71
Concord, Mass. 
1898.
May 1
(No 3)                    
at us with dull curiosity but the other
kept its eyes tightly closed. We did not go
near enough to disturb them seriously and we
saw nothing of either of their parents. They 
had probably fallen from a nest about as
large as a Crow's nest which we could see in
a fork of a pine directly over their heads
& about forty feet above the ground. By
them lay the skins of a Rabbit (L. sylvaticus)
apparently nearly eaten & probably torn off. The
pine stands on level ground on the top of a ridge bordering
the river meadow. The woods are at present about six
acres in extent & almost wholly composed of
large, old white pines.
  At a sand bank on the edge of these woods we
found a pair of Phoebees. The [female] collecting building
material which she got on the ground and tried to
place on a slender, vibrating root under the bank,
- a futile task for the wind storms etc; fell to the 
ground almost as soon as she left them and were added 
to a pile of similar material at the foot of the
bank. This pile was as large as an average-sized Phoebee's
nest. The bird was probably a young one that had
never before attempted to build a nest.
  Crossing the flooded meadows we next landed at the
big pines in Bedford swamp where we saw a Brown
Thrasher, the first this season. It was silent &
in dense oak scrub.