Monday, June 2, 2025

A Book of the Seasons: The Eastern Kingbird


 For the first time I perceive this spring
that the year is a circle.  
I would make a chart of our life,
know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.
Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

Are these not kingbird days,
when, in clearer first June days full of light,
this aerial, twittering bird flutters from willow to willow
and swings on the twigs,
showing his white-edged tail?
June 2, 1854

That aerial and spirited bird
loves best, methinks,
to fly where the sky is reflected beneath him.
  August 5, 1858


May 9.  Kingbird. May 9, 1857

May 10.   See a kingbird, looking like a large phoebe, on a willow by the river, and hear higher the clear whistle of the oriole. New days, then, have come, ushered in by the warbling vireo, yellowbird, Maryland yellow-throat, and small pewee, and now made perfect by the twittering of the kingbird and the whistle of the oriole amid the elms . . .  if not already the bobolink. May 10, 1853  

May 10.  It is remarkable that I saw this morning for the first time the bobolink, gold robin, and kingbird, - May 10, 1853

May 11.  I see the kingbird. May 11, 1854

May 11.  Now, some time after sunset, the robins scold and sing, the Maryland yellow-throat is heard amid the alders and willows by the waterside, and the peetweet and black birds, and sometimes a kingbird, and the tree-toad. May 11, 1854

May 12. Is not this the first day of summer, when first I sit with the window open and forget fire? and hear the golden robin and kingbird, etc., etc.? not to mention the bobolink, vireo, yellowbird, etc., and the trump of bullfrogs heard last evening. May 12, 1854

May 14.  First kingbird. Its voice and flight relate it to the swallow. May 14, 1852 

May 14.  The still dead-looking willows and button-bushes are alive with red-wings . . .The yellowbird, kingbird, and pewee, beside many swallows, are also seen. But the rich colors and the rich and varied notes of the blackbirds surpass them all. May 14, 1853

May 14.  A kingbird.  May 14, 1858

May 16.  Hear a bobolink and kingbird, and find sparrows' nests on the ground. May 16, 1859

May 17.  Kingbird.  May 17, 1856

May 29. How still the hot noon; people have retired behind blinds. Yet the kingbird — lively bird, with white belly and tail edged with white, and with its lively twittering— stirs and keeps the air brisk. May 29, 1853

June 2. Are these not kingbird days, when, in clearer first June days full of light, this aerial, twittering bird flutters from willow to willow and swings on the twigs, showing his white-edged tail? June 2, 1854

June 2. Bats go over, and a kingbird, very late. June 2, 1860

June 3.  A very warm day, without a breeze. A kingbird's nest in a fork of a black willow. June 3, 1854 

June 5. I see at a distance a kingbird or blackbird pursuing a crow lower down the hill, like a satellite revolving about a black planet.  June 5, 1854

June 5.  The Muscicapa Cooperi sings pe pe pe', sitting on the top of a pine, and shows white rump ( ? ) , etc. , unlike kingbird. June 5, 1856 

June 6.  A kingbird's nest, with two of its large handsome eggs, very loosely set over the fork of a horizontal willow by river, with dried everlasting of last year, as usual, just below Garfield's boat. Another in black willow south of long cove (east side, north of Hubbard's Grove) and another north of said cove.   June 6, 1857 

June 6.  As the light is obscured after sunset, the birds rapidly cease their songs, and the swallows cease to flit over the river. And soon the bats are seen taking the places of the swallows and flying back and forth like them, and commonly a late kingbird will be heard twittering still in the air.  June 6, 1860

June 7.  What does it signify, the kingbird, black bird, swallow, etc., etc., pursuing a crow? June 7, 1858 

June 7.  It is evidence enough against crows and hawks and owls, proving their propensity to rob birds’ nests of eggs and young, that smaller birds pursue them so often. You do not need the testimony of so many farmers' boys when you can see and hear the small birds daily crying “Thief and murder” after these spoilers.  June 7, 1858 

June 8.  A kingbird’s nest on a black cherry, above Barbarea Shore. loosely constructed, with some long white rags dangling; one egg. June 8, 1856 

June 8.   The marsh hawk's eggs are not yet hatched. She rises when I get within a rod and . . . keeps circling over the nest and repeatedly stoops within a rod of my head in an angry manner.  . . . A red-wing and a kingbird are soon in pursuit of the hawk, which proves, I think, that she meddles with their nests or themselves.  She circles over me, scolding, as far as the edge of the wood, or fifteen rods. June 8, 1858

June 8.    A kingbird's nest with three eggs, lined with some hair, in a fork — or against upright part — of a willow, just above near stone bridge. June 8, 1858 

Kingbird's nest with eggs
in a fork of a willow
above near stone bridge.

June 9.   I have come with a spy-glass to look at the hawks.  . . . Now and then pursued by a kingbird or a blackbird, who appear merely to annoy it by dashing down at its back. June 9, 1853

June 9.  A kingbird's nest and one egg.  June 9, 1860

June 11.  See many small blue devil's-needles to-day, but no mates with them, and is it not they that the kingbird stoops to snap up, striking the water each time?  June 11, 1860 

June 13.    The kingbird's eggs are not yet hatched. June 13, 1854

June 13.  Two kingbirds’ nests with eggs in an apple and in a willow by riverside.  June 13, 1855

June 14.  A kingbird’s nest with four eggs on a large horizontal stem or trunk of a black willow, four feet high, over the edge of the river, amid small shoots from the willow; outside of mikania, roots, and knotty sedge, well lined with root fibres and wiry weeds. June 14, 1855 

June 16.  Examined a kingbird’s nest found before (13th) in a black willow over edge of river, four feet from ground. Two eggs. West of oak in Hubbard’s meadow. June 16, 1855 

June 24.  A kingbird’s nest just completed in an apple tree. June 24, 1856 

July 5.  Borrowed Witherell’s boat and paddled over Loring’s Pond. A kingbird’s nest in fork of a button—bush five feet high on shore (not saddled on); three young just hatched and one egg.  July 5, 1856 

July 9. Paddle up river and sound a little above Fair Haven Pond. See young kingbirds which have lately flown perched in a family on the willows, — the airy bird, lively, twittering. July 9, 1859

July 10.  Kingbird lively. July 10, 1854

July 10.  Hearing a noise, I look up and see a pigeon woodpecker pursued by a kingbird, and the former utters loud shrieks with fear. July 10, 1859

July 10. See many young birds now, —  blackbirds, swallows, kingbirds, etc., in the air. July 10, 1859

July 10. The singing birds at present are: —Rural: Song sparrow, seringos, flicker, kingbird, goldfinch, link of bobolink, cherry-bird. July 10, 1854

July 17. The birds are quite lively at this hour of noon, — the robin, red - eye, wood pewee  martins, and kingbirds, etc. July 17, 1854

July 18.  5 A. M.  Whence these fogs and this increase of moisture in the air? The kingbird, song sparrows, and quail are lively. July 18, 1854

July 28. P. M. – Up Assabet. The kingbirds eat currants.  July 28, 1859

August 1.  I see a kingbird hovering within six inches above the potamogetons, front of Cheney's, and repeatedly snapping up some insects, perhaps a devil's-needle. [Often afterward for weeks; stoops from the willows]  August 1, 1859

August 5.  [Black willows] resound still with the sprightly twitter of the kingbird, that aerial and spirited bird hovering over them, swallow-like, which loves best, methinks, to fly where the sky is reflected beneath him. Also now from time to time you hear the chattering of young blackbirds or the link of bobolinks there, or see the great bittem flap slowly away.  The kingbird, by his activity and lively note and his white breast, keeps the air sweet. He sits now on a dead willow twig, akin to the flecks of mackerel sky, or its reflection in the water, or the white clamshell, wrong side out, opened by a musquash, or the fine particles of white quartz that may be found in the muddy river’s sand.  He is here to give a voice to all these.  The willow’s dead twig is aerial perch enough for him.  August 5, 1858

His activity
and lively note and his white
breast keeps the air sweet.

August 6.  If our sluggish river, choked with potamogeton, might seem to have the slow-flying bittern for its peculiar genius, it has also the sprightly and aerial kingbird to twitter over and lift our thoughts to clouds as white as its own breast  August 6, 1858 

August 7.  The sprightly kingbird glances and twitters above the glossy leaves of the swamp white oak. Perchance this tree, with its leaves glossy above and whitish beneath, best expresses the life of the kingbird and is its own tree. August 7, 1858

The sprightly kingbird
twitters above glossy leaves
of the swamp white oak.

August 12.  It is surprising how young birds, especially sparrows of all kinds, abound now, and bobolinks and wood pewees and kingbirds.  August12, 1858

August 14.  To speak from recollection, the birds which I have chanced to hear of late are (running over the whole list):  . . .The twitter of the kingbird, pretty often.  August 14, 1858

August 17.  Some days ago I saw a kingbird twice stoop to the water from an overhanging oak and pick an insect from the surface.  August 17, 1858

August 19.  Flocks of bobolinks go tinkling along about the low willows, and swallows twitter, and a kingbird hovers almost stationary in the air, a foot above the water.  August 19, 1853

August 23.  I see to-day — and may add to yesterday's list — the blue heron launch off from an oak by the river and flap or sail away with lumbering flight; also kingbirds and crows. August 23, 1853

August 29.  Many birds nowadays resort to the wild black cherry tree, as here front of Tarbell's. I see them continually coming and going directly from and to a great distance, — cherry birds, robins, and kingbirds. August 29, 1854 

September 1.  Now see many birds about E. Hubbard's elder hedge, —  bobolinks, kingbirds, pigeon woodpeckers, — and not elsewhere. September 1, 1860

December 22. In a (apparently kingbird's?) nest on this island I saw three cherry-stones, as if it had carried home this fruit to its young. It was, outside, of gnaphalium and saddled on a low limb. Could it have been a cherry-bird? December 22. 1859

See also

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality.”
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

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