155
Peterborough, New Hampshire.
1898.
July 5 to
Aug. 15
(No. 3)
  The brook valley just mentioned is at once the
most attractive and the most "birdy" place that I
have found in the neighborhood of our farm. It is
singularly diversified, containing extensive, rich, mixed woods;
rounded knolls, partly wooded and partly open, with
scattered, spreading red oaks and rock maples; old pastures
growing - or grown - up to white pines, red spruces,
hemlocks, birches, etc.; and - especially near the brook -
picturesque stretches of primitive meadow land covered with
wild grasses and sprinkled with alders or dotted with tufts
of rue and graceful, clustering blossoms of the
yellow lily (L. canadense).
  Immediately below the house, on the edge of this
valley but at some distance from the brook, lies an
interesting bog meadow filled with Pogonia, cotton grass, and
various attractive wild sedges and ferns and surrounded by
dense young woods, chiefly composed of white pines and
red spruces growing in thick clusters with grassy or fern-carpeted
openings between. In the openings and often intermingling with 
the pines and spruces are numbers of red cedars, the only ones
that I have seen near Peterborough. Ground junipers also grow
here in some profusion. Both cedars and junipers almost
wholly lack their usual olive tinge the foliage being of a
light and decidedly glaucous green.
  This bog, with its encircling woods and thickets, was alive
with birds and being within short walking distance of the
house I [delete][?][/delete] spent many evenings there and have become,
I think, pretty well acquainted with its feathered inhabitants
or occasional visitors from the woods lower down along the
course of the brook. The most abundant birds were
Hermit Thrushes, Black & Yellow Warblers, Maryland Yellow-throats