A large yellow butterfly

June 3. 

Friday. P. M. — Up Assabet. 

A large yellow butterfly (somewhat Harris Papilio Asterias like but not black-winged) three and a half to four inches in expanse. Pale-yellow, the front wings crossed by three or four black bars; rear, or outer edge, of all wings widely bordered with black, and some yellow behind it; a short black tail to each hind one, with two blue spots in front of two red-brown ones on the tail. 

Arenaria lateriflora well out, how long? 

Common rum cherry out yesterday, how long? 

Carex crinita out a good while. Carex lanuginosa, Smith's shore, green fruit. Carex pallescens, Smith's shore (higher up bank), green fruit. 


Nighthawk, two eggs, fresh. 

Quail heard.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 3, 1859

Arenaria lateriflora well out, how long? See June 6, 1852 ("The side-flowering sandwort, an inconspicuous white flower like a chickweed."); June 5, 1855 ("Side-flowering sandwort apparently three days out in Clamshell flat meadow."); June 10, 1856 ("Side-flowering sandwort abundantly out this side of Dugan Spring."); June 13, 1858 ("Arenaria lateriflora, how long?")

Nighthawk, two eggs, fresh.  See May 30, 1860 ("On the wall, at the brook behind Cyrus Hosmer’s barn, I start a nighthawk within a rod or two. It alights again on his barn-yard board fence, sitting diagonally. I see the white spot on the edge of its wings as it sits. It flies thence and alights on the ground in his corn-field, sitting flat, but there was no nest under it. This was unusual. Had it not a nest nearby?") June 1, 1853 ("Walking up this side-hill, I disturb a nighthawk eight or ten feet from me . .Without moving, I look about and see its two eggs on the bare ground, on a slight shelf of the hill, on the dead pine-needles and sand, without any cavity or nest whatever."); 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"); June 5, 1854 ("Now, just be fore sundown, a nighthawk is circling, imp-like, with undulating, irregular flight over the sprout-land on the Cliff Hill, with an occasional squeak and showing the spots on his wings. He does not circle away from this place, and I associate him with two gray eggs somewhere on the ground beneath and a mate there sitting. ")  See also  A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,, the Nighthawk