Crickets and katydids droned and fiddled all night, and when the katydids quit at daybreak, other grasshoppers and cicadas were ready to take their places in the screechy orchestra. Night and day they shrill their ceaseless music. It is all masculine love music, as much an expression of their tender feelings towards listening maidens, as the old troubadour songs to fair ladies or as the exquisite song of the rose-breasted grosbeak is to his brown-garbed spouse in May and June. Late in July it began with the short rasps and screeches of tiny hoppers flitting in the grass; the katydid began to tune up on the evening of July 29. Then the long-legged conductor waved his baton and the orchestra was off. It started moderato, but quickly increased to an allegro, and sometimes it is almost presto. For the first two weeks in August new fiddlers were constantly being added, and now there are enough to fill every band stand all through the woods. The noise at night is almost ear-splitting. The old preacher was right about it. There are times when the grasshopper is a burden. At the hour of sunset the cicada winds his rattle most joyously, subsiding into silence as darkness comes and making way for the katydid. The screechy orchestra is a poor substitute for the grand birds' concerts of June and July. For the birds, August is a month of silence. Except for an occasional solo, nearly all the birds are silent, moulting and moping in the thickets. If you steal into the thicket you may find the thrushes and the thrashers feeding on the ground. Once in a while one of them shows himself in the morning or the evening, but not often. Nesting done, the brown thrasher ceased his long and brilliant solos from the treetops after the first week of July. Next week the catbird's song was heard for the last time. Because the first nest of the wood thrush was robbed by the blue-jays, a second nest was built. This family was safely reared, and the wood thrush sang until the third week in July, when one clear sunset night, the sky all aglow with banners of golden red, he sang his farewell solo. For seven weeks the Maryland yellow throat sang just at the turn of the old woods road, where his mate had her nest in a low bush. As the babies waxed large his song waned, and he was not heard during the last week in July, nor since. Still the dickcissel, the lark sparrow and the indigo bunting continued their trio. Evidently their babies were somewhere over in the field nearby, a field that was corn last year, and now is grown up thickly with smartweed. August came with a rush of the mercury above the ninety mark, and there it has stayed. A week of it was enough for this trio. They ceased their concert work, but now and then the lark sparrow pipes up a feeble imitation of his sweet notes in July. Like the song sparrow, he cannot wholly refrain from expressing his satisfaction in being alive. Many men and women are just like that. The vireos also ceased singing at the end of the