Buteo Borealis in confinement
Middlesex Co., Mass. [Middlesex County, Massachusetts]
1875. April 20 - 1875 
Apr. 20 [April 20, 1875] Clear but cold and very windy. Ther. [Thermometer]
20 [degrees] at sunrise. Off after breakfast
walking up to the farm and back.
Shot 10 birds, the best 4 Ampelis cedrorum
1 Spiz. pusilla [Spizella pusilla] & 1 [male] Sialia sialis. Killed
4 Juncos [Junco hyemalis] & 1 song sparrow at a shot. The
former were in very perfect breeding pl. [plumage]
without a trace of rusty or ferruginous
anywhere. Saw large flocks of Pas. 
Iliaca [Passerella iliaca] and Juncos [Junco hyemalis]. Have seen no 
swallows for three days as the weather 
has been very cold. Maynard has 
recd. [received] 22 live Buteo borealis from a man 
at Tingsbury who has so
he writes, 40 more alive. All are 
caught in steel traps. They sit
in rows on the perches of his aviary
and are very peaceable, never 
quarreling in the least, and frequently 
sitting on each others backs. The 
only noise they make is a barely 
audible whining whistle. Two that
I took from M. Saturday would eat 
nothing and as their plumage became
badly spoiled by their confinement in
a small box I let them go in 
our garden yesterday: both flew 
but a short distance and one alighted
 in our own cherry tree where he sat for
some time within good gunshot of me. 
I think I saw the same bird
near Camb. cemetery [Cambridge Cemetery] this morning
getting within 20 yds. [yards] of it before it
sprang from the ground, where it was 
feeding upon something.