1893
May 23
Concord, Mass.
 Forenoon cloudless but the air obscured by horse. Clouds gathering
in the early afternoon but the sky clearing before sunset. Distant
thunder in the afternoon and heat lightning at night. Very hot,
the thermometer at the Buttrick's rising to 93 degrees.
[margin]Ball's Hill[/margin]
 
 Almost if not quite for the first time this month, the
birds sang freely and generally through the entire forenoon
beginning at daybreak. I heard them when I first awoke
in the early morning, while I was dressing, and all the
way down the river and along the edges of the meadows as I
was on my way to Ball's Hill. This singing was not half-
hearted and intermittent or the part of many species as
has been the almost unvarying rule heretofore but vigorous, [?]
well sustained.
[margin] Birds singing
freely for
first time
this month[/margin]
 I added two species to my list: a Wood [?] singing in
an oak on the meadows and a Traillii Flycatcher which I
both saw and heard in Mr. Nevius's field opposite Ball's Hill.
I landed there to try to identify a bird which sang much
like a Grass Finch but [?][?] and which appeared to be 
in a thicket on the edge of the meadow. It probably was a
Grass Finch but something about the low plaintive tone of the
song made me think of a White-crowed Sparrow. It became
silent before I could get ashore & I found no trace of it
afterwards. The Traillii Flycatcher was very shy. I saw it first
in a prairie in a pasture sitting erect on a dead branch &
identified it at once by the aid of my glass. It flew before
I could get at all near & went into some oak scrub where
it called pip at intervals & once [?] the q'uichy note but
I did not see it again.
[margn]First Wood
[?][/margin]
[margin]Traillii
Flycatcher[/margin]
 There was a male Canadian Warbler in this same pasture
but I saw no migrants of any kind at Ball's Hill.
