P. M. -- To owl’s nest.
A remarkably strong wind from the southwest all day, racking the trees very much and filling the air with dust. I do not remember such violent and incessant gusts at this season. Many eggs, if not young, must have been shaken out of birds’ nests, for I hear of some fallen. It is almost impossible to hear birds— or to keep your hat on. The waves are like those of March.
June 10, 2016
That common grass (June-grass), which was in blossom a fortnight since, and still on our bank, began a week ago to turn white here and there, killed by worms.
Veronica scutellata, apparently a day or two.
Iris versicolor, also a day or two.
A red maple leaf with those crimson spots.
clintonia borealis June 1, 2017
(avesong)
Clintonia, apparently four or five days (not out at Hubbard’s Close the 4th).
A catbird’s nest of usual construction, one egg, two feet high on a swamp-pink; an old nest of same near by on same.
Some Viola cucullata are now nine inches high, and leaves nearly two inches wide.
Iris versicolor . . . a day or two. See June 6, 1857 ("Early iris.") ; June 10, 1858 ("Common blue flag, how long? "): June 12, 1852 ("The blue flag (Iris versicolor). Its buds are a dark indigo-blue tip beyond the green calyx. It is rich but hardly delicate and simple enough; a very handsome sword-shaped leaf . . .The blue flag, notwithstanding its rich furniture, its fringed recurved parasols over its anthers, and its variously streaked and colored petals, is loose and coarse in its habit."); June 15, 1859 ("Blue flag abundant."); June 30,1851 ("The blue flag (Iris versicolor) enlivens the meadow. "); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Flag Iris (Versicolor)
A catbird’s nest of usual construction, one egg, two feet high on a swamp-pink; an old nest of same near by on same.
Some Viola cucullata are now nine inches high, and leaves nearly two inches wide.
,Archangelica staminiferous umbellets, say yesterday, but some, apparently only pistilliferous ones, look some days at least older; seed-vessel pretty large.
Oven-bird’s nest with four eggs two thirds hatched, under dry leaves, composed of pine-needles and dry leaves and a hair or two for lining, about six feet south west of a white oak which is six rods southwest of the hawk pine.
The young owls are gone.
The Kalmia glauca is done before the lambkill is begun here; apparently was done some days ago. A very few rhodoras linger.
Nest of the Muscicapa Cooperi, or pe pe, on a white spruce in the Holden Swamp, about fifteen feet high, on a small branch near the top, of a few twigs and pine-needles, and an abundance of usnea mainly composing and lining and overflowing from it, very open beneath and carelessly built, with a small concavity; with three eggs pretty fresh, but apparently all told, cream-color before blowing, with a circle of brown spots about larger end.
The female looked darker beneath than a kingbird and uttered that clear plaintive till tilt, like a robin somewhat, sitting on a spruce.
C. finds an egg to-day, somewhat like a song sparrow’s, but a little longer and slenderer, or with less difference between the ends in form, and more finely and regularly spotted all over with pale brown. -It was in a pensile nest of grape-vine bark, on the low branch of a maple. Probably a cowbird’s; fresh-laid.
He has found in nests of grass in thick bushes near river what he thought red-wing’s eggs, but they are pale-blue with large black blotches — one with a very I large black spot on one side. Can they be bobolinks? or what? Probably red-wings.
My partridge still sits on seven eggs.
The black spruce which I plucked on the 2d expanded a loose, rather light brown cone on the 5th, say. Can that be the pistillate flower? The white spruce cones are now a rich dark purple, more than a half inch long.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 10, 1855
The young owls are gone.
The Kalmia glauca is done before the lambkill is begun here; apparently was done some days ago. A very few rhodoras linger.
Nest of the Muscicapa Cooperi, or pe pe, on a white spruce in the Holden Swamp, about fifteen feet high, on a small branch near the top, of a few twigs and pine-needles, and an abundance of usnea mainly composing and lining and overflowing from it, very open beneath and carelessly built, with a small concavity; with three eggs pretty fresh, but apparently all told, cream-color before blowing, with a circle of brown spots about larger end.
The female looked darker beneath than a kingbird and uttered that clear plaintive till tilt, like a robin somewhat, sitting on a spruce.
C. finds an egg to-day, somewhat like a song sparrow’s, but a little longer and slenderer, or with less difference between the ends in form, and more finely and regularly spotted all over with pale brown. -It was in a pensile nest of grape-vine bark, on the low branch of a maple. Probably a cowbird’s; fresh-laid.
He has found in nests of grass in thick bushes near river what he thought red-wing’s eggs, but they are pale-blue with large black blotches — one with a very I large black spot on one side. Can they be bobolinks? or what? Probably red-wings.
My partridge still sits on seven eggs.
The black spruce which I plucked on the 2d expanded a loose, rather light brown cone on the 5th, say. Can that be the pistillate flower? The white spruce cones are now a rich dark purple, more than a half inch long.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 10, 1855
A remarkably strong wind from the southwest all day, racking the trees. . . It is almost impossible to hear birds. See June 1, 1855 ("A very windy day, the third, drowning the notes of birds."); June 2, 1855 ("Still windier than before . . .The wind shakes the house night "); June 20, 1855 ("A robin's nest with young, which was lately, in the great wind, blown down and somehow lodged on the lower part of an evergreen by arbor, without spilling the young!")
That common grass (June-grass), which was in blossom a fortnight since, and still on our bank, began a week ago to turn white here and there, killed by worms. See May 30, 1860 ("I observed that some of the June-grass was white and withered, being eaten off by a worm several days ago, or considerably before it blossoms. June-grass fills the field south of Ed. Hosmer’s ledge by the road, and gives it now a very conspicuous and agreeable brown or ruddy(?)-brown color,. . with a slightly undulating surface, like a mantle, is a very agreeable phenomenon of the season. The brown panicles of the June-grass now paint some fields with the color of early summer."); June 11, 1853 ("The upland fields are already less green where the June-grass is ripening its seeds.")
Iris versicolor . . . a day or two. See June 6, 1857 ("Early iris.") ; June 10, 1858 ("Common blue flag, how long? "): June 12, 1852 ("The blue flag (Iris versicolor). Its buds are a dark indigo-blue tip beyond the green calyx. It is rich but hardly delicate and simple enough; a very handsome sword-shaped leaf . . .The blue flag, notwithstanding its rich furniture, its fringed recurved parasols over its anthers, and its variously streaked and colored petals, is loose and coarse in its habit."); June 15, 1859 ("Blue flag abundant."); June 30,1851 ("The blue flag (Iris versicolor) enlivens the meadow. "); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Flag Iris (Versicolor)
Clintonia, apparently four or five days. See June 2, 1853 ("Clintonia borealis, a day or two. This is perhaps the most interesting and neatest of what I may call the liliaceous (?) plants we have. Its beauty at present consists chiefly in its commonly three very handsome, rich, clear dark-green leaves . . . arching over from a centre at the ground, sometimes very symmetrically disposed in a triangular fashion; and from their midst rises the scape [ a ] foot high, with one or more umbels of “green bell - shaped flowers,” yellowish-green, nodding or bent downward"); June 4, 1853 ("The clintonia is abundant there along by the foot of the hill, and in its prime."); June 12, 1852 ("Clintonia borealis amid the Solomon's-seals in Hubbard's Grove Swamp. ")
A catbird’s nest of usual construction, one egg, two feet high on a swamp-pink; an old nest of same near by on same. See June 6, 1855 ("Two
catbirds’ nests in the thickest part of the thicket on the edge of
Wheeler’s meadow near Island. One. . .composed of dead twigs and a
little stubble, then grape vine bark, and is lined with dark
root-fibres."); June 6, 1855 ("Another . . . has some dry leaves with the twigs, and one egg,—about six feet high."); June 8, 1855 ("A catbird’s nest on the peninsula of Goose Pond. . . as usual of sticks, dry leaves, and bark lined with roots."); June 9, 1855 ("A catbird’s nest, three eggs, in a high blueberry, four feet from ground, with rather more dry leaves than usual"); June 9, 1855 ("Catbird’s nest, one egg, on a blueberry bush, three feet from ground, of (as usual) sticks, leaves, bark, roots. "); June 12, 1855 ("In a hedge thicket by meadow near Peter’s Path, a catbird’s nest, one egg; as usual in a high blueberry, in the thickest and darkest of the hedge, and very loosely built beneath on joggle-sticks"); June 12, 1855 ("Catbird's nest with four eggs in a swamp-pink, three and a half feet up.") See Also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Catbird nests
Oven-bird’s nest with four eggs. . . See Early June, 1850; (". Who taught the oven-bird to conceal her nest ? It is on the ground, yet out of sight.Only the escape of the bird betrays it.")June 1, 1853 ("Eggs in oven- bird's nest.”); June 18, 1854 (Observe in two places golden-crowned thrushes, near whose nests I must have been, hopping on the lower branches and in the underwood, — a somewhat sparrow-like bird, with its golden-brown crest and white circle about eye, carrying the tail somewhat like a wren, and inclined to run along the branches.”); July 3, 1853 ("The oven-bird's nest in Laurel Glen is near the edge of an open pine wood, under a fallen pine twig and a heap of dry oak leaves. Within these, on the ground, is the nest, with a dome-like top and an arched entrance of the whole height and width on one side. Lined within with dry pine-needles.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Oven-bird
The Kalmia glauca is done before the lambkill is begun here . . . A very few rhodoras linger. See May 23, 1857 ("Kalmia glauca yesterday. Rhodora, on shore there, a little before it."); May 26, 1855 ("To my surprise the Kalmia glauca almost all out; perhaps began with rhodora. A very fine flower, the more interesting for being early."); May 26, 1855 ("The lambkill is just beginning to be flower-budded"); June 9, 1855 ("Lambkill out"); June 13, 1852 ("Lambkill is out. I remember with what delight I used to discover this flower in dewy mornings."); June 13, 1854 ("How beautiful the solid cylinders of the lamb-kill now just before sunset, ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia)
Nest of the Muscicapa Cooperi, or pe pe, on a white spruce in the Holden Swamp .See May 15, 1855 ("I hear from the top of a pitch pine in the swamp that loud, clear, familiar whistle . . . I saw it dart out once, catch an insect, and return to its perch muscicapa-like..”).June 5, 1856 ("The Muscicapa Cooperi sings pe pe pe’, sitting on the top of a pine.”); June 8, 1856 ("At Cedar Swamp, saw the pe-pe catching flies like a wood pewee, darting from its perch on a dead cedar twig from time to time and returning to it.“); . June 20, 1858 ("I wade about Holden Swamp, looking for birds’ nests. The spruce there are too thin-foliaged for nests, though I hear a pepe expressing anxiety") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Olive-sided flycatcher or pe-pe
My partridge still sits on seven eggs. See May 12, 1855 ("I find the partridge-nest of the 7th partially covered with dry oak leaves, and two more eggs only, three in all, cold. Probably the bird is killed."); May 26, 1855 ("The partridge which on the 12th had left three cold eggs covered up with oak leaves is now sitting on eight.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge
June 10. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 10
June 10. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 10
A strong wind all day
impossible to hear birds
or keep your hat on.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A strong wind all day."A book, each page written in its own season,out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025
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