A mouse's nest

October 8. 

Find a bird's nest converted into a mouse's nest in the prinos swamp, while surveying on the new Bedford road to-day, topped over with moss, and a hole on one side, like a squirrel-nest.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 8, 1853

Find a bird's nest converted into a mouse's nest. See December 13, 1852 (“I observed a mouse . . . had neatly covered over a thrasher or other bird's nest . . .and lined it warmly with that common kind of green moss . . .but chiefly with a kind [of] vegetable wool”); February 18, 1857 ("Picked up a mouse-nest in the stubble at Hubbard's mountain sumachs, left bare by the melting snow.”);  April 24, 1857 (“Saw on a small oak slanting over water in a swamp, in the midst of a mass of cat-briar, about ten feet from the ground, a very large nest, of that hypnum (?) moss, in the form of an inverted cone, one foot across above and about eight inches deep, with a hole in the side very thick and warm; probably a mouse-nest, for there were mouse droppings within.”); November 15, 1857 (“It will thus make its nest at least sixteen feet up a tree, improving some cleft or hollow, or probably bird's nest, for this purpose. These nests, I suppose, are made when the trees are losing their leaves . . .”)