 Middlesex Co., Mass. [Middlesex County, Massachusetts]
1874
Nov. 14 [November 14, 1874] Clear and cold. Ther. [Thermometer] 18 [degrees] at sunrise.
Off after breakfast taking Shot. Drove
up into Prospect St. where I tied
and beat the Cotton runs for quail
all the forenoon, but did not move
anything except two grouse and a 
bird which puzzled me completely. The
latter I came across in this wise: Shot
had been following a scent for some
distance and I was hurrying through
some second growth oak & birch trying
to keep as near him as possible when
a bird apparently of a dark slate color
and it seemed to me nearly as large
as a turkey rose with a prodigious
whirring & flutter from under my very
feet, certainly within 4 feet of me. I was
so much startled by its size and near
proximity that I fired rather hastily
but a few feathers floating back to me
on the wind convinced me that I
had not made quite a clean miss: one
of these which I picked up was a
complete sticker & I cannot conjecture
what its owner could have been. I made
a most careful search all through the
woods ahead but was unable to start
it again, and think it must have taken
to some of the pine trees near. As it was
a long distance from any house it could
scarcely have been a domesticated bird, though
its flight was so slow as rather to suggest
that hypothesis. Fired one long shot at
a grouse and killed a very fine [male]
Colaptes auratus as it was flying over