These might be called the pewee-days.

August 14. 

P. M. — To the one-arched bridge. 

Hardhacks are probably a little past prime. 

Stopped by the culvert opposite the centaurea, to look at the sagittaria leaves. Perhaps this plant is in its prime (?). Its leaves vary remarkably in form. I see, in a thick patch six or eight feet in diameter, leaves nearly a foot long and others, as long or longer,  with all the various intermediate ones. The very narrow ones, perhaps, around the edge of the patch, being also of a darker green, are not distinguished at first, but mistaken for grass.

Suggesting to C. an Indian name for one of our localities, he thought it had too many syllables for a place so near the middle of the town, — as if the more distant and less frequented place might have a longer name, less understood and less alive in its syllables. 

The Canada thistle down is now begun to fly, and I see the goldfinch upon it. Carduelis. Often when I watch one go off, he flies at first one way, rising and falling, as if skimming close over unseen billows, but directly makes a great circuit as if he had changed his mind, and disappears in the opposite direction, or is seen to be joined there by his mate.

We walked a little way down the bank this side the Assabet bridge. The broad-leaved panic grass, with its hairy sheaths or collars, attracts the eye now there by its perfectly fresh broad leaf. 

We see from time to time many bubbles rising from the sandy bottom, where it is two or more feet deep, which I suspect to come from clams there letting off air. I think I see the clams, and it is often noticed there.

I see a pickerel nearly a foot long in the deep pool under the wooden bridge this side the stone one, where it has been landlocked how long?

There is brought me this afternoon Thalictrum Cornuti, of which the club-shaped filaments (and sepals?) and seed-vessels are a bright purple and quite showy. 

To speak from recollection, the birds which I have chanced to hear of late are (running over the whole list): — 

• The squealing notes of young hawks. 
• Occasionally a red-Wing's tchuck. 
• The link of bobolinks. 
• The chickadee and phebe note of the chickadees, five or six together occasionally. 
• The fine note of the cherry-bird, pretty often. 
• The twitter of the kingbird, pretty often. 
• The wood pewee, with its young, peculiarly common and prominent. 
• Only the peep of the robin. 
• The pine warbler, occasionally. 
• The bay-wing, pretty often. 
• The seringo, pretty often. 
• The song sparrow, often. 
• The field sparrow, often. 
• The goldfinch, a prevailing note, with variations into a fine song. 
• The ground-robin, once of late. 
• The flicker‘s cackle, once of late. 
• The nighthawk, as usual. 

I have not been out early nor late, nor attended particularly to the birds. The more characteristic notes would appear to be the wood pewee’s and the goldfinch’s, with the squeal of young hawks. These might be called the pewee-days.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 14, 1858

The Canada thistle down is now begun to fly, and I see the goldfinch upon it.  See August 12, 1854 (“I see goldfinches nowadays on the lanceolate thistles, apparently after the seeds.”); August 15, 1854 (“On the top of the Hill I see the goldfinch eating the seeds of the Canada thistle. I rarely approach a bed of them or other thistles nowadays but I hear the cool twitter of the goldfinch about it.“);  August 28, 1856 ("A goldfinch twitters away from every thistle now, and soon returns to it when I am past. I see the ground strewn with the thistle-down they have scattered on every side."); September 4, 1860 (“The goldfinch is very busy pulling the thistle to pieces.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau the Goldfinch and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Thistles