 |
| June 10, 2016 |
Already the pads are much eaten before they are grown, and underneath, on the under side of almost every one, are the eggs of various species of insect, some so minute as to escape detection at first, in close, flat, straight-sided nests.
The yellow lily and kalmiana are abundantly out. The under sides of the pads, their stems, and the Ranunculus Purshii and other water-plants are thickly covered and defiled with the sloughs, perhaps of those little fuzzy gnats (in their first state) which have so swarmed over the river. It is quite difficult to clean your specimens of them.
P. M. — To Dugan Desert.
Cornus alternifolia a day or two, up railroad; maybe longer elsewhere.
Spergularia rubra by railroad, it having been dug up last year, and so delayed.
The cuckoo of June 5th has deserted her nest, and I find the fragments of egg-shells in it; probably because I found it.
Oxalis freshly out: how long? Apparently but two or three days.
I find some linnaea well out, after all, within a rod of the top of the hill, apparently two or three days. If it flowered more abundantly, probably it would be earlier.
Chewink’s nest with four young in the dry sprout-land of Loring’s thick wood that was, under a completely overarching tuft of dry sedge grass.
I hear the huckleberry-bird now add to its usual strain a-tea tea tea tea tea.
A painted tortoise laying her eggs ten feet from the wheel-track on the Marlborough road. She paused at first, but I sat down within two feet, and she soon resumed her work. Had excavated a hollow about five inches wide and six long in the moistened sand, and cautiously, with long intervals, she continued her work, resting always on the same spot her fore feet, and never looking round, her eye shut all but a narrow slit.
Whenever I moved, perhaps to brush off a mosquito, she paused. A wagon approached, rumbling afar off, and then there was a pause, till it had passed and long, long after, a tedious, naturlangsam pause of the slow-blooded creature, a sacrifice of time such as those animals are up to which slumber half a year and live for centuries.
It was twenty minutes before I discovered that she was not making the hole but filling it up slowly, having laid her eggs. She drew the moistened sand under herself, scraping it along from behind with both feet brought together, the claws turned inward. In the long pauses the ants troubled her (as mosquitoes me) by running over her eyes, which made her snap or dart out her head suddenly, striking the shell. She did not dance on the sand, nor finish covering the hollow quite so carefully as the one observed last year.
She went off suddenly (and quickly at first), with a slow but sure instinct through the wood toward the swamp.
The clustered blackberry of Dugan Desert not yet out, nor apparently for two or three days.
Sweet Viburnum apparently two or three days at most, by Warren Miles’s, Nut Meadow Pond.
In a hollow apple tree, hole eighteen inches deep, young pigeon woodpeckers, large and well feathered. They utter their squeaking hiss whenever I cover the hole with my hand, apparently taking it for the approach of the mother. A strong, rank fetid smell issues from the hole.
Ripe strawberries, even in a meadow on sand thrown out of a ditch, hard at first to detect amid the red radical leaves. The flower-buds of late there have now that rank smell.
Lambkill out, at Clamshell.
The Cratoegus Crus-Galli is out of bloom.
Arenaria serpyllifolia is out of bloom at Clamshell.
Side-flowering sandwort abundantly out this side of Dugan Spring.
Solanum well out, by Wood’s Bridge.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 10, 1856
The one [laying painted tortoise] observed last year. See June 18, 1855 ("after a slight pause it proceeds in its work, directly under and within eighteen inches of my face.”). See also June 10, 1858 (“See a painted turtle digging her nest in the road at 5.45 P. M.”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Painted Turtle (Emys Picta)
Sweet Viburnum apparently two or three days at most . . . See June 10, 1854 ("The Viburnum lentago is just out of bloom now that the V. nudum is fairly begun.”); June 10, 1857 (“At R.W.E.'s a viburnum, apparently nudum var. cassinoides (?)”)
Warren Miles's, Nut Meadow Pond . . . See May 7, 1856 ("The brook below is full of fishes,--suckers, pouts, eels, trouts,-- endeavoring to get up, but his dam prevents."); April 28, 1856 ("I began to survey the meadow there early, . . .but a great stream of water was already rushing down the brook, and it almost rose over our boots in the meadow before we had done.”); April 25, 1856 ("Warren Miles had caught three more snapping turtles since yesterday, at his mill, . . . These turtles have been disturbed or revealed by his operations.”); April 24 1856 (Warren Miles at his new mill tells me eels can’t get above his mill now, in the spring.”); February 28, 1856 ("Miles is repairing the damage done at his new mill by the dam giving way.”)
Lambkill out, at Clamshell. See June 9, 1855 ("Lambkill out."); June 10, 1855 ("The Kalmia glauca is done before the lambkill is begun here"); June 13, 1854 ("How beautiful the solid cylinders of the lamb-kill now just before sunset . . .”).
Ripe strawberries . . .amid the red radical leaves. See June 14, 1859 ("Early strawberries begin to be common. The lower leaves of the plant are red, concealing the fruit."); June 15, 1853 ("Strawberries in the meadow now ready for the picker. They lie deep at the roots of the grass in the shade. You spread aside the tall grass, and deep down in little cavities by the roots of the grass you find this rich fruit.”)
June 10. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 10
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
No comments:
Post a Comment