Cool north wind

June 30.
Cooler, with a northerly wind. The pads blown up by it already show crimson, it is so strong, but this not a fall phenomenon yet.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, June 30, 1859

The pads blown up by it already show crimson . . .See June 29, 1852 ("The wind exposes the red under sides of the white lily pads. This is one of the aspects of the river now”); July 30, 1856 ("I am struck with the splendid crimson-red under sides of the white lily pads where my boat has turned them, at my bath place near the Hemlocks.”); August 24,1854 ("The bright crimson-red under sides of the great white lily pads, turned up by the wind in broad fields on the sides of the stream, are a great ornament to the stream. It is not till August, methinks, that they are turned up conspicuously.”)

We walk down to the waterfall and back; detouring for a brief stop at the fort.  it gets dark as we walk and sprinkles on and off.  Buda is with me on a leash . the woods are damp, as it has rained every day.  June is over tonight with 9 inches in burlington as opposed to a regular three. before the boardwalk we see a flash, then later hear thunder.  a  moderate downpour hits just after we get home, i am sweaty and happy. i come up and turn off my fan to listen to the rain.

A flash then thunder --

Home, I turn off my fan and

listen to the rain.

June 30, 2013 

 It is Sunday night. After dinner we walk to the view and back.  The birds are the usual suspects. Two thrushes  ovenbird peewee Rose breasted grosbeak great crested flycatcher. Did we hear a scarlet Tanager? I have lost the mental note of this sound 

There was thunder last night and storms elsewhere in this morning heavy rain on and off with light rain in between. The stream at the junction has dried up and at the first stream crossing they are only two or three pools left for the dogs to drink. This probably will be the case for the rest of the summer. I’ve already lugged a good gallon jug of water to the view The sun is setting through the trees at the house. On the trail in the woods and on the cliffs are those orangey spots. But it has set well before we get there. I’m surprised the air is so clear and clean -- a pleasant northwest winds,  thunderhead perhaps on the north horizon.  I just never paid attention that it has cleared up. 

The sun is setting orange And one moment I think I see different layers of orange  I get one good picture that captures the colors. We sit longer than planned then head back the usual way in the dusk without headlamps   And press all the way home after dark using the luminescent paint along the trails to guide us now accompanied by a myriad fireflies.  We would never seen the fireflies dancing in the woods and over the trail using a headlamp   

Fireflies dancing

     in the night in the woods we 

           walk without headlamp  

June 30 2019

Zphx

In Howard's Meadow

June 29.

P. M. — To Walden. Very hot. 

The piper grass bloom in prime. 

Examined the flying squirrel's nest at the base of a small white [oak] or two (sprouts), four inches through, in a small old white oak stump, half open above, just below the level of the ground, composed of quite a mass of old withered oak leaves and a few fresh green ones, and the inside wholly of fine, dry sedge and sedge-like bark-fibres.  The upper side of the nest was half visible from above. It was eight or nine inches across. 

In it I found the wing of an Attacus luna, — and July 1st another wing near Second Division, which makes three between June 27th and July 1st.

At the railroad spring in Howard's meadow, I see two chestnut-sided warblers hopping and chipping as if they had a nest, within six feet of me, a long time. No doubt they are breeding near. Yellow crown with a fine dark longitudinal line, reddish-chestnut sides, black triangle on side of head, white beneath. 

River falls several inches.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 29, 1859

The flying squirrel's nest. See June 19, 1859 ("A flying squirrel's nest . . .south of Walden, on hilltop, in a covered hollow in a small old stump at base of a young oak")

I found the wing of an Attacus luna, three between June 27th and July 1st. See June 27, 1859 ("At the further Brister's Spring, under the pine, I find an Attacus luna, half hidden under a skunk-cabbage leaf, ")   See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Luna Moth (Attacus luna)

A merganser on the dock

At evening the sound of rain before it rains, pummeling the water. Starting a fire when the sky clears. Now rain in West Castleton coming across the water. The sight of rain before it rains. The sound of rain...the sound of rain.

No way the fire is still going. But hot coals glow when the rain stops. Cook over the fire and eat as the sunset lingers, followed by a setting new moon and morning, a merganser on the dock, mist rising.

Zphx, June 25, 2009

The other day it rains all afternoon as i sit by an open window in my attic room thinking of you listening to the sound of rain. The sound of rain stirring the embers of memory. The heat of our flame. The sound of rain. 20190621

On the road to Gettysburg: "Be at home soon now if nothing happens. "

In June, 1863 a Confederate army of 75,000 men marched through the Shenandoah Valley into southern Pennsylvania. The Army of the Potomac, numbering 90,000 and now commanded by General George G. Meade, moved to check Lee's advance.


Union Mills June 25th 1863

Dear Lettie

We are all packed and just on another start and have just time to write a word. The last I wrote you a note we were just on a start to guard a Ford on Cedar Run Mill. We just as I said started until last night when we had orders to withdraw our picket and report to this place at once which we did, arriving about half past one o'clock this morning.

I traveled some 20 miles yesterday and last night and feel first rate today better fitted for another march than so I had lazed in camp until now.

It is now most noon and I have working just as hard as I can jump every since morning getting ready. Have given up all my stuff except a shirt, pair stockings, blanket and a few other things.

We have been transferred to the Army of Potomac 1st Corps under command of Genl. Reynolds. The whole brigade goes and we expect a lively campaign but it will be short -- less than a month.

It is expected we march at once. We are only waiting for 12th & 13th to come up. Shall write often as I can but you must not expect many when on such marches.

I feel first rate, had as well go there as any where for a short time. I don’t think there is much doubt but what we shall have fun soon.

George has got better and is going to Alexandria with some Express boxes today and follow us tomorrow or next day.

Read your kind letter of the 18th inst. this morning when I arrived in camp which I read with much pleasure before retiring. I have no time to notice its contents.

Don’t worry about me but think me all right and be happy. Be at home soon now if nothing happens. I shall think of you every minute and love you always. Let me hug and kiss you again and again as I bid you good bye my darling one.

Affectionately,
Elmer


Captain Elmer Duane Keyes, Company H, 16th Vermont Regiment, Letter from Union Mills, June 25, 1863

High water on the Concord

June 22.

One who is not almost daily on the river will not perceive the revolution constantly going on.

It is hard to tell what is a fresh deposit and what an old growth. I notice a black willow top a foot above water, a dozen rods from shore, near the outlet of Fair Haven Pond, or just off the point of the Island, where the water is ten feet deep by my measure, and it is alive and green. There is a very large mass of bushes moved on the right shore, some way above Sherman's Bridge, and a large mass above Heard's Bridge some distance, on the east side (having drifted across). I should say that the largest masses, or islands, of button-bushes standing in the meadows had drifted there.

Many seeing the green willow-tops rising above the surface in deep water think that there is a rock there on which they grow. Even the owner of the meadow and the haymakers may not always detect what was imported the previous spring, these transplanted plants look so at home there.

So the revolution is almost an imperceptible one.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, June 22, 1859

One who is not almost daily on the river will not perceive the revolution constantly going on. See February 25, 1851 ("The crust of the meadow afloat, . . . another agent employed in the distribution of plants."); February 27, 1851("Blue-joint was introduced into the first meadow where it did not grow before."); February 28, 1855 ("This is a powerful agent at work.”)

Two Lost Celebrities with single Death Notice, June 2009

Suicide with a gun
is a messy imposition
on those you leave behind
to clean brains off the wall
and all that blood.

Better hang yourself in a closet
with a rope around your balls
to let them think
you were having fun.

Obituary.

Sleeping peacefully
surrounded by family and friends:
Accidental death!


Zphx, June 19, 2009

Taking shelter from a shower on the river.

June 18.

P. M. — Sail up river.

Rain again, and we take shelter under a bridge, and again under our boat, and again under a pine tree.

It is worth the while to sit or lie through a shower thus under a bridge or under a boat on the bank, because the rain is a much more interesting and remarkable phenomenon under these circumstances.

The surface of the stream betrays every drop from the first to the last, and all the variations of the storm, so much more expressive is the water than the comparatively brutish face of earth. We no doubt often walk between drops of rain falling thinly, without knowing it, though if on the water we should have been advertised of it.

At last the whole surface is nicked with the rebounding drops as if the surface rose in little cones to accompany or meet the drops, till it looks like the back of some spiny fruit or animal, and yet the different-colored currents, light and dark, are seen through it all;

and then, when it clears up, how gradually the surface of the water becomes more placid and bright, the dimples growing fewer and finer till the prolonged reflections of trees are seen in it, and the water is lit up with a joy which is in sympathy with our own, while the earth is comparatively dead.

I saw swarms of little gnats, light-winged, dancing over the water in the midst of the rain, though you would say any drop would end one's days.

The swamp white oaks and red maples and willows, etc., now first begin to show a slight silveriness on the under edges of their flakes, where the under sides of the new leaves are shown.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 18, 1859

The different-colored currents, light and dark, are seen through it all. See July 31, 1860 ("The differently shaded or lit currents of the river through it all; but anon it begins to rain very hard, and a myriad white globules dance or rebound an inch or two from the surface, where the big drops fall, and I hear a sound as if it rains pebbles or shot.")

June18.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, June 18

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2020

Sea of Green

June 16. 

P. M. — Paddle to Great Meadows. 

Small snapdragon, how long? 

Examined a kingfisher's nest, — though there is a slight doubt if I found the spot. It was formed singularly like that of the bank swallow, i. e. flat-elliptical, some eight inches, as I remember, in the - largest diameter, and located just like a swallow's, in a sand-bank, some twenty inches below the surface. Could feel nothing in it, but it may have been removed. Have an egg from this. 

Walked into the Great Meadows from the angle on the west side of the Holt, in order to see what were the prevailing sedges, etc. 

On the dry and hard bank by the river, grows June-grass, etc., Carex scoparia, stellulata, stricta, and Buxbaumii; in the wet parts, pipes two and a half feet high, C. lanuginosa, C. bullata(?), [C] monile, Eleocharis palustris, Panicum virgatum (a little just begins to show itself), and Glyceria fluitans here and there and out. 

There was a noble sea of pipes, — you may say pipes exclusively, — a rich dark green, quite distinct from the rest of the meadow and visible afar, a broad stream of this valuable grass growing densely, two and a half feet high in water. 

Next to this, south, where it was quite as wet, or wetter, grew the tall and slender C. lanuginosa, the prevailing sedge in the wetter parts where I walked. This was a sheeny glaucous green, bounding the pipes on each side, of a dry look. Next in abundance in the wet parts were the inflated sedges above named.

Those pipes, in such a mass, are, me-thinks, the richest mass of uniform dark liquid green now to be seen on the surface of the town [?]. You might call this meadow the "Green Sea.” 

Phalaris Americana, Canary grass, just out. The island by Hunt's Bridge is densely covered with it. 

Saw, in the midst of the Great Meadows, the trails or canals of the musquash running an indefinite distance, now open canals full of water, in which ever minnows dart constantly, deep under the grass; and here and there you come to the stool of a musquash, where it has flatted down the tufts of sedge and perhaps gnawed them off.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 16, 1859

Examined a kingfisher's nest, — though there is a slight doubt if I found the spot. See June 6, 1859 ("Hear of a kingfisher's nest, just found in a sand bank behind Abner Buttrick's, with six fresh eggs, of which I have one.”)

On the dry and hard bank by the river, grows June-grass, etc., Carex scoparia, stellulata, stricta, and Buxbaumii; in the wet parts, pipes two and a half feet high, C. lanuginosa, C. bullata(?), [C] monile, Eleocharis palustris, Panicum virgatum (a little just begins to show itself), and Glyceria fluitans here and there and out. SeeJune 16, 1858 (“A few sedges are very common and prominent, one, the tallest and earliest, now gone and going to seed, which I do not make out, also the Carex scoparia and the C. stellulata.”). Compare June 13, 1858 ("See now in meadows, for the most part going to seed, Carex scoparia, with its string of oval beads; and C. lupulina, with its inflated perigynia; also what I take to be C. stipata, with a dense, coarse, somewhat sharp triangular mass of spikelets; also C. stellulata, with a string of little star-like burs. ”)

Trails or canals of the musquash running an indefinite distance, now open canals full of water. See August 23, 1854 ("I improve the dry weather to examine the middle of Gowing's Swamp. . . . This is marked by the paths of muskrats, which also extend through the green froth of the pool. “); August 2, 1858 (“I noticed meandering down that meadow, which is now quite dry, a very broad and distinct musquash-trail, where they went and came continually when it was wet or under water in the winter or spring.”)

This is where the men who save the country are born and bred.

June 15.

Suddenly hot weather, - 90° - after very cool days.



Yarrow out, how long? 

Blue flag abundant. 

Blue-eyed grass at height. 

Saw near mill, on the wooded hillside, a regular old-fashioned country house, long and low, one story unpainted, with a broad green field, half orchard, for all yard between it and the road, — a part of the hill side, — and much June-grass before it. This is where the men who save the country are born and bred. Here is the pure fountain of human life. 

Walked over a rocky hill there in the midst of the heat. How interesting a thin patch of strawberry vines now on a rocky hillside, though the fruit is quite scarce! Good for suggestion and intention, at least. 

Herd's-grass spikes just appear; not in bloom. 

Sitting by Hubbard Bath swamp wood and looking north, at 3 P.M., I notice the now peculiar glaucous color of the very water, as well as the meadow-grass (i.e. sedge), at a dozen or twenty rods' distance, seen through the slight haze which accompanies this first June heat. A sort of leaden color, as if the fumes of lead floated over it.

Young crow blackbirds which have left the nest, with great heads and bills, the top of the head covered with a conspicuous raised light-colored down.

A fly (good-sized) with a large black patch on the wing and a reddish head alights on my hand. (A day or two after, one with a greenish head.) 

Birds shoot like twigs. The young are as big as the old when they leave the nest; have only got to harden and mature.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, June 15, 1859

Suddenly hot weather, - 90° - after very cool days. See June 15, 1860 ("A new season begun.") and  June 16, 1860 ("It appears to me that these phenomena occur simultaneously, say June 12th . . .”)

Yarrow out, how long? See June 15, 1851("And the yarrow, with its persistent dry stalks and heads, is now ready to blossom again")

Blue flag abundant. See June 10, 1858 ("Common blue flag, how long?"); June 14, 1853 ("The blue flag (Iris versicolor) grows in this pure water, rising from the stony bottom all around the shores, and is very beautiful, . . . especially its reflections in the water.); June 30,1851 ("The blue flag (Iris versicolor) enlivens the meadow.”)

Blue-eyed grass at height,  See June 15, 1851 ("The blue-eyed grass, well named, looks up to heaven.")

A regular old-fashioned country house, long and low, one story unpainted, with a broad green field, half orchard See August 26, 1856 ("What is a New England landscape this sunny August day? A weather-painted house and barn, with an orchard by its side, in midst of a sandy field surrounded by green woods, with a small blue lake on one side.”); April 24, 1857 (“Now the sun comes out and shines on the pine hill west of Ball's Hill, lighting up the light-green pitch pines and the sand and russet-brown lichen-clad hill. That is a very New England landscape. Buttrick's yellow farmhouse near by is in harmony with it.")

Early Strawberries

June 14

P. M. — To Flint's Pond. 

Early strawberries begin to be common. The lower leaves of the plant are red, concealing the fruit. 

Violets, especially of dry land, are scarce now. 

Eleocharis palustris abundant in Stow's meadow, by railroad. 

See a rose-bug. 

A pout's nest (at Pout's Nest) with a straight entrance some twenty inches long and a simple round nest at end. The young just hatched, all head, light-colored, under a mass of weedy hummock which is all under water. 

The common utricularia out. 

Hear the phebe note of a chickadee.

Cow-wheat, how long ? 

A rose-breasted grosbeak betrays itself by that peculiar squeak, on the Britton path. It is evident that many breed in the low woods by Flint's Pond. 

Catbird's nest with four eggs in a swamp-pink, three and a half feet up. 

The rose-breasted grosbeak is common now in the Flint's Pond woods. It is not at all shy, and our richest singer, perhaps, after the wood thrush. The rhythm is very like that of the tanager, but the strain is perfectly clear and sweet. 

One sits on the bare dead twig of a chestnut, high over the road, at Gourgas Wood, and over my head, and sings clear and loud at regular intervals, — the strain about ten or fifteen seconds long, rising and swelling to the end, with various modulations.

Another, singing in emulation, regularly answers it, alternating with it, from a distance, at least a quarter of a mile off. It sings thus long at a time, and I leave it singing there, regardless of me.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, June 14, 1859

Early strawberries begin to be common. The lower leaves of the plant are red, concealing the fruit. See June 2, 1859 ("Strawberries reddening on some hills"}; June 10, 1856 ("Ripe strawberries . . . hard at first to detect amid the red radical leaves.”)

A rose-breasted grosbeak. It is evident that many breed in the low woods by Flint's Pond See June 2, 1859 ("Found within three rods of Flint's Pond a rose-breasted grosbeak's nest.") See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, , the Rose-breasted Grosbeak

A pout's nest (at Pout's Nest).The young just hatched. See April 25, 1859 ("Young Stewart tells me that he saw last year a pout's nest at Walden in the pond-hole by the big pond. The spawn lay on the mud quite open and uncovered, and the old fish was tending it. A few days after, he saw that it was hatched and little pouts were swimming about.") "Pout’s Nest": HDT's name for Wyman's Meadow near Walden. See note to July 26, 1860 (I see a bream swimming about in that smaller pool by Walden in Hubbard's Wood. . . So they may be well off in the Wyman meadow or Pout's Nest."); see also June 7, 1858 ("Pouts, then, make their nests in shallow mud-holes or bays, in masses of weedy mud, or probably in the muddy bank; and the old pout hovers over the spawn or keeps guard at the entrance.Where do the Walden pouts breed when they have not access to this meadow?")

Hemlocks are about at height of their beauty, with their fresh growth.

June 11. 

P. M. — To Owl Swamp. 

Lambkill flower. 

Carrion-flower up a day or two. 

Panicum latifolium (not out) grows by riverside at Dakin's Brook. 

Ferns generally were killed by the frost of last month, e. g. brakes, cinnamon fern, flowering and sensitive ferns, and no doubt others. I smell the strong sour scent of their decaying. 

Galium triflorum, how long? 

In one grove pitch pine shoots are from seven to nine tenths as long as last year's growth. 

When I return, about 5 p. m., the shad-flies swarm over the river in considerable numbers, but there are very few at sundown.

Hemlocks are about at height of their beauty, with their fresh growth.





H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 11, 1859

Lambkill flower. See June 13, 1852 ("Lambkill is out. I remember with what delight I used to discover this flower in dewy mornings.All things in this world must be seen with the morning dew on them, must be seen with youthful, early-opened, hopeful eyes.");June 13, 1854 ("How beautiful the solid cylinders of the lamb-kill now just before sunset, — small ten-sided, rosy-crimson basins, about two inches above the recurved, drooping dry capsules of last year, — and sometimes those of the year before are two inches lower.");  June 25, 1852 ("Sometimes the lambkill flowers form a very even rounded, close cylinder, six inches long and two and a half in diameter, of rich red saucer-like flowers, the counterpart of the latifolia in flowers and flower- buds, but higher colored. I regard it as a beautiful flower neglected. It has a slight but not remarkable scent") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia)

Panicum latifolium (not out) grows by riverside at Dakin's Brook. See June 25, 1858 ("Just south the wall at Bittern Cliff, the Panicum latifolium, hardly yet, with some leaves almost an inch and a half wide.")

Hemlocks are about at height of their beauty, with their fresh growth. See June 5, 1853 ("The fresh light green shoots of the hemlocks have now grown half an inch or an inch, spotting the trees, contrasting with the dark green of last year's foliage. ")

Osprey

June 9.

At evening on the dock notice a large bird flying by at a distance. It heads further away, way across the lake. Osprey? Yes. I keep my eye on him, a speck in the distance. He turns and, with two others in that unmistakable flight, lopes right back toward me, as if my recognition attracts them. One … two… three ospreys straight overhead. One lands in a large pine behind me, imprinting their call in my memory.

Zphx, June 9, 2009

Surveying for D. B. Clark

June 10.

Surveying for D. B. Clark on “College Road,” so-called, cut a line in a thick wood that passed within two feet of a blue jay's nest about four feet up a birch, quite exposed beneath the leafy branches. The bird sat perfectly still upon its large young with its head up and bill open, not moving in the least, while we drove a stake close by, within three feet, and cut and measured, being about there twenty minutes at least.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, June 10, 1859

A blue jay’s nest. See June 8, 1855 ("A jay’s nest with three young half fledged in a white pine, six feet high, by the Ingraham cellar, made of coarse sticks.”); June 5, 1856 (“A blue jay’s nest on a white pine, eight feet from ground, next to the stem, of twigs lined with root-fibres; three fresh eggs, dark dull greenish, with dusky spots equally distributed all over”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

Sweet serendipity

The word serendipity was coined by Horace Walpole on reading a “silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of...."

I learned this word origin because this week Jane and Phineas were talking about ordering the Miracle Berry on the internet. When chewed, this purportedly causes sour substances to taste sweet. That’s the commercial name; she didn’t know the real name.

Later in the week Jane at graduation got talking with one of the seniors about his camera, a very nice Nikon like hers, and she asked him whether he had a tripod. He didn’t but he wanted one when he could afford it.

Coming home that evening Jane stopped to poke around a pile of stuff at the bottom of our hill marked, “free.” There was a perfectly good tripod just right for his camera!

It was “Kismet” she said when she told me the story, and I said, “Serendipitous!”

I had never heard of kismet. After the boys left the dinner table I asked, “What does kismet mean” and, first downloading a dictionary, tried to look it up on my iPod. Jane got a real dictionary and looked up kismet, meaning “fate.” Serendipity was a better fit: “finding something fortunate that one does not seek.”

Still downloading, I asked, “Where does serendipity come from?”  Searching for this word , Jane found instead the entry for serendipity berry: a berry, “when chewed, that causes sour substances to taste sweet.”

A clearing wind

Sitting on the dock after dark on the cell phone to Liz luminous green sky reflected in the water, the sun aglow under the northern horizon, it is time for the moon to break through the night black clouds over my shoulder and a mallard hen and her young to paddle by in silhouette. Three low flying geese honk honk honk all the way to Wisconsin, and my battery dies.

This morning a message: “Your battery died. I am here now at home with Craig. He is watering the garden. We have planted oats and corn and pumpkin and watermelon and potatoes, including blue potatoes, beets, strawberries, beans, peas, bell peppers, tomatoes, tons of garlic, onion, cucumbers, squash and various wildflowers and clover. Everything is doing well and I am glad you called.”


Zphx, June 3, 2009

The rose-breasted grosbeak

June 2.

I hear that Farmer shot on the 28th ult. two marsh hawks, male and female, and got their four eggs, in which the young were moving. 

P. M. — To Flint's Pond. 

Red maple seed is partly blown off. Some of it is conspicuously whitish or light-colored on the trees.

Examine a small striped snake, some sixteen inches long. Dark-brown above, with a grayish dorsal line and squarish black spots in the brown; then lighter-brown or dead-leaf color on the sides, chocolate-brown still lower, and light or pale-cream brown beneath. A dark- brown spot on each side of each abdominal plate. The sides yellowish forward. This is apparently a striped snake, but not yellow-striped as described. 

Strawberries reddening on some hills

Found within three rods of Flint's Pond a rose-breasted grosbeak's nest. It was in a thicket where there was much cat-briar, in a high blueberry bush, some five feet from the ground, in the forks of the bush, and of very loose construction, being made of the dead gray extremities of the cat-briar, with its tendrils (and some of this had dropped on the ground beneath), and this was lined merely with fine brown stems of weeds like pinweeds, without any leaves or anything else, -- a slight nest on the whole.

The egg is thickly spotted with reddish brown on a pale-blue ground, like a hermit thrush's, but rounder; very delicate.

Saw the birds. The male uttered a very peculiar sharp clicking or squeaking note of alarm while I was near the nest.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, June 2, 1859

A rose-breasted grosbeak's nest. . . .The male uttered a very peculiar sharp clicking or squeaking note of alarm while I was near the nest. See May 25, 1854 ("Hear and see . . . the rose-breasted grosbeak, a handsome bird with a loud and very rich song, in character between that of a robin and a red-eye. . . . Rose breast, white beneath, black head and above, white on shoulder and wings.")

In Cyrus Hosmer's meadow

June 1.


Some boys found yesterday, in tussock of sedge amid some flags in a wet place in Cyrus Hosmer's meadow, west of the willow-row, six inches above the water, the nest evidently of a rail, with seven eggs.

I got one to-day. It is cream-colored, sprinkled with reddish-brown spots and more internal purplish ones, on most eggs (not on mine) chiefly about the larger end.*

The nest (which I have) is made of old sedge, five or six inches in diameter and one or two deep.

There has been an abundance of meadow sedges (carices) flowering and fruiting in May, but from the end of May to the middle of June is apparently the best time to study them.

Eleocharis palustris not quite open yesterday in river.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, June 1, 1859

*Vide September 7th and 9th and 21st and December 7th, '58, and June 13th, ’59.


Some boys found the nest evidently of a rail, with seven eggs. See June 13, 1859 ("My rail's egg of June 1st looks like that of the Virginia rail in the Boston collection").  See also  September 7, 1858 (Storrow Higginson brings . . .some eggs to show me, — among others apparently that of the Virginian rail. It agrees in color, size, etc., according to Wilson, . . . So perhaps it breeds here. [Yes. Vide Sept. 9th. Vide Sept. 21st and Dec. 7th, and June 1st, 1859]”).