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Heat and moisture, the father and mother of all that lives, when June has plenty of these, the increase is sure.

Early in June the rye and wheat heads begin to nod; the motionless stalks have a reflective, meditative air. A little while ago, when their heads were empty or filled only with chaff and sap, how straight up they held them! Now that the grain is forming, they have a sober, thoughtful look. It is one of the most pleasing spectacles of June, a field of rye gently shaken by the wind. How the breezes are defined upon its surface–a surface as sensitive as that of water; how they trip along, little breezes and big breezes together! Just as this glaucous green surface of the rye-field bends beneath the light tread of the winds, so, we are told, the crust of the earth itself bends beneath the giant strides of the great atmospheric waves.

There is one bird I seldom hear till June, and that is the cuckoo. Sometimes the last days of May bring him, but oftener it is June before I hear his note. The cuckoo is the true recluse among our birds. I doubt if there is any joy in his soul. “Rain-crow,” he is called in some parts of the country. His call is supposed to bode rain. Why do other birds, the robin for instance, often make war upon the cuckoo, chasing it from the vicinity of their nests? There seems to be something about the cuckoo that makes its position among the birds rather anomalous. Is it at times a parasitical bird, dropping its eggs into other birds’ nests? Or is there some suggestion of the hawk about our species as well as about the European? I do not know. I only know that it seems to be regarded with a suspicious eye by other birds, and that it wanders about at night in a way that no respectable bird should. The birds that come in March, as the bluebird, the robin, the song sparrow, the starling, build in April; the April birds, such as the brown thrasher, the barn swallow, the chewink, the water-thrush, the oven-bird, the chippy, the high-hole, the meadowlark, build in May, while the May birds, the kingbird, the wood thrush, the oriole, the orchard starling, and the warblers, build in June. The April nests are exposed to the most dangers: the storms, the crows, the squirrels, are all liable to cut them off. The midsummer nests, like that of the goldfinch and the waxwing, or cedar-bird, are the safest of all.

In March the door of the seasons first stands ajar a little; in April it is opened much wider; in May the windows go up also; and in June the walls are fairly taken down and the genial currents have free play everywhere. The event of March in the country is the first good sap day, when the maples thrill with the kindling warmth; the event of April is the new furrow and the first seeding;–how ruddy and warm the soil looks just opened to the sun!–the event of May is the week of orchard bloom; with what sweet, pensive gladness one walks beneath the pink-white masses, while long, long thoughts descend upon him! See the impetuous orioles chase one another amid the branches, shaking down the fragrant snow. Here the rose-breasted grosbeak is in the blooming cherry tree, snipping off the blossoms with that heavy beak of his–a spot of crimson and black half hidden in masses of white petals. This orchard bloom travels like a wave. In March it is in the Carolinas; by the middle of April its crest has reached the Potomac; a week or ten days later it is in New Jersey; then in May it sweeps through New York and New England; and early in June it is breaking upon the orchards in Canada. Finally, the event of June is the fields ruddy with clover and milk-white with daisies.