The North Shore

April 27. 

Walk along Swampscott Beach from Red Rock northeast. 

The beach is strewn with beautifully colored purple and whitish algae just left by the tide. 

Hear and see the seringo in fields next the shore. No noticeable yellow shoulder, pure whitish beneath, dashed throat and a dark-brown line of dashes along the sides of the body. 

Struck inland and passed over the west end of High Rock, through the cemetery, and over Pine Hill, where I heard a strange warbler, methought, a dark-colored, perhaps reddish-headed bird. 

Thence through East Saugus and Saugus to Cliftondale, I think in the southern part of Saugus. 

The little brown snake with the light line along the back just killed in the road. 

Saw at the Aquarium in Bromfield Street apparently brook minnows with the longitudinal dark lines bordered with light. A little pout incessantly nibbles at the dorsal fin of the common perch, also at apparently the mucus on its back. 

See the sea-raven. 

Toads ring and, no doubt, in Concord also.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 27, 1859

Hear and see the seringo in fields next the shore. See note to December 7, 1858 ("Dr. Bryant calls my seringo (i. e. the faint-noted bird) Savannah sparrow.”)


The little brown snake with the light line along the back just killed in the road. See April 22, 1857 (“Near Tall's Island, rescue a little pale or yellowish brown snake that was coiled round a willow half a dozen rods from the shore and was apparently chilled by the cold. Was it not Storer's "little brown snake?”); October 29, 1857 (“I see evidently what Storer calls the little brown snake (Coluber ordinatus). . . . Above it is pale-brown, with a still lighter brown stripe running down the middle of the back”); April 29, 1858 ("Noticed a man killing, on the sidewalk by Minott's, a little brown snake with blackish marks along each side of back and a pink belly. Was it not the Coluber amaenus?”); October 18, 1858 (“Noticed a little snake, eight or nine inches long, in the rut in the road in the Lincoln woods. It was brown above with a paler-brown dorsal stripe, which was bounded on each side by a row of dark-brown or blackish dots one eighth inch apart, the opposite rows alternating; beneath, light cream-color or yellowish white. Evidently Storer’s Coluber ordinatus. It ran along in the deep sandy rut and would probably be run over there.”)