Lake Umbagog, Maine.
Cambridge River.
1895
Sept 1.
(No 2)
at them through the glass before they took wing.
  Charles Brown who preceeded us both ways started a flock
of six Ducks on his way up stream & shot a solitary 
Black Duck coming down. We saw a young Great Blue Heron
which some one had wantonly killed and left lying on the
bank a little below the forks. I took eleven photographs 
in all, one of B. Meadow which has not changed in the
least since I first saw it in 1872.
[margin]Photographing[/margin]
  On getting back to the Mill I went to the cellar of
the Umbagog House and found a number of Crossbills
on the exact spot of bare ground where I saw them two
days ago. There were four L. leucoptera (three [male] [male] & a [female]) and
about a dozen L. minor crowded thickly together on a space
of less than a square yard all busily engaged in scooping up
& swallowing large mouthfuls of the soil. I made sure this
time that they were really eating it. On examining the
spot closely after they had flown I found innumerable holes
and short furrows made by their bills. When they flew
up into the dead birches the Red Crossbills sang freely as
on my first visit. There were no young birds of either species.
Crossbills are evidently very numerous this autumn. I see
or hear them everywhere & while up the Cambridge to-day
we were rarely out of sound of their piping. Their abundance
is evidently due to the fact that the spruces and balsams
are loaded with cones which are fast turning brown.
[margin]Crossbills[/margin]
  I heard a bird call new to me to-day, a succession of
loud but short, barking cries. The author was apparently in
some large birches near the river but we could not get sight of him.
I sailed back to Lakeside alone late in afternoon.
[margin]A strange
bird voice[/margin]