The peetweets are quite noisy when I approach.

July 2 . 

Cooler to-day. 

Polygonum Persicaria. 

The Ranunculus Purshiï is very rarely seen now. 

I hear a harsh keow from a bittern flying over the river. 

The peetweets are quite noisy about the rocks in Merrick’s pasture when I approach; have eggs or young there, which they are anxious about. 

The tall anemone in blossom, and no doubt elsewhere much earlier, — a week or ten days before this, — but the drought has checked it here .

Saw on a maple leaf floating on the Assabet a kind of large aphides, thickly covering it. It was thickly coated with a mass of down for their tails were like swan’s-down, and, as they were constantly in motion, just stirring at least, it was as if there was a wind on it.

Thimble-berries probably a day or two.

H. .D. Thoreau, Journal, July 2, 1853


The Ranunculus Purshiï is very rarely seen now. See July 24, 1856 ("The Ranunculus Purshii is now very hard to meet with. Saw one double flower with sixteen petals (at least) in two rows. Time to get seeds of it.")

I hear a harsh keow from a bittern flying over the river. See July 22, 1859 ("A bittern's croak: a sound perfectly becoming the bird, as far as possible from music"); September 20, 1855 (“The great bittern, as it flies off from near the railroad bridge. . . utters a low hoarse kwa kwa”); September 25, 1855 ("Scare up the usual great bittern above the railroad bridge, whose hoarse qua qua, as it flies heavily off, a pickerel-fisher on the bank imitates.”) See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Stake-Diver (American Bittern)

The peetweets are quite noisy about the rocks in Merrick’s pasture when I approach; have eggs or young there, which they are anxious about. See July 2, 1860 ("Nowadays hear from my window the constant tittering of young golden robins, and by the river fields the alarm note of the peetweets, concerned about their young.")

The tall anemone in blossom, and no doubt elsewhere much earlier. See June 29, 1852 ("The Anemone Virginiana, tall anemone, looking like a white buttercup, on Egg Rock, cannot have been long in bloom.")

Thimble-berries probably a day or two. See note to July 8, 1858 ("Thimble-berries have begun")