1886
Sept. 22
Concord, Massachusetts.
Clear and cool. Wind W., not strong.
  Started up river at 10 A.M. spending the day and getting back just before sunset.
  Sailed about half (the last half) of the way
to Fairhaven and rowed all the way back.
[margin]To Fairhaven[/margin]
  Just above the French farm saw three Rusty
Grackles sitting in the button bushes and shot
one.  At the report of the green a flock of about 
thirty rose from a corn field and pitched down
into the button bushes about 100 yds. below me.
  I shot two or three at one shot and missed
another with the other barrel.
  Saw no Ducks until opposite Martha's Point
when six rose from a sheltered cover filled with 
lily pads. Five of them were A.obscura, the sixth
very much smaller than the others.  Later a single
Black Duck few past going down river and still
later tow Wood Ducks passed up coming almost
within shot.
  I made my first landing nearly opposite the Cliff's
where I hunched lying, for the first time since
May, in the sun. It was very beautiful then, the 
river with its setting of green for there is almost
no brighter coloring yet.  A pair of musk rats 
were playing about just above us driving and 
chasing one another about. A layer Hawk, I shot
a B. borealis, curled slowly over the river and 
then sailed away over the woods; numerous pairs
of dragon flies, the female dull red, the male brown, looked
together were dipping up and down on the water
laying their eggs; then were a few Jays