more genial climes. How unobtrusive was their
exodus. We awake and miss them, or we think of them and see them not,
and then we realize that with them summer too has gone.
This also the wafted thistledown and the blooming asters tell us, and,
though the woods are dark with their latest greenness, in the lowlands
the gaudy standard of autumn is already displayed. In its shadow the
muskrat is thatching his winter home, and on his new-shorn watery lawn
the full-fledged wild duck broods disport in fullness of feather and
strength of pinion. Evil days are these of September that now befall
them. Alack, for the callow days of peaceful summer, when no honest
gunner was abroad, and the law held the murderous gun in abeyance, and
only the keel of the unarmed angler rippled the still channel.
Continual unrest and abiding fear are their lot now and henceforth, till
spring brings the truce of close time to their persecuted race.
More silently than the fisher's craft the skiff of the sportsman now
invades the rush-paled thoroughfares. Noiseless as ghosts, paddler and
shooter glide along the even path till, alarmed by some keener sense
than is given us, up rise wood duck, dusky duck, and teal from their
reedy cover. Then the ready gun belches its thunder, and suddenly
consternation pervades the marshes. All the world has burst forth in a
burning of powder. From end to end, from border to border, the fenny
expanse roars with discharge and echo, and nowhere within it is there
peace or rest for the sole of a webbed foot. Even the poor bittern and
heron, harmless and worthless, flap to and fro from one to another now
unsafe retreat, in constant danger of death from every booby gunner who
can cover their slow flight.
The upland woods, too, are awakened from the slumber of their late
summer days. How silent they had grown when their songsters had
departed, rarely stirred but by the woodpecker's busy hammer, the
chatter and bark of squirrels, and the crows making vociferous
proclamation against some winged or furred enemy. The grouse have waxed
fat among the border patches of berry bushes, rarely disturbed in the
seclusion of the thickets but by the soft footfall of the fox, the
fleeting shadow of a cruising hawk, and the halloo of the cowboy driving
home his herd from the hillside pasture. Now come enemies more
relentless than beast or bird of prey, a sound more alarming than the
cowboy's distant call--man and his companion the dog, and the terrible
thunder of the gun. A new terror is revealed to the young birds, a
half-forgotten one brought afresh to the old. The crows have found fresh
cause for clamor, and the squirrels lapse into a silence of fear.
Peace and the quietness of peace have departed from the realm of the
woods, and henceforth while the green leaves grow bright as blossoms
with the touch of frost, then brown and sere, and till long after they
lie under the white shroud of winter, its wild denizens shall abide in
constant fear and unrest.
So fares it with the wood-folk, these days of September, wherein the
sportsman rejoiceth with exceeding gladness.