Cambridge, Mass.
1908.
March 4
  As I was walking up Buckingham Street
this evening, about ten o'clock, I heard the love song
of a Screech Owl repeated four or five times at intervals
of perhaps a minute. It consisted of a dozen or more
notes (I could not count them) given very rapidly and
evenly in the same key and forming a smooth yet
somewhat tremulous or throbbing roll in some respects like,
in others distinctly unlike, one of the autumn calls of the
Screech Owl and having, I thought, a closer resemblance to the
"winnowing" or "drumming" of Wilson's Snipe. The bird's voice
carried well in the still night air for I heard him faintly
when I was at the corner of Sparks and Brattle Streets
yet when I reached the head of Buckingham Street
he was still further on, apparently in the pines on
the hill by the Harvard Observatory. I think I heard
him there two nights before this as I was in my room at
Mrs. Cummings'.