A small pewee nest on apple in Miles’s meadow.

June 12. 

P. M. — To Conantum on foot. 

Sophia has sent me, in a letter from Worcester, part of an orchis in bloom, apparently Platanthera Hookeri (?), or smaller round-leafed orchis, from the Hermitage Wood, so called, northeast of the town; but the two leaves are elliptical.

Utricularia vulgaris was abundantly out yesterday in Everett’s Pool; how long? 

Sidesaddle flower numerously out now. 

Apparently a small pewee nest on apple in Miles’s meadow. Bird on, and not to be frightened off, though I throw sticks and climb the tree to near her.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 12, 1856

Sidesaddle flower numerously out now:  Sarracenia purpurea, also known as the purple pitcher plant or northern pitcher plant, the only pitcher plant native to New England.  See  June 12, 1852 ("The petals of the sidesaddle-flower, fully expanded, hang down. How complex it is, what with flowers and leaves! It is a wholesome and interesting plant to me, the leaf especially."); June 12, 1853 ('The sidesaddle-flowers are partly turned up now and make a great show, with their broad red petals flapping like saddle ears (?)" See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

Apparently a small pewee nest on apple. See  June 9, 1855 ("The nest probably of the small pewee — looking from the ground like a yellowbird’s, showing reddish wool of ferns —against a white birch, on a small twig, eighteen feet from ground. Four little eggs, all pale cream-color before blowing, white after - fresh.”); June 21, 1855 (" On an apple at R.W.E.’s a small pewee’s nest, on a horizontal branch, seven feet high, almost wholly of hair, cotton without, not incurved at edge; four eggs, pale cream-color.”)

The “Small Pewee” is listed as Muscicapa acadia in Report on the Fishes, Reptiles and Birds of Massachusetts 295 (1839), also in Thompson, Natural History of Vermont, part I, 76 (1842). Probably what Thoreau calls the "small pewee” is what we now know as the Least Flycatcher (Empidonax minimus). It nests in open woods, aspen groves orchards and shade trees. Its sound, che bek, seems closer to Thoreau’s chevet, tche-vet. And it arrives in Massachusetts the last week in April and in Vermont the first week of May. See A Book of the Seasons,by Henry Thoreau, the "Small Pewee”

A small pewee nest 

on apple in Mile's meadow – 

bird on, not frightened.