4 February 1861 – 10 February 1861

Horace Mann brings me a screech owl, which was caught in Hastings’s barn on the meeting-house avenue. It had killed a dove there. This is a decidedly gray owl, with none of the reddish or nut brown of the specimen of December 26, though it is about the same size, and answers exactly to Wilson’s mottled owl. Rice brings me an oak stick with a woodpecker’s hole in it by which it reached a pupa. The first slight rain and thaw of this winter was Feb- ruary 2d.

Coldest day yet; — 22° at least (all we can read), at 8 a. M., and, [so far] as I can learn, not above — 6° all day.