Latest among the
singers are the chewinks, the wood pewees, the field sparrows, and, of
course, the goldfinches and the cuckoos. The young chewinks left their
nests in the pasture on the third, and the chewink's feelings
expressed themselves in song for two weeks after that. He out-sang the
field sparrows, whose young were hatched August third, and left their
nest on the twelfth. Apparently the field sparrow stopped singing and
went to work providing for his family of three. But the chewink was
not to be sobered so quickly. Why not sing with the work? The days are
long enough, happy enough, for both. Even now he gives occasional
bursts of song. Evidently this is the theory of the tanager also, for
he sang all through July, and here in mid-August his trumpet tones
occasionally ring through the leafy silences of the woods. The young
wood pewees which left their nests on the eleventh are now able to
shift for themselves; but the parents have much the same song as they
had when the three eggs lay in the nest, saddled to the burr-oak
bough. Still, through the peaceful morning air comes the loud, clear,
cheery call of the Bob White--a note that has in it health and vigor
for the healing of many a tired heart. As for the cuckoo, well, his
mate is guarding those bluish-green eggs in the apology for a nest
built in the lower branches of a young black-oak; they will not be
hatched until the very last of the month.
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