To Assabet Bathing-Place and Derby Bridge.

June 25.

A green bittern, apparently, awkwardly alighting on the trees and uttering its hoarse, zarry note, zskeow-xskeow-xskeow. 

Shad-berry ripe. 

Garlic open, eighteen inches high or more. 

The calla fruit is curving down. 

I observe many kingfishers at Walden and on the Assabet, very few on the dark and muddy South Branch.  

A raspberry on sand by railroad, ripe. 

Through June the song of the birds is gradually growing fainter.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 25, 1854

A green bittern . . .awkwardly alighting on the trees. See  May 6, 1852 ("A green bittern, a gawky bird.");  July 12, 1854 ("A green bittern wading in a shallow muddy place, with an awkward teetering, fluttering pace.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The Green Bittern

Shad-berry ripe. See June 25, 1853 ("An unusual quantity of amelanchier berries . . .These are the first berries after strawberries, or the first, and I think the sweetest, bush berries ") See also  June 15, 1854 ("The Amelanchier Botryapium berries are already reddened two thirds over, and are somewhat palatable and soft, — some of them, — not fairly ripe"); June 17, 1854 ("The season of small fruits has arrived.");  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Shad-bush, Juneberry, or Service-berry (Amelanchier canadensis)

Garlic open, eighteen inches high or more. See June 14, 1853 ("The Allium Canadense in Tarbell's meadow. Wild meadow garlic, with its head of bulbs and a few flower- buds, not yet"); June 15, 1854 ("The garlic not in flower yet. "): June 26, 1857 ("I must be near bobolinks' nests many times these days, — in E. Hosmer's meadow by the garlic."); June 27, 1857 ("A young bobolink fluttering over the meadow. The garlic not even yet quite."); June 29, 1857 ("Allium Canadense in house and probably in field.")

I observe many kingfishers at Walden and on the Assabet. See May 10, 1854 ("Above the railroad bridge I see a kingfisher twice sustain himself in one place, about forty feet above the meadow, by a rapid motion of his wings, somewhat like a devil's-needle, not progressing an inch, apparently over a fish.”); June 9, 1854 (".Meanwhile the kingfishers are on the lookout for the fishes as they rise. I see one dive in the twilight and go off uttering his cr-r-ack, cr-r-rack. "); June 12, 1854 ("Scare a kingfisher on a bough over Walden. As he flies off, he hovers two or three times thirty or forty feet above the pond, and at last dives and apparently catches a fish, with which he flies off low over the water to a tree."); July 28, 1858 ("Heard a kingfisher, which had been hovering over the river, plunge forty rods off. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The Kingfisher

A raspberry on sand by railroad, ripe. See June 17, 1854 ("The season of small fruits has arrived."); June 30, 1854 ("Rubus triflorus berries, some time, — the earliest fruit of a rubus. The berries are very scarce, light red, semitransparent, showing the seed.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Raspberry

Through June the song of the birds is gradually growing fainter. See May 28, 1854 ("The woodland quire will rather be diminished than increased henceforth."); June 15, 1854 ("Methinks the birds sing a little feebler nowadays. "); August 2, 1854 ("the woodland quire has steadily diminished in volume.")

July 25. See A Book of the Seasons,, by Henry Thoreau, June 25

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 © 2009-2024