Look carefully among the leafy boughs and you may find the home of a leaf-rolling caterpillar. "The little creature begins by spinning a thread and fastening one end to some fixed point, and then attaches the other end to the loose leaf. By means of powerful, muscular movements of the front part of the body, ... it hauls away on the ropes, slowly pulling it to the desired point, where it is held in place by a new and stronger thread. In this tent it resides, eating out the interior, and adding new stores of food, by sewing new leaves to the outside of the tent." (Packard.) Notes August Tenth Families of barn and eave swallows now begin to congregate and to act restlessly. Flocks of red-shouldered blackbirds, mixed with purple and bronzed grackles, feed silently in the willows along the waterways, or are flushed from the grain fields. In the woods the chickadees, vireos, and warblers of many kinds keep company while they search among the trees for food. These are the first real signs to make the bird lover feel his feathered friends are soon to leave him. August Eleventh The muskrats now begin to build their winter houses, mounds of leaves, sticks, reeds, and aquatic vegetation, brought from the borders or the bottom of the ponds and streams, and piled from two to four feet above the surface of the water. The entrance to the _one large chamber_ is always below the surface, and in this snug room a family of muskrats will spend the winter, but they _do not hibernate_. August Twelfth The Indian pipe, or corpse flower, is found only in heavily shaded woods. Like the fungi, to which it is kin, it subsists on decaying vegetation. Its ashy color and queer, fantastic shape make you hesitate to pick it, and after you have overcome the feeling and snipped off the stem, you find that it soon turns black, and is useless as an ornament. [Illustration: RED-WINGED BLACKBIRDS.] Notes August Thirteenth Queen Anne's lace, wild carrot, and bird's nest, are the names given to the delicate, white lace-like flower which grows in such abundance in the open countries throughout the eastern States. Several flat-topped flower heads are arranged on stems along the stalk, and after the flowers have bloomed the stems of each head contract and form a sort of basket about the size of a hummingbird's nest. August Fourteenth "Now comes the season of our insect instrumentalists.... I have called them instrumentalists, for there are no insects, to my knowledge, that make any sounds with their mouths; they seem to be entirely void of vocal organs.... The song is produced by the rubbing or beating of some portion of the body against some other portion, these portions being so modified as to produce the rasping sound." (Brownell.) August Fifteenth