t
silent and motionless for hours at a stretch, the only sign of life the
glitter in his bright, bead-like eyes. Decide that he has gone daft,
however, and venture a step too near,--presto! With flutter and whirr
he takes to wings, and is off as if flying was as simple a feat as the
traditional "falling off a log." The jaunty kingfisher, too, makes a
devoted parent. One day we saw a fledgling fly straight out over the
lake. The mother bird followed close, uttering cries of alarm. But,
alas! she could not lend him wings. His young muscles were unequal to
his ambition, and the little body dropped into the water. Both parents
dashed madly back and forth over the still, shining surface, and then
wandered disconsolately from tree to tree along the shore, voicing
their grief in wild, rattling cries.

Bird families hold together long after the nest is abandoned. They may
be seen toward nightfall making their way by twos and threes to the
tamarack swamp across the lake. The close-set, symmetrical branches
provide the best of perches for inexperienced feet. "Birds of a feather
flock together" when it comes to a question of lodging houses. One
evening I counted one hundred and fifteen kingbirds roosting in the
tapering spires of the tamarack trees.

September days are heralded by the return of the birds who have
summered in Canada. Fox sparrows stop with us a week or so on their
southward journey. The evening grosbeaks have come down from far
Saskatchewan, and are thinking of spending the winter here. Wild geese
wake one o' nights, with their hoarse "honk, honk." They have stopped
for a taste of our tender frogs, but will soon re-form their triangular
caravans and push on to the South. Ducks, mallards and canvasbacks,
feed and fatten in the shallow water among the reeds. The gunners
arrive as soon as they, however, and will soon frighten them away.
Everybody is getting ready for the great migration. Troops of young
birds flutter through the trees, like autumn leaves blown by a gust of
wind. They are taking their first lessons in migration and in food
supply.

The natives look on at these preparations with cynical unconcern. Blue
jays chatter and scream with a daily extension of their marvelous
vocabulary. Crows come proudly out from the deep woods, leading black,
ungainly broods, and direct their flight to the ripening cornfields.
Nuthatches, the white-bellied and the Canadian, bustle about the tree
trunks, bent on making the