The low sand-downs between East Harbor head and sea are thinly covered with beach-grass, seaside goldenrod, and beach pea.
Fog wets your beard till twelve o’clock.
Long slender seaside plantain leaf at East Harbor head. Solanum (with white flowers) nigrum in marsh. Spergularia rubra var. marina.
Great many little shells by edge of marsh - Auricula bidentata and Succinea avara.
Great variety of beetles, dor-bugs, etc., on beach. I have one green shining one. Also butterflies over bank.
I was surprised to see great spider-holes in pure sand and gravel, with a firm edge, where man could not make a hole without the sand sliding in, —in tunnel form.
The upland plover begins with a quivering note somewhat like a tree-toad and ends with a long, clear, somewhat plaintive or melodious hawk-like scream. I never heard this very near to me, and when I asked the inhabitants about it they did not know what I meant.* It hovers on quivering wing, and alights by a steep dive.
My paper so damp in this house I can’t press flowers without mildew, nor dry my towel for a week.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 12, 1855
The upland plover
hovers on quivering wing,
alights by steep dive.
*Frank Forester, in “Manual for Young Sportsmen,” 1856, page 308, says,
“This bird has a soft plaintive call or whistle of two notes, which have something of a ventriloquial character and possess this peculiarity, that when uttered close to the ear, they appear to come from a distance, and when the bird is really two or three fields distant, sound as if near at hand.”
July 12. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 12
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 © 2009-2021
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