Ipswich, Mass.
1902.
August 28
  Forenoon hazy & at times cloudy. Afternoon brilliantly
clear with light E. wind.
  Spent the day at Ipswich driving down to the sand hills
and driving at Woodbury's. The sand dunes have not changed
perceptibly in general character or appearance during the
past thirty years. The breeding place of the Least Terns
(that is their former breeding place) looks exactly as it did
in 1869 when I visited it and secured a number of
the birds and their eggs. No Terns build there now but
we saw two or three hundred (apparently Wilson's) fishing
in the tide-rips off the beach.
  Some gunners were shooting at beach birds on the eastern
shore of the sand dunes. Mr. Emerton, who is staying at
Woodbury's, told me that a dozen or two of Peeps was
considered a fair bag now. He says that several Black-head
Plover have been killed this week.
  As we were skirting the marshes a flock of about 
forty Semipalmated Sandpipers alight near us on the 
margin of a salt pool among some wooden decoys but
there was no gunner there to disturb them. These & a
few other stragglers of the same species were all the
wading birds that we saw.
  Swallows were fairly numerous but widely scattered.
I saw both White-bellied & Barn, the former in 
the greater numbers.
  Savannah Sparrows swarmed in the marshes & Meadow Larks
occasionally started from the roadside. In a cornfield
we saw an immense flock of Blackbirds, all Molothrus ater
I thought.
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