A yellowbird’s nest on a willow bough against a twig, ten feet high, four eggs.

June 7

Rain. 

June 7, 2012

In afternoon —mizzling weather —to Abel Hosmer Woods. 

A yellowbird’s nest on a willow bough against a twig, ten feet high, four eggs. 

I have heard no musical gurgle-ee from blackbirds for a fortnight. They are now busy breeding.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 7, 1855

A yellowbird’s nest. See May 31, 1855 ("See a yellowbird building a nest on a white oak on the Island. She goes to a fern for the wool."); May 31, 1858 ("A yellowbird’s nest of that grayish milkweed fibre, one egg, in alder by wall west of Indian burying-ground."); June 5, 1859 ("A yellowbird's nest; four eggs, developed."); June 9, 1856 ("A yellowbird’s nest in a poplar on Hubbard’s Bridge causeway; four fresh eggs; ten feet high, three rods beyond fence."); June 9, 1855 ("A yellowbird’s nest eight feet from ground in crotch of a very slender maple.“); June 19, 1855 ("A yellowbird’s nest saddled on a horizontal (or slanting down amid twigs) branch of a swamp white oak, within reach, six feet high, of fern down and lint; a sharp cone bottom; four eggs, just laid, pale flesh-color with brown spots; have one."); June 20, 1855 ("A summer yellowbird’s, saddled on an apple, of cotton-wool, lined with hair and feathers, three eggs, white with flesh-colored tinge and purplish-brown and black spots.")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  the Summer Yellowbird

Gurgle-ee from blackbirds. See March 19, 1858 (" A new era has come. The red-wing's gurgle-ee is heard when smooth waters begin; they come together."); June 1, 1857 ("A red-wing's nest, four eggs, low in a tuft of sedge in an open meadow."); June 8, 1858 ("I see red-wing blackbirds hatched"); June 12, 1855 ("Young red-wings now begin to fly feebly amid the button-bushes, and the old ones chatter their anxiety. At mouth of Mill Brook, a red-wing’s nest tied on to that thick, high grass and some low willow, eighteen inches from ground, with four eggs variously marked, full of young.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Red-wing in Spring

June 7. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, June 7

A yellowbird’s nest

on a willow bough against

a twig – ten feet high.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A yellowbird’s nest, four eggs.

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 © 2009-2025