VII
1888
Feb. 13
East Watertown, Mass.
Clear, perfectly still and warm for a winter day.
  Over the E. Watertown ground this morning
starting at 10.30, and getting back at 1 P.M.
  Shortly after entering the woods behind the cemetery
I saw two Creepers playing about the trunk of a
pine flying round and round as they ascended in a 
cork-screw course. A Nuthatch was calling a little beyond,
Crows cawing in the distance. No other birds in these
woods.
[margin]Sitta 
carolinensis[/margin] 
  The snow was nearly a foot deep, crusted in the fields
but among the trees loose and powdery. Saw a gray
squirrels track in the cemetery woods.
  Crossing the road and climbing French's hill I
found a number of birds assembled in this favorite
haunt of theirs. In the row of cedars just below the
pines were about a dozen Juncos twittering and flitting
along the wall one or two occasionally practicing the trills
and warbling notes so often heard in March. In the old
oaks near the crest of the ridge two Creepers were calling
to one another. I shot them and they proved to be a
pair; the [male] sang once or twice in low tones.
[margin]Juncos[/margin]
[margin]Certhia[/margin]
  In the belt of cedars to the westward I found numerous
traces of a small Owl which from the size of the ejected
pellets were composed wholly of the hair & bones of mice;
yet a single mouse track that dotted the snow under
these cedars was the only mouse sign that I saw to-day.
Perhaps the Owl was only waiting to capture him before
changing his hunting grounds!
[margin]Small owl[/margin]
  Pausing a moment on the warm, sunny edge
of this grove I thought, sadly enough, of the many
many times years ago that I had stood in the