94
Lake Umbagog.
Leonard's Pond
1897
May 30
(No 2)
twice or more this evening and I am positive that
one of them went up three or four times in the
course of eight or ten minutes. The flight song of this
species puts that of the Oven bird (which I heard also
this evening) quite to shame.
[margin]Flight song
of
Water Thrush[/margin]
  The singing of the Swainson's Thrushes was remarkably
fine and impressive rising and falling in rhythmic
cadences all around the wooded shores of the pond
and lasting ten minutes or more after all the other
birds had become silent for the night.
[margin]Evening
singing of
Swainson's
Thrushes[/margin]
  Two Great Blue Herons, [delete]a brown Eagle[/delete] passed high
overhead soon after sunset and a Brown Eagle went to
roost in the old haunt on the north shore behind
the island. Then a musk rat cut a silvery furrow
across the pond and a Great Horned Owl began
hooting in the distance towards Moll's Rock. After
this I heard only the plaintive peeping of the Hylas
which lasted late into the night.
[margin]Herons
Eagle[/margin]
[margin]Muskrat
Bubo
hooting
Hylas
peeping[/margin]
  But the most interesting experience of the evening
remains to be mentioned. Soon after we had cast
anchor four Whistlers, all, as far as I could make out
with my glass, females, began flying about over the
stubs in a peculiar manner now rising high above
them, next descending and darting between the trunks
& branches, moving their wings incessantly as in ordinary
flight but describing a succession of circles, in the
centre of which stood a remarkably tall stub with
a shattered, jagged top. Around this they would pass a
[margin]Four
Whistlers
circling
about a
stub[/margin]