The yellow-throated vireo I hear now.

June 9.

June 9, 2014

I should like to know the birds of the woods better, what birds inhabit our woods? I hear their various notes ringing through them. What musicians compose our woodland quire? They must be forever strange and interesting to me. How prominent a place the vireos hold! It is probably the yellow-throated vireo I hear now, — a more interrupted red-eye with its prelia — prelioit or tully-ho, — invisible in the tops of the trees.

7 p. m. — Up Assabet.  Chimney and bank swallows are still hovering over the river, and cherry-birds fly past. The veery rings, and the tree- toad. 

The air is now full of shad-flies, and there is an incessant sound made by the fishes leaping for their evening meal, dimpling the river like large drops as far as I can see, sometimes making a loud plashing.

Meanwhile the kingfishers are on the lookout for the fishes as they rise.  I see one dive in the twilight and go off uttering his cr-r-ack, cr-r-rack. 

The mosquitoes encircle my head and torment me, and I see a great moth go fluttering over the tree-tops and the water, black against the sky, like a bat. The fishes continue to leap by moonlight. A full moon.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 9, 1854

The air is now full of shad-flies, and there is an incessant sound made by the fishes leaping for their evening meal . . . See June 9, 1856 ("Again, about seven, the ephemera came out, in numbers as many as last night, ...; and the fishes leap as before. . . "); June 8, 1856 (“my boat being by chance at the same place where it was in ’54, I noticed a great flight of ephemera”)

June 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 9

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021

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*** 

P . M . – To Well Meadow .

The summer aspect of the river begins perhaps when the Utricularia vulgaris is first seen on the surface, as yesterday.

As I go along the railroad causeway, I see in the cultivated grounds, a lark flashing his white tail, and showing his handsome yellow breast, with its black crescent like an Indian locket. For a day or two I have heard the fine seringo note of the cherry - birds, and seen them flying past, the only ( ? ) birds, methinks, that I see in small flocks now, except swallows.         

 The willow down and seeds are blowing over the causeway.         

 Veronica scutellata, apparently several days.         

 A strawberry half turned on the sand of the causeway side, — the first fruit or berry of the year that I have tasted.         

 Ladies’-slippers are going to seed. I see some white oak pincushions, nearly two inches through.         

Is that galium, out apparently some days in the woods by Deep Cut, near Linnæa, triflorum or Aparine ?. Compare that at Lee ' s. 

I should like to know the birds of the woods better, what birds in habit our woods? 

I hear their various notes ringing through them.         

What musicians compose our wood land quire ? They must be forever strange and interesting to me.         

How prominent a place the vireos hold ! It is probably the yellow - throated vireo I hear now, — a more interrupted red- ye with its prelia - prelioit or tully - ho, — invisible in the tops of the trees.         

 I see the thick, flower - like huckleberry apples.           

Haynes (?), Goodwin ' s comrade, tells me that he used to catch mud turtles in the ponds behind Provincetown with a toad on a mackerel hook thrown into the pond and the line tied to a stump or stake on shore.         

Invariably the turtle when hooked crawled up, following the line to the stake, and was there found waiting — Goodwin baits minks with muskrats.

Find the great fringed orchis out apparently two or three days.

Two are almost fully out, two or three only budded.

 A large spike of peculiarly delicate pale-purple flowers growing in the luxuriant and shady swamp is remarkable that this, one of the fairest of all our flowers, should also be one of the rarest, — for the most part not seen at all. 

I think that no other but myself in Concord annually finds it. 

That so queenly a flower should annually bloom so rarely and in such : withdrawn and secret places as to be rarely seen by man ! The village belle never sees this more delicate belle of the swamp. 

How little relation between our life and its ! Most of us never see it or hear of it. 

The seasons go by to us as if it were not. 

A beauty reared in the shade of a convent, who has never strayed be yond the convent bell.

  Only the skunk or owl or other inhabitant of the swamp beholds it. 

In the damp twilight of the swamp, where it is wet to the feet. 

 How little anxious to display its attractions ! It does not pine because man does not admire it. 

 How independent on our race ! It lifts its delicate spike amid the hellebore and ferns in the deep shade of the swamp. 

 I am inclined to think of it as a relic of the past as much as the arrowhead, or the tomahawk I found on the 7th.       

Ferns are four or five feet high there.         

7 P. M. — Up Assabet.

         
The tupelo stamens are loose and will perhaps shed pollen to- morrow or next day. 

 It is twilight, and the river is covered with that dusty lint, as was the water next the shore at Walden this afternoon.

  Chimney and bank swallows are still hovering over the river, and cherry-birds fly past.

 The veery rings, and the tree toad. 

The air is now pretty full of shad- flies, and there is an incessant sound made by the fishes leaping for such as are struggling on the surface ; it sounds like the lapsing of a swift stream, sucking amid rocks.

 The fishes make a business of thus getting their evening meal, dimpling the river like large drops as far as I can see, sometimes making a loud plashing. 

Meanwhile the kingfishers are on the lookout for the fishes as they rise, and I saw one dive in the twilight and go off utter ing his cr-r-ack, cr-r-rack. 

The mosquitoes encircle my head and torment me, and I see a great moth go fluttering over the tree-tops and the water, black against the sky, like a bat. 

The fishes continue to leap by moonlight.

 A full moon.

 Covered with disgrace, this State has sat down coolly to try for their lives the men who attempted to do its duty for it.

         And this is called justice! They who have shown that they can behave particularly well, — they alone are put under bonds “for their good behavior !” Such a judge and court are an impertinence. 

           Only they are guiltless who commit the crime of contempt of such a court.

            It behooves every man to see that his influence is on the side of justice, and let the courts make their own characters.

            What is any political organization worth, when it is in the service of the devil ? I see that the authorities — the Governor, Mayor, Commissioner, Marshal, etc.     — are either weak or unprincipled men, - i. e.         , well disposed but not equal to the occasion, — or else of dull moral perception, with the unprincipled and servile in their pay.

            All sound moral sentiment is opposed to them.

            I had thought that the Governor, was in some sense the executive officer of the State ; that it was his business to see that the laws of the State were executed ; but, when there is any special use for him, he is useless, permits the laws to go unexecuted, and is not heard from.

            But the worst I shall say of the Governor is that he was no better than the majority of his constituents - he was not equal to the occasion.

            While the whole military force of the State, if need be, is at the service of a slaveholder, to enable him to carry back a slave, not a soldier is offered to save a citizen of Massachusetts from being kidnapped.

           Is this what all these arms, all this “training,” has been for these seventy-eight years past  What is wanted is men of principle, who recognize a higher law than the decision of the majority.

            The marines and the militia whose bodies were used lately were not men of sense nor of principle; in a high moral sense they were not men at all.

            Justice is sweet and musical to hear; but injustice is harsh and discordant.

            The judge still sits grinding at his organ, but it yields no music, and we hear only the sound of the handle.

            He believes that all the music resides in the handle, and the crowd toss him their coppers just the same as before.