Goodwin says he heard a stake-driver several days ago.

April 25.

P. M. — To Assabet. 

Approaching the Island, I hear the phe phe, phe phe, phe phe, phe phe, phe, the sharp whistling note, of a fish hawk, and, looking round, see him just afterward launching away from one of the swamp white oaks southwest of the Island. 

There is about half a second between each note, and he utters them either while perched or while flying. He shows a great proportion of wing and some white on back. The wings are much curved. He sails along some eighty feet above the water’s edge, looking for fish, and alights again quite near. 

I see him an hour afterward about the same spot. 

See a barn swallow. Also see one myrtle-bird, and Goodwin says he heard a stake-driver several days ago.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 25, 1858

Approaching the Island, I hear the phe phe, phe phe, phe phe, phe phe, phe, the sharp whistling note, of a fish hawk, and, looking round, see him just afterward launching away from one of the swamp white oaks. See April 28, 1858 (“ I see the fish hawk again . . . This bird goes fishing slowly down one side of the river and up again on the other, forty to sixty feet high, continually poising itself almost or quite stationary, with its head to the northwest wind and looking down, flapping its wings enough to keep its place, some times stationary for about a minute. It is not shy. This boisterous weather is the time to see it. ”) Compare April 15, 1855 ("Half a mile further we see another fish hawk upon a dead limb midway up a swamp white oak over the water. . . When he launches off, he utters a clear whistling note, — phe phe, phe phe, phe phe, — somewhat like that of a telltale, but more round and less shrill and rapid, and another, perhaps his mate, fifty rods off, joins him. "); April 16, 1856 ("As I walk along the bank of the Assabet, I hear the yeep yeep yeep yeeep yeeep yeep, or perhaps peop, of a fish hawk, repeated quite fast, but not so shrill and whistling as I think I have heard it, and directly I see his long curved wings undulating over Pinxter Swamp, now flooded.”) See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Osprey (Fish Hawk)

Stake-Driver

Goodwin says he heard a stake-driver [the American Bittern]. See March 22, 1855 ("The river has skimmed over a rod in breadth along the sides. See a heavy-flapping, bittern-like bird flying northeast. It was small for a fish hawk. Can it be the stake-driver ? or a gull? "); April 24, 1854 ("A.M. — Up railroad. . . . As I stand still listening on the frosty sleepers at Wood's crossing by the lupines, I hear the loud and distinct pump-a-gor of a stake-driver. Thus he announces himself."); May 9, 1857 ("Hear stake-driver."); May 12, 1855 (“We sit about half an hour, and it is surprising what various distinct sounds we hear there deep in the wood, as if the aisles of the wood were so many ear trumpets,-- the cawing of crows, the peeping of hylas in the swamp and perhaps the croaking of a tree-toad, the oven-bird, the yorrick of Wilson’s thrush, a distant stake-driver, the night-warbler and black and white creeper, the lowing of cows, the late supper horn, the voices of boys, the singing of girls, -- not all together but separately, distinctly, and musically, from where the partridge and the red-tailed hawk and the screech owl sit on their nests.”) May 20, 1856 ("See and hear a stake-driver in the swamp. It took one short pull at its pump and stopped."); June 11, 1860 ("Just as we are shoving away from this isle, I hear a sound just like a small dog barking hoarsely, and, looking up, see it was made by a bittern (Ardea minor), a pair of which flap over the meadows and probably nest in some tussock thereabouts."); June 15, 1857 ("as I passed a swamp, a bittern boomed."); July 22, 1859 ("Heard from a bittern, a peculiar hoarse, grating note, lazily uttered as it flew over the meadows. A bittern's croak: a sound perfectly becoming the bird, as far as possible from music."); August 5, 1854 (Near Lee's (returning), see a large bittern, pursued by small birds, alight on the shorn meadow near the pickerel-weeds, but, though I row to the spot, he effectually conceals himself.); August 13, 1852 ("Saw the head and neck of a great bittern projecting above the meadow-grass, exactly like the point of a stump, only I knew there could be no stump there.")August 22, 1854 ("See a blue heron — apparently a young bird, of a brownish blue — fly up from one of these pools, and a stake-driver from another, and also see their great tracks on the mud, and the feathers they had shed,"); August 31, 1855 ("Passed in boat within fifteen feet of a great bittern, standing perfectly still in the water by the riverside, with the point of its bill directly up, as if it knew that from the color of its throat, etc., it was much less likely to be detected in that position, near weeds."); September 20, 1851 ("I scare up the great bittern in meadow by the Heywood Brook near the ivy. He rises buoyantly as he flies against the wind, and sweeps south over the willow with outstretched neck, surveying."); September 20, 1855 ("The great bittern, as it flies off from near the rail road bridge, filthily drops its dirt and utters a low hoarse kwa kwa; then runs and hides in the grass, and I land and search within ten feet of it before it rises. "); September 25, 1855 ("Scare up the usual great bittern above the railroad bridge, whose hoarse qua qua, as it flies heavily off, a pickerel-fisher on the bank imitates.");; October 26, 1858 ("[Minott] says that some call the stake-driver “'belcher squelcher,” and some, “wollerkertoot. ” I used to call them “pump-er-gor’. ” Some say “slug-toot.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, American Bittern (the Stake-Diver)