1892
Sept. 9.
(No 5)
Concord, Massachusetts.
Mass.
Concord. I left my cabin and started up river a
little before sunset. I had not gone far when I
heard a Titlark piping and looking up saw the
bird, a solitary individual, high in air flying
over the meadows.
[margin]First Titlark[/margin]
  While passing through Beaver Dam rapid I 
started a Coot (Fulica) from the wild rice
on my right. It flew about 60 yds. and alighted
in the water on the border of a belt of reeds
& pickerel weed which it skirted without entering,
swimming in the usual manner with bobbing head.
I scrutinised it through my glasses at a distance
of less than thirty yards and saw that it was a
young bird with slatey head and dingy white bill.
The second time it rose it flew up into the bayou
at the head of the rapids again swimming along just
outside the edge of a bed of water plants. After I
had watched it for a few minutes it became uneasy
and flew a third time circling around me
back into the river where it dropped behind a
bank of wild rice. I paddled to the place at
once but did not get another sight at it so
concluded that it had at length taken to corn.
[margin]A Coot (Fulica)
in the river.[/margin]
  In the meadow at the head of this bayou
is a large cluster of button bushes. What I took
to be a flock of Bobolinks – at least thirty birds –
pitched down in silence from a considerable
height and alighted in these bushes as I
was passing. I heard Bobolinks chinking further on.
[margin]Bobolinks?[/margin]