The black-polls are very numerous all over the town this spring.

May 27.

Fire in house again. 

The Sylvia striata are the commonest bird in the street, as I go to the post-office, for several days past. I see six (four males, two females) on one of our little fir trees; are apparently as many more on another close by. The white bars on the wings of both sexes are almost horizontal. 

I see them thus early and late on the trees about our houses and other houses the 27th and 28th and 29th also, - peach trees, etc., but especially on the firs.

They are quite tame. I stand within seven or eight feet while they are busily pecking at the freshly bursting or extending glaucous fir twigs, deliberately examining them on all sides, and from time to time one utters a very fine and sharp, but faint tse tse, tse tse, tse tse, with more or less of these notes. I hear the same in the woods.

Examining the freshly starting fir twigs, I find that there are a great many lice or aphides amid the still appressed leafets or leaves of the buds, and no doubt they are after these. Occasionally a summer yellowbird is in company with them, about the same business.

They, the black-polls, are very numerous all over the town this spring. The female has not a black, but rather, methinks, a slate - colored crown, and is a very different bird, — more of a yellowish brown.

Eleocharis acicularis, not long, on the low exposed bank of the river; if it is that that greens the very low muddy banks.

J. Farmer found a marsh hawk's nest on the 16th, — near the Cooper ' s hawk nest, — with three fresh eggs.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 27, 1860

Fire in house again. See May 21, 1860 (“Cold, at 11 A.M. 50°; and sit by a fire”); and note to May 22, 1860 ("Another cold and wet day, requiring fire")

They, the black-polls, are very numerous all over the town this spring. See May 20, 1856 ("The Sylvia striata, or black-poll warbler, busily picking about the locust buds and twigs. Black head and above, with olive (green) wings and two white bars; white all beneath, with a very distinct black line from throat to shoulders; flesh-colored legs; bill, dark above, light beneath."); and note to June 4, 1860 ("The black-poll warblers (Sylvia striata) appear to have left, and some other warblers, if not generally, with this first clear and bright and warm, peculiarly June weather, immediately after the May rain.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Black-poll Warbler

J. Farmer found a marsh hawk's nest on the 16th with three fresh eggs. See May 29, 1860 ("We next proceeded to the marsh hawk’s nest from which the eggs were taken a fortnight ago and the female shot")