At the railroad meadow this side the Brooks Crossing.

July 5. 

A. M. — To Loring’s Pond. 

July 5. 

Pink-colored yarrow.

Epilobium coloratum, a day or more. 

Young partridges (with the old bird), as big as robins, make haste into the woods from off the railroad. 

Plucked some large luscious purple pyrus berries. Lactuca some days out. 

Borrowed Witherell’s boat and paddled over Loring’s Pond. A kingbird’s nest in fork of a buttonbush five feet high on shore (not saddled on); three young just hatched and one egg. 

Much of this pond is now very shallow and muddy and crowded with pads, etc. I can hardly push through them. Yet I can see no more white lily pads shaped as that appears to have been which I found here a few weeks since. 

Many pickerel dart away from amidst the pads, and in one place I see one or two great snap-turtles. 

I notice two varieties (?), perhaps, of Asclepias Cornuti now out, one on the railroad meadow this side the Brooks Crossing, the other beyond the first mile-post above. The last has broader leaves and blunter and more decidedly mucronate, and pedicels and peduncles quite downy, the former little more than twice the length of the petals. The other has narrower and more pointed leaves, peduncles and pedicels but little downy comparatively, the latter more than three times the length of the petals and not so numerous as in the other. Vide their pods, if spiny, by and by. 

The Spergularia rubra was not open in the morning when I passed up, at 8 or 9 A. M., but was opened when I returned at noon, but closed again at 5 P. M.

The notes of barn swallows, perhaps with their young, are particularly loud now and almost metallic, like that of a mackerel gull. 

The large evening-primrose below the foot of our garden does not open till some time between 6.30 and 8 P. M. or sundown. It was not open when I went to bathe, but freshly out in the cool of the evening at sun down, as if enjoying the serenity of the hour.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 5, 1856


Young partridges (with the old bird), as big as robins, make haste . . . See July 5, 1857 ("Partridges big as quails."); June 26, 1857( See a pack of partridges as big as robins at least.); July 1, 1860 (I see young partridges not bigger than robins . . .”) and note to August 24, 1855 ("Scare up a pack of grouse."). Also  A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge.

A kingbird’s nest in fork of a buttonbush five feet high. See July 9, 1859 ("See young kingbirds which have lately flown perched in a family on the willows, — the airy bird, lively, twittering"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Kingbird

Pink-colored yarrow. See August 27, 1859 ("I often see yarrow with a delicate pink tint, very distinct from the common pure-white ones. ")