With some boys to Flint's Pond, to see the nests

June 23. 

June 23, 2018

P. M. – With some boys to Flint's Pond, to see the nests mentioned on [June 19]. 

The hermit(?) thrush's nest referred to on last page is a rather shallow nest of loose construction, though sufficiently thick-bottomed, about five inches in diameter and hardly one deep within, externally of rather coarse and loosely arranged stubble, chiefly everlasting stems with the flowers yet emitting some fragrance, some whorled loosestrife with the seed-vessels, etc., etc.; within, finer grass and pine-needles. Yet the grass is as often bent angularly as curved regularly to form the nest. 

The tanager's nest of the 19th is four and a half to five inches wide and an inch or more deep, considerably open to look through; the outside, of many very slender twigs, apparently of hemlock, some umbelled pyrola with seed-vessels, everlasting, etc.; within, quite round and regular, of very slender or fine stems, apparently pinweed or the like, and pine needles; hardly any grass stubble about it. 

The egg is a regular oval nine tenths of an inch long by twenty seven fortieths, pale-blue, sprinkled with purplish brown spots, thickest on the larger end. To-day there are three rather fresh eggs in this nest. Neither going nor returning do we see anything of the tanager, and conclude it to be deserted, but perhaps she stays away from it long. 

That rather low wood along the path which runs parallel with the shore of Flint's Pond, behind the rock, is evidently a favorite place for veery-nests. I have seen three there. 

One lately emptied I got to day, amid the dry leaves by some withered ferns. It is composed externally of a mass of much withered oak leaves, thick and pretty well stuck together, plastered or stuck down over the rim, is five to six inches in diameter and four high, two and a half wide within, and very deep, more than two inches. Next to the leaves come bark-shreds, apparently maple bark, and the lining is of a little fine grass, pine-needles, apparently a little hypnum root-fibre. A very deep well-shaped and rounded cavity.

Saw another with two eggs in it, one a much lighter blue than the other. This was by the path leading toward the rock, amid some sprouts at the base of a sapling oak, elevated about six inches above the general level (the veery's). It was a deep, firm nest three quarters of an inch thick, outwardly oak and chestnut leaves, then rather coarse bark-shreds, maple or oak, lined with the same and a few dark root-fibers. 

What that empty nest partly of mud, with conspicuous saliva, on a middle-sized maple, against main stem, near wood thrush’s? 

In the case of the hermit (?) thrush, wood thrush, and tanager's, each about fourteen feet high in slender saplings, you had to climb an adjacent tree in order to reach them. 

A male redstart seen, and often heard. What a little fellow! 

Lysimachia quadrifolia, how long? and veiny-leaved hawkweed, how long? 

Get an egg out of a deserted bank swallow's nest, in a bank only about four feet high dug in the spring for a bank wall near Everett's. The nest is flattish and lined abundantly with the small, somewhat downy, naturally curved feathers of poultry. Egg pure white, long, oval, twenty-seven fortieths by eighteen fortieths of an inch. 

Take two eggs out of the oviduct of an E. insculpta, just run over in the road. They have lately cooked a snapping turtle at Mrs. Wetherbee's, eggs and all, and she thinks there were just forty-two of them!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 23, 1858



Veery nests. See June 2, 1852 (“Nest of Wilson's thrush with bluish-green eggs.”); June 18, 1858 ("A little boy brings me an egg of Wilson's thrush, which he found in a nest in a low bush about a foot from the ground.”); June 19, 1853 ("In the middle of the path to Wharf Rock at Flint's Pond, the nest of a Wilson's thrush, five or six inches high, between the green stems of three or four golden rods, made of dried grass or fibres of bark, with dry oak leaves attached loosely, making the whole nine or ten inches wide, to deceive the eye. Two blue eggs. Like an accidental heap. Who taught it to do thus?"); June 19, 1858 (“boys have found this forenoon at Flint’s Pond one or more veery-nests on the ground. ”)

WILSON'S THRUSH or VEERY, Turdus Wilson,The song of this species, although resembling that of the Wood Thrush in a great degree, is less powerful, and is composed of continued trills repeated with different variations, enunciated with great delicacy and mellowness, so as to be extremely pleasing to one listening to them in the dark solitudes where the sylvan songster resides. It now and then tunes its throat in the calm of evening, and is heard sometimes until after the day has closed. J.J. Audubon

The tanager's nest of the 19th ... To-day there are three rather fresh eggs. See June 19, 1858 ("Two fresh eggs in small white oak sapling, some fourteen feet from ground. They saw a tanager near. (I have one egg.) ")See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Scarlet Tanager

You had to climb an adjacent tree in order to reach them. See June 11, 1855("In order to get the deserted tanager’s nest at the top [of] a pitch pine which was too weak to climb, we carried a rope in our pockets and took three rails a quarter of a mile into the woods, and there rigged a derrick, by which I climbed to a level with the nest, . . . Tied the three tops together and spread the bottoms. “)

Veiny-leaved hawkweed, how long? See June 23, 1859 ("Veiny-leaved hawkweed freshly out."); See also August 21, 1851 (" I have now found all the hawkweeds. Singular these genera of plants, plants manifestly related yet distinct. They suggest a history to nature, a natural history in a new sense.”).

A male redstart seen, and often heard. What a little fellow! See June 23, 1855 ("Probably a redstart’s nest on a white oak sapling, twelve feet up, on forks against stem. Have it. See young redstarts about.”); May 29, 1855 ("females of the redstart, described by Wilson, — very different from the full-plumaged black males. ")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The American Redstart

Get an egg out of a deserted bank swallow's nest. See November 20, 1857 ("Some bank swallows’ nests are exposed by the caving of the bank at Clamshell. The very smallest hole is about two and a half inches wide horizontally, by barely one high. All are much wider than high (vertically). . . .The nest is a regular but shallow one made simply of stubble, about five inches in diameter, and three quarters of an inch deep. ")