More nests

June 13, 2013

June 13.

C. finds a pigeon woodpecker’s nest in an apple tree, five of those pearly eggs, about six feet from the ground; could squeeze your hand in. 

Also a peetweet’s, with four eggs, in Hubbard’s meadow beyond the old swamp oak site; and two kingbirds’ nests with eggs in an apple and in a willow by riverside.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 13, 1855

A pigeon woodpecker’s nest in an apple tree, five of those pearly eggs . . . See June 13, 1858 ("In the great apple tree front of the Miles house I hear young pigeon woodpeckers.");  June 10, 1856 ("In a hollow apple tree, hole eighteen inches deep, young pigeon woodpeckers, large and well feathered. . . .”); July 22, 1855 (“The pigeon woodpeckers have flown. Dog day weather begins.”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Woodpecker (flicker).


Two kingbirds’ nests with eggs in an apple and in a willow by riverside. See June 14, 1855 ("A kingbird’s nest with four eggs on a large horizontal stem or trunk of a black willow, four feet high, over the edge of the river, amid small shoots from the willow; outside of mikania, roots, and knotty sedge, well lined with root fibres and wiry weeds"); June 16, 1855 ("Examined a kingbird’s nest found before (13th) in a black willow over edge of river, four feet from ground. Two eggs."); see also note to June 8, 1858 ("A kingbird's nest with three eggs, lined with some hair, in a fork — or against upright part — of a willow. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Kingbird