Concord, Mass.
1893
Dec. 8
  Cloudless, calm and for the season warm although
the thermometer fell to 20 degrees] last night.
  Took the 9.15 A.M. train for Concord. The trees, 
bushes, tall weeds etc. were thickly encrusted with
hoar frost (which melted & disappeared before noon, however.)
An asparagus bed which I saw from the car window
was the most beautiful thing of all - a delicate tracery
in white against a white background. 
  At Concord I heard in the village a White breasted Nuthatch
and saw a Shrike among the evergreens near North Bridge.
The drive to Bensen's was delightful for the sleighing
was perfect and the air crisp & bracing yet wholly
without chill. [A few Crows flying about over the fields,
a Certhia in an elm, [delete]and[/delete]a Blue Jay flitting through
an orchard, and a flock of fully 20 Tree Sparrows along
the roadside on the east slope of Punkatassett [Punkatasset] Hill were
the only birds seen by the way. There were 9 or 10 more
Tree Sparrows and one Junco feeding in a weed patch
just below Bensen's barn.]
[margin]Birds seen[/margin]
  I walked across the fields to Bensen's knoll and thence 
through the swamp to the cabin. My Fox had rambled
about freely since the snow fall and I found where he
had dug out and eaten a mouse and again where he
had apparently devoured a Rabbit whose fur was scattered about
in little tufts on the snow. Fox tracks led into & from both
entrances to the new earth at the east end of the Ball's Hill
ridge and just outside one of the holes lay a Short-tailed
Shrew which although badly mouthed and with the skull
[margin]Fox signs[/margin]
[margin]Shrew killed
by a Fox[/margin]