In many ways the autumn season in Northern India resembles the English spring.  The Indian October may be likened to April in England.  Both are months of hope, heralds of the most pleasant period of the year.  In both the countryside is fresh and green.  In both millions of avian visitors arrive.

Like the English April, October in Northern India is welcome chiefly for that to which it leads.  But it has merits of its own.  Is not each of its days cooler than the preceding one?  Does it not produce the joyous morn on which human beings awake to find that the hot weather is a thing of the past?

Throughout October the sun’s rays are hot, but, for an hour or two after dawn, especially in the latter half of the month, the climate leaves little to be desired.  An outing in the early morning is a thing of joy, if it be taken while yet the air retains the freshness imparted to it by the night, and before the grass has yielded up the sparkling jewels acquired during the hours of darkness.  It is good to ride forth on an October morn with the object of renewing acquaintance with nimble wagtails, sprightly redstarts, stately demoiselle cranes and other newly-returned migrants.  In addition to meeting many winter visitors, the rider may, if he be fortunate, come upon a colony of sand-martins that has begun nesting operations.

The husbandman enjoys very little leisure at this season of the year.  From dawn till sunset he ploughs, or sows, or reaps, or threshes, or winnows.

The early-sown rice yields the first-fruits of the kharif harvest.  By the end of the month it has disappeared before the sickle and many of the fields occupied by it have been sown with gram.  The hemp (san) is the next crop to mature.  In some parts of Northern India its vivid yellow flowers are the most conspicuous feature of the autumn landscape.  They are as brilliantly coloured as broom.  The san plant is not allowed to display its gilded blooms for long, it is cut down in the prime of life and cast into a village pond, there to soak.  The harvesting of the various millets, the picking of the cotton, and the sowing of the wheat, barley, gram and poppy begin before the close of the month.  The sugar-cane, the arhar and the late-sown rice are not yet ready for the sickle.  Those crops will be cut in November and December.

As in September so in October the birds are less vociferous than they were in the spring and the hot weather.  During the earlier part of the month the notes of the koel and the brain-fever bird are heard on rare occasions; before October has given place to November, these noisy birds cease to trouble.  The pied starlings have become comparatively subdued, their joyful melody is no longer a notable feature of the avian chorus.  In the first half of the month the green barbets utter their familiar cries at frequent intervals; as the weather grows colder they call less often, but at no season of the year do they cease altogether to raise their voices.  The tonk, tonk, tonk of the coppersmith is rarely heard in October; during the greater part of the cold weather this barbet is a silent creature, reminding us of its presence now and then by calling out wow softly, as if half ashamed at the sound of its voice.  The oriole now utters its winter note tew, and that sound is heard only occasionally.