A great flight of ephemera over the water.

June 8. 

We have had six days either rain-threatening or rainy, the last two somewhat rainy or mizzling. 

P. M. -— To Cedar Swamp.

Pulled up a yellow lily root, four feet long and branch ing, two and a half inches diameter and about same size at each end where it had broken off, tree-like. Broken off, it floats. Great white rootlets put out all along it. 

I find no Andromeda racemosa in flower. It is dead at top and slightly leafed below. Was it the severe winter, or cutting off the protecting evergreens? It grows four or five rods from knoll near a sawed stump between two large red maple clumps. 

The three-leaved Solomon’s-seal has almost entirely done, while the two leaved is quite abundant.

Stellaria longrfolia opposite Barbarea Shore not yet out. It is obviously different from what I call S. borealis, much more tall (one foot high) and upright, with branches ascending (not spreading) (the other grows in a dense mass at Corner Spring); leaves longer and more linear, and not at all ciliate like the other; stem much sharper-angled, almost winged; flower-buds more long and slender; and grows in high grass and is later. 

I observe in a mass of damp shavings and leaves and sand there, in the shade, a little prostrate willow just coming into flower, perhaps a black willow. Pulling it up, I find it to be a twig about sixteen inches long, two thirds buried in the damp mass. This was probably broken off by the ice, brought down, washed up, and buried like a layer there; and now, for two thirds its length, it has put out rootlets an inch or two long abundantly, and leaves and catkins from the part above ground. 

So vivacious is the willow, availing itself of every accident to spread along the river’s bank. The ice that strips it only disperses it the more widely. It never says die. May I be as vivacious as a willow.

Some species are so brittle at the base of the twigs that they break on the least touch, but they are as tough above as tender at base, and these twigs are only thus shed like seeds which float away and plant themselves in the first bank on which they lodge. I commonly litter my boat with a shower of these black willow twigs whenever I run into them. 

A kingbird’s nest on a black cherry, above Barbarea Shore. loosely constructed, with some long white rags dangling; one egg. 

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. It appeared to have a black crown with some crest, yellowish (?) bill, gray-brown back, black tail, two faint whitish bars on wings, a dirty cream-white throat, and a gray or ash white breast and beneath, whitest in middle.

I had noticed when coming up the river two or three dead suckers, one with a remarkable redness about the anal fins; and this reminded me of the ephemera. It was the 2d of June, 1854, that I observed them in such numbers. 

When I returned to my boat, about five, the weather being mizzling enough to require an umbrella, with an easterly wind-and dark for the hour, my boat being by chance at the same place where it was in ’54, I noticed a great flight of ephemera over the water, though not so great as that. 

The greater part were flying down-stream against the wind, but if you watched one long enough you would see him suddenly turn at length and fly swiftly back up the stream. They advanced against the wind faster than I floated along. They were not coupled nor coupling, — I only noticed two coupled, — but flew, most of them, with their bodies curved, and from time to time each one descended to the water and touched it, or rested on it a second or two, sometimes several minutes. They were generally able to rise, but very often before it arose, or not being able to rise, it was seized by a fish. While some are flying down they are met by others coming up. The water was dimpled with the leaping fish. They reach about ten or fifteen feet high over the water, and I also saw a stream of them about as thick over a narrow meadow a dozen rods from the water in the woods. The weather was evidently unfavorable, what with the wind and the rain, and they were more or less confined to the shore, hovering high over the bushes and trees, where the wind was strong over the river. I had not noticed any on leaves.

At one place, against Dodge’s Brook, where they were driven back by a strong head wind at a bend, more than usual were wrecked on the water and the fishes were leaping more numerously than elsewhere. The river was quite alive with them, and I had not thought there were so many in it, — great black heads and tails continually thrust up on all sides of my boat. You had only to keep your eye on a floating fly a minute to see some fishy monster rise and swallow it with more or less skill and plashing. Some skillfully seized their prey without much plashing, rising in a low curve and just showing their backs; others rose up perpendicularly, half their length out of water, showing their black backs or white bellies or gleaming sides; others made a noisy rush at their prey and leaped entirely out of water, falling with a loud plash. You saw twenty black points at once. They seemed to be suckers; large fish, at any rate, and probably various kinds. What a sudden surfeit the fishes must have! 

They are of various sizes, but generally their solid bodies about three quarters of an inch long or less, yellowish tinge, transparent, with rows of brown spots; wings gauze-like, with a few opaque brown spots.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  June 8, 1856

Stellaria longrfolia opposite Barbarea Shore not yet out. It is obviously different from what I call S. borealis . . . See May 15, 1856 ("Just on the brink of this Heywood Spring, I find what may be the Stellaria borealis (if it is not the longifolia)”)

I find no Andromeda racemosa in flower. See April 24, 1854 ("New plant (Racemed andromeda) flower-budded at Cedar Swamp . . . — upright dense racemes of reddish flower-buds on reddish terminal shoots.”)

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. . . . See June 5, 1856. ("The Muscicapa Cooperi sings pe pe pe’, sitting on the top of a pine . . .”); 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. As near as I could see it had a white throat, was whitish, streaked with dark, beneath, darker tail and wings, and maybe olivaceous shoulders; bright yellow within bill. Probably M. Cooperi.”). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Olive-sided flycatcher or pe-pe

. . .by chance at the same place where it was in ’54, I noticed a great flight of ephemera over the water . . . See June 2,1854 ( "the whole atmosphere over the river was full of shad-flies.")

June 8. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 8

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

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