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.  He does his best to be cheerful and to make a joyful sound.  “Kut-Kut-Kut,” and “Kow-Kow-Kow”—­you may often hear the latter sound in the middle of the night.  Does he try to let his lady dear know that he is near her through the darkness, or is he happily singing in his dreams?

Perched on a mullen spike, a goldfinch is singing to his mate, whose nest is in a sapling not far away.  His jet black wings fold over his yellow back, shaping it into a pointed shield of gold.  He is so happy and so fond that he can not bear long to remain out of her sight.  Now he sings a tender serenade, then his joy rises to ecstasy.  He takes wings and floats up and down the imaginary waves, circling higher and higher, his sweet notes growing more rapturous until finally they reach their climax as he goes abruptly skyward.  Then his fluttering wings close, and he drops from a height of perhaps forty or fifty feet, to alight again on his original perch and resume his tender serenade, singing now in a sweet, dreamy way, sounding just like a ripple of moonlit water looks.  This love-song of the goldfinch is the climax of the summer’s bird-song.  If there were none other, the summer would be worth while.

Dreamily sitting on a bare twig, the wood pewee is content.  She has raised her family, they are now able to get their own food.  Though she is worn and wasted since the spring, and may easily be told from her husband, because he is handsome and well-groomed, yet is she content to sit and wait for the food to come her way.  Now she circles from her perch and returns.  Watching her catch an insect on the way, I hear the sharp snap of her bill, as if two pebbles had been smartly struck together.

* * * * *

Fanning the air with gauzy wings, the honey bee comes for a feast on the flowers of the figwort.  Visiting every open blossom, he loads up with the honey and departs in a line for his hive.  Bye-and-bye a humble-bee wanders along, quickly finding that another has drained the blossoms of their sweets.  He passes on undismayed; there are more flowers.  Over by the wire fence the tick-trefoil, desmodium, is in its glory.  Its lower petal stands out like a doorstep, and on it the humble-bee alights.  Two little yellow spots, bordered with deep red, show him where lies the nectar.  Here he thrusts his head, forcing open the wing petals from the standard.  Instantly the keel snaps down as if a steel spring had been released.  The bee is dusted with pollen, which he carries with him to fertilize another flower.  How did the flower learn to fashion that mechanism, to construct those highly colored nectar-guides?