1892
Jan. 24
Near Concord, Massachusetts
Concord, Massachusetts.                                                
[margin]"Damsdale."[/margin]
Mass.
Concord. Clear and still. Warm in the sun at [?]
but only 14[degrees] at sunrise.
  Bollis came up this morning for a tramp
but I could go only a little distance with him
as I have been ill with the influenza for three
weeks and am still very weak (I have been out
only three times before this).
  We started up the Estabrook road, turned into
Mr. Derby's lane, kept up thru Damsdale to
Pratt's nursery and their house along Flint's brook.
The fields are bare but there are about 2 inches of
soft, dry snow in the woods & on northern exposures.
This in places showed the fine, braided trails of mice
and the broad pad-prints of rabbits. We also saw
a few Squirrel tracks.
  In the Damsdale meadow where the ground was
 frozen hard and more than half covered with snow
 & ice we found two small, wood-colored, wingless
 grasshoppers, both very lively.
[margin]Grasshoppers[/margin]
   Of birds we saw two Juncos, a flock of five
 Chickadees, one of eight Crows, a Downy Woodpecker,
and two Blue Jays, the last screaming at frequent
intervals.
  Yesterday afternoon I went over the same ground
and started a Grouse in Pratt's larch swamp.
Early this morning, before Bollis arrived, I heard a
Shrike in full song in the apple tree near Mrs
Bratterick's shed. His voice was much like a Thrasher's
in quality but the notes are delivered much more
slowly with considerable intervals. He screamed repeatedly
much like a Cat-bird but more hoarsely.
[margin]Shrike in
full song[/margin]