After lunch wandered over the fields, seeing a 
fine old male Marsh H§.wk, then retraced our steps and pas¬ 
sing the pine hill visited the large field to the S.W. 
Here we found a flock of fully 100 Sparrows, containing 
about fifty Juncos, thirty Fox Sparrows, the remainder Song 
Sparrows. They were feeding among weeds and on seeing us 
flew into the birches just over the wall, the Fox Sparrows 
at once beginning to sing, the Juncos warbling the usual 
low accompaniment. We watched them for a long time and 
when they returned to the field crept up behind the wall 
and studied their manner of feeding under unusually favor¬ 
able conditions for we had many of them within a few yards 
of us. 
The row back to town, across the flooded meadow 
the first part of the way, afterwards in the channel of 
the river against a swift current, was marked by only one 
episode of unusual interest, viz: the sight of a pair of 
musk-rats copulating. They were in water several feet in 
depth but among the stems of a cluster of young maples, on 
which the female obtained a foothold part of the time but 
much of the time she was swimming and nearly or quite sub¬ 
merged by the weight of the male. There were three periods 
of contact, each lasting several minutes. One or both 
animals uttered almost incessantly the low whining murmur 
peculiar to this species. 
