1891
May 23
(No 3)
Canoe trip on Concord River
Mass.
Concord to Wayland. - and the several common Vireos
and Warblers were singing, the tussocky meadows
and better of button bushes peopled by numerous
Red-wings who flitted from place to place and 
gurgled forth their rich, watery notes as they half-
spread their wings and showed their brilliant
epaulets to us and their plain gray-brown mates
who kept darting out from their nests in the 
tussock grass or bushes; every now and then a
Kingfisher, sounding his rattle softly as the looked
meditatively down into the water beneath his perch
on some dead branch, or a pair of Red-shouldered
Hawks mounting in graceful circles into the pale
blue sky and screaming shrilly; these were but
a few of the sights and sounds that we
drank in as as we glided, without the slightest effort more
than the occasional touch on the foot-steering
gear of the trimming of the sheet, from our
camping place through Fairhaven Bay, past
[?] Bridge and the meadows & hills beyond to
Sherman's bridge where we landed at ten o'clock
for lunch and a rest under the pitch pines.
  As we were crossing Fairhaven, Spelman discovered
a large, white bird swimming close in to the
button bushes and turning [?] [?]. It proved
to be a fine old male Gooseander, broken winged
and unable to rise from the water. Doubtless
it was the same bird which Bolles and I
met with in April. Spelman ran his canoe
within a few yards of it.
[margin]Gooseander[/margin]
  At our [?] place birds were very numerous