At Natural History Rooms, Boston.

January 15.

January 15, 2018

At Natural History Rooms, Boston. 

Looked at the little grebe. Its feet are not webbed with lobes on the side like the coot, and it is quite white beneath. 

Saw the good-sized duck—velvet duck, with white spot on wing — which is commonly called “coot” on salt water. 

They have a living young bald eagle in the cellar. 

Talked with Dr. Kneeland. They have a golden eagle from Lexington, which K. obtained two or three years since, the first Dr. Cabot has heard of in Massachusetts. 

Speaking to him of my night warbler, he asked if it uttered such a note, making the note of the myrtle-bird, ah, te-te-te te-te-te te-te-te, exactly, and said that that was the note of the white throated sparrow, which he heard at Lake Superior, at night as well as by day. Vide his report, July 15, 1857. 

Same afternoon, saw Dr. Durkee in Howard Street. He has not seen the common glow-worm, and called his a variety of Lampyris noctiluca. Showed to Agassiz, Gould, and Jackson, and it was new to them. They thought it a variety of the above. His were luminous throughout, mine only in part of each segment. 

Saw some beautiful painted leaves in a shop window, - maple and oak.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 15, 1858

Looked at the little grebe. Its feet are not webbed with lobes on the side like the coot, and it is quite white beneath. See note to December 26, 1857 ("The little dipper must, therefore, be different from a coot. Is it not a grebe?”) Also November 27, 1857 (“Mr. Wesson . . . appears not to know a coot, and did not recognize the lobed feet when I drew them.”); April 24, 1856 (“Goodwin shot, about 6 P. M., and brought to me a cinereous coot . . .Lobes chiefly on the inner side of the toes.”); June 17, 1856 (“Went to Rev. Horace James’s reptiles (Orthodox). He had, set up, . . .a large lobe-footed bird which I think must have been a large grebe, killed in Fitchburg. ”);  December 26, 1853 ("Saw in it a small diver, probably a grebe or dobchick, dipper, or what-not, with the markings, as far as I saw, of the crested grebe, but smaller. It had a black head, a white ring about its neck, a white breast, black back, and apparently no tail.”)


Speaking to him of my night warbler. According to Emerson,  the night warbler is "a bird he had never identified, had been in search of twelve years, which always, when he saw it, was in the act of diving down into a tree or bush.” See May 9, 1852 “Heard the night warbler.”); May 9, 1853 ("Again I think I heard the night-warbler.”); May 10, 1854("Heard the night-warbler. “); May 28, 1854 ("The night-warbler, after his strain, drops down almost perpendicularly into a tree-top and is lost.”); May 19, 1858 ("Heard the night-warbler begin his strain just like an oven-bird! I have noticed that when it drops down into the woods it darts suddenly one side to a perch when low.” See also May 12, 1855 (“We sit about half an hour, and it is surprising what various distinct sounds we hear there deep in the wood, as if the aisles of the wood were so many ear trumpets,-- the cawing of crows, the peeping of hylas in the swamp and perhaps the croaking of a tree-toad, the oven-bird, the yorrick of Wilson’s thrush, a distant stake-driver, the night-warbler and black and white creeper, the lowing of cows, the late supper horn, the voices of boys, the singing of girls, -- not all together but separately, distinctly, and musically, from where the partridge and the red-tailed hawk and the screech owl sit on their nests.”)

His glowworms were luminous throughout, mine only in part of each segment. See September 16, 1857 (“Watson gave me three glow-worms which he found by the roadside in Lincoln last night. They exhibit a greenish light, only under the caudal extremity, and intermittingly, or at will. As often as I touch one in a dark morning, it stretches and shows its light for a moment, only under the last segment.”) Also August 8, 1857 (“B. M. Watson sent me from Plymouth, July 20th, six glow-worms, . . . Knapp, in “Journal of a Naturalist,” speaks of “the luminous caudal spot” of the Lampyris noctiluca")