1893.
June 15
(No 2)
Saybrook Ferry, Conn.
  a creek and our lunch on a wooded island started out
over the marshes which stretched away to the eastward for
a mile or more with the river on our right and lower ground
intersected with creeks on the left. Along the creeks cat-tails
grew in large tracks or narrow, winding belts conspicuous by
their dark green color and tall stalks waving in the breeze like
fields of Indian corn. The marsh was dry & covered with
dense, rather tall and frequently lodged grasses where it approached
or bordered on the river bank but further back it was very
wet with frequent small, well-like pools and short grasses the
commonest of which were of a peculiar light vivid green and
[delete]grew in[/delete]confined to plots or beds of small extent with tracts of coarser sparser grasses
between. This fine grass was almost as dense and nearly
as soft looking as fur. Where it was mixed with the dead
growth of previous years it formed a favorite nesting place for
the Sea side & Sharp-tailed Finches. The former were very numerous
and conspicuous but the latter were silent and we saw, or
at least identified, only a few birds. Bobolinks were seldom out
of sight or hearing and I have never heard them sing more freely.
There must have been seven or eight of them scattered along
the river bank. Once I saw four in the air at once all
singing. 
[margin]Lyme marshes.[/margin]
  Faxon wandered off to the left & entered the cat tails
but Clark & I kept on together following the river bank
for about a mile. Although we started many Sea-sides we
found no nests until we turned back and searched the
wet portions of the meadow. Here Clark found seven or
eight, all with four eggs, most of the sets fresh or nearly
so. Some of the nests were wonderfully concealed. They varied
to a remarkable degree in position & construction. Some were
perfectly open above, others canopied with green & dry grasses
[margin]Nests of 
Sea-side Sparrows[/margin]