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]”).