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| May 28, 2018 |
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| May 28, 2018 |
Hear the wood pewee.
P. M. — By boat to Great Meadows to look for the bittern's nest.
The Cornus florida involucres are partly expanded, but not yet very showy.
Salix nigra apparently one day in one place.
The Salix pedicellaris, which abounds in the Great Meadows, is a peculiar and rather interesting willow, some fifteen inches high and scarcely rising above the grass even now. With its expanded reddish ovaries, it looks like the choke-berry in bud at a little distance.
The Ranunculus Purshii is now abundant and conspicuous in river.
I see common in these meadows what appears to be that coarse grass growing in circles, light or yellowish green, with dense wool-grass-like heads and almost black involucres, just begun to bloom. Is it the Scirpus sylvaticus var. atrovirens? (Vide pressed.) As I look far over the meadow, which is very wet, — often a foot of water amid the grass, – I see this yellowish green interspersed with irregular dark-green patches where it is wettest, just like the shadow of a cloud, – and mistook it for that at first. That was a dark-green and fine kind of sedge. These various shades of grass remind me of June, now close at hand.
From time to time I hear the sound of the bittern, concealed in the grass, indefinitely far or near, and can only guess at the direction, not the distance. I fail to find the nest.
I come, in the midst of the meadow, on two of the Emys meleagris, much larger than I have found before. Perhaps they are male and female, the one's sternum being decidedly depressed an eighth of an inch, the other's not at all. They are just out of the water, partly concealed by some withered grass, and hiss loudly and run out their long necks very far and struggle a good deal when caught. They continue to scratch my hand in their efforts to escape as I carry them, more than other turtles do.
The dorsal shield of each is just seven inches long; the sternum of what appears to be the female is about an eighth inch shorter, of the male near a quarter of an inch longer, yet in both the projection of the sternum is chiefly forward. Breadth of shell in the male four and seven eighths, of female four and a half, in middle, but the female widens a little behind. Height of each about two and three quarters inches.
The smoothish dark-brown shells, high, regularly rounded, are very thickly but not conspicuously spotted (unless in water) with small oval or elongated yellow spots, as many as fifty or sixty to a scale, and more or less raying from the origin of the scale, becoming larger and horn-colored on the marginal scales especially of one. The thickly and evenly distributed yellow marks of the head and neck correspond to those of the shell pretty well.
They are high-backed turtles. The sternum is horn-color, with a large dark or blackish spot occupying a third or more of the rear outer angle of each scale. The throat is clear light-yellow and much and frequently exposed. Tail, tapering and sharp. The claws are quite sharp and perfect. One closes its forward valve to within an eighth of an inch, but the posterior not so much, and evidently they are not inclined to shut up close, if indeed they can at this season, or at all. The sternum of the male, notwithstanding the depression, curves upward at each extremity much more than the female's.
They run out their heads remarkably far and have quite a harmless and helpless expression, yet, from the visible length of neck, the more snake-like. About the size of the wood tortoise. Very regularly and smoothly rounded shells. Voided many fragments of common snail-shells and some insect exuviae.
Hear for a long time, as I sit under a willow, a summer yellowbird sing, without knowing what it is. It is a rich and varied singer with but few notes to remind me of its common one, continually hopping about.
See already one or two (?) white maple keys on the water.
Saw the mouse-ear going to seed in Worcester the 23d.
The red actaea is fully expanded and probably has been open two or three days, but there will be no pollen till to-morrow.
What kind of cherry tree is that, now rather past prime, wild-red-cherry-like, if not it, between the actaea and river near wall? Some ten inches in diameter.
Hear the night hawk? and see a bat to-night.
The earliest cinnamon fern, apparently not long.
E. Hoar finds the Eriophorum vaginatum at Ledum Swamp, with lead-colored scales; how long?
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 28, 1858
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| May 28, ,2018 |
These various shades of grass remind me of June. See May 27, 1855 ("The fields now begin to wear the aspect of June, their grass just beginning to wave;. . . ”); May 27, 1853 ("A new season has commenced - summer - leafy June.”)
Two of the Emys meleagris, much larger than I have found before. See March 20, 1857 (“[Agassiz says t]he Cistuda Blandingii (which he has heard of in Massachusetts only at Lancaster) copulates at eight or nine years of age. He says this is not a Cistuda but an Emys.”); July 20 1857 (“De Kay does not describe the Cistuda Blandingii as found in New York. ”)
See already one or two white maple keys on the water. See May 29, 1854 (“The white maple keys have begun to fall and float down the stream like the wings of great insects.”); May 30, 1853 ("The white maple keys falling and covering the river.");
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
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