Down river to swamp east of Poplar Hill.
I hear the toad, which I have called “spray frog” falsely, still. He sits close to the edge of the water and is hard to find—hard to tell the direction, though you may be within three feet. I detect him chiefly by the motion of the great swelling bubble in his throat. A peculiarly rich, sprayey dreamer, now at 2 P. M.! How serenely it ripples over the water! What a luxury life is to him! I have to use a little geometry to detect him. Am surprised at my discovery at last, while C. sits by incredulous. Had turned our prow to shore to search. This rich, sprayey note possesses all the shore. It diffuses itself far and wide over the water and enters into every crevice of the noon, and you cannot tell whence it proceeds.
Young red-wings now begin to fly feebly amid the button-bushes, and the old ones chatter their anxiety. At mouth of Mill Brook, a red-wing’s nest tied on to that thick, high grass and some low willow, eighteen inches from ground, with four eggs variously marked, full of young.
In a hedge thicket by meadow near Peter’s Path, a catbird’s nest, one egg; as usual in a high blueberry, in the thickest and darkest of the hedge, and very loosely built beneath on joggle-sticks.
In the thick swamp behind the hill I look at the vireo’s nest which C. found on the 10th, within reach on a red maple forked twig, eight feet from ground. He took one cowbird’s egg from it, and I now take the other, which he left. There is no vireo’s egg, and it is said they always desert their nest when there are two cowbird’s eggs laid in it. I saw a red-eye lurking near. Have the nest.
Near by, in a part of the swamp which had been cleared and then burnt apparently by accident, we find the nest of a veery on a tussock eight inches high, which like those around has been burnt all off close and black. The nest is directly in the top, the outside burnt. It contains three eggs, which have been scorched, discolored, and cooked, — one cracked by the heat, though fresh. Some of the sedge has since sprung up green, eight inches high, around here and there. All the lower part of the nest is left, an inch thick with dead leaves, —maple, etc., —and well lined with moss stems (?). It is a dry swamp.
In a high blueberry bush, on the Poplar Hill-side, four feet from ground, a catbird’s nest with four eggs, forty feet high up the hill. They even follow the blue berry up-hill.
A field sparrow’s nest with three young, on a Vaccinium vacillans, rose, and grass, six inches from ground, made of grass and hair.
A Carya tomentosa hickory on the hill well out, and froth on the nuts, almost all out and black; perhaps three or four days.
A hawthorn grows near by, just out of bloom, twelve feet high — Crataegus Oxyacantha.
A veronica at Peet weet Rock; forget which kind.
A crow blackbird’s nest high in an elm by riverside just below the Island. C. climbed to it and got it. I have it. There were eggs. Bottom of mud and coarse grass and sedge, lined with finer grass and dry weed stems.
Another in an elm rear of Loring’s, in a recess where a limb was once broken off, open on one side, eighteen feet high. Young with heads out almost ready to fly.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 12, 1855
This rich, sprayed note . . . diffuses itself far . . . and you cannot tell whence it proceeds. See April 5, 1860. ("a very faint distant ring of toads, which, though I walk and walk all the afternoon, I never come nearer to.”); compare May 3, 1857 ("A clear, ringing note with a bubbling trill. It takes complete possession of you, for you vibrate to it, and can hear nothing else."
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