A walk on the beach

July 11. 

Bartramia longicauda

See young piping plover 

running in a troop on the beach 

like peetweets.

Patches of shrub oaks, bayberry, beach plum, and early wild roses, overrun with woodbine. What a splendid show of wild roses, whose sweetness is mingled with the aroma of the bayberry! 

A bar wholly made within three months; first exposed about first of May; as I paced, now seventy five rods long and six or eight rods wide at high water, and bay within six rods wide. The bay has extended twice as far, but is filled up. 

The upland plover hovers almost stationary in the air with a quivering note of alarm. Above, dark-brown interspersed with white, darkest in rear; gray-spotted breast, white beneath; bill dark above, yellowish at base beneath, and legs yellowish. 

Bank at lighthouse one hundred and seventy feet on the slope, perpendicular one hundred and ten; say shelf slopes four and ordinary tide-fall is nine, makes one hundred and twenty-three in all. Saw sand bank south fifteen to twenty-five feet higher. 

Mackerel-fishing not healthy like cod-fishing; hard work packing the mackerel, stooping over.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 11, 1855

Upland plover. "In Massachusetts, and to the eastward of that state, this species is best known by the name of 'Upland Plover,'”     ~ J. J. Audubon  [Bertram’s sandpiper (Bartramia longicauda),  now known as the Upland Sandpiper.]

July 11. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 11

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