302
Concord, Mass.
1898
November 9 
  Clear, calm and warm  -  a typical "Indian Summer" day.
  I went to Cambridge on the 7th. and in the old 
garden there saw White-throated Sparrows and Yellow rumps
in the afternoon of that day.
  Returned to Concord by the 8.34 train this morning.
Heard Titlarks pipiping over the fields near the W. Bedford
station and a large cock Partridge in the little
cluster of pines.
  Went to the Barrett farm in the afternoon. A Partridge
was drumming there at short, regular intervals on the
stone wall in the river. Either this bird or another
"chests" almost daily in an ant-hill near the wall.
It is a common habit of the Partridge to resort to
ant-hills for this purpose probably because they afford
almost the only clean dry dirt that can be found in
the leaf-carpeted woods. Gilbert saw a Partridge eating
a mushroom yesterday and brought in the fragment.
It plainly showed the marks of the birds bill but
unfortunately it was so mutilated that Miss Howell to
whom Miss Keyes took it for identification was only 
able to say that it was one of the edible kinds.*
Miss H[?] also said that she has seen Crows (as well
as cows) eating mushrooms & that they attack only
the harmless species.
[margin]* Another and better specimen, afterwards obtained by Gilbert
in the same place & considered both by him and Miss H[?]
to be unquestionably the same species, was identified by 
Miss H[?], "at a meeting in Boston", as Collybia maculata,
an edible & "most delicious" kind of mushroom.
[margin]Partridge eating
mushrooms[/margin]
  Later in the afternoon a flock of about 100 Bronzed
Grackles followed a minute or two later by a second flock
of fully 300 passed over the Barrett House flying S.W.
The first flock was at an elevation of almost 300 ft., the
second at an immense height, fully 1/2 mile I thought.
[margin]Bronzed 
Grackles.[/margin]