Early Strawberries

June 14

P. M. — To Flint's Pond. 

Early strawberries begin to be common. The lower leaves of the plant are red, concealing the fruit. 

Violets, especially of dry land, are scarce now. 

Eleocharis palustris abundant in Stow's meadow, by railroad. 

See a rose-bug. 

A pout's nest (at Pout's Nest) with a straight entrance some twenty inches long and a simple round nest at end. The young just hatched, all head, light-colored, under a mass of weedy hummock which is all under water. 

The common utricularia out. 

Hear the phebe note of a chickadee.

Cow-wheat, how long ? 

A rose-breasted grosbeak betrays itself by that peculiar squeak, on the Britton path. It is evident that many breed in the low woods by Flint's Pond. 

Catbird's nest with four eggs in a swamp-pink, three and a half feet up. 

The rose-breasted grosbeak is common now in the Flint's Pond woods. It is not at all shy, and our richest singer, perhaps, after the wood thrush. The rhythm is very like that of the tanager, but the strain is perfectly clear and sweet. 

One sits on the bare dead twig of a chestnut, high over the road, at Gourgas Wood, and over my head, and sings clear and loud at regular intervals, — the strain about ten or fifteen seconds long, rising and swelling to the end, with various modulations.

Another, singing in emulation, regularly answers it, alternating with it, from a distance, at least a quarter of a mile off. It sings thus long at a time, and I leave it singing there, regardless of me.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, June 14, 1859

Early strawberries begin to be common. The lower leaves of the plant are red, concealing the fruit. See June 2, 1859 ("Strawberries reddening on some hills"}; June 10, 1856 ("Ripe strawberries . . . hard at first to detect amid the red radical leaves.”)

A rose-breasted grosbeak. It is evident that many breed in the low woods by Flint's Pond See June 2, 1859 ("Found within three rods of Flint's Pond a rose-breasted grosbeak's nest.") See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, , the Rose-breasted Grosbeak

A pout's nest (at Pout's Nest).The young just hatched. See April 25, 1859 ("Young Stewart tells me that he saw last year a pout's nest at Walden in the pond-hole by the big pond. The spawn lay on the mud quite open and uncovered, and the old fish was tending it. A few days after, he saw that it was hatched and little pouts were swimming about.") "Pout’s Nest": HDT's name for Wyman's Meadow near Walden. See note to July 26, 1860 (I see a bream swimming about in that smaller pool by Walden in Hubbard's Wood. . . So they may be well off in the Wyman meadow or Pout's Nest."); see also June 7, 1858 ("Pouts, then, make their nests in shallow mud-holes or bays, in masses of weedy mud, or probably in the muddy bank; and the old pout hovers over the spawn or keeps guard at the entrance.Where do the Walden pouts breed when they have not access to this meadow?")