CONCORD 
1893 
December 
Birds 
seen 
Fox signs 
Shrew 
killed by 
a Fox 
5 [Took ’ t ^ ie 9.15 A. M. train for Concord. The trees, 
bushes, tall weeds, etc. were thickly encrusted with hoar 
frost (which melted and disappeared before noon, however). 
An asparagus bed which I saw from the car window was the 
most beautiful thing of all — a delicate tracery in white 
against a white background.] 
At Concord I heard in the village a White-breasted 
Nuthatch and saw a Shrike among the evergreens near North 
Bridge. The drive to Benson*s was delightful for the 
sleighing was perfect and the air crisp and bracing yet 
wholly without chill. A few Crows flying about over the 
fields, a Certhia [^w. in an elm, a Blue Jay 
flitting through an orchard, and a flock of fully 20 Tree 
Sparrows along the roadside on the east slope of Punka- 
tasset Hill were the only birds seen by the way. There 
were 8 or 10 more Tree Sparrows and one Junco feeding in a 
weed patch just below Bensen's barn. 
I walked across the fields to Bensen's Knoll and 
thence through the swamp to the cabin. My Fox had rambled 
about freely since the snowfall and I found where he had 
dug out and eaten a mouse and again where he had apparently 
devoured a rabbit whose fur was scattered about in little 
tufts on the snow. Fox tracks led into and from both 
entrances to the new earth at the east end of the Ball's Hill 
ridge and just outside one of the holes lay a Short-tailed 
Shrew which although badly mouthed and with the skull 
