Sunday. I hear no trilling of birds early. 5.15 a. m. — To Hill. I hear a gold robin, also faint song of common robin. Wood pewee (fresh); red-wing blackbird with fragmentary trill; bobolinks (the males apparently darker and by themselves); kingbirds; nuthatch heard; yellow-throated vireo, heard and saw, on hickories (have I lately mistaken this for red-eye ?); goldfinch; slate- colored hawk (with white rump and black wing-tips).
The grape leaves even at this hour, after a dewy night, are still many of them curled upward, showing their light under-sides, and feel somewhat crisped by the drought. This, I think, is one with that permanent standing up of the leaves of many trees at this season. Prinos berries have begun to redden.
When the red-eye ceases generally, then I think is a crisis, — the woodland quire is dissolved. That, if I remember, was about a fortnight ago. The concert is over. The pewees sit still on their perch a long time, returning to the same twig after darting at an insect. The yellow-throated vireo is very restless, darting about. I hear a sound as of green pignuts falling from time to time, and see and hear the chickaree thereabouts!
1 P. M. — Up Assabet by boat to Bath. A warm but breezy day, wind west by south. Water clear and sunny. I see much of my fresh-water sponge just above the Island, attached to the bottom, rocks, or branches under water. In form it reminds me of some cladonia lichens, for it has many branches like a lichen, being a green, porous, spongy substance, with long, slender, pointed fingers or horns, pointed upward or outward, the thickest about half an inch in diameter, and emits a peculiar, penetrating, strong, rank scent like some chemicals. The whole mass per haps eight or ten inches in diameter. When raised to the surface it slowly sinks again.
The bottom of the south branch is in many places almost covered with the short cut leaves of the sium, — as I call it. On the sandy bottom in midstream (mussel shoals), a dozen rods above the Rock, I notice a small (?) green clam which must be the same with or similar to that which Perkins showed me in Newburyport. It has bright-green rays from the eye (?) on a light-green ground. Found in pure sand. Saw three. The rays show through to the inside. It is handsomer without than the common.
Some chickadees on the pitch pines over water near the Hemlocks look longer than usual, hanging back downward. See a strange bird about size of cedar-bird also on the pitch pine, perhaps greenish-olive above, whitish or ashy beneath, with a yellow vent and a dark line on side-head.
Saw a wood pewee which had darted after an insect over the water in this position in the air: It often utters a continuous pe-e-e.
The Polygonum amphibium at Assabet Rock, apparently several days, rising two or more feet above water. In many places I notice oaks stripped by caterpillars nowadays. Saw yesterday one of those great light-green grubs with spots.
I see to-day many — more than a half-dozen — large wood tortoises on the bottom of the river, — some apparently eight to nine inches long in shell, some with their heads out. Are they particularly attracted to the water at this season? They lie quite still on the bottom.
Off Dodge's Brook, saw a fish lying on its side on the surface, with its head downward, slowly steering toward the shore with an undulating motion of the tail. Found it to be a large sucker which had apparently been struck by a kingfisher, fish hawk, or heron and got away. (The mill is not a-going to-day, Sunday.) It had been seized near the tail, which for three inches was completely flayed and much torn, lacerated, a part of the caudal fin being carried off. It had also received a severe thrust midway its body, which had furrowed its side and turned down a large strip of skin. It was breathing its last when I caught it. It was evidently too powerful for the bird which had struck it.
I brought it home and weighed and measured it. It weighed two pounds and two ounces and was nineteen and a quarter inches long. Above, it was a sort of blue black or slate-color, darkest on the head, with blotches of the same extending down its sides, which were of a reddish golden, passing into white beneath. There were a few small red spots on the sides, just behind the gills. It had what I should call a gibbous head, but no horns; a line of fine mucous pores above and below eye; eyes at least one and a half inches apart; great corrugated ears on the lower lip; fins all dark like the back; nostrils double; opercula not golden; irides golden; scales on lateral line sixty-five (about), those near tail gone with skin. Fin rays, as I counted: pectoral, seventeen; ventral, ten; anal, nine; dorsal, thirteen; caudal, some wanting.
Looking down on it, it was very broad at base of head, tapering thence gradually to tail. It had a double bladder, nearly six inches long by one inch at widest part. I think it must have been a kingfisher, it was so much lacerated at the tail.
Now, at 4 p. M., hear a croaking frog near the water's edge, sounding like the faint quacking of a duck with more of the r in it, — something like crack grack grack, rapidly repeated. Though I knew that I must be within three feet of it, as I looked from the boat upon the shore, I could see nothing, but several times I interrupted him and caused him to jump. It is surprising how perfectly they are concealed by their color, even when croaking under one's eyes.
It was Rana palustris, though I did not see it when it croaked. I after heard them further off, just before sunset, along the edge of the river, and saw that I had often mistaken their note for that of a cricket. So similar are these two earth-sounds. The cricket-like note of this little frog in the meadow ushers in the evening.
A man tells me to-day that he once saw some black snake's eggs on the surface of a tussock in a meadow just hatching, some hatched. The old one immediately appeared and swallowed all the young.
Assabet quite low. Those beds of dirty green ostrich-feather potamogetons are much exposed and dry at top. I perceive quite a number of furrows of clams in the sand, all leading from the side toward the middle of the river, with the clams at that end. Can they be going down now? They have not moved opposite Hubbard Bath, where they are in middle as well as by shore. Their position in the furrows is on their sharp edges, with what I will call their two eyes forward.
We had a very little drizzling rain on the 4th, and I think that was the last drop. There is so thick a bluish haze these dog-days that single trees half a mile off, seen against it as a light colored background, stand out distinctly a dark mass, — almost black, — as seen against the more distinct blue woods. So, also, when there is less haze, the distinct wooded ridges are revealed one behind another in the horizon.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 20, 1854
When the red-eye ceases generally, then I think is a crisis, — the woodland quire is dissolved. See May 27, 1854 ("The red-eye is an indefatigable singer.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red-eyed Vireo
I had often mistaken their note for that of a cricket. See September 27, 1855 "(Yesterday I traced the note of what I have falsely thought the Rana palustris, or cricket frog, to its true source.”)
Single trees half a mile off ... stand out distinctly a dark mass, — almost black. See August 20, 1853 (" If they are between you and the sun, the trees are more black than green.”)
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