Lancaster, Mass.
1902.
May 29
(No 2)
  At noon we drove to Pine Hill. It has
been burned since last year and there were
few birds in the oak scrub where we found so
many last June. The Prairie Warblers seem to
have altogether deserted the locality but there
were a few Towhees & Field Sparrows singing in
patches of scrub that had escaped the fire. In one
of these we found a Towhee's nest with four eggs.
Prairie Warbler
Towhee's nest
  The chief object of our visit to Pine Hill was
to try to find a pair of Cardinal Grosbeaks which
Harriman saw there yesterday afternoon. He started
them in a dense thicket of witch hazel bushes at
the eastern base of the hill and followed them for
several hundred yards. They were not at all shy
& he repeatedly got within twenty or thirty yards of
the male and saw him raise his crest and sing
as he followed the female about among the thickets.
The locality is a rather favorable-looking one for
Cardinals but we searched it carefully to-day
without getting either sight or sound of the birds.
Harriman described both the song & the sharp alarm
chirp so accurately that I cannot distrust the
correctness of his identification.
  There was a Hairy Woodpecker's nest in a poplar
stub on the hillside near a little pond hole. Harriman
says he heard the young calling in it yesterday.
One of the old birds was near it to-day. She
made an almost continuous outcry while we
were in its neighborhood. This is the third breeding
pair that Thayer & Harriman have found this season.
Hairy Woodpecker's nest with young
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