Image from the Biodiversity Heritage Library.
Contributed by Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Ernst Mayr Library.
| www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Transcription
March 1874
March 3 Blue & warm with S wind. The ground
in now bare in patches and the
roads in an almost impassable
condition. Went up on 'the farm'
in the morning. Saw about a
dozen S. dids all males and in
full song. The cedar birds seem to
be less abundant than they were
two weeks ago and have not touched
the asparagus berries as yet. As I
lay at full length on the grass under
the shelter of the cedar ridge
I noticed several grasshoppers (in
the larval stage) stopping clumsily about
and catching a few. I found them
of two kinds or at least two sorts,
one variety being brown and the
other a uniform grass green. The
large blue bodied blow fly Lobo
noticed in nearly every shaded
spot crawling about in a state of
semi-torpor. I heard two Melanodia
singing in that subdued undertone
familiar to this season. I think that
they are winter birds and
that none have arrived from
the S as yet. In an old apple stump
among the cedars & pair of birds
had commenced excavating a nest
and the snow below was strewn
for many yards around with pink
chips. I think they must have been
P. striatipalus a pair of which I saw
not far off but the hole (already sunk
to the depth of several inches) was