Talked with Minott, who sits in his wood-shed

August 16.

Hear it raining again early when I awake, as it did yesterday, still and steady, as if the season were troubled with a diabetes.

P. M. — To Cardinal Ditch.

I hear these birds on my way thither, between two and three o’clock:

• goldfinches twitter over;
• the song sparrow sings several times; hear a low warble from bluebirds, with apparently their young,
• the link of many bobolinks (and see large flocks on the fences and weeds; they are largish-looking birds with yellow throats); 
• a large flock of red-wings goes tchucking over; 
• a lark twitters; 
• crows caw; 
• a robin peeps; 
• kingbirds twitter, as ever.

At sunset I hear a low short warble from a golden robin, and the notes of the wood pewee.

In my boating of late I have several times scared up a couple of summer ducks of this year, bred in our meadows. They allowed me to come quite near, and helped to people the-river. I have not seen them for some days. Would you know the end of our intercourse? Goodwin shot them, and Mrs. , who never sailed on the river, ate them. Of course, she knows not' what she did. What if I should eat her canary? Thus we share each other’s sins as well as burdens. The lady who watches admiringly the matador shares his deed. They belonged to me, as much as to any one, when they were alive, but it was considered of more importance that Mrs. should taste the flavor of them dead than that I should enjoy the beauty of them alive.

A three-ribbed goldenrod on railroad causeway, two to three feet high, abundantly out before Solidago nemoralis. 

I notice that when a frog, a Rana halecina, jumps, it drops water at the same instant, as a turtle often when touched as she is preparing to lay. I see many frogs jump from the side of the railroad causeway toward the ditch at its base, and each drops some water. They apparently have this supply of water with them in warm and dry weather, at least when they leave the water, and, returning to it, leave it behind as of no further use.

Thalictrum Comuti is now generally done.

The hardhack commonly grows in low meadow-pastures which are uneven with grassy clods or hummocks, such as the almshouse pasture by Cardinal Ditch.

I am surprised to find that where of late years there have been so many cardinal-flowers, there are now very few. So much does a plant fluctuate from season to season. Here I found nearly white ones once. Charming tells me that he saw a white bobolink in a large flock of them to-day. Almost all flowers and animals may be found white. As in a large number of cardinal-flowers you may find a white one, so in a large flock of bobolinks, also, it seems, you may find a white one.

Talked with Minott, who sits in his wood-shed, having, as I notice, several seats there for visitors, —one a block on the sawhorse, another a patchwork mat on a wheelbarrow, etc., etc. His half-grown chickens, which roost overhead, perch on his shoulder or knee. According to him, the Holt is at the “ diving ash,” where is some of the deepest water in the river. He tells me some of his hunting stories again. He always lays a good deal of stress on the kind of gun he used, as if he had bought a new one every year, when probably he never had more than two or three in his life. In this case it was a “half-stocked” one, a little “cocking-piece,” and whenever he finished his game he used the word “gavel,” I think in this way, “gave him gavel,” i. e. made him bite the dust, or settled him. Speaking of foxes, he said: “As soon as the nights get to be cool, if you step outdoors at nine or ten o’clock when all is still, you’ll hear them bark out on the flat behind the houses, half a mile off, or sometimes whistle through their noses. I can tell ’em. I know what that means. I know all about that. They are out after something to eat, I suppose.” He used to love to hear the goldfinches sing on the hemp which grew near his gate.

At sunset paddled to Hill.

Goodwin has come again to fish, with three poles, hoping to catch some more of those large eels.

A blue heron, with its great undulating wings, prominent cutwater, and leisurely flight, goes over southwest, cutting off the bend of the river west of our house. 

Goodwin says he saw one two or three days ago, and also that he saw some black ducks. 

A muskrat is swimming up the stream, betrayed by two long diverging ripples, or ripple-lines, two or three rods long each, and inclosing about seventy-five degrees, methinks. The rat generally dives just before reaching the shore and is not seen again, probably entering some burrow in the bank.

Am surprised to see that the snapping turtle which I found floating dead June 16th, and placed to rot in the cleft of a rock, has been all cleaned, so that there is no smell of carrion. The scales have nearly all fallen Off, and the sternum fallen apart, and the bony frame of the back is loose and dropping to pieces, as if it were many years old. It is a wonderful piece of dovetailing, the ends of the ribs (which are narrow and rib-like) set into sockets in the middle of the marginal bones, .whose joints are in each case between the ribs. There are many large fish-bones Within the shell. Was it killed by the fish it swallowed? The bones not being dispersed, I suppose it was cleaned by insects.

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

 A blue heron, with its great undulating wings, prominent cutwater, and leisurely flight. See  April 29, 1854 ("Off the Cliffs, I meet a blue heron flying slowly down stream. He flaps slowly and heavily, his long, level, straight and sharp bill projecting forward, then his keel-like neck doubled up, and finally his legs thrust out straight behind."); August 14,1859 ("If you would know the depth of the water on these few shoalest places of Musketaquid, ask the blue heron that wades and fishes there")

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