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| June 21, 2018 |
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."”)
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