Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 207, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1917 — FEW BIRDS SING IN AUGUST [ARTICLE]

FEW BIRDS SING IN AUGUST

Midseason Month Noticeable for the Absence of Music From Nature’s Feathered Creatures. < ■ Once upon a time when we had something to say about August we spoke on It as nature’s silent month, remarks the Terre Haute Star. Almost instantly we were reproved by readers who said that in August the locusts and some dozens of their kin made the month noisy, if not musical. Confessedly, when we wrote of August as the silent month, we were thinking of birds, not bugs. The song sparrow, the red-eyed vlreo and sometimes the ovenbird try to take from August Its value as a synonym for silence, hut of what account is the music of three when their thousand fellows refuse to sing? August Is the molting month and molting is a painful process. The birds do not feel like singing, and, mostly, they do not sing, but It is highly probable that they would not, even if nature were not insisting on a change of feathers. The reason Is that the season Is late. Housekeeping was nushed forward because roofs were xlkely to leak. August, however, for its main part, will hold its silent record. It Is the midseason and It shows forth together some of the beauties of summer and of fall. The. belated rose blossoms with the early aster and the goldenrod stands between. August has neither the full glory of burning July nor of cool September, but it shares in some small part of the glories of each.