Belmont & Waltham, Mass.
1895
March 24
  Early morning clear and calm but the sky hazed over
before two o'clock and during the remainder of the day the
sun shone dimly through thin clouds and a chill S.W. wind
blew with considerable force.
  We have had a long, hard winter with no exceptionally
cold weather or deep snows but with almost no mild
weather since November. Birds have been scarcer than I 
ever knew them to be before and the early spring migrants have
been late in coming. On the 20th I took a long tramp
around Rock Meadows & through Waverly without seeing or
hearing any spring bird except one Song Sparrow. None of
the farmers whom I questioned had heard a Bluebird
but one or two were reported a few days before this from
Brookline & Wellesley. On the On the 14th Spelman saw a solitary
male Red-wing in the Fresh Pond Swamps.
  As nearly as I can learn the first marked flight of Song Sparrows,
Blackbirds & Bluebirds arrived on the 22nd and 23rd. It
is singular that they are so late this year for the
fields have been bare for over two weeks and the frost
is now out of the ground in many places and the
roads as dry & dusty as in summer.
  This morning Spelman on his bicycle and I in my buggy
rode to Waverly and alighting at the upper mill pond
spent the day on Rock Meadow taking photographs.
We found Song Sparrows abundant everywhere and saw
a Phoebe (in the maple swamp just above the mill pond[)], two
Crow Blackbirds, a Rusty Blackbird, a Robin, a Black Duck
& a Red-shouldered hawk but neither Bluebirds nor Red wings.
Speckled Tortoises were out but no frogs were seen or heard.