1886
Sept.27
Concord, Massachusetts.
  Clear, still and very warm; evening cloudy and 
cooler with light rain. Yesterday cloudy and warm
with high S.W. wind.
  To Ripley's Hill and beyond at 10 A.M. In the
pines I found only one bird, a D. coronata, but the 
thickets on the east side, the swamp below, and all
the colder, birds and oak thickets and grooves over there 
sandy planes still further east were literally swarming 
with small birds. In my past experience I have
only a few times seen as many in a similar area.
Probably the flight extended over the whole surrounding
region.  Fully 75 per-cent of t he individuals were
D. striata of which I certainly saw three or four
hundred in walking a mile. D. coronata was also
numerously represented; I saw probably fifty. There 
were also a good many Sparrows, Song and Swamp in
the Thickets along the brook, Field in the openings,
and one party of about a dozen Z. albicollis and 
five or six Juncos in the birches. During my entire
ramble more or less birds were constantly in sight.
In fact they formed a continuous flock with breaks
only where their were gaps in the woods and thickets.
The Black-polls and Yellow rumps are especially
numerous in the birches, when nearly every tree
held one or more. On every side the faint lisping
notes, or clicking of birds busy among the Applauder,
were heard. On every side the leaves were rustling
where they moved and trembling where they hopped.
[margin]Ripley's Hill[/margin]
[margin]Heavy flight of D. Striata and D. Coronata[/margin]
  It was an interesting scene full of life and
animation.
  It is a problem what caused this exceptionally