CONCORD 
1892 
May 20 
Yellow- 
bill 
Cuckoo 
Abundance 
of 
Redstarts 
Spent the forenoon in or near the house. In spite 
of the violence of the storm, heard Bobolinks and Red-wings 
singing and a Water Thrush somewhere on the river bank. 
At 3 P. M. put on rubber boots and a mackintosh 
and started for a walk. As I was leaving the house, a Yellow¬ 
billed Cuckoo, wet and bedraggled and apparently nearly ex¬ 
hausted, glided past me and alighted on the handle of a pump. 
I got within a few feet of it before it flew again. I saw 
another shy and active one in a thicket on the roadside 
shortly after. Entering Derby’s lane I found a small flock 
of Warblers, the majority Redstarts, in the young pines and 
oaks near the path. It was a great Redstart day, evidently, 
for I saw others in various places, usually from two to five 
together, the majority adult males. 
Rose-breasted 
Grosbeaks 
Grosbeaks were also unusually numerous; in one 
together 
Jay 
imics 
Chat 
- Brown 
Thrasher 
mimics the 
Oven-bird’s 
song 
place there were three, two females and one male/ They^ere 
all in trees and bushes on the outskirts of the woods as 
indeed were most of the birds that I met, the wood interiors 
holding nothing but Oven-birds, Jays, and, in one grove of 
tall chestnuts, two male Tanagers. 
A Jay in a belt of trees along a wall mimiced 
a Chat so perfectly as to deceive me for some time. It 
gave the long series of whistles of the Chat. I also heard 
a Brown Thrasher interpolate a perfect imitation of the 
Oven-bird’s tea-cha notes in its song. 
