The bream is steadily poised over her treasures..

June 8. 

June 8, 2018

P. M. — To marsh hawk's nest near Hubbard’s Bath. 

June 8, 2018

I see many breams' nests made, and in one or two in which I look, I find, on taking out the stones and the gravel, the small yellowish ova about one twentieth of an inch in diameter. This is not, at least ordinarily, visible now as you look down on the nest, but, on taking up portions of the bottom of the concave nest, you find it scattered (not crowded) over the sand, stones, clam shells, weeds, etc., which form the bottom of the nest. It studs the little gray and brown stones, rather scatteredly, like some kind of gem adhering pretty firmly, and the bream is steadily poised over her treasures. 

You see the bream poised over her large concave nest in the sand, and, taking up a part of the bottom, as some brown stone, you find it studded with the small gem-like ova, loosely dispersed. Apparently it has not been laid long. 

The Salix nigra is still in bloom. 

I see red-wing blackbirds hatched. 

In several places I see where dead suckers have been at last partly devoured by some animal, and their great bladders are seen floating off. Thomas Bell, in his “British Reptiles,” says of “the Terrapene Europaea, the common lacustrine tortoise of the Continent,” “As they live principally upon small fish, the air-bags of which they reject, it is said that the people are wont to judge of the quantity of tortoises to be found in a lake or pond, by the number of air-bags which are seen swimming on the surface of the water.” 

The marsh hawk's eggs are not yet hatched. She rises when I get within a rod and utters that peculiar cackling or scolding note, much like, but distinct from, that of the pigeon woodpecker. She keeps circling over the nest and repeatedly stoops within a rod of my head in an angry manner. She is not so large as a hen-hawk, and is much more slender. She will come sailing swiftly and low over the tops of the trees and bushes, etc., and then stoop as near to my head as she dares, in order to scare me away. The primaries, of which I count but five, are very long and loose, or distant, like fingers with which she takes hold of the air, and form a very distinct part of the wing, making an angle with the rest. Yet they are not broad and give to the wing a long and slender appearance. The legs are stretched straight back under the tail. I see nothing of the male, nor did I before. 

A red-wing and a kingbird are soon in pursuit of the hawk, which proves, I think, that she meddles with their nests or themselves. She circles over me, scolding, as far as the edge of the wood, or fifteen rods. 

The early potentilla is now in some places erect. 

The sidesaddle-flower is out, — how long? — and the sweet flag, how long? 

I see quite common, on the surface in deep water wherever there are weeds, misty white strings of spawn, reminding one of toad-spawn without the ova, only whiter, or more opaque. But these strings turn on themselves, forming small masses four to eight inches long, attached to the weeds, – Ranunculus Purshii, potamogeton, etc., etc. These strings are full of minute ova, like seeds, pale-brown, oval or elliptical, about one fiftieth of an inch long. 

I perceive distinctly to-day that there is no articular line along the sides of the back of the bullfrog, but that there is one along the back of that bullfrog-like, smaller, widely dispersed and early frog so common about fountains, brooks, ditches, and the river, of which I probably have one small one bottled and have heard the croak (vide April 5th, 1858). 

That pale-brown or oat spawn must belong, then, I think, to the Rana fontinalis. 

A kingbird's nest with three eggs, lined with some hair, in a fork — or against upright part — of a willow, just above near stone bridge. 

Is that small spiked rush from a few inches to a foot or more in height Eleocharis palustris? or tenuis? 
In early aster meadow and else where common, along meadow-paths. 

Whiteweed is getting to be common.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 8, 1858

June 8, 2018

The sidesaddle-flower is out. Sarracenia purpurea, also known as the purple pitcherplant or northern pitcher plant, the only pitcherplant native to New England. See note to June 12, 1856 ("Sidesaddle flower numerously out now.")

And the bream is steadily poised over her treasures. See November 30, 1858 ("I can only poise my thought there by its side and try to think like a bream for a moment. I can only see the bream in its orbit, as I see a star. The bream, appreciated, floats in the pond as the centre of the system, another image of God. Its life no man can explain more than he can his own.")

The marsh hawk's eggs are not yet hatched. She rises when I get within a rod and utters that peculiar cackling or scolding note, much like, but distinct from, that of the pigeon woodpecker. See May 30, 1858 ("The hawk rises when we approach and circles about over the wood, uttering a note singularly like the common one of the flicker. . . . There are two dirty, or rather dirtied, white eggs left (of four that were),”);  June 17, 1858 (“One egg is hatched since the 8th, and the young bird, all down, with a tinge of fawn or cinnamon, lies motionless on its breast with its head down and is already about four inches long!”);  June 20, 1858 (“Got the marsh hawk's egg, which was addled. I noticed on the 17th that the hawk (my marsh hawk) was off her nest and soaring above the wood late in the afternoon, as I was returning.”); July 22, 1858 (“The nest of the marsh hawk is empty. It has probably flown.”);; August 2, 1858 (“I see there what I take to be a marsh hawk of this year, hunting by itself. It has not learned to be very shy yet, so that we repeatedly get near it. What a rich brown bird! almost, methinks, with purple reflections.”)

A red-wing and a kingbird are soon in pursuit of the hawk. See June 5, 1854 ("I see at a distance a kingbird or blackbird pursuing a crow lower down the hill, like a satellite revolving about a black planet."); June 7, 1858 ("It is evidence enough against crows and hawks and owls, proving their propensity to rob birds’ nests of eggs and young, that smaller birds pursue them so often.")

A kingbird's nest with three eggs, lined with some hair, in a fork — or against upright part — of a willow. See June 8, 1856 ("A kingbird’s nest on a black cherry, above Barbarea Shore. loosely constructed, with some long white rags dangling; one egg."); see also June 3, 1854 ("A kingbird's nest in a fork of a black willow"); June 6, 1857 ("A kingbird's nest, with two of its large handsome eggs, very loosely set over the fork of a horizontal willow by river, with dried everlasting of last year, as usual, just below Garfield's boat. Another in black willow south of long cove (east side, north of Hubbard's Grove) and another north of said cove.");  June 3, 1854 ("A kingbird's nest in a fork of a black willow. "); June 13, 1855 ("Two kingbirds’ nests with eggs in an apple and in a willow by riverside."); June 14, 1855 ("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"); June 16, 1855 ("Examined a kingbird’s nest found before (13th) in a black willow over edge of river, four feet from ground. Two eggs."); June 24, 1856 ("A kingbird’s nest just completed in an apple tree. "); July 5, 1856 ("A kingbird’s nest in fork of a button-bush five feet high on shore (not saddled on); three young just hatched and one egg.")

June 8. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 8

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 ©  2009-2021