1891.
June 2
Mass.
North Truro. - Cloudless t he sun hot but a delicious
S.W. wind blowing all day, changing to W. at sunset
with a thunder shower passing to the N.W. but no rain
falling here.
  The Nonpareil was singing this morning at
daybreak and a Wood Pewee, which must have 
arrived during the night, was also heard in
the poplars near the house.
  As we had birds to skin and notes to write
we did not get off until nearly noon when
we went directly to the boat house and started
up the Eel Pond. By padding a little way we
managed to make the rest of the distance
under sail landing, finally, at the fish house,
and wading out over the flats to a fish weir
belonging to Warren Small. It was low tide and
the water inside the weir or trap, only six
inches to a foot in depth, was alive with
fish of several kinds; flounders of three species,
skates, sculpin, alewifes, tailor herring and a
few smelts. There were also numerous small squid
and many large horse-shoe crabs in pairs.
The man in charge of the trap was at work
baling out with a dip net the marketable
fish and wantonly, as it seemed to me,
impaling the sculpin, skates, and crabs with
a two-tined pitchfork and flinging them
out through an opening in the netting. The
skates and squid were most interesting, the
latter changing color radically and rapidly
and darting backward by means of their siphons.