P. M. — To Walden.
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| June 7, 2018 (Avesong) |
June shadows are moving over waving grass-fields, the crickets chirp uninterruptedly, and I perceive the agreeable acid scent of high blueberry bushes in bloom. The trees having leaved out, you notice their rounded tops, suggesting shade.
The nighthawk sparks and booms over arid hillsides and sprout-lands.
It is evidence enough against crows and hawks and owls, proving their propensity to rob birds’ nests of eggs and young, that smaller birds pursue them so often. You do not need the testimony of so many farmers' boys when you can see and hear the small birds daily crying “Thief and murder” after these spoilers.
What does it signify, the kingbird, black bird, swallow, etc., etc., pursuing a crow? They say plainly enough, “I know you of old, you villain; you want to devour my eggs or young. I have often caught you at it, and I’ll publish you now.” And probably the crow pursuing the fish hawk and eagle proves that the latter sometimes devour their young.
The Salix tristis is now generally going or gone to seed.
Oxalis violacea in garden.
I see toads copulating and toad-spawn freshly laid in the Wyman meadow at Walden.
Utricularia vulgaris out there.
The water colored or dusted with the pollen of the pitch pine.
As I was wading in this Wyman meadow, looking for bullfrog-spawn, I saw a hole at the bottom, where it was six or eight inches deep, by the side of a mass of mud and weeds which rose just to the surface three or four feet from the shore. It was about five inches in diameter, with some sand at the mouth, just like a musquash's hole. As I stood there within two feet, a pout put her head out, as if to see who was there, and directly came forth and disappeared under the target-weed; but as I stood perfectly still, waiting for the water which I had disturbed to settle about the hole, she circled round and round several times be tween me and the hole, cautiously, stealthily approaching the entrance but as often withdrawing, and at last mustered courage to enter it.
I then noticed another similar hole in the same mass, two or three feet from this. I thrust my arm into the first, running it in and downward about fifteen inches. It was a little more than a foot long and enlarged somewhat at the end, the bottom, also, being about a foot beneath the surface, — for it slanted downward, – but I felt nothing within; I only felt a pretty regular and rounded apartment with firm walls of weedy or fibrous mud.
I then thrust my arm into the other hole, which was longer and deeper, but at first discovered nothing; but, trying again, I found that I had not reached the end, for it turned a little and descended more than I supposed. Here I felt a similar apartment or enlargement, some six inches in diameter horizontally but not quite so high nor nearly so wide at its throat.
Here, to my surprise, I felt something soft, like a gelatinous mass of spawn, but, feeling a little further, felt the horns of a pout. I deliberately took hold of her by the head and lifted her out of the hole and the water, having run my arm in two thirds its length. She offered not the slightest resistance from first to last, even when I held her out of water before my face, and only darted away suddenly when I dropped her in the water.
The entrance to her apartment was so narrow that she could hardly have escaped if I had tried to prevent her. Putting in my arm again, I felt, under where she had been, a flattish mass of ova, several inches in diameter, resting on the mud, and took out some. Feeling again in the first hole, I found as much more there. Though I had been stepping round and over the second nest for several minutes, I had not scared the pout.
The ova of the first nest already contained white wiggling young. I saw no motion in the others. The ova in each case were dull-yellowish and the size of small buckshot. These nests did not communicate with each other and had no other outlet.
Pouts, then, make their nests in shallow mud-holes or bays, in masses of weedy mud, or probably in the muddy bank; and the old pout hovers over the spawn or keeps guard at the entrance. Where do the Walden pouts breed when they have not access to this meadow?
The first pout, whose eggs were most developed, was the largest and had some slight wounds on the back. The other may have been the male in the act of fertilizing the ova.
I sit in my boat in the twilight by the edge of the river. Toads are now in full blast along the river. Some sit quite out at the edge of the pads, and hold up their heads so high when they ring, and make such a large bubble, that they look as if they would tumble over backward.
Bullfrogs now are in full blast. I do not hear other frogs; their notes are probably drowned. I perceive that this generally is the rhythm of the bullfrog; er|er-r er-r-r| (growing fuller and fuller and more tremendous) and then doubling, er, er er, err er, er, er er, er, er and finally er, er, er, er er, er, er, er. Or I might write it oorar oorar oorar oorar-hah oorar-hah hah oorar hah hah hah.
Some of these great males are yellow or quite yellowish over the whole back. Are not the females oftenest white-throated?
What lungs, what health, what terrenity (if not serenity) it suggests!
At length I hear the faint stertoration of a Rana palustris (if not halecina).
Seeing a large head, with its prominent eyes, projecting above the middle of the river, I found it was a bullfrog coming across. It swam under water a rod or two, and then came up to see where it was, or its way. It is thus they cross when sounds or sights attract them to more desirable shores. Probably they prefer the night for such excursions, for fear of large pickerel, etc.
I thought its throat was not yellow nor baggy. Was it not the female attracted by the note of the male?
Fireflies pretty numerous over the river, though we have had no thunder-showers of late.
Mosquitoes quite troublesome here.
The ledum is a very good plant to bloom in a pitcher, lasting a week or more.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 7, 1858
87° at 3 P. M and i see that a new season has arrived. . . .Fireflies pretty numerous over the river, though we have had no thunder-showers of late. Mosquitoes quite troublesome here. See June 7, 1854 ("[M]osquitoes are very troublesome in the woods. . . .This muggy evening I see fireflies, the first I have seen"); See also June 16, 1860 ("It appears to me that these phenomena occur simultaneously, say June 12th, viz.: -
• Heat about. 85° at 2 P.M.The nighthawk sparks and booms over arid hillsides and sprout-lands. See June 7, 1853 ("Visit my nighthawk on her nest. . . . The sight of this creature sitting on its eggs impresses me with the venerableness of the globe."); See also May 25, 1852 ("First nighthawks squeak and boom") and also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,, the Nighthawk
• Hylodes cease to peep.
• Purring frogs (Rana palustris) cease.
• Lightning-bugs first seen.
• Bullfrogs trump generally.
• Mosquitoes begin to be really troublesome.
• Afternoon thunder-showers almost regular.
• Sleep with open window.
• Turtles fairly and generally begun to lay.")
Oxalis violacea in garden. See June 7, 2057 ("Pratt has got the . . . Oxalis violacea, which he says began about last Sunday, or May 31st, larger and handsomer than the yellow, though it blossoms but sparingly.")
I sit in my boat
in the twilight by the
edge of the river.
At length I hear the
faint stertoration of a
Rana palustris
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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