Two woodcocks in the shady alder marsh at Well Meadow go off with a whistling flight.

July 15. 

July 15, 2017

Tephrosia is generally considerably past its prime. 

Vaccinium vacillans berries. 

Scare up a snipe (?) by riverside, which goes off with a dry crack, and afterward two woodcocks in the shady alder marsh at Well Meadow, which go off with a whistling flight. 

Rhus glabra under Cliffs, not yet. 

When I entered the woods there, I was at once pursued by a swarm of those wood flies which gyrate around your head and strike your hat like rain-drops. As usual, they kept up with me as I walked, and gyrated about me still, as if I were stationary, advancing at the same time and receiving reinforcements from time to time. Though I switched them smartly for half a mile with some indigo-weed, they did not mind it in the least, nor a better switch of Salix tristis; but though I knocked down many of them, they soon picked them selves up and came on again. 

They had a large black spot on their wings and some yellowish rings about their abdomens. They keep up a smart buzzing all the while. When I descended into the swamp at Well Meadow, they deserted me, but soon pursued me again when I came out. 

Apparently the same swarm followed me quite through the wood (with this exception), or for two miles, and they did not leave me till I had got some twenty rods from the woods toward Hayden's. They did not once sting, though they endeavored sometimes to alight on my face. What they got by their perseverance I do not know, — unless it were a switching.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 15, 1857

Scare up a snipe (?) by riverside, which goes off with a dry crack, and afterward two woodcocks in the shady alder marsh at Well Meadow, which go off with a whistling flight. See July 3, 1856 ("I scare up one or two woodcocks in different places by the shore, where they are feeding, and in a meadow. They go off with a whistling flight. Can see where their bills have probed the mud. ") July 11, 1856 (“I scare up several apparent snipes (?), which go off with a crack. They are rather heavy-looking, like woodcocks. ”):  July 13, 1852 ("Each day now I scare up woodcocks by shady springs and swamps.");  July 18, 1856 (“Again scare up a woodcock, apparently seated or sheltered in shadow of ferns in the meadow on the cool mud in the hot afternoon. ”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau: the Snipe; A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The American Woodcock

Rhus glabra under Cliffs, not yet. See  July 12, 1856 (“Smooth sumach, apparently yesterday.”): July 24, 1852 (“The smooth sumach berries are red. ”): July 31,1856 (“The smooth sumach is pretty generally crimson-berried on the Knoll . . .”)

July 15. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau July 15

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