1892
Feb.8
(No 3)
Concord, Massachusetts.
[margin]("Damsdale")[/margin]
Mass.
Concord.- bordering brooks. They had quartered nearly
every square rod of the Damsdale meadow and had
dug innumerable holes through the snow to the ground
in pursuit of Mice. In one place a[I] found the
entrails, in another the entrails and back with
some skin and fur, of a Mouse by the side of one
of these holes. In a third hole was a Mouse's nest
torn open and scattered about on the crust.
[margin]Tracks &
food of
Foxes[/margin]
  Many tracks on a pine-clad hillside led into a
beautiful little bower formed by the snow-laden branches
of a young bushy pine touching the ground on every
side leaving within, about the stem of the tree, an
open space so high that I could stand erect there.
Under this bower the snow was trampled down
perfectly hard and smooth. It was smeared over
with blood and sprinkled with minute pieces of
hard, jagged bones which were certainly not those of
any bird nor of any of our small mammals and
which I took to be fragments of beef or mutton bones.
There were no other animal remains whatever but in
a neighboring spinny within about eight feet of a
small, dense pine the surface of the snow was covered
with the wing and tail feathers, and some of the
breast feathers, also, of a Blue Jay. The wing &
tail feathers had all been bitten off near their
bases. I examined every one and there was not
a single exception. How did the Fox catch this
bird? I found two tail feathers directly under
the pine but the wind may have blown them
there. Some of the branches of this tree were,
however, bent down to within two feet of the