A Blanding's Turtle on the hot sand of the new road at Beck Stow's Swamp.

July 6 . 

P. M. - To Beck Stow's.

Euphorbia maculata, good while.

Polygonum aviculare, a day or two.

Now a great show of elder blossoms.

Polygala sanguinea, apparently a day or more.

Galium asprellum in shade; probably earlier in sun.

Partridges a third grown.

Veery still sings and toad rings.

On the hot sand of the new road at Beck Stow's, headed toward the water a rod or more off, what is probably Cistudo Blandingii; had some green conferva (?) on its shell and body.

Length of upper shell, 6 inches; breadth behind, 4 5/8 ; tail beyond shell, 2 1/4.

Did not see it shut its box; kept running out its long neck four inches or more; could bend it directly back to the posterior margin of the second [?] dorsal plate.

Ran out its head further and oftener than usual.

The spots pale-yellow or buff.

Upper half of head and neck blackish, the former quite smooth for 13 inches and finely sprinkled with yellowish spots, the latter warty The snout lighter, with five perpendicular black marks.

Eyes large (?), irides dull green-golden.

Under jaw and throat clear chrome-yellow.

Under parts of neck and roots of fore legs duller yellow; inner parts behind duller yellow still.

Fore legs with black scales, more or less yellow spotted above; at root and beneath pale-yellow and yellowish.

Hind legs uniformly black above and but little lighter beneath.

Tail black all round.

No red or orange about the animal.

No hook or notch to jaw.

Plantain, some days, and gnaphalium, apparently two or three days.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 6, 1854

Beck Stow's. See July 17, 1852 ("Beck Stow's Swamp! What an incredible spot to think of in town or city! . . .deep and impenetrable, where the earth quakes for a rod around you at every step. . . and its verdurous border of woods imbowering it on every side") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, at Beck Stow's Swamp

Partridges a third grown. See July 5, 1856 ("Young partridges (with the old bird), as big as robins, make haste into the woods from off the railroad. ");July 5, 1857 ("Partridges big as quails"); July 7, 1854 ("Disturb two broods of partridges this afternoon, — one a third grown, flying half a dozen rods over the bushes, yet the old, as anxious as ever, rushing to me with the courage of a hen.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

On the hot sand of the new road at Beck Stow's, what is probably Cistudo Blandingii. See March 13, 1859 (“On the northeast part of the Great Fields, I find the broken shell of a Cistudo Blandingii, on very dry soil. This is the fifth, then, I have seen in the town. All the rest were three in the Great Meadows (one of them in a ditch) and one within a rod or two of Beck Stow's Swamp”)

 A Blanding's Turtle 

on the hot sand of the new 

road at Beck Stow's Swamp