that the bird had obtained any food during its short
rambles.
On reaching the cluster of tall spruces which we visited yesterday
I heard small birds chirping and soon discovered a mixed flock
containing five Chickadees, two Nuthatches (canadensis) & a Cuthia. I
shot one of each species when the report of my gun started some
Hudson Bay Chickadees to calling in the pasture spruces outside. I
shot two of them and am very sure there was a third.
Next ascended the mountain about 200 f[ee]t higher & entered
the hardwood timber, yellow & paper birches, beeches, sugar maples,
and basswood, many of the trees very large & old with trunks
2 to 4 f[ee]t in thickness and tops blasted. Some of the yellow beeches
were nearly as large at the top as at the base, the lateral branches
long & stout, the bark exceedingly rough. In these woods I
found Chickadees, Red-bellied Nuthatches & White bellied do. but
no Woodpeckers or Creepers. Gray Squirrel tracks were numerous and I
saw one of the Squirrels, a fine large fellow sitting  in a bush with
tail pressed tight against his back in the conventional taxider-
mists attitude. He fled to a tall hollow beech as I approached.
Climbing still higher I entered a belt of old-growth spruces
well up to the top of the ridge. They were large trees but with branches
nearly to the ground leaving, however, a clear space beneath so
that the eye could roam over the snow covered ground for a
hundred yards or more on every side. An old logging road
traversed these weeds & I followed it nearly half a mile. The
sun was nearly down behind the ridge and the light under the
trees softened and subdued yet fairly strong. It was wonderfully
still - a breathing stillness broken only by the occasional snicker of
a Red Squirrel or the whining call of a Nuthatch (canadensis)
There were many of the latter feeding on the spruce seeds, the scales
of which floating down to the snow often first attracted my
attention to the bird at work above. The snow was everywhere marked
by the tracks of red squirrels, foxes, & mice. I heard Pine Grosbeaks &
Crossbills (L[oxia] leucoptera). Reached Hilben's[?] after sunset & found a telegram calling me home.
[margin]I had barely time to change my clothes, pack my trunk & take the last train
for Cambridge which I reached at 11 p.m. Faxon saw Crows, Blue Jays & a Hairy Woodpecker[/margin]