Oxford.
1909.
Sept. 9 [September 9, 1909]
(No 4)
took to be Goldfinches. Robins were the only birds in full song.
I heard them everywhere where there were clusters of trees.
Swallows & Martins in fair numbers were circling & skimming
over the open pasture lands. I have seen no Swifts since the
day I descended the Thames early in August.
  For insect sounds I listened long & carefully today, in many
places along the river, but everywhere in vain. If there were
crickets or grasshoppers concealed among the grass in these verdant
fields and pastures they were wholly silent. Cabbage Butterflies
were common enough but I saw only one other species, a smallish
orange-brown one & that represented by but a single specimen.
Lucky Bugs, similar to our listed species but still smaller, I thought, were
present in great abundance in the river where they kept well in
shore, in rafts containing a hundred or more individuals each, as ours
are accustomed to do when there is a high, cool wind blowing.
Absence of insect sounds
  Many of the stretches of the Cherwell which I traversed today
were not unlike, in general character & appearance, those of our
Concord River lying between Flint's Bridge & Dakin's Hill. Indeed
I was constantly reminded of the latter and of their bordering
meadows during my excursion up this pretty little English
stream. But below the boat-house where, for hundreds of yards,
the trees arch completely over it, it is wholly unlike the Concord
and more attractive than any New England river known to
me except my favorite the Cambridge, at Lake Umbagog.
  During a previous boat trip (on September 2) up these same
reaches of the Cherwell I had a close view of a Water Rat. It appeared
within a few yards of our boat swimming in clear water, towards shore, towing
a stalk of flag 3 feet long, holding one end in its mouth. On reaching shore
it entered the mouth of a tile drain into which it tried ineffectually
to drag the flag finally leaving it behind at the entrance. It swam & looked
exactly like a small Muskrat. I am told by watermen here that these animals
are very numerous, that they are chiefly nocturnal & that they dive like our muskrats,
when startled or shot at.