P. M. — To Assabet Bath.
The fertile Salix alba is conspicuous now at a distance, in fruit, being yellowish and drooping.
Hear the parti-colored warbler.
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| Sylvia Americana |
Examine the stone-heaps. One is now a foot above water and quite sharp. They contain, apparently freshly piled up, from a wheelbarrow to a cartload of stones; but I can find no ova in them.
I see a musquash dive head foremost (as he is swimming) in the usual way, being scared by me, but without making any noise.
Saw a painted turtle on the gravelly bank just south of the bath-place, west side, and suspected that she had just laid (it was mid-afternoon). So, examining the ground, I found the surface covered with loose lichens, etc., about one foot behind her, and digging, found five eggs just laid one and a half or two inches deep, under one side. It is remarkable how firmly they are packed in the soil, rather hard to extract, though but just buried.
I notice that turtles which have just commenced digging will void considerable water when you take them up. This they appear to have carried up to wet the ground with.
Saw half a dozen Emys insculpta preparing to dig now at mid-afternoon, and one or two had begun at the most gravelly spot there; but they would not proceed while I watched, though I waited nearly half an hour, but either rested perfectly still with heads drawn partly in, or, when a little further off, stood warily looking about with their necks stretched out, turning their dark and anxious-looking heads about.
It seems a very earnest and pressing business they are upon. They have but a short season to do it in, and they run many risks.
Having succeeded in finding the E. picta’s eggs, I thought I would look for the E. insculpta's at Abel Hosmer's rye-field. So, looking carefully to see where the ground had been recently disturbed, I dug with my hand and could directly feel the passage to the eggs, and so discovered two or three nests with their large and long eggs, – five eggs in one of them. It seems, then, that if you look carefully soon after the eggs are laid in such a place, you can find the nests, though rain or even a dewy night might conceal the spot. I saw half a dozen E. insculpta digging at mid-afternoon.
Near a wall thereabouts, saw a little woodchuck, about a third grown, resting still on the grass within a rod of me, as gray as the oldest are, but it soon ran into the wall.
Edward Hoar has seen the triosteum out, and Euphorbia Cyparissias (how long?), and a Raphanus Rapha nistrum, the last at Waltham; also Eriophorum polystachyon.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 11, 1858
The fertile Salix alba is conspicuous now at a distance, in fruit, being yellowish and drooping. See May 10, 1858 ("For some days the Salix alba have shown their yellow wreaths here and there, suggesting the coming of the yellowbird, and now they are alive with them")
The parti-colored warbler. See June 22, 1856 ("The woods still resound with the note of my tweezer-bird, or Sylvia Americana.") and note to May 13, 1856
Saw a painted turtle on the gravelly bank just south of the bath-place, west side, and suspected that she had just laid. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Painted Turtle
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