Four nests.

June 20, 2014

June 20.

A catbird’s nest eight feet high on a pitch pine in Emerson’s heater piece, partly of paper. 

A summer yellowbird’s, saddled on an apple, of cotton-wool, lined with hair and feathers, three eggs, white with flesh-colored tinge and purplish-brown and black spots. 

Two hair-birds’ nests fifteen feet high on apple trees at R.W.E.’s (one with two eggs). 

A robin’s nest with young, which was lately, in the great wind, blown down and somehow lodged on the lower part of an evergreen by arbor,—without spilling the young!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 20, 1855

A catbird’s nest eight feet high on a pitch pine . . . See June 16, 1855 (“Catbird’s nest in an alder, three feet from ground, three fresh eggs.”); June 15, 1855 (“In the swamp a catbird’s nest in the darkest and thickest part, in a high blueberry, five feet from ground, two eggs; bird comes within three feet while I am looking. ”); June 12, 1855 (“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 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 blueberry up-hill. ”); June 10, 1855 (“A catbird’s nest of usual construction, one egg, two feet high on a swamp-pink; an old nest of same near by on same. ”); June 9, 1855 (“A catbird’s nest, three eggs, in a high blueberry, four feet from ground, with rather more dry leaves than usual, above Assabet Spring. . . . Catbird’s nest, one egg, on a blueberry bush, three feet from ground, of (as usual) sticks, leaves, bark, roots. Another near same (also in V. Muhlenbergii Swamp) on a bent white birch and andromeda, eighteen inches from ground; three eggs; stubble of weeds mainly instead of twigs, otherwise as usual. ”); June 8, 1855 (“A catbird’s nest on the peninsula of Goose Pond — four eggs — in a blueberry bush, four feet from ground, close to water; as usual of sticks, dry leaves, and bark lined with roots. ”); June 6, 1855 ("Two catbirds’ nests in the thickest part of the thicket on the edge of Wheeler’s meadow near Island. One done laying (I learn after); four eggs, green, —much darker green than the robin’s and more slender in proportion. This is loosely placed in the forks of a broad alternate or silky cornel bush, about five feet from the ground, and is composed of dead twigs and a little stubble, then grape vine bark, and is lined with dark root-fibres. Another, eight rods beyond, rests still more loosely on a Viburnum dentatum and birch; has some dry leaves with the twigs, and one egg,—about six feet high. The bird hops within five feet"); July 19, 1854 (“Apparently a catbird's nest in a shrub oak, lined with root-fibres, with three green- blue eggs.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Catbird nests

June 20. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 20

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