Dog-days and fogs

July 29.

To Fair Haven Hill shore. 

The Cyperus dentatus in bloom on hard sandy parts of meadows now is very interesting and handsome on being inspected now, with its bright chestnut purple sided flat spikelets, -- a plant and color looking toward autumn. Very neat and handsome on a close inspection.

Also in dry sandy soil the little tufts of Fimbristylis capillaris in bloom are quite brown and withered-looking now, -- another yet more autumnal-suggesting sight.

The river is very nearly down to summer level now, and I notice there, among other phenomena of low water by the river, the great yellow lily pads flat on bare mud, the Ranunculus Flammula (just begun), a close but thin green matting now bare for five or six feet in width, bream nests bare and dried up, or else bare stones and sand for six or eight feet. 

The white lilies are generally lifted an inch or two above water by their stems; also the Utricularia vulgaris and purpurea are raised higher above the surface than usual. Rails are lodged amid the potamogetons in midstream and have not moved for ten days. 

Dog-days and fogs. Rocks unsuspected peep out and are become visible. The water milfoil (the ambiguum var. nutans), otherwise not seen, shows itself. This is observed only at lowest water. 

I examined some of these bream nests left dry at Cardinal Shore. These were a foot or two wide and excavated five inches deep (as I measured) in hard sand. The fishes must have worked hard to make these holes. Sometimes they are amid or in pebbles, where it is harder yet. 

There are now left at their bottoms, high and dry, a great many snails (Paludina decisa) young and old, some very minute. They either wash into them or take refuge there as the water goes down. I suspect they die there. 

The fishes really work hard at making their nests — these, the stone-heaps, etc. — when we consider what feeble means they possess. 

Vaccinium vacillans begin to be pretty thick and some huckleberries. 

See large flocks of red-wings now, the young grown. 

Bartonia tenella, how long?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 29, 1859

See large flocks of red-wings now, the young grown. See July 11, 1856 (“See quite a flock of red-wing blackbirds and young (?)”); July 13, 1856 (“See quite a large flock of chattering red-wings, the flight of first broods.”); July 22, 1855 "See small flocks of red-wings, young and old, now, over the willows.”);


Vaccinium vacillans begin to be pretty thick and some huckleberries.  See  July 24, 1853 ("The berries of the Vaccinium vacillans are very abundant and large this year on Fair Haven, where I am now.Indeed these and huckleberries and blackberries are very abundant in this part of the town."); July 31, 1856 (“How thick the berries — low blackberries, Vaccinium vacillans, and huckleberries — on the side of Fair Haven Hill! ”); August 4, 1852 (“Most huckleberries and blueberries and low blackberries are in their prime now.”); August 4, 1854 ("On this hill (Smith's) the bushes are black with huckleberries. ...Now in their prime. Some glossy black, some dull black, some blue; and patches of Vaccinium vacillans inter mixed."); August 4. 1856 ("This favorable moist weather has expanded some of the huckleberries to the size of bullets");See also July 13, 1852 ("It is impossible to say what day — almost what week — the huckleberries begin to be ripe, unless you are acquainted with, and daily visit, every huckleberry bush in the town"); and notes to July 13, 1852 ("Huckleberries, both blue and black,must have been ripe several days.") and July 29, 1858 (The difference between the often confused Huckleberry (Gaylussacia) and Lowbush Blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium and vacillans) )