1898.
March 2
Cambridge & Belmont, Mass.
  A brilliant day, cloudless, with almost no wind,
the early morning sharp & frosty, the middle of the
day warm for the season.
  I drove to the Payson place this morning to make
enquiries respecting the fine Great Gray Owl which Frazer
sold me a week or so ago. Mr. Malone told me that
he shot it at about 2 P.M. on February 22nd. During
the whole forenoon the crows had been making a great
outcry behind his house and their numbers kept
increasing until as he thinks upwards of 100 birds were
assembled. Their clamor finally became so loud and
incessant as to annoy him seriously and soon after
dinner he took a Flobert rifle and went out to
disperse them. Immediately behind his house is a row
of tall Norway spruces, behind this an old apple orchard
and just beyond the orchard a dense growth of Norway
spruces, larches and arbor vitaes encircling an open
space in the middle of which are the stables and
paddock of the fine old Cushing estate. A circular
driveway passes under or through the trees which average
50 or 60 feet in height. Between the driveway and
the paddock, in the middle of the thickest spruces,
stands a white pine - a vigorous tree with a full,
green top but with dead under branches. The Owl
was perched on one of these dead branches about 25 ft.
above the ground and some five feet below a fork
in which there is an old Crow's nest.
[margin]Great Gray
Owl shot
on the
Payson place[/margin]
  As Malone approached the spruces he saw great
numbers of Crows sitting on or flying over them and
picking out a bird that offered a good mark