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.”)