The temptation is great, if we love flowers, to pass over the seed time, when stalks are dried and leaves are shrivelled, no matter how beautiful may be the adaptation for scattering or preserving the seed or how wonderful the protective coats guarding against cold or wet. Or if insects attract us by their many varied interests, we are more enthusiastic over the glories of the full-winged image than the less conspicuous, though no less interesting, eggs and chrysalides hidden away in crevices throughout the long winter.
Thus there seems always a time when we hesitate to talk or write of our favourite theme, especially if this be some class of life on the earth, because, perchance, it is not at its best.
Even birds have their gray days, when in the autumn the glory of their plumage and song has diminished. At this time few of their human admirers intrude upon them and the birds themselves are only too glad to escape observation. Collectors of skins disdain to ply their trade, as the ragged, pin-feathery coats of the birds now make sorry-looking specimens. But we can find something of interest in birddom, even in this interim.
Nesting is over, say you, when you start out on your tramps in late summer or early autumn; but do not be too sure. The gray purse of the oriole has begun to ravel at the edges and the haircloth cup of the chipping sparrow is already wind-distorted, but we shall find some housekeeping just begun.
The goldfinch is one of these late nesters. Long after his northern cousins, the pine siskins and snowflakes, have laid their eggs and reared their young, the goldfinch begins to focus the aerial loops of his flight about some selected spot and to collect beakfuls of thistledown. And here, perhaps, we have his fastidious reason for delaying. Thistles seed with the goldenrod, and not until this fleecy substance is gray and floating does he consider that a suitable nesting material is available.
When the young birds are fully fledged one would think the goldfinch a polygamist, as we see him in shining yellow and black, leading his family quintet, all sombre hued, his patient wife being to our eyes indistinguishable from the youngsters.
But in the case of most of the birds the cares of nesting are past, and the woods abound with full-sized but awkward young birds, blundering through their first month of insect-hunting and fly-catching, tumbling into the pools from which they try to drink, and shrieking with the very joy of life, when it would be far safer for that very life if they remained quiet.
It is a delightful period this, a transition as interesting as evanescent. This is the time when instinct begins to be aided by intelligence, when every hour accumulates fact upon fact, all helping to co-ordinate action and desire on the part of the young birds.
No hint of migration has yet passed over the land, and the quiet of summer still reigns; but even as we say this a confused chuckling is heard; this rises into a clatter of harsh voices, and a small flock of blackbirds—two or three families—pass overhead. The die is cast! No matter how hot may be the sunshine during succeeding days, or how contented and thoughtless of the future the birds may appear, there is a something which has gone, and which can never return until another cycle of seasons has passed.
During this transition time some of our friends are hardly recognisable; we may surprise the scarlet tanager in a plumage which seems more befitting a nonpareil bunting,—a regular “Joseph’s coat.” The red of his head is half replaced with a ring of green, and perhaps a splash of the latter decorates the middle of his back. When he flies the light shows through his wings in two long narrow slits, where a pair of primaries are lacking. It is a wise provision of Nature which regulates the moulting sequence of his flight feathers, so that only a pair shall fall out at one time, and the adjoining pair not before the new feathers are large and strong. A sparrow or oriole hopping along the ground with angular, half-naked wings would be indeed a pitiful sight, except to marauding weasels and cats, who would find meals in abundance on every hand.