Surely autumn is the finest season of the year. I always know that as soon as it gets here. Yesterday I revelled in the summer that had stayed with us so long and, still seemed to show few signs of going. Today the fall coloring is burning, like a wood fire on a still day, slowly up from the swamps into the upland woods. Now that I have begun to notice it I see that the coloring is touching the underleaves of the hillside birches, those nearest the stem, and that perhaps one in five has the same cool, pale yellow fire alight. Thus rapidly does the conflagration spread from swamp to hillside, from the shade of the grove to its topmost boughs and before we know it the year will have once more set the world on fire. As far those other signs, there is a whole calendar of bird voices and bird movements that might well give us the dates, day by day. To me the first warning of the passing of summer comes in the tin-trumpet notes of the blue jays. While the nesting season is on the blue jay is as dumb as an oyster. The woods may be full of him and his tribe, but never an old bird says a word. After the young can fly you may hear them if you slip quietly along in the pine woods. You have to be pretty near though, to do it. They sit in a family group in the treetops and complain, under the breath, hungrily. It is not until the young are well grown, the moulting season is over and the summer pretty nearly the same that any blue jay gets his voice. Then, almost as suddenly as the coming of autumn coloring in the trees the racket begins. You may not have seen a blue jay in the woods for months. Suddenly they appear in flocks, swooping down on the orchard in brand new uniforms of conspicuous blue, white and black, yelling tooting and chattering. They have been shy and careful. They are now tame and reckless. They troop into the pasture after the wild cherries which they eat with chattering and scolding. On vibrant limbs they give spirit rappings in imitation of a woodpecker. Then they laugh and scream about it. Hearing them we always say, "How fallish it sounds."