Looked at the birds in the Natural History Rooms in Boston.

July 2. 

July 2, 2016

Return to Concord. Looked at the birds in the Natural History Rooms in Boston. 

Observed no white spots on the sparrow hawk’s wing, or on the pigeon or sharp-shinned hawk’s. Indeed they were so closed that I could not have seen them. Am uncertain to which my wing belongs. 

May I not have seen the white-crowned sparrow in company with the white-throated? They are much alike. Yet Wilson says they rarely associate. 

Hemlock Warbler

Pine Warbler

The hemlock and pine warbler are much alike. Is it possible I have confounded them?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 2, 1856

Am uncertain to which my wing belongs. See May 24, 1856 ("Pratt gave me the wing of a sparrow (?) hawk which he shot some months ago. . . .It must be a sparrow hawk, according to Wilson and Nuttall, for the inner vanes of the primaries and secondaries are thickly spotted with brownish white.”) See also May 4, 1855 (“I think that what I have called the sparrow hawk falsely, and latterly pigeon hawk, is also the sharp-shinned (vide April 26th and May 8th, 1854, and April 16th, 1855), for the pigeon hawk’s tail is white-barred.”); April 16, 1855 ( "What I call a pigeon hawk, probably sharp-shinned.”)   See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the sharp-shinned hawk.

Pine warbler.  See April 16, 1856 I(“See a pine warbler, much less yellow than the last. . . . “); April 9, 1856 ("Its bright yellow or golden throat and breast, etc., are conspicuous at this season.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, the Pine Warbler.