Concord, Mass.
1896
Nov.19
  Clear and warm, cooler at evening when the wind
changed to north.
  The A.O.U. meeting and some other matters have
kept me at Cambridge the past two weeks. I
returned to Concord on the evening of the 17th
and paddled down to Ball's Hill yesterday morning
but was obliged to return at noon & to go
to Boston in the afternoon.
  To-day was subject to no such vexatious interruption
and the weather was so mild that it was
delightful to be on the river and in the woods.
I sailed down to Ball's Hill in the morning,
tramped over pretty much all of my land during
the day, and paddled back to the Keyes' at
evening. I saw an unusual number of birds - at
the North Bridge a mixed flock consisting of seven
Chickadees, two Brown Creepers, a pair of White-bellied
and a pair of Red-bellied Nuthatches and a Downy
Woodpecker; at the Glacial Hollow eight Chickadees &
two [male] Red-bellied Nuthatches; on Davis's Hill four
Chickadees, a pair of Red-bellied Nuthatches &
a Creeper; in the swamp just behind Ball's Hill
five Chickadees, some Tree Sparrows and a flock
of Goldfinches; in Prescott's woods three Fox Sparrows;
over the river meadows a flock of eighty or more
Crows; at Holden's Hill two Buteos one a
very small but richly-coloured adult [male] borealis
the other not fully identified, but apparently of
the same species; in the river opposite Davis's Hill
a Carolina Grebe; in the woods Jays & a