It costs so much to publish,

September 14.

P. M. — To Hubbard’s Close. 

I scare from an oak by the side of the Close a young hen-hawk, which, launching off with a scream and a heavy flight, alights on the topmost plume of a large pitch pine in the swamp northward, bending it down, with its back toward me, where it might be mistaken for a plume against the sky, the light makes all things so black. 

It has a red tail; black primaries; scapulars and wing-coverts gray-brown; back showing much white and whitish head. It keeps looking round, first this side then that, warily. 

I see no fringed gentian yet. 

It costs so much to publish, would it not be better for the author to put his manuscripts in a safe?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 14, 1855

A young hen-hawk. . . alights on the topmost plume of a large pitch pine in the swamp northward, bending it down . . See March 23, 1859 (“. . .we saw a hen-hawk perch on the topmost plume of one of the tall pines at the head of the meadow . . .")

What HDT calls the “hen-hawk” is the red-tailed hawk. ~ zphx

I see no fringed gentian yet.  See A Book of the Seasons: The Fringed Gentian