1902
March 16
(No. 2)
more in the Ball's Hill woods. Several of them 
rose from scanty clusters of leafless branches well
outside the wood edges.
  There is no snow (save an occasional wasted drift)
remaining, even in the densest woods, and the frost
is well out of the ground in the open fields and
the river wholly free from ice. The season, indeed,
is decidedly further advanced than is usual at
this date.
  Late in the afternoon I took a walk in the
woods near the house remaining out until dark.
There was a violent south-west wind and this
with the densely cloudy and very gloomy sky was no
doubt the cause of the general silence of the
birds. I did not, indeed, hear a single one singing.
  As I was entering the woods from the Birch Field
I started a dozen or more Robins from a dense
young hemlock in the top of which they had
evidently gone to roost for the night as it was
nearly dark at the time. They went blundering 
off in every direction making a prodigious fluttering
as they forced their way through the thicket of
birches which surrounds the hemlock.
  Bensen tells me that very many muskrats have
been shot this spring and that George Holden
got seventeen yesterday but Bensen's statements 
are not always quite accurate. I heard only
two shots in the direction of the river yesterday 
afternoon.
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