Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 211, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 September 1917 — FEW BIRDS SING IN AUGUST [ARTICLE]

FEW BIRDS SING IN AUGUST

Mid Mason Month Noticeable for the Absence of Music From Nature's Feathered Creatures. Once upon a time when we had something to say about August wo 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 dosens of their kin made the month noisy, if not musical. Oonfeoedly, when we wrote of AnBit as the silent month, we were nklngof birds, not bugs. The song sparrow, the rod-eyed vireo and sometimes the ovenbird try to take* from August its value as a synonym for silence, but of what account is the music of three when their thousand follows 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, oven if n»tn re were not insisting on a change of feathers. The reason Mi that the season is late. Housekeeping was nushed forward because roofs were likely 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.