Part 19

July Seventeenth

During the haying season the birds hold high carnival. Robins, song and chipping sparrows, orioles, bobolinks, goldfinches, meadow larks, and flickers, all feed upon the insects that are now so easy to catch. A seat in the shade overlooking a new mown field is at present a good point from which to study birds.

July Eighteenth

Huckleberries, red raspberries, and shad or service-berries, when ripe, are eaten by birds, squirrels, and chipmunks during the day, while at night various species of mice harvest them. The choke-cherries, elderberries, and blackberries are beginning to lose their bright red color, and they, too, will soon be feeding Nature's people.

Notes

July Nineteenth

The pickerel-weed and arrow-head are in full bloom side by side at the water's edge of stream and pond. The blue flower-heads of the former contrast strikingly with the round white blossoms of the latter.

July Twentieth

The female flies and mosquitoes are the ones that bite, and it is the female and the worker bees and wasps that sting. The males of the two former groups are not provided with blood-sucking mouth parts, and the males of the bees and wasps lack stingers. When a less offensive remedy is not at hand, insect tormentors may be kept away by rubbing a piece of fat pork or bacon on one's face and hands.

July Twenty-first

The leaf-cutting bees resemble the bumblebees. Examine the bushes and trees and you will find circular holes in the leaves from which pieces have been cut. Hundreds of these tiny bits are used to line the rows of cells that the bees make in the ground or in wood. The cells are filled with pollen for the young bees to feed upon when they emerge from the eggs that are laid on top of the supply of "bee-bread."

Notes

July Twenty-second

Do you miss the rollicking song of the bobolink? Have you seen him recently in his spring dress of black and white? No; he has sung himself silent, and, as though in hope of escaping the guns of the Southern rice planters, whose crops he will plunder on his way South, he has disguised himself in a plumage of buff color, streaked with brown, quite like that of his mate.

July Twenty-third

"The summer is nearly over when the Joe-Pie weed (purple boneset) begins to tinge with 'crushed raspberry' the lowlands through which we pass. 'Joe Pie' is supposed to have been the name of an Indian who cured typhus fever in New England by means of this plant." (Dana.)

July Twenty-fourth

The ostrich fern is so named because the dark green fertile fronds which appear about this time, and form the centre of the vase-shaped leaf-cluster, resemble ostrich plumes. Mr. Clute says: "It is at its best in wet, sandy soil of a half-shaded island or river shore. Its development is rapid, often lengthening six inches in a day."

Notes

July Twenty-fifth

A cuckoo pleading for her nest of young would soften a heart of stone. With wings and tail spread, she flutters almost into one's face, uttering pathetic and heartrending cries that beseech you not to touch her treasures. In pinfeathers the young of this bird, as well as those of the chimney swift, resemble baby European hedgehogs.

July Twenty-sixth

Trees and flowers must sleep as well as animals. The dandelion closes its petals late in the afternoon, and as night approaches the water lily folds up tightly. Although summer in the North is shorter than the summer in the South, the days are several hours longer, so vegetation is growing here while their trees and flowers are sleeping. This provision of Nature gives the northern Indian vegetables and flowers in a country which we often call "a land of snow and ice."

July Twenty-seventh

The common milkweed is another one of Nature's fly traps. Examine some of the fragrant flower heads and you are almost sure to find a captive held firmly by the foot. "The silky hairs of the seed-pods have been used for stuffing pillows and mattresses, and can be mixed with flax or wool and woven to advantage." (Dana.)

Notes

July Twenty-eighth

One of the simplest duties of a spider's life, is the stretching of a parallel web. Tiring of her location, the spider begins to spin a thread, or tangle a mass of threads together, until they are of sufficient buoyancy to support her weight. Then she fastens one end of a strand to the point she is about to leave, and clinging to the under side of her improvised balloon, floats away with the breeze. She pays out silk until the thread parts, or she finally comes in contact with some object, and so the cable is laid.