1893
March 17
Cambridge, Mass.
Morning walk to Fresh Pond
  Cloudy, the sun shining feebly at times. No wind. The last
two nights cold the thermometer falling below 20[degrees].
  At 9 A.M. took street car to Mt Auburn and walked
thence up Fresh Pond Lane to the hemlock grove in the point
and back by way of the fields to the W. of the Lane.
The ground is now bare in places but at least nine tenths
of the country is still covered with snow which the recent
rains and thaws have settled and the cold of the past two
days hardened to nearly the consistency of snow ice. Hence the
walking was everywhere easy and delightful. The morning, 
however, was rather gloomy and the air chilly and
disagreeable. Nevertheless I saw a good many birds. 
  There were two Robins near the entrance to the lane, one
eating buckthorn berries, the other sitting in the top of an
apple. Both birds uttered the laughing ha-ha-ha, the pip, and
the lisp at frequent intervals and one looked like a female.
Altogether they impressed me as being a pair of our local
summer birds. Hoffman thinks that [deleted]there was[/deleted] a small
flight of our local Robins arrived on the 11th inst. when 
he saw a flock of six, containing two or three females, at
Pout Pond which is not a winter haunt. The flocks of
Robins seen here in winter are usually if not always composed
wholly of males, according to Faxon's observations. 
[margin]Robins[/margin]
  In the woods at the northern extremity of the Gray place
a Downy Woodpecker was drumming at short, regular
intervals on the upper side of a large horozontal branch of an oak.
The branch appeared to be sound and its resonance was not
loud but the bird, a fine male, seemed perfectly satisfied with it. 
[margin]Downy Woodp'r
drumming[/margin]