Concord, Mass.
1900.
May 15
  Clear with strong S.W. wind. Thunder showers
hovering about the western horizon at evening and a light sprinkle
of rain here. Intensely hot for the season. Ther: 48 degrees - 90 degrees here,
maximum at Cambridge 96 degrees.
Ball's Hill 
&
"the Farm."
  I spent the first hour after breakfast (7-8 A.M.) in
the Ball's Hill woods. Next I visited the Farm where I
rambled about near Pulpit Rock and in the oak & pine woods that
border the road leading from the school house to Bensen's.
Sudden
hot wave
  Returning to Ball's Hill at 10 A.M. I found Abbott H. Thayer
at the cabin. He had arrived by the 9 A.M. train and is
to spend three days with me here. It was so very hot that
we did not go out again until later afternoon when we
visited Davis Hill.
Abbott Thayer
comes to
Ball's Hill
  It is no exaggeration to say that the whole country
literally swarmed with birds to-day. Ordinarily when we
have a good flight of north-bound migrants they occur
in numbers in only a few especially favored places
and are thinly scattered or quite wanting elsewhere.
But to-day every piece of woods, every outlying thicket,
almost every tree and bush, was simply alive with them.
So very numerous were they that we became at time not
not only confused but even positively exhausted by the nervous
strain of watching and identifying them. It was, moreover,
a surfeit of good things to have so many birds which we
are accustomed to regard as uncommon or elusive almost
constantly in sight or hearing. Most of them had been noted before
this season (ie as species), the only fresh arrivals being a Bay-breasted
Warbler (in a pine at Pulpit Rock), an Indigo Bird, a Crested Flycatcher
and a Night-hawk. About 8 o'clock this evening we heard more
than over the lisping calls of Warblers passing overhead. These gave
evidence of course, that at least some of the birds here to day passed on to-night
Floods of
migrating,
north-bound
birds arrive.
We find them
everywhere in
great numbers
& variety.
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