Heard my night-warbler on a solitary white pine in the Heywood Clearing by the Peak.

June 19.

June 19, 2020

P. M. – To Flint ’ s Pond.

I see large patches of blue - eyed grass in the meadow across the river from my window.

The pine woods at Thrush Alley emit that hot dry scent, reminding me even of days when I used to go a-blackberrying.

The air is full of the hum of invisible insects, and I hear a locust. Perhaps this sound indicates the time to put on a thin coat.

But the wood thrush sings as usual far in the wood.

A blue jay and a tanager come dashing into the pine under which I stand. The first flies directly away, screaming with suspicion or disgust, but the latter, more innocent, remains.

The cuckoo is heard, too, in the depths of the wood.

Heard my night-warbler on a solitary white pine in the Heywood Clearing by the Peak. Discovered it at last, looking like a small piece of black bark curving partly over the limb. No fork to its tail. It appeared black beneath; was very shy, not bigger than a yellowbird, and very slender.

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?

Lobelia Dortmanna, a day or two at most.

No grass balls yet.

That fine-rooted green plant on bottom sends up stems with black heads three or four inches. Do they become white?

Every one who has waded about the shores of a pond must have been surprised to find how much warmer the water was close to the shore, where only three or four inches deep, than a little further out.

I think I saw a young crow now fully grown.

Returned by Smith’s Hill and the Saw Mill Brook.

Got quite a parcel of strawberries on the hill.

The hellebore leaves by the brook are already half turned yellow. Plucked one blue early blueberry.

The strain of the bobolink now begins to sound a little rare. It never again fills the air as the first week after its arrival.

At this season we apprehend no long storm, only showers with or without thunder.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 19, 1853

Heard my night-warbler. Discovered it at last. See June 19, 1858 ("I do not hear the night-warbler so often as a few weeks ago. Birds generally do not sing so tumultuously.")  See also  May 17, 1858 ("Just after hearing my night-warbler I see two birds on a tree. ...[One perhaps golden-crowned thrush. ]”); May 19, 1858 (“Heard the night-warbler begin his strain just like an oven-bird! I have noticed that when it drops down into the woods it darts suddenly one side to a perch when low."); May 28, 1854 ("The night-warbler, after his strain, drops down almost perpendicularly into a tree-top and is lost.”). and  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Oven-bird . Note Thoreau;s night-warbler  is likely the oven-bird making its flight call. According to Emerson the night warbler is "a bird he had never identified, had been in search of twelve years, which always, when he saw it, was in the act of diving down into a tree or bush.” 

In the middle of the path to Wharf Rock at Flint's Pond, the nest of a Wilson's thrush. See June 19, 1858 (“Boys have found this forenoon at Flint’s Pond one or more veery-nests on the ground. ”) and note to June 23, 1858 ("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.")

I think I saw a young crow now fully grown. See.July 7, 1860 ("I see a flock of some twenty-five crows. Probably the young are just grown."); July 10, 1854 ("Crows are more noisy, probably anxious about young.")

The strain of the bobolink now begins to sound a little rare. See June 9, 1855 ("I think I have hardly heard a bobolink for a week or ten days.");June 15, 1852 ("The note of the bobolink begins to sound somewhat rare.") and note to July 7, 1859 ("The note of the bobolink has begun to sound rare?") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Bobolink