Concord, Mass.
1893
Aug 4
(No 2)
  In the afternoon I made a flying visit to Ball's Hill
driving down with Mr. Hatch whose services were
required to mend the pump in the cabin.
  I was shocked at the appearance of the fields
along the road which are now suffering surely from
the drought. Many of the grass fields were of a 
uniform brown color and the corn is drooping and
withering. The foliage of the roadside thickets looked
dull and dust stained. There were few birds visable &
none singing.
[margin]Country 
suffering
from drought]
  The adult male Orioles are coming out of retirement
at last. One the way to Ball's Hill I saw one,
apparently in good plumage, in an elm by the
 roadside not far from a house and another fluted
over this evening near the Buttricks'. These are
the first that I have noted since July 18th but
Faxon told me on Aug. 1st that he had seen
them regularly up to that date in the elms about
the hotel at E. Lexington and further that there
had been a little singing each morning early up to that date.
[margin]Baltimore
Orioles
ad. 2 males
reappear
about houses[/margin]
  As I was passing along the path at the foot of Ball's
Hill next the river, early this afternoon, I saw ahead on
the horizontal branch of an oak in the middle of a
tuft of leaves something that looked like an Oriole's nest.
I came nearly beneath it before I made it out to be a
gray Screech Owl, a young bird about half through the
moult between the downy (first) and autumnal plumages.
He sat erect with feathers drawn in and eyes half closed and
allowed us to pass directly under him although the branch was
barely 8 ft above the path. He had turned about when we returned
and as we stopped to look at him flew and alighted high up on
the hillside among some young pines.
[margin]A young
Screech Owl[/margin]