A wood frog in hand.

September 12. 

Saturday. P. M. – To Owl Swamp (Farmer's).

In an open part of the swamp, started a very large wood frog, which gave one leap and squatted still. I put down my finger, and, though it shrank a little at first, it permitted me to stroke it as long as I pleased. Having passed, it occurred to me to return and cultivate its acquaintance. To my surprise, it allowed me to slide my hand under it and lift it up, while it squatted cold and moist on the middle of my palm, panting naturally. I brought it close to my eye and examined it. 

It was very beautiful seen thus nearly, not the dull dead-leaf color which I had imagined, but its back was like burnished bronze armor defined by a varied line on each side, where, as it seemed, the plates of armor united. It had four or five dusky bars which matched exactly when the legs were folded, showing that the painter applied his brush to the animal when in that position, and reddish-orange soles to its delicate feet. There was a conspicuous dark-brown patch along the side of the head, whose upper edge passed directly through the eye horizontally, just above its centre, so that the pupil and all below were dark and the upper portion of the iris golden. 

September 17, 2023

(avesong)

I have since taken up another in the same way.[Indeed they can generally be treated so. Some are reddish, as burnished copper.] 

Round-leaved cornel berries nearly all fallen.

Crossing east through the spruce swamp, I think that I saw a female redstart. 

What is that running herbaceous vine which forms a dense green mat a rod across at the bottom of the swamp northwest of Corallorhiza Rock? [It is chrysosplenium.] It is of the same form, stem and leaves, with the more brown hairy and woolly linnaea. It also grows in the swamp by the beech trees in Lincoln.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 12, 1857

To Owl Swamp (Farmer's). See June 24, 1857 ("Went to Farmer's Swamp to look for the owl's nest Farmer had found.")

Not the dull dead-leaf color which I had imagined, but its back was like burnished bronze armor . . . Compare May 27, 1852 ("Catch a wood frog (Rana sylvatica), the color of a dead leaf. He croaks as I hold him, perfectly frog-like.”)

I think that I saw a female redstart. See May 29, 1855 ("females of the redstart, described by Wilson, — very different from the full-plumaged black males"); April 11, 1853 ("Female dark ashy and fainter marks.") See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The American Redstart
"

Corallorhiza Rock.  See August 29, 1857 ("Nearby, north [of Indian Rock, west of the swamp], is a rocky ridge, on the east slope of which the Corallorhiza multiflora is very abundant.")