Concord, Mass.
1909.
March 22.
  The roughest kind of a rough March day brilliantly
clear but cold with a raging and positively icy N.W. wind.
Ther. 20 degrees at sunrise. The ground frozen hard all day.
Harsh weather.
  Practically all of the few early spring bird now here
must have sought shelter in secluded places for I saw
nothing but seven Robins (collected together on the sunny side
of the woods at the Ritchie place). The only bird I heard
was a Junco singing the simple trill in our orchard. Gilbert,
however, met with eight Juncos feeding on the ground in
the chicken yard at the Bungalow. I was in Birch Field
for nearly three hours without noting a single bird of any kind,
a most unusual experience.
Birds vanish.
  Passing through the wood path just below the peach 
orchard this afternoon I found the tail of a large Gray
Squirrel. It could not have been there yesterday noon
when the Emersons & I came home that way for it
was in the very middle of the path, in an open
place, and too conspicuous to be overlooked. Moreover
it was perfectly flexible & the thick end was still
wet with fresh blood. Apparently it had been cut
off or rather bitten off, close to the Squirrel's body
but by what? I suspect a Fox had something
to do with the matter but this is pure assumption,
unsupported by any evidence, for I found no tracks
or other signs. The ground was too hard frozen to
register them. Thus the affair is quite mysterious &
likely to remain so, I fear.
Another woodland tragedy.