1892
July 18
(No 4)
Concord, Massachusetts.
[margin]Evening walk to Sunset Pasture[/margin]
Mass.
Concord.- I reached home at 6 P.M. sailing all the
way from Fairhaven and meeting no adventures worth
recording on the way.
    After tea I walked up the Estabrook road to
Clark's pasture where I smoked a cigar and watched
the sun set and darkness fall, sitting on my favorite
boulder near the middle of the field.
  The evening was calm and peaceful but the life and
sparkle of the morning were gone and in their place
a dull apathy possessed all nature. The influences which
work such a change are often subtle but in this case
they were apparently a bank of gray clouds rising in
the west and the presence of much smoky haze in the
atmosphere.
  There were intervals, sometimes of a minute or more in length,
when not a bird sang. Then I would hear, one after
another, Robins, Song Sparrows, Field Sparrows, Chippies,
Grass Finches, Meadow Larks, Quail, and occasionally
a Black-billed Cuckoo. At 7.40, when the light
was failing fast, a Tanager sang a few times and just
five minutes later the first Whippoorwill began. Five
minutes after this Grass Finches and Field Sparrows
were still singing. One of the former closed the
diurnal concert at 7.53.
[margin]Birds singing
at & after
sunset[/margin]
  There were no Tree Toads to-night and I heard none
last evening at Fairhaven. Have they ceased?
[margin]Tree Toads cease
singing.[/margin]

  Soon after leaving the house this evening I saw a
Goldfinch singing on wing. It flew very slowly on a
perfectly level plane the wings[sic: should be wing] beats deep and regular.
The bird looked nearly double its real size.
[margin]Goldfinch
singing on
wing[/margin]