Birds do not distinguish a man sitting in a boat.

A Gawky Bird

July 12.

Many young barn swallows sit in flocks on the bared dead willows over the water and let me float within four or five feet. Birds do not distinguish a man sitting in a boat. 

I see a green bittern wading in a shallow muddy place, with an awkward teetering, fluttering pace. 

Observe a pickerel in the Assabet, about a foot long, headed up stream, quasi-transparent (such its color), with darker and lighter parts contrasted, very still while I float quite near. There is a constant motion of the pectoral fins and also a waving motion of the ventrals, apparently to resist the stream, and a slight waving of the anal, apparently to preserve its direction. It darts off at last by a strong sculling motion of its tail. 

See white maple leaves floating bottom up, covered with feathery aphides. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 12, 1854

Many young barn swallows sit in flocks on the bared dead willows over the water and let me float within four or five feet. See July 12, 1859 ("I see at 9.30 p. m. a little brood of four or five barn swallows, which have quite recently left the nest, perched close together for the night on a dead willow twig . . . I now float within four feet, and they do not move or give sign of awaking. I could take them all off with my hand. ")

I see a green bittern wading in a shallow muddy place, with an awkward teetering. See May 6, 1852 ("A green bittern, a gawky bird.”); June 25, 1854 ("A green bittern . . . awkwardly alighting on the trees and uttering its hoarse, zarry note,”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The Green Bittern

There is a constant motion of the pectoral fins and . . . It darts off at last by a strong sculling motion of its tail. See July 6, 1852 ("He heads upstream and keeps his body perfectly motionless, however rapid the current, chiefly by the motion of his narrow pectoral fins, though also by the waving of his other fins and tail as much as necessary, which a frog might mistake for that of weeds. Thus, concealed by his color and stillness, like a stake, he lies in wait for frogs or minnows. Now a frog leaps in, and he darts forward three or four feet.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

White maple leaves floating bottom up, covered with feathery aphides. See July 2, 1853 ("Saw on a maple leaf floating on the Assabet a kind of large aphides, thickly covering it.")
July 12. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 12

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  A man sitting in a boat.

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