As though ashamed of man's carelessness. Nature covers the fire-swept forests with beds of purple flowers, called "fireweed." Sometimes acre after acre of these tall flowers sway back and forth beneath the charred or naked tree trunks, a pleasant relief to the eye of the traveller.
August Ninth
Look carefully among the leafy boughs and you may find the home of a leaf-rolling caterpillar. "The little creature begins by spinning a thread and fastening one end to some fixed point, and then attaches the other end to the loose leaf. By means of powerful, muscular movements of the front part of the body, ... it hauls away on the ropes, slowly pulling it to the desired point, where it is held in place by a new and stronger thread. In this tent it resides, eating out the interior, and adding new stores of food, by sewing new leaves to the outside of the tent." (Packard.)
Notes
August Tenth
Families of barn and eave swallows now begin to congregate and to act restlessly. Flocks of red-shouldered blackbirds, mixed with purple and bronzed grackles, feed silently in the willows along the waterways, or are flushed from the grain fields. In the woods the chickadees, vireos, and warblers of many kinds keep company while they search among the trees for food. These are the first real signs to make the bird lover feel his feathered friends are soon to leave him.
August Eleventh
The muskrats now begin to build their winter houses, mounds of leaves, sticks, reeds, and aquatic vegetation, brought from the borders or the bottom of the ponds and streams, and piled from two to four feet above the surface of the water. The entrance to the one large chamber is always below the surface, and in this snug room a family of muskrats will spend the winter, but they do not hibernate.