Our "Indian summer," that seems still to linger, as if loth to leave us to the tender mercies of a winter that is likely to prove unusually inclement, has been a season of unwonted jubilation to our wild-birds; for, guided by an instinct that is a monitor sufficiently to be depended upon in ordinary circumstances, they had already, each after his kind, prepared themselves, not for equinoctial warmth and sunshine, but for equinoctial storms. All the more, then, from its very unexpectedness, did they feel bound to rejoice in the incalculable blessing of twenty free days of midsummer warmth and calm at a time when, in the usual course of events, the tempest should have been howling through the woods and careering over moss and moorland, they the while glad to cower for shelter and safety in such crevices and corners as might be best suited to their purpose. At and after the autumnal equinox, in ordinary seasons, the only one of our native wild-birds that sings, or attempts to sing, a fairly finished song, is the redbreast; though, to be sure, the wren also sometimes strikes up an occasional voluntary when we least expect it; the lively Lilliputian in his song, as in everything else, being a creature of unbridled impulse, guided solely by the whim and caprice of the moment, as if in utter contempt and disregard of the method and order by which other birds are fain to regulate the conduct of their lives. Not the redbreast alone, however, backed by the intermittent melodies of the wren, who, Sims Reeves-like, only sings when the humour seizes him, obstinately silent when you would expect him to sing, and as obstinately singing when you would expect him to be silent; but the blackbird also, and chaffinch, the corn bunting and goldfinch, have been of late delighting us with their music, in volume and compass and exquisite finish hardly inferior, though so out of season, to their most successful performances in spring and early summer, which, be it noted, is the season for wild-bird song at its best. Our poets, as if by tacit arrangement and preconcert, do all in their power to impress us with the notion that June is not only the month of flower and leaf, but the great bird music month as well, a mistake partly owing, no doubt, to their ignorance of bird life, but mainly, we suspect, arising from the fact that "June" and "tune" are such pat and perfect rhymes, that the poet dealing with summer glories and summer joys never fails to pounce upon them for instant use, without a thought of their inappropriateness, so far at least as bird music is concerned. It is true that with reference to bird song our poets are also liberal enough with their "May" and "lay," which, as nearer to the mark, is somewhat better. Better still, however, would be April, if our poets would be correct, to which we might perhaps suggest "trill" as a rhyme; not a good rhyme to be sure, even if "April" could be decently placed at the end of a line (as in