A pack of partridges as big as robins

June 26. 

Friday. 

Stand over a bream's nest close to the shore at Hubbard's rear wood. At length she ventures back into it, after many approaches. The apparent young bream, hardly half an inch long, are hovering over it all the while in a little school, never offering to swim away from over that yellow spot; such is their instinct. The old one at length returns and takes up her watch beneath, but I notice no recognition of each other. 

The largest tupelo I remember in Concord is on the northerly edge of Staples's clearing. 

See a pack of partridges as big as robins at least. 

I must be near bobolinks' nests many times these days, — in E. Hosmer's meadow by the garlic and here in Charles Hubbard's, — but the birds are so overanxious, though you may be pretty far off, and so shy about visiting their nests while you are there, that you watch them in vain. The female flies close past and perches near you on a rock or stump and chirps whit tit, whit tit, whit it tit tit te incessantly. 

Some of the Salix Torreyana by railroad is cordate and some not. The sterile one there is not, nor those near it. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 26, 1857

A bream's nest close to the shore . . .See note to July 10, 1853 ("The bream poised over its sandy nest on waving fin - how aboriginal! So it has poised here and watched its ova before this New World was known to the Old.")


See a pack of partridges as big as robins at least. See June 23, 1854 ("Disturb three different broods of partridges in my walk this afternoon in different places. . . ."); June 27,1852 ("I meet the partridge with her brood in the woods, a perfect little hen. . . .”); June 27, 1860 ("See on the open grassy bank and shore, just this side the Hemlocks, a partridge with her little brood.”); July 1, 1860 (I see young partridges not bigger than robins fly three or four rods. . .”); July 5, 1856 ("Young partridges (with the old bird), as big as robins, make haste into the woods from off the railroad.")

I must be near bobolinks' nests . . . See July 2, 1855 ("Young bobolinks are now fluttering over the meadow, but I have not been able to find a nest ..")

The Salix Torreyana by railroad. See May 12, 1857  (" . . .how many species of willow have been planted along the railroad causeway within ten years, of which no one knows the history . . ")