1890
May 23
Cambridge, Massachusetts
A hunt for Rails eggs.
Clear and cool with raw N.E. wind.
  To the swamps at 2 P.M. Went alone and spent most
of the afternoon in hunting for nests. Began with the
bush-grown meadow between the brick inhouses and the
turnpike where I found a nest of the Swamp Sparrows with
two eggs, a nest of a Yellow Warbler with four eggs and a 
Maryland Yellow-throat's nest with three eggs & one of Molothrus
Visited the little rectangular pond in the meadow where
we used to catch pickerel when I was a boy. Its eastern
border is now a [piece?] of birches thirty or more feet high. 
Its western is an open marsh precisely as of yore. A
Wilson's Thrush was singing in the birches and a 
meadow Lark in the grass field on the Tudor place.
  The Maple Swamp which I visited next yielded me
nothing except a Yellow Warbler's nest and that I 
found sometime ago building. To-day it held a fine
set of five eggs. The Flicker's hole has not yet been found
by the boys, apparently, for it was not cut open and I 
heard the male laughing near. In the willows along 
Alewife Brook I heard one Black-poll Warbler and
saw another; these, with a Mniotilta varia (singing) which
surely cannot be breeding there, were all the migrants
I could find. Of summer residents there were about
five Wilson's Thrushes (two singing), two pairs of Red starts,
two pairs of Cat birds, several Least Flycatchers & Maryland Yellow-throats,
A pair of Grosbeaks, a pair of Yellow-throated Vireos, several
Red-eyes and about the usual number of Robins, 
Red-wings and Yellow Warblers. The last are undoubtedly
the most numerous birds in this swamp. There are
no Cuckoos, apparently, in any part of the swamps
this year. What can have become of them? White eyed Vireos
[margin]Summer birds
of the
Maple Swamp[/margin]