1903.
May 31
  Brilliantly clear with light easterly wind. Cooler. Ther. 42 degrees - 69 degrees.
  As I was taking a walk up the road just after
breakfast this morning my attention was suddenly arrested
by the voice of a Yellow-breasted Chat, only the second that
I have ever heard in Concord, the first being noted some years
ago in the briary thickets opposite Ball's Hill. The bird met
with this morning was in full continued song during the
fifteen or twenty minutes that I remained within hearing
distance. It appeared to be in a leafy white oak that stood
on the edge of some rather swampy woods of low growth
with an extension tract of blueberry & other tall bushes
extending onto from the woods into a field - that just
behind Everett Mason's house. The locality is also a
quarter of a mile to the northward of our farm.
  It was a great day for night-hawks. I I found
one sitting on the top of a stone wall by the roadside this morning,
another was perched in one of the tall elms behind the
house in the early afternoon calling paap every now & then
without moving from its resting place. (There was one in
the same tree yesterday) and at evening I counted
no less than sixteen in sight at once scattered over
the river meadows between Davis Hill & Birch Island, hawking
for insects. I do not remember ever noting so many at one
time before in spring.
  Bluebirds appear to overflowed into the woods & towns
this year. A pair have been seen almost daily for weeks in
the oak woods on Davis Hill & another in those at Holden's
Hill. I think there can be little doubt that they are