Strawberries after rain

June 14. 

Up river. 

See young red-wings; like grizzly-black vultures, they are still so bald. See many empty red-wing nests now amid the Camus sericea. 

The bluebird’s nest high in the black willow at Sassafras Shore has five eggs. The gold robin’s nest, which I could pull down within reach, just beyond, has three eggs. I have one. 

I tell C. to look into an old mortise-hole in Wood’s Bridge for a white-bellied swallow’s nest, as we paddle under; but he laughs, incredulous. I insist, and when he climbs up he scares out the bird. Five eggs. “You see the feathers about, do you not?” “Yes,” said he. 

Kalmiana lily, several days. The little galium in meadow, say one day. 

A song sparrow’s nest in ditch bank under Clamshell, of coarse grass lined with fine, and five eggs nearly hatched and a peculiar dark end to them. Have one or more and the nest. The bird evidently deserted the nest when two eggs had been taken. Could not see her return to it, nor find her on it again after we had flushed her. 

A kingbird’s nest with four eggs on a large horizontal stem or trunk of a black willow, four feet high, over the edge of the river, amid small shoots from the willow; outside of mikania, roots, and knotty sedge, well lined with root fibres and wiry weeds. 

Viburnum dentatum, apparently not long, say two days, and carrion-flower the same. 

Looked at the peetweet’s nest which C. found yesterday. It was very difficult to find again in the broad open meadow; no nest but a mere hollow in the dead cranberry leaves, the grass and stubble ruins, under a little alder. The old bird went off at last from under us; low in the grass at first and with wings up, making a worried sound which attracted other birds. I frequently noticed others afterward flying low over the meadow and alighting and uttering this same note of alarm. 

There were only four eggs in this nest yesterday, and to-day, to C.’s surprise, there are the two eggs which he left and a young peetweet beside; a gray pinch of down with a black centre to its back, but already so old and precocious that it runs with its long legs swiftly off from squatting beside the two eggs, and hides in the grass. We have some trouble to catch it. 

How came it here with these eggs, which will not be hatched for some days? C. saw nothing of it yesterday. These eggs were not addled (I had opened one, C. another). Did this bird come from another nest, or did it belong to an earlier brood? Eggs white, with black spots here and there all over, dim at great end. (J. Farmer says that young peetweets run at once like partridges and quails, and that they are the only birds he knows that do.)

A cherry-bird’s nest and two eggs in an apple tree fourteen feet from ground. One egg, round black spots and a few oblong, about equally but thinly dispersed over the whole, and a dim, internal, purplish tinge about the large end. It is difficult to see anything of the bird, for she steals away early, and you may neither see nor hear anything of her while examining the nest, and so think it deserted. Approach very warily and look out for them a dozen or more rods off. 

It suddenly begins to rain with great violence, and we in haste draw up our boat on the Clamshell shore, upset it, and get under, sitting on the paddles, and so are quite dry while our friends thought we were being wet to our skins. But we have as good a roof as they. It is very pleasant to lie there half an hour close to the edge of the water and see and hear the great drops patter on the river, each making a great bubble; the rain seemed much heavier for it. 

The swallows at once and numerously begin to fly low over the water in the rain, as they had not before, and the toads’ spray rings in it. After it begins to hold up, the wind veers a little to the east and apparently blows back the rear of the cloud, and blows a second rain somewhat in upon us. 

As soon as the rain is over I crawl out, straighten my legs, and stumble at once upon a little patch of strawberries within a rod, -- the sward red with them. These we pluck while the last drops are thinly falling. 

Silene antirrhina out on Clamshell, how long? 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 14, 1855

It suddenly begins to rain with great violence, and we in haste draw up our boat on the Clamshell shore, upset it, and get under. See July 22, 1858 (“C. and I took refuge from a shower under our boat at Clamshell; staid an hour at least.”)

A little patch of strawberries. See June 14, 1859 ("Early strawberries begin to be common. The lower leaves of the plant are red, concealing the fruit. "); June 10, 1856 ("Ripe strawberries . . . hard at first to detect amid the red radical leaves.”); June 15, 1853 ("Strawberries in the meadow now ready for the picker. They lie deep at the roots of the grass in the shade. You spread aside the tall grass, and deep down in little cavities by the roots of the grass you find this rich fruit.”)



Silene antirrhina: sleepy campion.