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Perceiving that we are watching him the grosbeak ceases his ringing tones and drops into that dreamy, soft, melodious warble, which is characteristic of this songster as it is of the catbird. But he leaves when a belted kingfisher comes screaming along the stream.

But there is more of interest on the willow. Unseen till now, no fewer than three nighthawks are squatted lengthwise on its lower limbs, two on one limb and one on another. Strange we did not see them before, but the explanation is the grosbeak was singing. They are as motionless and apparently lifeless as if they had been mummified or petrified for a thousand years. Their mottled back and rusty feathers, their heads drawn down and eyes almost closed, make them look like uncanny visitants from beyond the Styx. Poe’s raven was not so ominous and strangely silent; these will not say even the one word, “Nevermore.” They look like relics of a Saturnian reign before beauty and music and joy were known upon the earth. If there were charred stumps of trees in the Bracken which was shown to Faust, we should expect to see nighthawks squatted on them, wholly indifferent to the lamentations of lost souls. We go directly under the branch where one of them is sitting ten feet above and still he makes no sign. We throw a clod, but yet there is no movement of his wings. Not till a stick hits the limb close to where he is sitting does he stretch his long wings with their telltale white spots and fly rapidly away. And the other two sit unmoved. But some night we hear the whirr of the nighthawk’s wings as he drops rapidly from a great height, or we see him skimming close to the surface of the stream in search of insects in some twilight hour and then he is the embodiment of strength, agility, and swiftness. And some day we perchance find the two dirt colored eggs on the bare ground, or the tiny young, like bits of rabbit fur, with only the earth beneath them and the sky above them, apparently as deserted and destitute as Romulus and Remus; and all this adds wonderfully to our interest in this strange bird, which is so common in the June woods.

The whip-poor-will is much like the nighthawk. Both are of about the same size and color. Both sit lengthwise on limbs. Both are weird creatures that sleep by day and hunt by night. But the nighthawk has a V-shaped patch of white on his throat; the large mouth of the whip-poor-will is fringed with bristles. The nighthawk has a patch of white extending through his long wings; the whip-poor-will has none. The nighthawk is not usually heard after the twilight hours; the whip-poor-will is heard much later. The whip-poor-will calls its name aloud, sometimes startlingly close to the chamber window; the nighthawk only screams.

We cautiously approach a sand flat and are fortunate to see one of the sights of a lifetime. The mud turtle is preparing to lay her eggs in the moist sand. She digs the hole almost entirely with her hind feet, using first one and then the other, working rapidly for perhaps eight or ten minutes until the hole is about six inches in diameter and apparently about three or four inches deep. Then she draws in her head, and drops, at intervals of two or three minutes, five eggs into the hole. That done, she scrapes the moist sand back into the hole, pressing it and patting it from time to time with her hind feet. This process takes much longer than digging the hole. When it is done to her satisfaction she waddles towards the creek. You might have some trouble to find the eggs but the skunk often gets them. Does the mother turtle watch over them till they are hatched by the sun or is it a mere picked-up crowd of youngsters that we sometimes see in the early fall sitting with her on a boulder in the pond?

We follow the scarlet tanager up a wide glen where wholesome smelling brake grows almost shoulder high. Suddenly there comes from our feet a sharp, painful cry, as of a human being in distress, and the ruffed grouse, commonly called pheasant, leaves her brood of tiny, ginger-yellow chicks—eight, ten, twelve—more than we can count,—little active bits of down about the size of a golf ball, scattering here, there, and everywhere to seek the shelter of bush, bracken, or dried leaves, while their mother repeats that plaintive whine, again and again, as she tries to lead us up the hillside away from them. When we look for them again they are all safely hidden; not one can be seen. The mother desperately repeats her whining cry to entice us away and we walk on up to the top of the hill and away to relieve her anxiety. Anon we hear her softly clucking as she gathers her scattered brood.

The scarlet tanager’s nest is on the horizontal limb of a big white oak. But it is not the familiar, striking, scarlet, black-winged bird, which sits on the ragged nest. The female is dressed in sober olive-green above and olive-yellow below, with dusky wings and tail. Probably many an amateur has found this bird down by the river and tried to classify her among the fly-catchers until the coming of her handsome husband caused him to remember that in birdland it is usually only the male part of the population which wears the handsome clothes, just as the Indian braves wear the gaudiest paint and the showiest feathers. It is not till we get to the higher stages of civilization that this rule is reversed.

The foliage of the June woods has not the delicacy of tints which was so exquisite in May, nor the strength of color which will be so striking in September. But it has a beauty no less admirable. The chlorophyll in the leaf-cells is now at its prime and the leaves very closely approach a pure green, especially those of the sycamore, which is the nearest to a pure green of any tree in the forest. Standing in the wood road which runs along the top of a timbered crest we look across a broad, wooded valley where the leaves seem to exhale a soft, yellowish green in the bright sunlight. Beyond and above them, five miles away, and yet apparently very near, a belt of bluish green marks the timber fringe of the next water course. Still farther, another unseen stretch of corn land intervening, the forest crowned ridge meets the soft sky in a line of lavender, as if it were a strata cloud lying low on the horizon. From this distance the lavender and purple are almost changeless every sunny day the year around. Always the Enchanted Land and the Delectable Mountains over across the valley. How like the alluring prospect across the valley of years! Always the same soft lavender haze there, while the woods here run through all the gamut of color, from the downy pinks and whites and the tender greens of spring through the deeper greens of summer to the crimson and scarlet of the fall, and the russets, grays, and coffee-browns of the winter. When the foliage of the forest has deepened into one dark shade of verdure then we know that June is far spent, spring has gone and summer is here. The uniform green is not monotonous. See the woods in the hour before sunset when the slanting light gives the foliage consummate glory. See them again in the white light of a clear noon when the glazed leaves seem to reflect a white veil over the pure verdure; and again when the breeze ripples through the leafy canopy, showing the silvery under-surfaces of the maple leaves, the neat spray of the river birches, the deeply cleft leaves of the scarlet oak and the finely pinnate leaves of the honey locust. Each has a glory now peculiar to itself and to June.

There is much beauty of color in the woodland undergrowth. Tall torches touched with the crimson of the