A large yellow butterfly

June 3

Friday. P. M. — Up Assabet. 

Female Eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus ) (Wikipedia)

A large yellow butterfly (somewhat Harris Papilio Asterias like but not black-winged) three and a half to four inches in expanse. Pale-yellow, the front wings crossed by three or four black bars; rear, or outer edge, of all wings widely bordered with black, and some yellow behind it; a short black tail to each hind one, with two blue spots in front of two red-brown ones on the tail. (P. Turnus?)

Arenaria lateriflora well out, how long? 

Common rum cherry out yesterday, how long? 

Carex crinita out a good while. Carex lanuginosa, Smith's shore, green fruit. Carex pallescens, Smith's shore (higher up bank), green fruit. 

Nighthawk, two eggs, fresh. 

Quail heard.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 3, 1859

A large yellow butterfly See May 28, 1855 ("Large yellow and black butterfly."); June 14, 1860 ("I see near at hand two of those large yellow (and black) butterflies which I have probably seen nearly a month . They rest on the mud near a brook. Two and three quarters to three inches in alar extent; yellow with a broad black border, outside of which a row of small yellow spots; three or four black marks transversely to the fore wings, and two fine lines parallel with the body on the hinder (?) wings; a small and slender swallow tail with reddish brown and blue at the tail; body black above and yellow along the sides. (C. says it is the Papilio Turnus of Say.)"). See also Lewis Hyde,  What Thoreau knew about butterflies :

"What he’s seen is the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail whose scientific name at the time was Papilio turnus. He seems unsure of that, however, and guesses that it’s Papilio asterias, the name properly belonging to the Black Swallowtail. The parenthetical question mark suggests that he knows he’s not sure and the name Harris indicates that he knows where to turn for help: Thaddeus William Harris . . .  In the entry for June 14, 1860 . . . Thoreau gives the correct scientific name of the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail. After a clear description (“a small and slender swallow tail with reddish brown and blue at the tail,” etc.) he adds a note: “C[hanning] says itis the Papilio Turnus of Say”. Thomas Say was another nineteenth-century entomologist whose three-volume master work, American Entomology, was originally published in the 1820s. In the Journal, however, Say does not appear until this entry in 1860, plausibly because in 1859 another entomologist, John Lawrence LeConte, had published a two-volume version of Say’s 1820 edition. LeConte’s edition has a fine color plate of the Tiger Swallowtail; William Ellery Channing must have seen it, whereupon, one year later, Thoreau is sure of the name."

Tiger swallowtails, hand-colored engraving by Cornelis Tiebout 

after drawings by Titian R. Peale, 

called Papilio turnus by Thomas Say, 

in his American Entomology, vol. 3, 1824-28

According to Harris "The caterpillar of the Turnus butterfly  lives upon the leaves of apple and wild-cherry trees. It is of a green color above  with little blue dots in rows, a yellow eye-spot with a black centre on each side of the third segment, a yellow and black band across the fourth segment , and the head, belly, and legs are pink. It suspends itself and becomes a chrysalis about the first of August, and is not changed to a butterfly till the month of June in the following summer."  See July 15, 1851 ("Slow- moving green worms, with rings spotted black and yellow, like an East Indian production.")

Arenaria lateriflora well out, how long? See June 6, 1852 ("The side-flowering sandwort, an inconspicuous white flower like a chickweed."); June 5, 1855 ("Side-flowering sandwort apparently three days out in Clamshell flat meadow."); June 10, 1856 ("Side-flowering sandwort abundantly out this side of Dugan Spring."); June 13, 1858 ("Arenaria lateriflora, how long?")

Nighthawk, two eggs, fresh.  See May 30, 1860 ("On the wall, at the brook behind Cyrus Hosmer’s barn, I start a nighthawk within a rod or two. It alights again on his barn-yard board fence, sitting diagonally. I see the white spot on the edge of its wings as it sits. It flies thence and alights on the ground in his corn-field, sitting flat, but there was no nest under it. This was unusual. Had it not a nest nearby?") June 1, 1853 ("Walking up this side-hill, I disturb a nighthawk eight or ten feet from me . .Without moving, I look about and see its two eggs on the bare ground, on a slight shelf of the hill, on the dead pine-needles and sand, without any cavity or nest whatever."); June 7, 1853 ("Visit my nighthawk on her nest. . . . The sight of this creature sitting on its eggs impresses me with the venerableness of the globe"); June 5, 1854 ("Now, just be fore sundown, a nighthawk is circling, imp-like, with undulating, irregular flight over the sprout-land on the Cliff Hill, with an occasional squeak and showing the spots on his wings. He does not circle away from this place, and I associate him with two gray eggs somewhere on the ground beneath and a mate there sitting. ")  See also  A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,, the Nighthawk