One song sparrow or two?

June 25.

An abundance of the handsome corn-cockle (Lychnis), apparently in prime, in midst of a rye-field, together with morning-glories by the Acushnet shore.

Black-grass in bloom, partly done. A kind of rush (?) with terete leaves and a long spike of flowers, one to two feet high, somewhat like a loose plantain spike. It inclines to grow in circles a foot or more in diameter. 

Seaside plantain and rosemary, not long out. Veronica arvensis one foot high (!) on the shore there. Spergularia rubra var. marina.

 P. M. —Called at Thomas A. Greene’s in New Bedford, said to be best acquainted with the botany of this vicinity (also acquainted with shells, and some-what with geology). In answer to my question what were the rare or peculiar plants thereabouts, he looked over his botany deliberately and named the Aletris farinosa, or star-grass; the Hydrocotyle vulgaris (probably interrupta of Gray), which he thought was now gone; Proserpinaca pectinacea, at the shallow pond in Westport where I went last fall with Ricketson; Panax trifolium. That chenopodium-like plant on the salt-marsh shore, with hastate leaves, mealy under sides, is Atriplex patula, not yet out. 


Brewer, in a communication to Audubon (as I read in his hundred(?)-dollar edition), makes two kinds of song sparrows, and says that Audubon has represented one, the most common about houses, with a spot in the centre of the breast, and Wilson the other, more universally spotted on the breast. The latter’s nest will be two feet high in a bush and sometimes covered over and with an arched entrance and with six eggs (while the other has not more than five), larger and less pointed than the former’s and apparently almost wholly rusty brown. This builds further from houses.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 25, 1856

July 25. See A Book of the Seasons,, by Henry Thoreau, June 25

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