Oxford.
1909.
Sept. 19 [September 19, 1909]
  Foggy in early morning. After that sunny and almost cloudless
but very hazy. Little or no wind.  Warm in sun, chilly in shade.
  Walking alone in Oxford Park from 8.30 to 9 and from 10 to
10.30, A.M. During the second trip I went entirely around it,
a distance of fully a mile. It is a most attractive place,
the central portions open grass fields dotted with grazing sheep,
the outskirts planted thickly with a great variety of ornamental
trees and shrubs through which wind graveled foot paths.
A morning walk in Oxford Park
  As an example of the very best type of landscape gardening it
excels anything of the kind I know of in America. Even our
Central Park would suffer by comparison with it for it
is simple and less consciously ornate yet even more beautiful,
at least to my taste. For a distance of nearly a quarter of
a mile it borders directly on the Cherwell. Here are many 
fine old trees, among them alders forty or fifty feet in height
with trunks two feet in diameter at the base.
  The Park was literally alive with birds to day. Robins were
especially numerous and in full song everywhere. The singing
males occurred, on the average, once every fifty yards and I
heard scores of them in all. Their bright, glancing, highly
variable music delighted me. Some of their bars reminded
me of the song of our Ruby-crowned Kinglet. Starlings were
present in large numbers. There were flocks of them everywhere
among the sheep and I saw two perched on the back of 
a feeding sheep, keeping their positions with some difficulty. 
Single males concealed among the foliage of the trees were
singing on every hand. Their music is very varied and
highly entertaining. They have "reeling" notes note unlike the
Skylarks and an infinite variety of clear whistles, some
resembling our Cardinal's, others very human in quality.
Two Chiff-Chaffs were in full song, the first I have heard this year.