Concord, Mass.
1902.
March 15
  Clear with light S.E. wind. A mild but somewhat
chilly day.
  Robins were singing and calling in the Garden at
Cambridge this morning and small flocks of Crow Blackbirds
flying over it. There was also a Flicker "shouting".
  I took the 2.05 P.M. train for Concord where
Hansen met me at the station. On the way
to the farm I saw nothing beside three Bluebirds,
one of which was singing. There was a fourth
warbling most delightfully at the farm soon after
I got there. A little later a Flicker shouted several
times in the big elm where I saw both it and its
mate.
  Just before sunset when the raw east wind had
lulled the air for fifteen or twenty minutes was filled
with bird music of that exquisitely sweet, tender quality
peculiar to early spring. Most of it was contributed
by two Bluebirds in the old orchard and several Song
Sparrows in the alder thickets across the road but there
were also one or two Robins singing softly in the
distance and Rusty or Red-winged Blackbirds passing
overheard at frequent intervals besides a few Tree
Sparrows which, however, gave only their low twinkling
call notes which always remind me of the clinking
of broken fragments of ice. The only Batrachian voice
was that of a Wood Frog who croaked doubtfully a
few times in the swamp below the house.
  I started two Partridges in the woods but none
came into the orchard at evening probably because the snow
has wholly disappeared & they can get evergreen plants now.
Partridges
21