But nesting-time passes, with all its pleasures and trials and dangers and happy-go-lucky affairs. Late summer sees the young bobolinks out of the nest and away to the weed stalks with their parents. The young males set up an independent though weakly melodious warble on their own account, though they have not yet forgotten their baby ways, and still coax the parents for a good bite of bug or beetle. It is about the only very young bird we are acquainted with that is as precocious in regard to song. It is by this only that it is recognized as a male in this first season, being clothed like the mother and sisters. And, strange to say, about this time the father bobolink begins to don another dress. His black and white are inconspicuous, as if faded with the summer sun, and he ceases to sing as formerly. The fact is, he has no time to sing now, with the young birds to help along, as it is getting almost "time to move." And this strange bird actually seems to forget which are his own children, for the whole neighborhood gathers together, males, females, and young, helter-skelter, each intent on gastronomic affairs and the growing of feathers. As the days wear away, and the sere and yellow leaf of sumac and beech and maple warn all good folk that winter is getting ready to travel back home, the bobolinks preen up. Slyly, like the Arab, they steal away; not suddenly as they came in the spring, but slowly and deliberately. The wings of the young must have time to expand, and season and endure fatigue. Besides, bird families are not able to carry lunch-baskets on an autumn outing. So the bobolinks pass slowly toward the South, feeding as they go, never exercising enough to lose weight, but actually fattening on the journey. Now, taking all things into account, the bobolinks are the most sensible of people. Persons who ought to know better by experience and observation hurry on a journey, take no time to enjoy the scenery and the people that live along the route. At the journey's end they are depleted, tired, worn to skin and bone, and out of sorts with travel. Not so the bobolinks! They have no bones at the journey's end. They have fattened themselves into butter. They have put on flesh as the bare spring trees put on leaves, and the butternut takes in oil. All the way they eat and drink, and make as merry as they can with so much fat on them. The yesterday's bird of mad music is to-day the bird of mad appetite. True, they may call out "chink" in passing, but "chink" means "chock-full," and people who delight in bobolink table-fare recognize the true meaning of the note. Bobolink has forgotten to call his own name, so he answers to any nickname the epicurean lovers of him please to call him by--"rice-bird," "reed-bird," "butter-bird," anything or everything that is appropriate. And "'possum" sits up on a stump and laughs.