A goldfinch nest

August 9.

Edward Bartlett shows me this morning a nest which he found yesterday. It is saddled on the lowest horizontal branch of an apple tree in Abel Heywood’s orchard, against a small twig, and answers to Nuttall’s description of the goldfinch’s nest, which it probably is. The eggs were five, pure white or with a faint bluish-green tinge, just begun to be developed. 

I did not see the bird. 

It is but little you learn of a bird in this irregular way, — having its nest and eggs shown you. How much more suggestive the sight of the goldfinch going of on a jaunt over the hills, twittering to its plainer consort by its side!

It is surprising to what extent the world is ruled by cliques. They who constitute, or at least lead, New England or New York society, in the eyes of the world, are but a clique, a few “men of the age” and of the town, who work best in the harness provided for them. The institutions of almost all kinds are thus of a sectarian or party character. Newspapers, magazines, colleges, and all forms of government and religion express the superficial activity of a few, the mass either conforming or not attending. The newspapers have just got over that eating-fullness or dropsy which takes place with the annual commencements and addresses before the Philomathean or Alpha Beta Gamma societies. Neither they who make these addresses nor they who attend to them are representative of the latest age. The boys think that these annual recurrences are part and parcel of the annual revolution of the system. There are also regattas and fireworks and “surprise parties” and horse-shows. So that I am glad when I see or hear of a man anywhere who does not know of these things nor recognizes these particular fuglers. 

I was pleased to hear the other day that there were two men in Tamworth, N. H., who had been fishing for trout there ever since May; but it was a serious drawback to be told that they sent their fish to Boston and so catered for the few. The editors of newspapers, the popular clergy, politicians and orators of the day and office-holders, though they may be thought to be of very different politics and religion, are essentially one and homogeneous, inasmuch as they are only the various ingredients of the froth which ever floats on the surface of society. 

I see a pout this afternoon in the Assabet, lying on the bottom near the shore, evidently diseased. He permits the boat [to] come within two feet of him. Nearly half the head, from the snout backward diagonally, is covered with an inky-black kind of leprosy, like a crustaceous lichen. The long feeler on that side appears to be wasting, and there stands up straight in it, about an inch high, a little black tree-like thorn or feeler, branched at top. It moves with difficulty. 

Edith Emerson gives me an Asclepias tuberosa from Naushon, which she thinks is now in its prime there. 

It is surprising what a tissue of trifles and crudities make the daily news. For one event of interest there are nine hundred and ninety-nine insignificant, but about the same stress is laid on the last as on the first. The newspapers have just told me that the transatlantic telegraph-cable is laid. That is important, but they instantly proceed to inform me how the news was received in every larger town in the United States, — how many guns they fired, or how high they jumped, —in New York, and Milwaukee, and Sheboygan; and the boys and girls, old and young, at the corners of the streets are reading it all with glistening eyes, down to the very last scrap, not omitting what they did at New Rochelle and Evansville. And all the speeches are reported, and some think of collecting them into a volume ! ! ! You say that you have travelled far and wide. How many men have you seen that did not belong to any sect, or party, or clique? Did you go further than letters of introduction would avail?

The goldfinch nest of this forenoon is saddled on a horizontal twig of an apple, some seven feet from ground and one third of an inch in diameter, supported on one side by a yet smaller branch, also slightly attached to another small branch. It measures three and one half inches from outside to outside, one and three quarters inside, two and one half from top to bottom, or to a little below the twig, and one and one half inside. It is a very compact, thick, and warmly lined nest, slightly incurving on the edge within. It is composed of fine shreds of bark — grape-vine and other— and one piece of twine, with, more externally, an abundance of pale-brown slender catkins of oak (?) or hickory (?), mixed with effete apple blossoms and their peduncles, showing little apples, and the petioles of apple leaves, some times with half-decayed leaves of this year attached, last year’s heads of lespedeza, and some other heads of weeds, with a little grass stem or weed stem, all more or less disguised by a web of white spider or caterpillar silk, spread over the outside. It is thickly and very warmly lined with (apparently) short thistle-down, mixed with which you see some grape-vine bark, and the rim is composed of the same shreds of bark, catkins, and some fine fibrous stems, and two or three hairs (of horse) mixed with wool (?); for only the hollow is lined with the looser or less tenacious thistle-down. This nest shows a good deal of art. 

The mind tastes but few flavors in the course of a year. We are visited by but few thoughts which are worth entertaining, and we chew the end of these unceasingly. What ruminant spirits we are! I remember well the flavor of that rusk which I bought in New York two or three months ago and ate in the cars for my supper. A fellow-passenger, too, pretended to praise it, and yet, O man of little faith! he took a regular supper at Springfield. They cannot make such in Boston. The mere fragrance, rumor, and reminiscence of life is all that we get, for the most part. If I am visited by a thought, I chew that cud each successive morning, as long as there is any flavor in it. Until my keepers shake down some fresh fodder. Our genius is like a brush which only once in many months is freshly dipped into the paint-pot. It becomes so dry that though we apply it incessantly, it fails to tinge our earth and sky. Applied to the same spot incessantly, it at length imparts no color to it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 9, 1858

The sight of the goldfinch going of on a jaunt over the hills, twittering to its plainer consort by its side. See note to August 9, 1856 (". . .the goldfinch twittering over. Does the last always utter his twitter when ascending? These are already feeding on the thistle seeds. ")

Edith Emerson gives me an Asclepias tuberosa from Naushon. See August 29, 1857 ("R. W. E. says that he saw Asclepias tuberosa abundant and in bloom on Naushon last week.")

August 9. SeeA Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  August 9 

Our genius is like 

a brush never freshly dipped 

into the paint-pot.

It becomes so dry

it fails to tinge earth and sky.

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 © 2009-2021

The green bitterns are leaving the nest now.

August 1. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

August 1, 2019

The radical or immersed leaves of the pontederia are linear and grass-like, and I see that I have mistaken them for vallisneria just springing from the bottom. The leaves of new plants are just reaching and leaving the surface now, like spoons on the end of long handles. 

Edward Bartlett and another brought me a green bittern, this year’s bird, apparently full grown but not full plumaged, which they caught near the pool on A. Heywood’s land behind Sleepy Hollow. They caught it in the woods on the hillside. 

It had not yet acquired the long feathers of the neck. The neck was bent back on itself an inch or more,— that part being bare of feathers and covered by the long feathers from above, — so that it did not appear very long until stretched out. This doubling was the usual condition and not apparent, but could be felt by the hand. 

So the green bitterns are leaving the nest now.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 1, 1858

So the green bitterns are leaving the nest now. See July 29, 1859 ("Heard from a bittern, a peculiar hoarse, grating note, lazily uttered as it flew over the meadows."); July 30, 1856 ("A green bittern. . .with heavy flapping flight, ts legs dangling"); August 2, 1856 ("A green bittern comes, noiselessly flapping, with stealthy and inquisitive looking to this side the stream and then that, thirty feet above the water. ")

A broad egg, white with large reddish and purplish brown spots.

July 26.

Yellow-winged sparrow

Fringilla passerina

Grasshopper Sparrow

Ammodramus savannarum

Button-bush in prime. 

Edward Bartlett shows me a nest in the Agricultural ground which had four eggs, yet pretty fresh, but the bird has now deserted it. (Vide one.) It is like Farmer’s seringo.

It is a broad egg, white with large reddish and purplish brown spots chiefly about large end. 

The nest is small and deep and low in the grass of this pasture. (Vide nest out of order.)

Could not see the bird; only saw bay-wings and huckleberry-birds. I suspect it may be the Fringilla passerina? He says the bird had a clear yellowish-white breast!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 26, 1858

Bay-wings and Huckleberry-birds. See A Book of the Seasons, the Bay-Wing [Vesper] Sparrow; also April 27, 1852 ("Heard the field or rush sparrow this morning (Fringilla juncorum), George Minott's "huckleberry-bird." "); April 9, 1856 ("Wandering over that high huckleberry pasture, I hear the sweet jingle of the Fringilla juncorum."); ; April 15, 1856 ("I hear the note of the Fringilla juncorum (huckleberry-bird) from the plains beyond. ")

A broad egg, white with large reddish and purplish brown spots chiefly about large end. I suspect it may be the Fringilla passerina? See June 26, 1856 ("According to Audubon’s and Wilson’s plates, the Fringilla passerina has for the most part clear yellowish-white breast .... Audubon says that the eggs . . .of the yellow-winged sparrow are “of a dingy white, sprinkled with brown spots.”); May 28, 1856 (“A seringo or yellow-browed (?) sparrow’s nest . . .Egg, bluish-white ground, thickly blotched with brown, yet most like a small ground bird’s egg, rather broad at one end, pretty fresh.”)

July 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 26

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 © 2009-2021

Pine pollen adhering to the inside of the boat along the water-line

June 22

June 22, 2018

Edward Bartlett found what he calls two bobolinks’ nests some weeks ago, with each six eggs. I have one of the nests. There is but little of it, composed simply of some flexible grass without and finer within, kept in form by the thick tussock or tuft of meadow-grass at the bottom and in the midst of which it is placed. 

He shows me, also, one of three eggs found the 20th in Gourgas’s wood-lot, within a rod of the roadside, in a small slender oak (eighteen feet high), about fourteen feet from the ground, about fifteen rods north of Britton’s corner, in a grove, where two or three small branches left the main stem; eggs somewhat advanced. Says the bird was a thrush of some kind. The egg is one inch by five eighths, rather slender, faint-blue, and quite generally spotted with distinct rather reddish brown, inclining to small streaky blotches, though especially at the larger end; not pale-brown like that described [June 21]. Can it be the Turdus solitarias? I have the egg.

Mowing the June grass about our house a few days ago, I disturbed several toads squatted deep in the rankest grass near the house, and wounded one or two with the scythe. They appear to love such cool and shady retreats by day, hopping out at night and in the rain. 

I see in the river a little pickerel, not quite two inches long, which must have been hatched this year, and probably as early as the perch, since they have more to grow. 

I notice, after tipping the water out of my boat under the willows, much evidently pine pollen adhering to the inside of the boat along the water-line. Did it fall into it during my excursion to Holden’s Swamp the 20th, or has it floated through the air thus far? 

About the grassy island in front of the Rock, grows abundantly, apparently the Carex crinita, with about four long pendulous fertile spikes and one barren, two and a half feet high and long since done. 

I think that I first noticed willow down floating on the river about the 16th. 

Observe a painted turtle laying or digging at 5 P.M. She has not excavated any hole, but has already watered the ground, and, as usual when I take her up under these circumstances, passes more water.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 22, 1858

Edward Bartlett found what he calls two bobolinks’ nests some weeks ago, with each six eggs. See note to June 18, 1858 (“E. Bartlett has found three bobolinks’ nests. One or more of them he thinks has been covered by the recent flood.”) See also  A Book of the Seasons,by Henry Thoreau, the Bobolink

Did it fall into it during my excursion to Holden’s Swamp the 20th, or has it floated through the air thus far? See June 20, 1858 ("Walking in the white pine wood there, I find that my shoes and, indeed, my hat are covered with the greenish-yellow pollen of the white pines, which is now being shed abundantly and covers like a fine meal all the plants and shrubs of the forest floor. I never noticed it in such abundance before. My shoes are green-yellow, or yellow-green, even the next day with it.”); June 21, 1860 ("The air must be full of this fine dust at this season, that it must be carried to great distances, and its presence might be detected remote from pines by examining the edges of bodies of water ... the lakes detect for us thus the presence of the pine pollen in the atmosphere. They are our pollinometers. “) See also A Book of the Seasons,by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines

I think that I first noticed willow down floating on the river about the 16th. See June 10, 1853 ("The fuzzy seeds or down of the black (?) willows is filling the air over the river and, falling on the water, covers the surface. "); June 15, 1854 ("Black willow is now gone to seed, and its down covers the water, white amid the weeds. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,by Henry Thoreau, the Propogation of the Willow.

She has not excavated any hole, but has already watered the ground See June 11, 1858 (“I notice that turtles which have just commenced digging will void considerable water when you take them up. This they appear to have carried up to wet the ground with.” ) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Painted Turtle

Some trees have dropped their leaves instantaneously, as at a signal.

October 17. 

Notice some of the fungus called spunk, very large, on the large white oak in Love Lane, eight or nine feet from the ground on the east side, on a protuberance where a limb was formerly cut off. It is now green and moist, of a yellowish color, composed of several flakes one above the other; the length of the shelf, or chord of the arc, twenty-one inches; depth from the tree, or width of shelf, about one foot. 

Frost has now within three or four days turned almost all flowers to woolly heads, — their November aspect. Fuzzy, woolly heads now reign along all hedge rows and over many broad fields. 

Some trees, as small hickories, appear to have dropped their leaves instantaneously, as at a signal, as a soldier grounds arms. The ground under such reflects a blaze of light from now crisped yellow leaves. Down they have come on all sides, as if touched by fairy fingers. 

October 17, 2016

Boys are raking leaves in the street, if only for the pleasure of dealing with such clean, crisp substances.

Countless leafy skiffs are floating on pools and lakes and rivers and in the swamps and meadows, often concealing the water quite from foot and eye. Each leaf, still crisply curled up on its edges, makes as yet a tight boat like the Indian's hide one, but ere long it will be come relaxed and flatted out and sink to the bottom, i. e. if it is driven out to sea, but most are drifted toward the shore, which is converted into one long, crowded haven where the water is concealed, and they settle close to land.

Many fringed gentians quite fresh yet, though most are faded and withered. I suspect that their very early and sudden fading and withering has nothing, or little, to do with frost after all, for why should so many fresh ones succeed still? My pressed ones have all faded in like manner! ! 

It would be too late to look for bees now at Wyman's; the flowers are too far gone. 

I go down the path through Charles Bartlett's land. The young white oak leaves are now generally withered in and on the sides of the hollows there, also the black scrub, while the red and black oaks are still commonly red and so far alive. 

As I stand looking at Emerson's bound under the railroad embankment, I heard a smart tche-day-day-day close to my ear, and, looking up, see four of these birds, which had come to scrape acquaintance with me, hopping amid the alders within three and four feet of me. I had heard them further off at first, and they had followed me along the hedge. They day-day 'd and lisp their faint notes alternately, and then, as if to make me think they had some other errand than to peer at me, they peck the dead twigs with their bills — the little top-heavy, black-crowned, volatile fellows.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 17, 1856

Some trees, . . have dropped their leaves instantaneously, as at a signal, . . .The ground under such reflects a blaze of light from now crisped yellow leaves. See October 15, 1853 ("They suddenly form thick beds . . . just the size and form of the tree above.")

Countless leafy skiffs . . . concealing the water quite from foot and eye. See October 11, 1857 ("Another frost last night, although with fog, and this afternoon the maple and other leaves strew the water, and it is almost a leaf harvest."); October 12, 1855 ("The leaves fallen last night now lie thick on the water next the shore, concealing it, —fleets of dry boats . . ."); October 12, 1858 ("There are many maple, birch, etc., leaves on the Assabet, in stiller places along the shore, but not yet a leaf harvest"); October 13, 1860 (("Now, as soon as the frost strips the maples, and their leaves strew the swamp floor and conceal the pools, the note of the chickadee sounds cheerfully winteryish."); October 15, 1856 ("Large fleets of maple and other leaves are floating on its surface as I go up the Assabet. . .");  October 17, 1856 ("Countless leafy skiffs . . . concealing the water quite from foot and eye"); October 17, 1857 ("The swamp floor is covered with red maple leaves, many yellow with bright-scarlet spots or streaks. Small brooks are almost concealed by them. "); October 17, 1858 ("They remind me of ditches in swamps, whose surfaces are often quite concealed by leaves now. The waves made by my boat cause them to rustle, "); October 19, 1853 ("The leaves have fallen so plentifully that they quite conceal the water along the shore, and rustle pleasantly when the wave which the boat creates strikes them."); October 22, 1853 ("this great fleet of scattered leaf boats, still tight and dry, each one curled up on every side by the sun's skill,"); November 1, 1852("On the river this afternoon, the leaves, now crisp and curled, when the wind blows them on to the water become rude boats which float and sail about awhile conspicuously before they go to the bottom.")