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| July 7, 2019 |
P. Hutchinson says he once found a wood duck's nest in a hollow maple by Heywood's meadow (now by railroad), and tried to get the young as soon as hatched, but they were gone too soon for him.
On the first, or westerly, part of the Great Meadows, i. e. the firmer parts and the bank, I find, mixed with sedges of different kinds, much red-top (coloring the surface extensively), fowl-meadow (just begun to bloom and of a purplish lead-color, taller than the red-top), the slender purple-spiked panic, Agrostis (perennans? or scabra??).
In the wet, or main, part, beside various other sedges, — as [Carex] stellulata, lanuginosa, stricta, etc., etc., — wool-grass, now in flower, a sedge (apparently C. ampullacea var. utriculata toward Holbrook's) thicker-culmed than wool-grass, but softer and not round, with fertile spikes often three inches long, and slender. A great part of the meadow is covered with, I think, either this or wood grass (not in flower). I am not certain which prevails, but I think wool-grass, which does not flower.
Also, mixed with these and lower, dulichium, Eleocharis palustris, etc., etc.
First notice pontederia out; also tephrosia, how long?
The note of the bobolink has begun to sound rare?
Do not young nighthawks run pretty soon after being hatched? I hear of their being gone very soon.
Bathing at Barrett's Bay, I find it to be composed in good part of sawdust, mixed with sand. There is a narrow channel on each side, deepest on the south.
The potamogeton is eight feet long there in eighteen inches of water.
I learn from measuring on Baldwin's second map that the river (i. e. speaking of that part below Framingham) is much the straightest in the lower part of its course, or from Ball's Hill to the Dam. It winds most in the broad meadows. The greatest meander is in the Sudbury meadows.
From upper end of Sudbury Canal to Sherman's Bridge direct is 558 rods (1 mile 238 rods); by thread of river, 1000 rods (3 miles 40 rods), or nearly twice as far. But, though meandering, it is straighter in its general course than would be believed. These nearly twenty-three miles in length (or 16 + direct) are contained within a breadth of two miles twenty-six rods; i. e., so much it takes to meander in. It can be plotted by the scale of one thousand feet to an inch on a sheet of paper seven feet one and one quarter inches long by eleven inches wide.
The deep and lake-like are the straightest reaches. The straightest reach within these limits above Ball's Hill is from Fair Haven Pond to Clamshell Hill.
I observed in Maine that the dam at the outlet of Chesuncook Lake, some twenty miles off, had raised the water so as to kill the larches on the Umbazookskus extensively. They were at least four or five miles up the Umbazookskus.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 7, 1859
The slender purple-spiked panic, Agrostis (perennans? or scabra??).See
September 5, 1858 ("
Agrostis perennans, thin grass, or hair grass, on moist ground or near water. The branches of the panicle are but slightly purplish.");
July 3, 1859 (" A large patch of
Agrostis scabra a very interesting purple with its fine waving top, mixed with blue-eyed grass.");
July 11, 1860 (" I am interested now by patches of
Agrostis scabra. Drooping and waving in the wind a rod or two over amid the red-top and herd's-grass of A.Wheeler's meadow, this grass gives a pale purple sheen to those parts, the most purple impression of any grass.")
The note of the bobolink has begun to sound 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.");
June 19, 1853 ("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.") Compare
June 30, 1852 ("(I heard a bobolink this afternoon.)");
July 2, 1855 ("Young bobolinks are now fluttering over the meadow.");
July 10, 1859 ("See many young birds now. . . Even hear one
link from a bobolink.");
July 11, 1856 ('Hear now the
link of bobolinks, and see quite a flock of red-wing blackbirds and young. ");
July 12, 1857 ("I hear the occasional
link note from the earliest bobolinks of the season");
July 15, 1854 ("I hear the
link link of the bobolink,. . . . Many birds begin to fly in small flocks like grown-up broods.");
July 15, 1856 ("Bobolinks are heard — their
link, link — above and amid the tall rue which now whitens the meadows”);
July 19, 1855 ("Young bobolinks; one of the first autumnalish notes.");
August 6, 1852 (“With the goldenrod comes the goldfinch. About the time his cool twitter is heard, does not the bobolink, thrasher, catbird, oven-bird, veery, etc., cease?”);
August 10, 1853 ("Of late, and for long time, only the
link, link of bobolink.");
August 10, 1854 ("The tinkling notes of goldfinches and bobolinks which we hear nowadays are of one character and peculiar to the season.");
August 16, 1858 ("[Hear]the link of many bobolinks (and see large flocks on the fences and weeds; they are largish-looking birds with yellow throats)");
August 22, 1853 ("Surprised to hear a very faint bobolink in the air; the
link, link, once or twice later");
August 25, 1852 (" I hear no birds sing these days, only . . . the mew of a catbird, the
link link of a bobolink, or the twitter of a goldfinch, all faint and rare");
September 15, 1858 ("I have not seen not heard a bobolink for some days at least, numerous as they were three weeks ago, and even fifteen days. They depart early.") See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bobolink
Do not young nighthawks run pretty soon after being hatched? See
June 17, 1853 (" One of the nighthawk's eggs is hatched. The young is unlike any that I have seen, exactly like a pinch of rabbit's fur or down of that color dropped on the ground, not two inches long, with a dimpling or geometrical or somewhat regular arrangement of minute feathers in the middle, destined to become the wings and tail. Yet even it half opened its eye, and peeped if I mistake not. . . It seemed a singular place for a bird to begin its life, — to come out of its egg, — this little pinch of down, — . . ., with nothing but the whole heavens, the broad universe above, to brood it when its mother was away.") See also
A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,, the Nighthawk
Bathing at Barrett's Bay, I find it to be composed in good part of sawdust, mixed with sand. See
April 19, 1854 ("I was surprised to find the river so full of sawdust from the pail-factory and Barrett's mill that I could not easily distinguish if the stone-heaps had been repaired. There was not a square three inches clear. And I saw the sawdust deposited by an eddy in one place on the bottom like a sand-bank a foot or more deep half a mile below the mill.") and note to
July 14, 1857 ("Set fire to the carburetted hydrogen from the sawdust shoal with matches, and heard it flash.")
