NATURE NOTES FROM ACADIA

AUGUST IN ACADIA

A band of swallows strung out along the lines of electric wires which follow the country road, asters and goldenrods and Pearly Everlasting in the fields, the drone of the dog-day cicada overhead, and a dash of crimson upon the Woodbine and the maples. It is August in Acadia, a lull-period between green sumner and colorful autumn.

Silence reigns in the ranks of the feathered choristers. Nesting cares are, for the most part, at an end while the restlessness of migration time has not yet begun in earnest. This is the month of molting, and few are the birds who continue to sing. The talkative Red-eyed Vireo, the ever-cheerful Chickadee, the Flicker and a few others are sometimes heard, but these at best constitute a mere handful.

Daisies now appear frayed and bedraggled and the abundant roadside Fireweed has lost its blooms. These and other flowers of early summer are fading before the pageant of thistles, asters, goldenrods, and other late summer blossoms. The caps of many bright-colored mushrooms are being reared above the leaf-mold in the flowerless woods, dotting the forest floor with a hundred different hues. At night the insect chorus is best in open meadows where innumerable six-legged musicians scrape and fiddle as though to out-do their brothers.

In the woods the squirrels are beginning to cut the green fruits from the Beech, the Arbor Vitae, the White Birch, and from other trees.

In places the ground is strewn with fresh cuttings. August is the month of wild berries - red, orange, blue, black, white, and numerous other colors. Of these, red and its various shades, predominate, and some of our most attractive wild fruits are so colored. Bunchberry, Hobblebush, Red Elder, Sumac, Cherry, Shadbush, Mountain Holly, Twisted Stalk, Partridgeberry, Baneberry, American Yew, Raspberry, Mountain Cranberry, Trillium, and others have fruits which are some shade of crimson.

The year seems to slumber in August, so quiet are the wild things. But before the month has passed the face of the fields can hardly deny the coming of autumn's fiery legions. Our summer passes with the passing of the Maize Moon.