Concord, Mass.
1899
May
(a)
  I have seen at least six different Lincoln's Finches here
this month, three on the 13th, two on the 15th and 19th
and one daily in the same place, directly on front of the
cabin from the 15th to the 22nd inclusive. One, an
exceedingly shy bird, was by the roadside in the bushy hollow
just above the Bensen's where it skulked along the back side
of a stone wall & finally disappeared in a thicket.
Another was on the ground among birches on the edge of
the Blakeman woods in company with a White-throated
Sparrow. Something within the wood edge alarmed the
trio. The Lincoln's Finch flew directly towards me &
alighted in a small birch where it sat for some time preening
its feathers within ten yards of me. When I finally rowed
towards it it flew into the top of a dense pine that
stands alone in the pasture near the road through Bensen's
field. Both these birds were silent but a third which
I found earlier the same morning in the swampy thicket
east of the cabin and which spent the entire day there
sang six or eight times at about 8 A.M. giving the
House Wren form of song each time. It is possible that this
bird was the same which established itself directly in
front of the cabin on the 15th & remained there until
the  forenoon of the 22nd but if so I failed to detect its
presence on the 14th although I looked for it carefully.
On the 15th I found what was certainly a different bird
in the belt of bushes along the waterfront at the western
end of Ball's Hill. It was silent & comparatively tame but
an adroit skulker keeping constantly behind the stems of
the bushes & running nimbly from one cove to the next as
I advanced. On the 19th I got a brief but satisfactory glympse
of still another bird in a thicket of low bushes behind Ball's Hill.
94
[margin]Notes on
Lincoln's Finch[/margin]