The green bitterns are leaving the nest now.

August 1. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

August 1, 2019

The radical or immersed leaves of the pontederia are linear and grass-like, and I see that I have mistaken them for vallisneria just springing from the bottom. The leaves of new plants are just reaching and leaving the surface now, like spoons on the end of long handles. 

Edward Bartlett and another brought me a green bittern, this year’s bird, apparently full grown but not full plumaged, which they caught near the pool on A. Heywood’s land behind Sleepy Hollow. They caught it in the woods on the hillside. 

It had not yet acquired the long feathers of the neck. The neck was bent back on itself an inch or more,— that part being bare of feathers and covered by the long feathers from above, — so that it did not appear very long until stretched out. This doubling was the usual condition and not apparent, but could be felt by the hand. 

So the green bitterns are leaving the nest now.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 1, 1858

So the green bitterns are leaving the nest now. See July 29, 1859 ("Heard from a bittern, a peculiar hoarse, grating note, lazily uttered as it flew over the meadows."); July 30, 1856 ("A green bittern. . .with heavy flapping flight, ts legs dangling"); August 2, 1856 ("A green bittern comes, noiselessly flapping, with stealthy and inquisitive looking to this side the stream and then that, thirty feet above the water. ")