Ball's Hill.
1891.
Nov. 12
Concord, Massachusetts.
Concord. - Cloudless, calm and very warm; a typical
Indian summer day.
  George Carroll came up this morning and rowed
me down to Ball's Hill where I set him to work at
digging out a boat landing. I spent most of the
day supervising this but also found time to cut a
few paths and take some photographs with my large
Kodak. The weather was delicious, nearly as warm
as in midsummer but with all the bracing freshness of
autumn in the air.
  On the way down river I saw an adult Buteo lineatus, 
two Swamp Sparrows and several Tree Sparrows. A Painted
Tortoise was sunning himself on a floating plank.
On Ball's Hill I found a very active Garter Snake and
heard Pickering's Hylas and Crickets. There was a Creeper,
several Kinglets, and a flock (the first real flock I have
met with this autumn) of six or eight Chickadees in the
pines on the summit. Balloon Spiders were out in great
force skimming continually over or across the surface of
the calm river wafted [delete]swiftly[/delete] by currents of air too slight
to ruffle the water yet so swiftly that I could not
easily overtake them in my canoe.
[margin]Painted Tortoise
sunning.[/margin]
[margin]Hylas & Crickets[/margin]
[margin]Balloon Spiders[/margin]
  Late in the afternoon a shot rang out in the woods
on the Bedford shore. Fifteen or twenty minutes after-
wards several Quail began whistling there. Evidently some
one had started and scattered them. Soon after this
there were two more shots and the voice of a man
calling to his dog. Then silence for half-an-hour,
and after this more Quail calls but no more shots.
[margin]Quail[/margin]
  Musk-rats were cleaving their silvery furrows across
the river as we came up in the evening twilight.