Cambridge, Mass.
1902.
Dec. 1.
  Clear with light west wind. Ther 30 degrees at sunrise.
  Walter and I visited Fresh Pond this morning, about 8.30,
finding there upwards of 200 Gulls, 54 Black Ducks, 2 adult males
red-heads and a female Mallard. Most of the black Ducks,
with the Mallard, were close to shore well up in
Cambridge Nook but they all began swimming out and
a few of them (including the Mallard) took wing when
we showed ourselves above them on the crest of Hemlock
Point.
  We looked in vain for the murre & the Loon which
were seen yesterday and we are both nearly sure that
neither of them was in the Pond this morning.
  At evening, however, the Loon, freshly killed, was brought
to me by Thomas Mahoney, a young Irishman with
a frank, honest face who assured me that he had
killed the bird with a 22 cal. rifle in Perry's Clay pit
just to the westward of Hill's Crossing in Belmont.
He further asserted that it had been frequenting Fresh
Pond for a week or more (this statement is confirmed, we
hear, by Richard Eustis) and that he has frequently
seen it flying to & fro between the Pond and the
clay pit. Despite his prepossessing appearance & manner
I suspect that a part of his story is false & that
the bird was really slain in Fresh Pond early this
morning. Certainly it had been fired at with a charge
of shot for besides the small wound in the head
which Mahoney asserted had been made by his bullet
there were fresh, bleeding shot wounds in both
wings as well and in the body. That the bird was
Loon shot in Cambridge (or Belmont)
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