A large hawk circling Ministerial Swamp.

July 7.

Woodcock at the spring under Clamshell. 

Disturb two broods of partridges this afternoon, — one a third grown, flying half a dozen rods over the bushes, yet the old, as anxious as ever, rushing to me with the courage of a hen.

Columbines still. 

See a pretty large hawk with narrow and long wings, black-tipped beneath, and white rump, light beneath, circling over the Ministerial Swamp with a loud, shuffling, jay-like and somewhat flicker-like sound.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 7, 1854

Woodcock at the spring under Clamshell.  See  July 10, 1854 ("Woodcock seen within two or three days."); July 12, 1857 ("I drink at every cooler spring in my walk these afternoons.");July 13, 1852 ("Each day now I scare up woodcocks by shady springs and swamps"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The American Woodcock and July 7, 1860 ("The temperature of good or cool springs in this town at this season varies very little indeed from 49 °")

The old, as anxious as ever, rushing to me with the courage of a hen. See June 27, 1852("I meet the partridge with her brood in the woods, a perfect little hen. She spreads her tail into a fan and beats the ground with her wings fearlessly within a few feet of me, to attract my attention while her young disperse") See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

Hawk with narrow and long wings, black-tipped beneath, and white rump . . . and somewhat flicker-like sound. See March 27, 1855 (“See my frog hawk . . . It is the hen-barrier, i.e. marsh hawk, male. Slate-colored; beating the bush; black tips to wings and white rump. "); March 29, 1854 (See two marsh hawks, white on rump.”); May 14, 1857 ("See a pair of marsh hawks, the smaller and lighter-colored male, with black tips to wings, and the large brown female, sailing low over J. Hosmer's sprout-land”); May 30, 1858 ("The hawk rises when we approach and circles about over the wood, uttering a note singularly like the common one of the flicker”); June 8, 1858 ("The marsh hawk's eggs are not yet hatched. She rises when I get within a rod and utters that peculiar cackling or scolding note, much like, but distinct from, that of the pigeon woodpecker.”);  August 22, 1853 ("The scream of young marsh hawks sounds like some notes of the jay. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)

Ministerial Swamp. See November 14, 1851 ("Surveying the Ministerial Lot in the southwestern part of the town."); November 18,1851 ("Surveying these days the Ministerial Lot . . . Here hawks also circle by day, and chickadees are heard, and rabbits and partridges abound."); December 21, 1851 (“As I stand by the edge of the swamp (Ministerial), a heavy-winged hawk flies home to it at sundown, just over my head, in silence.”);

Hawk with narrow

and long wings, black-tipped beneath --

loud flicker-like sound.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A large hawk circling Ministerial Swamp.

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

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