A rainbow in the west this morning.

June 30. 

June 30, 2018

Succory on the bank under my window, probably from flowers I have thrown out within a year or two. 

A rainbow in the west this morning. 

Hot weather.

H.  D. Thoreau, Journal, June 30, 1853

A rainbow in the west this morning. See June 25, 1852 (“Just as the sun rises this morning, under clouds, I see a rainbow in the west horizon, the lower parts quite bright.”)

Hot weather. See note to June 30, 1855 ("Thermometer north side of house, 95°")

June 30, 2018

Open to new impressions under water.

June 29. 

P. M. – To Walden. 

Bathing in the cove by railroad. When I hold my head near the surface and look down, in two or three feet of water, the bottom appears concave, just as the sky does. 

How interesting the water-target's slender gelatinous stem and leaves, reminding me of the plants in aquaria!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 29, 1858

Bathing in the cove by railroad. See July 17, 1860 ('The soft sand on the bottom of Walden, as deep as I can wade, feels very warm to my feet, while the water feels cold. ") and note to July 23, 1856 ("Bathing in Walden, I find the water considerably colder at the bottom while I stand up to my chin, but the sandy bottom much warmer to my feet than the water.")

Just as the sky appears concave. See June 3, 1850 ("The landscape is a vast amphitheatre rising to its rim in the horizon."): June 25, 1852 ("The earth appears like a vast saucer sloping upward to its sharp mountain rim.") ; March 28, 1858 (" On ascending the hill next his home, every man finds that he dwells in a shallow concavity whose sheltering walls are the convex surface of the earth, beyond which he cannot see..")

Fertile bayberry bushes fifteen rods east of yellow birch and six south of apple tree

June 28. 

P. M. — To broom. 

The erect potentilla is a distinct variety, with differently formed leaves as well as different time of flowering, and not the same plant at a different season. Have I treated it as such? 

The Genista tinctoria has been open apparently a week. It has a pretty and lively effect, reminding me for some reason of the poverty-grass. 

Mountain laurel on east side of the rocky Boulder Field wood is apparently in prime. 

I see in many places little barberry bushes just come up densely in the cow-dung, like young apple trees, the berries having been eaten by the cows. Here they find manure and an open space for the first year at least, when they are not choked by grass or weeds. In this way, evidently, many of these clumps of barberries are commenced. 

I notice that the ostrya, when growing in woods, has a remarkable spread for the size of its trunk, more than any tree, methinks. 

Cymbidium, how long? 

Epilobium coloratum, how long? 

We find in the Botrychium Swamp fine wiry asparagus plants, six inches high, with the seeds at bottom, apparently planted by birds, but no plants two years old. 

There are fertile bayberry bushes fifteen rods east of yellow birch and six south of apple tree.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 28, 1858

The erect potentilla is not the same plant at a different season. See  June 28, 1860 ("I meet to-day with a wood tortoise which is eating the leaves of the early potentilla") See also June 4, 1857 ("The early potentilla is now erect in the June grass."); June 4, 1855 (“There are now many potentillas ascendant.”); June 8, 1858 ("The early potentilla is now in some places erect."); and note to June 23, 1851 ("The common cinquefoil (Potentilla simplex) greets me with its simple and unobtrusive yellow flower in the grass.")

I see in many places little barberry bushes just come up densely in the cow-dung, like young apple trees, the berries having been eaten by the cows. See May 29, 1858 ("I mistook dense groves of little barberries in the droppings of cows in the Boulder Field for apple trees at first. So the cows eat barberries, and help disperse or disseminate them exactly as they do the apple! That helps account for the spread of the barberry, then."); August 6, 1858 ("I then looked for the little groves of barberries which some two months ago I saw in the cow-dung thereabouts, but to my surprise I found some only in one spot after a long search") See also November 3, 1857 ("I see on many rocks, etc., the seeds of the barberry, which have been voided by birds, – robins, no doubt, chiefly. How many they must thus scatter over the fields, spreading the barberry far and wide!"); February 4, 1856. ("It it now occurs to me that these and barberries, etc., may be planted by the crows, and probably other birds."). Also September 21, 1860 ("I suspect that such seeds as these will turn out to be more sought after by birds and quadrupeds, and so transported by them, than those lighter ones furnished with a pappus and transported by the wind; and that those the wind takes are less generally the food of birds and quadrupeds than the heavier and wingless seeds.")

Cymbidium, how long? See July 11, 1857 ("The cymbidium is really a splendid flower, with its spike two or three inches long, of commonly three or five large, irregular, concave, star-shaped purple flowers, amid the cool green meadow-grass. It has an agreeable fragrance withal")

Epilobium coloratum [eastern willow-herb], how long?  See July 5, 1856 ("Epilobium coloratum, a day or more."); July 28, 1852 ("Epilobium coloratum, roadside just this side of Dennis's. ")

Fertile bayberry bushes. See May 30, 1855 ("The myrica, bayberry, plucked on the 23d, now first sheds pollen in house, the leaf being but little more expanded on the flowering shoot."); June 2, 1856 ("Myrica cerifera, possibly yesterday. Very few buds shed pollen yet; more, probably, to-day."); June 12, 1857 ("Bayberry well out")

Two wood pewees’ nests

June 27. 

Sunday. P. M. — Up Assabet. 

Land at old mill-site and walk through the Lee Woods looking for birds' nests. 

See an Attacus luna in the shady path, smaller than I have seen before. At first it appears unable or unwilling to fly, but at length it flutters along and upward two or three rods into an oak tree, and there hangs inconspicuous amid the leaves. 

Find two wood pewees’ nests, made like the one I have. 

One on a dead horizontal limb of a small oak, fourteen feet from ground, just on a horizontal fork and looking as old as the limb, color of the branch, three eggs far advanced. 

The other, with two eggs, was in a similar position exactly over a fork, but on a living branch of a slender white oak, eighteen feet from ground; lichens without, then pine-needles, lined with usnea, willow down. Both nests three to five feet from main stem.

H.  D. Thoreau, Journal , June 27, 1858

See an Attacus luna in the shady path. See June 27, 1859 ("At the further Brister's Spring, under the pine, I find an Attacus luna") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Luna Moth (Attacus luna)

Two wood pewees’ nests, made like the one I have. See June 26, 1855 ("C. has found a wood pewee’s nest on a horizontal limb of a small swamp white oak, ten feet high, with three fresh eggs, cream-colored with spots of two shades in a ring about large end."); see also August 13, 1858 ("I come to get the now empty nests of the wood pewees found June 27th.)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Eastern Wood Pewee

The ground under the white pines is now strewn with the effete male flowers.

June 25

The ground under the

white pines is now strewn with the

effete male flowers.

June 25, 1858

P. M. — To Conantum. Hotter than yesterday and, like it, muggy or close.

June 25, 2018

So hazy can see no mountains. In many spots in the road and by edge of rye-fields the reflected heat is almost suffocating. 

93° at 1 P. M. 

At my perch pool I hear the pebbly sound of frogs, and some, perhaps below the middle size, hop in before I see them. I suspect that this sound is not made by the bullfrog, but by the fontinalis or palustris. 

In the meadow or partly included in the west end of Hubbard’s Grove, a smooth, rather flaccid rush with roundish spikes, say twenty inches high, apparently fresh, somewhat flava-like.

Sitting on the Conantum house sill (still left), I see two and perhaps three young striped squirrels, two thirds grown, within fifteen or twenty feet, one or more on the wall and another on the ground. Their tails are rather imperfect, as their bodies. They are running about, yet rather feebly, nibbling the grass, etc., or sitting upright, looking very cunning. The broad white line above and below the eye make it look very long as well as large, and the black and white stripes on its sides, curved as it sits, are very conspicuous and pretty. Who striped the squirrel's side? 

Several times I saw two approach each other and playfully and, as it were, affectionately put their paws and noses to each other's faces. Yet this was done very deliberately and affectionately. There was no rudeness nor excessive activity in their sport. At length the old one appears, larger and much more bluish, and shy, and, with a sharp cluck or chip, calls the others gradually to her and draws them off along the wall, they from time to time frisking ahead of her, then she ahead of them. 

The hawks must get many of these inexperienced creatures. 

The Rubus frondosus is hardly past prime, while the villosus is almost wholly done here.

Just south the wall at Bittern Cliff, the Panicum latifolium, hardly yet, with some leaves almost an inch and a half wide. 

We bathe at Bittern Cliff. The water is exceedingly warm near the surface, but refreshingly cold four or five feet beneath. There must be twenty degrees difference at least. 

The ground under the white pines is now strewn with the effete flowers, like an excrement.  

I notice an apparent female bullfrog, with a lustrous greenish (not yellow) throat.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 25, 1858

The ground under the white pines is now strewn with the effete flowers. See June 25, 1852 (" I am too late for the white pine flowers. The cones are half an inch long and greenish, and the male flowers effete."); June 25, 1857 ("White pine effete."); July 1, 1852 ("The path by the wood-side is red with the effete staminiferous flowers of the white pine.")

We bathe at Bittern Cliff. The water is exceedingly warm near the surface, but refreshingly cold four or five feet beneath. See July 9, 1852 ("The pond water being so warm made the water of the brook feel very cold;. . .and when I thrust my arm down where it was only two feet deep, my arm was in the warm water of the pond, but my hand in the cold water of the brook.”); July 23, 1856 ("Bathing in Walden, I find the water considerably colder at the bottom while I stand up to my chin, but the sandy bottom much warmer to my feet than the water.")

An apparent female bullfrog, with a lustrous greenish (not yellow) throat. See June 7, 1858 ("'Are not the females oftenest white-throated?")

July 25. See A Book of the Seasons,, by Henry Thoreau, June 25

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

A bobolink's egg.

June 24. 

Very hot weather. 

Aralia hispida at Cliffs. 

Epilobium, how long? 

Storrow Higginson gives me a bobolink's egg. It is a regular oval, seven eighths by five eighths inch. It is a dark cream-color with pretty large spots of brown, sometimes blackish, chiefly at the large end, and very faint, more internal pale-purplish spots equally dispersed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 24, 1858

A bobolink's egg. It is a dark cream-color with pretty large spots of brown, sometimes blackish. See June 12, 1857 (“ At Natural History Rooms. — The egg found on ground in R. W. E.'s garden some weeks since cannot be the bobolink's, for that is about as big as a bay-wing's but more slender, dusky-white, with numerous brown and black blotches.”)

With some boys to Flint's Pond, to see the nests

June 23. 

June 23, 2018

P. M. – With some boys to Flint's Pond, to see the nests mentioned on [June 19]. 

The hermit(?) thrush's nest referred to on last page is a rather shallow nest of loose construction, though sufficiently thick-bottomed, about five inches in diameter and hardly one deep within, externally of rather coarse and loosely arranged stubble, chiefly everlasting stems with the flowers yet emitting some fragrance, some whorled loosestrife with the seed-vessels, etc., etc.; within, finer grass and pine-needles. Yet the grass is as often bent angularly as curved regularly to form the nest. 

The tanager's nest of the 19th is four and a half to five inches wide and an inch or more deep, considerably open to look through; the outside, of many very slender twigs, apparently of hemlock, some umbelled pyrola with seed-vessels, everlasting, etc.; within, quite round and regular, of very slender or fine stems, apparently pinweed or the like, and pine needles; hardly any grass stubble about it. 

The egg is a regular oval nine tenths of an inch long by twenty seven fortieths, pale-blue, sprinkled with purplish brown spots, thickest on the larger end. To-day there are three rather fresh eggs in this nest. Neither going nor returning do we see anything of the tanager, and conclude it to be deserted, but perhaps she stays away from it long. 

That rather low wood along the path which runs parallel with the shore of Flint's Pond, behind the rock, is evidently a favorite place for veery-nests. I have seen three there. 

One lately emptied I got to day, amid the dry leaves by some withered ferns. It is composed externally of a mass of much withered oak leaves, thick and pretty well stuck together, plastered or stuck down over the rim, is five to six inches in diameter and four high, two and a half wide within, and very deep, more than two inches. Next to the leaves come bark-shreds, apparently maple bark, and the lining is of a little fine grass, pine-needles, apparently a little hypnum root-fibre. A very deep well-shaped and rounded cavity.

Saw another with two eggs in it, one a much lighter blue than the other. This was by the path leading toward the rock, amid some sprouts at the base of a sapling oak, elevated about six inches above the general level (the veery's). It was a deep, firm nest three quarters of an inch thick, outwardly oak and chestnut leaves, then rather coarse bark-shreds, maple or oak, lined with the same and a few dark root-fibers. 

What that empty nest partly of mud, with conspicuous saliva, on a middle-sized maple, against main stem, near wood thrush’s? 

In the case of the hermit (?) thrush, wood thrush, and tanager's, each about fourteen feet high in slender saplings, you had to climb an adjacent tree in order to reach them. 

A male redstart seen, and often heard. What a little fellow! 

Lysimachia quadrifolia, how long? and veiny-leaved hawkweed, how long? 

Get an egg out of a deserted bank swallow's nest, in a bank only about four feet high dug in the spring for a bank wall near Everett's. The nest is flattish and lined abundantly with the small, somewhat downy, naturally curved feathers of poultry. Egg pure white, long, oval, twenty-seven fortieths by eighteen fortieths of an inch. 

Take two eggs out of the oviduct of an E. insculpta, just run over in the road. They have lately cooked a snapping turtle at Mrs. Wetherbee's, eggs and all, and she thinks there were just forty-two of them!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 23, 1858



Veery nests. See June 2, 1852 (“Nest of Wilson's thrush with bluish-green eggs.”); June 18, 1858 ("A little boy brings me an egg of Wilson's thrush, which he found in a nest in a low bush about a foot from the ground.”); June 19, 1853 ("In the middle of the path to Wharf Rock at Flint's Pond, the nest of a Wilson's thrush, five or six inches high, between the green stems of three or four golden rods, made of dried grass or fibres of bark, with dry oak leaves attached loosely, making the whole nine or ten inches wide, to deceive the eye. Two blue eggs. Like an accidental heap. Who taught it to do thus?"); June 19, 1858 (“boys have found this forenoon at Flint’s Pond one or more veery-nests on the ground. ”)

WILSON'S THRUSH or VEERY, Turdus Wilson,The song of this species, although resembling that of the Wood Thrush in a great degree, is less powerful, and is composed of continued trills repeated with different variations, enunciated with great delicacy and mellowness, so as to be extremely pleasing to one listening to them in the dark solitudes where the sylvan songster resides. It now and then tunes its throat in the calm of evening, and is heard sometimes until after the day has closed. J.J. Audubon

The tanager's nest of the 19th ... To-day there are three rather fresh eggs. See June 19, 1858 ("Two fresh eggs in small white oak sapling, some fourteen feet from ground. They saw a tanager near. (I have one egg.) ")See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Scarlet Tanager

You had to climb an adjacent tree in order to reach them. See June 11, 1855("In order to get the deserted tanager’s nest at the top [of] a pitch pine which was too weak to climb, we carried a rope in our pockets and took three rails a quarter of a mile into the woods, and there rigged a derrick, by which I climbed to a level with the nest, . . . Tied the three tops together and spread the bottoms. “)

Veiny-leaved hawkweed, how long? See June 23, 1859 ("Veiny-leaved hawkweed freshly out."); See also August 21, 1851 (" I have now found all the hawkweeds. Singular these genera of plants, plants manifestly related yet distinct. They suggest a history to nature, a natural history in a new sense.”).

A male redstart seen, and often heard. What a little fellow! See June 23, 1855 ("Probably a redstart’s nest on a white oak sapling, twelve feet up, on forks against stem. Have it. See young redstarts about.”); May 29, 1855 ("females of the redstart, described by Wilson, — very different from the full-plumaged black males. ")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The American Redstart

Get an egg out of a deserted bank swallow's nest. See November 20, 1857 ("Some bank swallows’ nests are exposed by the caving of the bank at Clamshell. The very smallest hole is about two and a half inches wide horizontally, by barely one high. All are much wider than high (vertically). . . .The nest is a regular but shallow one made simply of stubble, about five inches in diameter, and three quarters of an inch deep. ")

Pine pollen adhering to the inside of the boat along the water-line

June 22. 

June 22, 2018

Edward Bartlett found what he calls two bobolinks’ nests some weeks ago, with each six eggs. I have one of the nests. There is but little of it, composed simply of some flexible grass without and finer within, kept in form by the thick tussock or tuft of meadow-grass at the bottom and in the midst of which it is placed. 

He shows me, also, one of three eggs found the 20th in Gourgas’s wood-lot, within a rod of the roadside, in a small slender oak (eighteen feet high), about fourteen feet from the ground, about fifteen rods north of Britton’s corner, in a grove, where two or three small branches left the main stem; eggs somewhat advanced. Says the bird was a thrush of some kind. The egg is one inch by five eighths, rather slender, faint-blue, and quite generally spotted with distinct rather reddish brown, inclining to small streaky blotches, though especially at the larger end; not pale-brown like that described [June 21]. Can it be the Turdus solitarias? I have the egg.

Mowing the June grass about our house a few days ago, I disturbed several toads squatted deep in the rankest grass near the house, and wounded one or two with the scythe. They appear to love such cool and shady retreats by day, hopping out at night and in the rain. 

I see in the river a little pickerel, not quite two inches long, which must have been hatched this year, and probably as early as the perch, since they have more to grow. 

I notice, after tipping the water out of my boat under the willows, much evidently pine pollen adhering to the inside of the boat along the water-line. Did it fall into it during my excursion to Holden’s Swamp the 20th, or has it floated through the air thus far? 

About the grassy island in front of the Rock, grows abundantly, apparently the Carex crinita, with about four long pendulous fertile spikes and one barren, two and a half feet high and long since done. 

I think that I first noticed willow down floating on the river about the 16th. 

Observe a painted turtle laying or digging at 5 P.M. She has not excavated any hole, but has already watered the ground, and, as usual when I take her up under these circumstances, passes more water.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 22, 1858

Edward Bartlett found what he calls two bobolinks’ nests some weeks ago, with each six eggs. See note to June 18, 1858 (“E. Bartlett has found three bobolinks’ nests. One or more of them he thinks has been covered by the recent flood.”) See also  A Book of the Seasons,by Henry Thoreau, the Bobolink

Did it fall into it during my excursion to Holden’s Swamp the 20th, or has it floated through the air thus far? See June 20, 1858 ("Walking in the white pine wood there, I find that my shoes and, indeed, my hat are covered with the greenish-yellow pollen of the white pines, which is now being shed abundantly and covers like a fine meal all the plants and shrubs of the forest floor. I never noticed it in such abundance before. My shoes are green-yellow, or yellow-green, even the next day with it.”); June 21, 1860 ("The air must be full of this fine dust at this season, that it must be carried to great distances, and its presence might be detected remote from pines by examining the edges of bodies of water ... the lakes detect for us thus the presence of the pine pollen in the atmosphere. They are our pollinometers. “) See also A Book of the Seasons,by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines

I think that I first noticed willow down floating on the river about the 16th. See June 10, 1853 ("The fuzzy seeds or down of the black (?) willows is filling the air over the river and, falling on the water, covers the surface. "); June 15, 1854 ("Black willow is now gone to seed, and its down covers the water, white amid the weeds. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,by Henry Thoreau, the Propogation of the Willow.

She has not excavated any hole, but has already watered the ground See June 11, 1858 (“I notice that turtles which have just commenced digging will void considerable water when you take them up. This they appear to have carried up to wet the ground with.” ) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Painted Turtle

In the Natural History Rooms talking of the myrtle-bird.

June 21. 

June 21, 2018

Vide at Cambridge, apparently in prime, Silene inflata; also, in a rich grass-field on Sacramento Street, what may be Turritis glabra (?), also in prime, the last three or four feet high. Both pressed. 

Talked with Mr. Bryant at the Natural History Rooms. He agrees with Kneeland in thinking that what I call the myrtle-bird’s is the white-throat sparrow’s note. Bryant killed one Down East in summer of ’56. He has lived the last fifteen years at Cohasset, and also knows the birds of Cambridge, but talks of several birds as rare which are common in Concord, such as the stake-driver, marsh hawk (have neither of their eggs in the collection), Savannah sparrow, the passerina much rarer, and I think purple finch, etc. Never heard the tea-lee note of myrtle-bird ( ?) in this State. 

Their large hawk is the red-shouldered, not hen-hawk. 

He thinks that the sheldrake of the Maine lakes is the merganser, the serrator belonging rather to the sea coast. 

Of the two little dippers or grebes, he thought the white-breasted one would be the commonest, which has also a slender bill, while the other has a brownish breast and a much thicker bill. 

The egg of the Turdus solitarius in the collection is longer, but marked very much like the tanager’s, only paler-brown. They have also the egg of the T. brunneus, the other hermit thrush, not common here.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 21, 1858

Mr. Bryant at the Natural History Rooms agrees with Kneeland in thinking that what I call the myrtle-bird’s is the white-throat sparrow’s note. See January 15, 1858 ("At Natural History Rooms, Boston. . . . Talked with Dr. Kneeland. . . . 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.”)

The egg of the Turdus solitarius in the collection. See June 12, 1857 (“The egg of the Turdus solitarius is lettered "Swamp Robin."”)

My shoes and hat are covered with the greenish-yellow pollen of the white pines, which is now being shed abundantly.

June 20. 

P. M. – By boat to Holden Swamp. 

I heard that snapping sound against a pad on the surface, and at the same time saw a pad knocked up several inches, and a ripple in the water there as when a pickerel darts away. I should say without doubt some fish had darted there against the pad, perhaps at an insect on the under side. 

Got the marsh hawk's egg, which was addled. I noticed on the 17th that the hawk (my marsh hawk) was off her nest and soaring above the wood late in the afternoon, as I was returning. 

I notice that when turtles are floating dead their necks and legs are stretched out. I have seen them this year of every kind but the meleagris and cistudo, including a snapping turtle with shell some nine inches long, floating or lying dead. What kills them?

I wade about Holden Swamp, looking for birds’ nests. The spruce there are too thin-foliaged for nests, though I hear a pepe expressing anxiety, and also song sparrows. See the redstart and hear many; also hear the blue yellow-backs. 

Walking in the white pine wood there, I find that my shoes and, indeed, my hat are covered with the greenish-yellow pollen of the white pines, which is now being shed abundantly and covers like a fine meal all the plants and shrubs of the forest floor. I never noticed it in such abundance before. My shoes are green-yellow, or yellow-green, even the next day with it.

Dangle-berry well out, how long? 

Potentilla Norvegica, how long? 

What is that sedge with a long beak, some time out of bloom, now two feet high, common just north of new stone bridge? Vide pressed one.

I see that the French have a convenient word, aunaie, also spelt aulnaie and aulnage, etc., signifying a grove of alders. It reminds me of their other convenient word used by Rasle, cabanage.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 20, 1858

I noticed on the 17th that the hawk (my marsh hawk) was off her nest and soaring. See May 30, 1858 ("Edward Emerson shows me the nest which he and another discovered. . . .There are two dirty, or rather dirtied, white eggs left (of four that were),"); June 8, 1858 (“The marsh hawk's eggs are not yet hatched. ”); June 17, 1858 ("P. M. – To hawk's nest. One egg is hatched since the 8th") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Marsh Hawk


I wade about Holden Swamp, looking for birds’ nests. The spruce there are too thin-foliaged for nests, though I hear a pepe expressing anxiety. See June 10, 1855 ("Nest of the Muscicapa Cooperi, or pe pe, on a white spruce in the Holden Swamp.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Olive-sided flycatcher or pe-pe

The greenish-yellow pollen of the white pines is now being shed abundantly and covers like a fine meal all the plants and shrubs of the forest floor. See June 21, 1850 ("The flowers of the white pine are now in their prime, but I see none of their pollen on the pond."); June 21, 1856 ("Much pine pollen is washed up on the northwest side of the pond. Must it not have come from pines at a distance?"); June 22, 1858 (" I notice, after tipping the water out of my boat under the willows, much evidently pine pollen adhering to the inside of the boat along the water-line. Did it fall into it during my excursion to Holden’s Swamp the 20th, or has it floated through the air thus far? "); June 21, 1860 ("The air must be full of this fine dust at this season, that it must be carried to great distances, and its presence might be detected remote from pines by examining the edges of bodies of water ... the lakes detect for us thus the presence of the pine pollen in the atmosphere. They are our pollinometers. "); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines

Potentilla Norvegica, how long? See June 20, 1856 ("Potentilla Norvegicea; apparently petals blown away.")

Other convenient word used by Rasle. See March 4, 1858 ("Father Rasle’s dictionary of the Abenaki language amounts to a very concentrated and trustworthy natural history of that people.")

June 20. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 20

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

Storrow Higginson and other boys find nests and eggs of veery, wood thrush and tanager.

June 19. 

June 19, 2018

Saturday. 

I do not hear the night-warbler so often as a few weeks ago. Birds generally do not sing so tumultuously. 

Storrow Higginson and other boys have found this forenoon at Flint’s Pond one or more veery-nests on the ground. 

Also showed me one of five eggs, far advanced, they found there in a nest some fourteen feet high in a slender maple sapling, placed between many upright shoots, many dry leaves outside. It is a slender clear-blue egg, more slender and pointed at the small end than the robin's, and he says the bird was thrush like with a pencilled breast. It is probably the wood thrush. [Saw it the 23d, and it is apparently this bird. It is some ten rods south along path beyond the clearing, opposite a stone turned over.] He saw one or two other similar nests, he thought, not yet completed. 

Also showed me an egg, which answers to the description of the tanager's. Two fresh eggs in small white oak sapling, some four teen feet from ground. They saw a tanager near. [I have one egg. 
Vide 23d.] 

P. M. — To Bateman’s Pond. 

The swamp-pink, apparently not long, and the maple leaved viburnum, a little longer, but quite early. Some of the calla is going to seed. 

See an oven-bird's nest with two eggs and one young one just hatched. The bird flits out low, and is, I think, the same kind that I saw flit along the ground and trail her wings to lead me off day before yesterday.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 19, 1858

To Bateman’s Pond. The swamp-pink, apparently not long. See June 20, 1853 ("Those great greenish-white puffs on the panicled andromeda are now decaying. On the swamp-pink they are solid."); June 20, 1856 ( ("Swamp-pink out apparently two or three days at Clamshell Ditch"); June 21, 1852 ("The swamp-pink bushes have many whitish spongy excrescences. "); June 30, 1852 ("Is not this period more than any distinguished for flowers, when roses, swamp-pinks, morning-glories, arethusas, pogonias, orchises, blue flags, epilobiums, mountain laurel, and white lilies are all in blossom at once?") See also November 5, 1855 ("Swamp-pink buds now begin to show.”); November 6, 1853 (“The remarkable roundish, plump red buds of the high blueberry.”); November 16, 1852 ("The swamp-pink and blueberry buds attract."); December 1, 1852 (“The large bright yellowish and reddish buds of the swamp-pink,"); December 11, 1855 ("The great yellow buds of the swamp-pink"); January 25, 1858 ("The large yellowish buds of the swamp pink."); January 10, 1855 ("The great buds of the swamp-pink, on the central twig, clustered together, are more or less imbrowned and reddened. "); January 31, 1854 ("In the winter, when there are no flowers and leaves are rare, even large buds are interesting and somewhat exciting. I go a-budding like a partridge. I am always attracted at this season by the buds of the swamp-pink, the poplars, and the sweet-gale."); February 13, 1858 )("How often vegetation is either yellow or red! as the buds of the swamp-pink, the leaves of the pitcher-plant, etc., etc."); February 13, 1858 ("The great buds of the swamp-pink, on the central twig, clustered together, are more or less imbrowned and reddened.")

Some of the calla is going to seed. See June 7, 1857 (“Pratt has got the Calla palustris, in prime. . .from the bog near Bateman's Pond”); June 9, 1857( “The calla is generally past prime and going to seed. I had said to Pratt, "It will be worth the while to look for other rare plants in Calla Swamp, for I have observed that where one rare plant grows there will commonly be others." ”); June 24, 1857 ("Found [in Owl-Nest Swamp] the Calla palustris, out of bloom, and the naumbergia, now in prime, which was hardly begun on the 9th at Bateman Pond Swamp.”); August 29, 1857 ("I find the calla [in Owl-Nest Swamp] going to seed, but still the seed is green.”); and note to July 2, 1857 ("Calla palustris . . . at the south end of Gowing's Swamp. Having found this in one place, I now find it in another.")

Also showed me one of five eggs found there in a nest some fourteen feet high in a slender maple sapling. See July 31, 1857 ("Got the wood thrush’s nest of June 19th (now empty).")

See an oven-bird's nest with two eggs and one young one just hatched. The bird flits out low, and is, I think, the same kind that I saw flit along the ground and trail her wings to lead me off day before yesterday. See June 1, 1853 (“ Eggs in oven- bird's nest. ”); June 7, 1853; (“The oven-bird runs from her covered nest, so close to the ground under the lowest twigs and leaves, even the loose leaves on the ground, like a mouse, that I can not get a fair view of her. She does not fly at all. Is it to attract me, or partly to protect herself ?”); June 10, 1855; ( Oven-bird’s nest with four eggs two thirds hatched, under dry leaves, composed of pine-needles and dry leaves and a hair or two for lining, about six feet south west of a white oak which is six rods southwest of the hawk pine.”); June 18, 1854 (“Observe in two places golden-crowned thrushes, near whose nests I must have been, hopping on the lower branches and in the underwood, — a somewhat sparrow-like bird, with its golden-brown crest and white circle about eye, carrying the tail somewhat like a wren, and inclined to run along the branches. Each had a worm in its bill, no doubt intended for its young.”); July 3, 1853 (“The oven-bird's nest in Laurel Glen is near the edge of an open pine wood, under a fallen pine twig and a heap of dry oak leaves. Within these, on the ground, is the nest, with a dome-like top and an arched entrance of the whole height and width on one side. Lined within with dry pine-needles.”).

I find a young Emys insculpta

June 18. 

How dogs will resort to carrion, a dead cow or horse, half buried, no matter how stale, — the best-bred and petted village dogs, and there gorge themselves with the most disgusting offal by the hour, as if it were a season of famine! Surely they are foul creatures that we make cossets of. 

P. M. – To Walden to see a bird's nest, a red-eye's, in a small white pine; nest not so high as my head; still laying. 

A boy climbs to the cat owl's nest and casts down what is left of it, — a few short sticks and some earthy almost turfy foundation, as if it were the accumulation of years. Beside much black and white skunk-hair, there are many fishes scales (!) intimately mixed with its substance, and some skunk’s bones. 

E. Bartlett has found three bobolinks’ nests. One or more of them he thinks has been covered by the recent flood. 

A little boy brings me an egg of Wilson's thrush, which he found in a nest in a low bush about a foot from the ground. 

Coming across the level pasture west of E. Hubbard's swamp, toward Emerson's, I find a young Emys insculpta, apparently going to lay, though she had not dug a hole. It was four and a quarter inches long by three and a half wide, and altogether the handsomest turtle of this species, if not of any, that I have ever seen. It was quite fresh and perfect, without wound or imperfection; its claws quite sharp and slender, and the annual striae so distinct on all the scales above and below that I could count them with ease. It was nine years old, though it would be like an infant among turtles, the successive striae being perfectly parallel at equal distances apart.

The sternum, with a large black spot on the rear angle of each scale and else where a rich brown color, even reminded me of the turtle-shell of commerce. While its upper shell was of ‘a uniform wholesome brown, very prettily marked in deed, not only by the outlines of the scales, but more distinctly by the lines of prominences raying out from the starting-point of each scale, perfectly preserved in each year’s growth, a most elaborate coat of mail, worthy the lifelong labor of some reptilian Vulcan. 

This must have been a belle among the E. insculpta. Nevertheless I did discover that all the claws but one of one hind foot were gone! Had not a bird peeked them off? So liable are they to injury in their long lives. Then they are so well-behaved; can be taken up and brought home in your pocket, and make no unseemly efforts to escape. The upper shell was remarkably spreading and curving upward on the rear edges.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 18, 1858

A red-eye's, in a small white pine; nest not so high as my head; still laying. See June 12, 1855 ("In the thick swamp behind the hill I look at the vireo’s nest which C. found on the 10th, within reach on a red maple forked twig, eight feet from ground. He took one cowbird’s egg from it, and I now take the other, which he left. There is no vireo’s egg"); July 21, 1855 ("A red-eyed vireo nest on a red maple on Island Neck, on meadow-edge, ten feet from ground; one egg half hatched and one cowbird’s egg, nearly fresh, a trifle larger"); January 13, 1856 ("What a wonderful genius it is that leads the vireo to select the tough fibres of the inner bark, instead of the more brittle grasses, for its basket, the elastic pine-needles and the twigs, curved as they dried to give it form, and, as I suppose, the silk of cocoons, etc., etc., to bind it together with!")

A boy climbs to the cat owl's nest and casts down what is left of it, — a few short sticks and some earthy almost turfy foundation, as if it were the accumulation of years. Beside much black and white skunk-hair, there are many fishes scales (!) intimately mixed with its substance, and some skunk’s bones. See May 20, 1858 ("Saw in the street a young cat owl, one of two which Skinner killed in Walden Woods yesterday. . . .So I visited the nest. It was in a large white pine close . . . the nest is some thirty-five feet high on two limbs close to the main stem, and, according to Skinner, was not much more than a foot across, made of small sticks, nearly flat, “without fine stuff!” There were but two young. ")

E. Bartlett has found three bobolinks’ nests. See June 22, 1858 (“I have one of the nests. There is but little of it ...”);  see also  June 26, 1857 ("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."); July 2, 1855 ("Young bobolinks are now fluttering over the meadow, but I have not been able to find a nest ..")

A little boy brings me an egg of Wilson's thrush. See June 2, 1852 ("Nest of Wilson's thrush with bluish-green eggs.")

This must have been a belle among the E. insculpta. Nevertheless I did discover that all the claws but one of one hind foot were gone! See May 14, 1857 ("I see one with a large dent three eighths of an inch deep and nearly two inches long in the middle of its back, where it was once partially crushed. Hardly one has a perfect shell.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Wood Turtle (Emys insculpta)

June18. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, June 18

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 © 2009-2020

The young bird, all down, with a tinge of fawn or cinnamon.

June 17. 

P. M. – To hawk's nest.

One egg is hatched since the 8th, and the young bird, all down, with a tinge of fawn or cinnamon, lies motionless on its breast with its head down and is already about four inches long! 

An hour or two after, I see the old hawk pursue a stake-driver which was flying over this spot, darting down at him and driving him off. The stake-driver comes beating along, like a long, ungainly craft, or a revenue cutter, looking into the harbors, and if it finds a fisherman there, standing out again. 

See a painted turtle digging at mid-afternoon. I have only to look at dry fields or banks near water to find the turtles laying there afternoons.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 17, 1858

One egg is hatched since the 8th. See June 8, 1858 (“The marsh hawk's eggs are not yet hatched. ”)

I see the old hawk pursue a stake-driver darting down at him and driving him off. See August 5, 1854 (“Near Lee's (returning), see a large bittern, pursued by small birds.”)

I have only to look at dry fields or banks near water to find the turtles laying. See June 16, 1855 (“ A painted tortoise just burying three flesh-colored eggs in the dry, sandy plain. . .Find near by four more about this business. ”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The Painted Turtle

The Mystery of the odorless sternothaerus .

June 16. 

June 16, 2018
(Avesong)

P. M. – To Staples's Meadow Wood. 

It is pleasant to paddle over the meadows now, at this time of flood, and look down on the various meadow plants, for you can see more distinctly quite to the bottom than ever. 

A few sedges are very common and prominent, one, the tallest and earliest, now gone and going to seed, which I do not make out, also the Carex scoparia and the C. stellulata. 

How will the water affect these plants, standing thus long over them? 

The head of every sedge that now rises above the surface is swarming with insects which have taken refuge from the flood on it, — beetles, grasshoppers, spiders, caterpillars, etc. How many must have been destroyed!

No doubt thousands of birds' nests have been destroyed by the flood, – blackbirds', bobolinks', song sparrows', etc. I see a robin's nest high above the water with the young just dead and the old bird in the water, apparently killed by the abundance of rain, and after ward I see a fresh song sparrow's nest which has been flooded and destroyed. 

Two sternothaerus which I smell of have no scent to-day. 

Looking into Hubbard's Pool, I at length see one of the minims which I put into it. I brought the last here April 30th. It is now a little perch about an inch and a quarter long; it was then about a quarter of an inch long. I can now see the transverse bars a rod off. It is swimming actively round and round the pool, but avoids the quite shallow water of the edges, so it does not get landlocked or lost in the weedy overflowed edges. I put twenty or thirty into this pool in all. They grow very fast, then, at last. 

Carrion-flower, how long? Not long. 

How agreeable and wholesome the fragrance of the low blackberry blossom, reminding me of all the rosaceous fruit bearing plants, so near and dear to our humanity! It is one of the most deliciously fragrant flowers, reminding of wholesome fruits. 

I see a yellow-spotted turtle digging its hole at midafternoon, but, like the last of this species I saw, it changed its place after I saw it, and I did not get an egg; it is so wary. Some turtles must lay in pretty low fields, or else make a much longer excursion than I think they do, the water in which they dwell is so far from high land. 

Among the geraniums which now spot the wood or sprout-land paths, I see some with very broad, short, rounded petals, making a smaller but full round flower. 

The Salix nigra appears to be quite done.

Edward Emerson, Edward Bartlett, and Storrow Higginson come to ask me the names of some eggs to-night. 

They have the egg of the warbling vireo, – much like the pepe's, but smaller. [Or is it not yellow-throated vireo's P Vide nest. From a maple near Hemlocks, Asset.]

They tell of a hen-hawk's nest seen the 6th, with two eggs. 

They have also, undoubtedly, the egg of the purple finch, seen first two or three weeks ago, and they bring me two nests and one egg. Both these nests were in small fir trees, one by the Lee house (that was), Joe Barrett's, and the other in the New Burying-Ground. 

The last appeared to have been spoiled by the rain, and was against the main stem and contained four fresh eggs, they say, the 14th; the other had five eggs two days earlier; both near the top. The egg is a little more than three quarters of an inch long by nearly five eighths at the bigger end, and so of another from the other nest, rather more slender, — a tapering pale bluish-green egg, with blackish-brown and also dull slate-colored spots and streaks about the larger end and a few very fine spots on the other parts. 

The Lee nest is somewhat like a hair-bird's, though larger. They are both about four inches wide, outside to out side, and two and a half high, two and a quarter to two and a half [in] diameter within, and one and a quarter to one and a half deep. 

The Lee house one (which had the egg in it) is composed externally of many small weed stems — apparently lepidium, lechea — and root-fibres, and the inner part is very thick and substantial, of root-fibres and bark-shreds and a little cow’s hair, lined with much horsehair. 

The other is a little less substantial, externally of pinweed and apparently hypericum stems and root-fibres and within of root-fibres lined with much fine and soft bark-shreds. 

Edward Bartlett brings me a crow's nest, one of several which he found in maple trees, twenty or thirty feet from ground, in a swamp near Copan, and in this he found an addled egg. The mass of twigs which was its foundation were too loose and bulky to be brought away, — half a wheelbarrow-load, at least, chiefly maple, eighteen inches long and a quarter of an inch wide. The rest or inner portion of the nest, which part is ten or twelve inches in diameter, about two inches thick, and slightly concave, is composed almost wholly of coarse strips of grape-vine bark, with some finer, apparently maple, bark-shreds and some hair and hog's bristles, perhaps of carrion carried to its young heretofore; and the under part is loosely earthy to some extent.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 16, 1858

The head of every sedge that now rises above the surface is swarming with insects which have taken refuge from the flood on it. See August 25, 1856 (“Almost every stem which rises above the surface has a grasshopper or caterpillar upon it. Some have seven or eight grasshoppers, clinging to their masts, one close and directly above an other, like shipwrecked sailors, now the third or fourth day exposed. . . . They are so thick that they are like a crop which the grass bears; some stems are bent down by their weight.”)

Two sternothaerus which I smell of have no scent to-day. See April 1, 1858 ("I see six Sternothaerus odoratus in the river thus early. . . .. I took up and smelt of five of these, and they emitted none of their peculiar scent!”); May 1, 1858 ("Two sternothaeruses which I catch emit no scent yet.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musk Turtle (Sternothaerus odoratus )

Looking into Hubbard's Pool, I at length see one of the minims which I put into it. See April 3, 1858 (“When returning, we discovered, on the south side of the river, just at the old crossing-place from the Great Meadows, north of the ludwigia pool, a curious kind of spawn.”); ; April 7, 1858 ("I brought home ... two kinds of spawn in a pail. ...  I see the embryo, already fish-like (?), curved round the yolk, with a microscope.”);April 14, 1858 (“At Ed. Hoar's in the evening.. . .. with his microscope I see the heart beating in the embryo fish and the circulations distinctly along the body.”); April 16, 1858("My fish ova in a tumbler has gradually expanded till it is some three sixteenths of an inch in diameter, and for more than a week the embryos have been conspicuously active, hardly still enough to be observed with a microscope. Their tails, eyes, pectoral fins, etc., were early developed and conspicuous. . . .This morning I set them in the sun, and, looking again soon after, found that they were suddenly hatched, and more than half of them were free of the egg.”); April 30, 1858 (“I carry the rest of my little fishes, fifteen or twenty, to the cold pool in Hubbard's ground. They are about a quarter-inch long still, and have scarcely increased in length. ”)

Edward Bartlett brings me a crow's nest. See April 29, 1859 ("E. Bartlett has found a crow's nest with four eggs a little developed in a tall white pine in the grove east of Beck Stow's")

June 16. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 16

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