1892.
Sept. 25
(No 2)
Concord, Massachusetts.
Mass.
Concord. - With some Black-polls & Chickadees in mixed
woods was a Red-bellied Nuthatch creeping about on
the pitch pine. It is the fourth I have seen thus far.
  Practically all my records this year of White-bellied Nuthatch
relate to birds seen in the elms in front of our house
or in the trees about the Manse but this morning I
found a solitary bird in the heart of the Estabrook woods.
[margin]Canada Nuthatch[/margin]
[margin]White-bellied Nuthatch[/margin]
  Grouse were drumming to-day as freely and vigorously
as in Spring. We heard no less than four different birds
and started a fifth in oak scrub. The sportsmen report
them very scarce thus far.
[margin]Partridges drumming freely[/margin]
  It is a great Squirrel year. The woods to-day were simply
alive with Chipmunks and we saw or heard at least a
dozen Red Squirrels but met with only one Gray Squirrel
although the last species is said to be exceptionally numerous.
This increase of Squirrels (all three species were very scarce last
autumn) is not a local phenomenon for the sportsmens' papers
report them in great numbers from various parts of New England,
the Middle States & the Ohio Valley. In this region it
might be accounted for by the exceptionally abundant crop of nuts
and berries of all kinds. The Red Squirrels, as I noted the
other day, are already eating the chestnuts. In many
places to-day we found the ground under these trees literally
covered with sharpened burrs attached to short pieces of twigs
which showed the marks of the Squirrel's teeth. There were
fully two bushels of these burrs under one tree. We saw
the Squirrels carrying them in their mouths and found great
heaps of "chompings" on the tops of stumps and walls.