But this is the last day but one of August, and so nominally the end of summer. Only nominally, for these flowery meadows and sweet-scented fields contradict the almanac. This quiet nook in the Delaware meadows offers no intimation of autumn until October, and late in the month at that. The bees and buckwheat will see to this, or seem to, which is just as much to the purpose. To-day along the old worm-fence are many kingbirds, and, although mute, they are not moping. There is too much insect life astir for that. With them are orioles and bluebirds, the whole making a loose flock of perhaps a hundred birds. The bluebirds are singing, but in a half-hearted, melancholy way, reminding me of an old man who spent his time when over ninety in humming “Auld Lang Syne.” Before the buckwheat has lost its freshness these birds will all be gone, but at what time the bluebirds part company with the others I do not know. They certainly do not regularly migrate, as do the others. There was a colony of them that lived for years in and about my barn, and one was as sure to see them in January as in June. No English sparrows could have been more permanently fixed. When the buckwheat is ripe and the fields and meadows are brown, there will be other birds to take their place. Tree-sparrows from Canada and white-throats from New England will make these same fields merry with music, and the tangle about the old fence will ring with gladness. But it is August still, and why anticipate? High overhead there are black specks in the air, and we can mark their course, as they pass, by the bell-like _chink-chink_ that comes floating earthward. It is one of the sounds that recall the past rather than refer to the present. The reed-bird of to-day was a bobolink last May. His roundelay that told then of a long summer to come is now but a single note of regret that the promised summer is a thing of the past. It is the Alpha and Omega of the year’s song-tide. Not that we have no other songs when the reed-bird has flown to the Carolina rice-fields. While I write, a song-sparrow is reciting reminiscences of last May, and there will be ringing rounds of bird-rejoicing from November to April. Still, the initial thought holds good: bobolink in May, and only a reed-bird in August; the beginning and the end; the herald of Summer’s birth and her chief mourner; Alpha and Omega. Where the brook that drains the meadow finds its way, the little rail-birds have congregated. Many spent their summer along the Musketaquid, where Thoreau spent his best days, but they bring no message from New England. They very seldom speak above a whisper. Not so the king-rail. He chatters as he threads the marsh and dodges the great blue barrier that sweeps above the cat-tail grasses and has to be content with a sparrow or a mouse.