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Saw at the Natural History Rooms a shell labelled Haliotis splendens, apparently same with mine from Ricketson’s son, with holes and green reflections.
To Purgatory in Sutton: by railroad to Wilkinsonville in the northeast corner of Sutton (thirty cents) and by buggy four or five miles to Purgatory in the south or southeast part of the town, some twelve miles from Worcester.
The stream rising from the bottom of it must empty into the Blackstone, perhaps through the Mumford River. Sutton is much wooded.
The woman at the last house told of an animal seen in the neighborhood last year. Well, she “had no doubt that there had been a bad animal about.” A Mr. Somebody, who could be relied on, between there and Sutton Centre, had been aroused by a noise early one morning, and, looking out, saw this animal near a wood-pile in his yard, as big as a good-sized dog. He soon made off, making nothing of the walls and fences, before he and his sons got their guns ready. They raised part of the town, a body of shoemakers, and surrounded a swamp into which it was supposed to have entered, but they did not dare to go into it. Also a strange large track was seen where it crossed the road.
Found at the very bottom of this Purgatory, where it was dark and damp, on the steep moss and fern covered side of a rock which had fallen into it, a wood thrush’s nest. Scarcely a doubt of the bird, though I saw not its breast fairly. Heard the note around, and the eggs (one of which I have) correspond. Nest of fine moss from the rock (hypnum?), and lined with pine-needles; three eggs, fresh.
Found in the Purgatory the panicled elder (Sambucus pubens), partly gone to ribbed seed, but some in flower, new to me; Polygonum cilinode (?), not yet in flower; moose-wood or striped maple; and also, close by above, Actoea alba, out of bloom; and a chestnut oak common. Cow-wheat numerously out.
Heard around, from within the Purgatory, not only Wilson’s thrush, but evergreen forest note and tanager; and saw chip-squirrels within it.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 16, 1856
[Purgatory is a 0.25-mile-long chasm between granite walls rising as high as 70 feet, once believed to have originated in the sudden release of dammed-up glacial meltwater near the end of the last Ice Age. Today ice lingers in boulder caves into the early summer, however there is there is no evidence of water erosion in the chasm or on its walls.]
A wood thrush’s nest . . . of fine moss . . . lined with pine-needles; three eggs, fresh. See June 12, 1857 ("At Natural History Rooms . . . The wood thrush's is a slender egg , a little longer than a catbird's and uniform greenish-blue."); June 19, 1858 ("Storrow Higginson and other boys. . . showed me one of five eggs, far advanced, they found there [at Flint's Pond] in a nest some fourteen feet high in a slender maple sapling, placed between many upright shoots, many dry leaves outside. It is a slender clear-blue egg, more slender and pointed at the small end than the robin's . . . It is probably the wood thrush."); June 23, 1858 ("In the case of the hermit thrush, wood thrush, and tanager's [nests of June 19], each about fourteen feet high in slender saplings, you had to climb an adjacent tree in order to reach them."); July 31, 1858 ("Got the wood thrush’s nest of June 19th (now empty) . . . measures four and a half to five inches in diameter from outside to outside of the rim, and one and three quarters deep within . . ."); August 10, 1858 ("The wood thrush’s was a peculiarly woodland nest, made solely of such materials as that unfrequented grove afforded, the refuse of the wood or shore of the pond. There was no horsehair, no twine nor paper nor other relics of art in it.")
The panicled elder (Sambucus pubens), partly gone to ribbed seed, but some in flower, new to me. See September 5, 1856 ("About one mile from West Fitchburg depot, westward, I saw the panicled elderberries on the railroad but just beginning to redden, though it is said to ripen long before this."); July 18, 1857 ("George Bradford says he finds in Salem striped maple and Sambucus pubens."); November 3, 1858 (" I see at the very northwest end of the White Cedar Swamp a little elder, still quite leafy and green, near the path on the edge of the swamp. Its leafets are commonly nine, and the lower two or more are commonly divided. This seemed peculiarly downy beneath, even “sub-pubescent,” as Bigelow describes the Sambucus pubens to be. Compare it with the common")
June 16. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 16
The steep side of a rock -
a wood thrush’s nest lined with
pine-needles; three eggs.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,
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 © 2009-2026
https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560616
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