The summer culminates.

June 21. 

It is so hot I 

have to lift my hat to let 

the air cool my head.  

June 21, 1853

the summer culminates

June 21, 2023

4.30 A.M.––Up river for lilies

No dew even where I keep my boat. The driest night yet, threatening the sultriest day. Yet I see big crystalline drops at the tips or the bases of the pontederia leaves. 

The few lilies begin to open about 5.

The nest of a brown thrasher with three eggs, on some green-briar, perfectly concealed by a grape vine running over it; eggs greenish brown; nest of dry sticks, lined with fibres of grape bark and with roots. Bird  scolded me much.

Carpet weed out. 

I have got a pan full of lilies open.

We have not had rain, except a mere sprinkling in the night of the 17th, since the 26th of May. 

P.M. To Conantum. 

The warmest day yet. For the last two days I have worn nothing about my neck. This change or putting off of clothing is, methinks, as good an evidence of the increasing warmth of the weather as meteorological instruments. 

I thought it was hot weather perchance when a month ago, I slept with a window wide open and laid aside a comfortable, but by and by I found that I had got two windows open, and to-night two windows and the door are far from enough. 

Hypericum perforatum just out.

This year the time when the locust was first heard was the time to put on summer clothes.

Early on the morning of the 18th the river felt lukewarm to my fingers when my paddle dipped deeper than usual. 

The galium with three small white petals (G. trifidum) has been out some time, and I find that erectish, broad-leaved, three-nerved, green-flowered one, perhaps G. circazans at Corner Spring.  

Peltandra Virginica, perhaps a week, for many of its flowers are effete and curved downward .

The Hypericum ellipticum by the riverside.

The only violets I notice nowadays are a few white lanceolate ones in the meadows.

The river has got down quite low, and the muddy shores are covered here and there with a sort of dark brown paper, the dried filaments of confervæ which filled the water. Now is their fall.

The bright little flowers of the Ranunculus reptans var filiformis are seen peeping forth between its interstices. 

Calopogon out. I think it surpasses the pogonia, though the latter is sometimes high colored and is of a handsome form;  but it is inclined to be pale ,is sometimes even white. 

Now see many bright red amelanchier berries and some purple or dark-blue ones amid them. They are mostly injured by insects or apparently pecked and deformed by birds, but, from the few perfectly sound and ripe I have eaten to-day, I should pronounce them superior to either blueberries or huckleberries. Those of the Botryapium have a soft skin; of the shorter bush with a stiffer leaf, a tough skin.  This is a little before blueberries.  

The panicled cornel is the only one of the cornels or viburnums that now is noticed in flower , generally speaking.  The last of our cornels – the C. sericea I think it must be – is just beginning.

The farmers have commenced haying. With this the summer culminates. The most extended crop of all is ready for the harvesting.

Lint still comes off the leaves and shoots.

It is so hot I have to lift my hat to let the air cool my head. 

I notice that that low, rather rigid fern, about two feet high, on the Great Hubbard Meadow, which a month ago was yellow, but now is green and in fruit, and with a harsh-feeling fruit atop, is decidedly inclined to grow in hollow circles from one foot to six or eight feet in diameter.– often, it is true, imperfect on one side, or, if large, filled up in the middle. How to account for it? Can it have anything to do with the hummocks deposited on the meadow? Many small stems near together in circles i. e. not a single line. Is it the Osmunda spectabilis?

Now I hear the spotted (?) flies about my head,–- flies that settle and make themselves felt on the hand sometimes. 

The morning-glory still fresh at 3 P.M.  A fine, large, delicate bell with waved border, some pure white ,some reddened. The buds open perfectly in a vase I find them open when I wake at 4 A .M. Is not this one of the eras or culminating places in the flower season? Not this till the sultry mornings come.

Angelica,  perhaps a day or more. Elder just opening. 

The four leaved asclepias, probably some days, rather handsome flower, with the peculiar fragrance of the milkweeds. 

Observed three or four sweet-briar bushes with white flowers of the usual size, by the wall under Conantum Cliff,– very slightly tinted with red or rose. In the paucity and form of prickles at least I make them answer to the micrantha, but not else  Is it intermediate? Opened at home in a vase in the shade. They are more distinctly rose-tinted. Leaves and all together in the water, they have a strong spirituous or rummy scent. 

There are no flowers nor flower-buds on the bass this year, though it was so full last year.

Where the other day I saw a pigeon woodpecker tapping and enlarging a hole in the dead limb of an apple tree ,when as yet probably no egg was laid, to-day I see two well grown young woodpeckers about as big as the old looking out at the hole, showing their handsome spotted breasts and calling lustily for something to eat, or, it may be, suffering from the heat. Young birds in some situations must suffer greatly from heat these days, so closely packed in their nests and perhaps insufficiently shaded. It is a wonder they remain so long there patiently.

I saw a yellowbird's nest in the willows on the causeway this afternoon and three young birds nearly ready to fly, overflowing the nest ,all holding up their open bills and keeping them steadily open for a minute or more, on noise of my approach. 

Still see cherry-birds in flocks.

Dogsbane and Prinos verticillatus. 

My white lilies in the pan are mostly withering the first day, the weather is so warm.

At sunset to Island. 

The white anemone is withering with drought; else would probably have opened.  

Return while the sun is setting behind thunder clouds, which now shadow us.  Between the heavy masses of clouds, mouse colored, with dark blue bases, the patches of clear sky are a glorious cobalt blue, as Sophia calls it.  

How happens it that the sky never appears so intensely, brightly, memorably blue as when seen between clouds and, it may be, as now in the south at sunset?  This, too, is like the blue in snow. 

For the last two or three days it has taken me all the forenoon to wake up. 

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, June 21, 1853

4.30 A.M.––Up river for lilies . . .The few lilies begin to open about 5. See July 26, 1856 ("At five [A.M.] the lilies had not opened, but began about 5.15 and were abundantly out at six") and note to July 17, 1854 ("I go to observe the lilies. ")

The summer culminates.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Haymaking

Calopogon . . . surpasses the pogonia, See.June 23, 1853 ("Pogonias are now very abundant in the meadow-grass, and now and then a calopogon is mixed with them .The last is broader and of more singular form,  commonly with an unopened bud above on one side."); June 24, 1852 (""The calopogon is a more bluish purple than the pogonia.); July 5, 1852 (The calopogon, or grass-pink, now fully open, . . — its four or five open purple flowers — . . . makes a much greater show than the pogonia. It is of the same character with that and the arethusa. "); July 7, 1852 ("The Arethusa bulbosa, " crystalline purple;" Pogonia ophioglossoides, snake-mouthed arethusa, "pale purple;" and the Calopogon pulchellus, grass pink, "pink purple," make one family in my mind, — next to the purple orchis, or with it, — being flowers par excellence, all flower, all color, with inconspicuous leaves, naked flowers,")

Now see many bright red amelanchier berries and some purple or dark-blue ones amid them.  See June 25, 1853 (" An unusual quantity of amelanchier berries . . . I never saw nearly so many before. It is a very agreeable surprise") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Shad-bush,Juneberry, or Service-berry (Amelanchier canadensis)

How happens it that the sky never appears so intensely, brightly, memorably blue as when seen between clouds and, it may be, as now in the south at sunset? See December 14. 1851 ("There is a beautifully pure greenish-blue sky under the clouds now in the southwest just before sunset."); January 11, 1852 ("The glory of these afternoons, . . . is in the ineffably clear blue, or else pale greenish-yellow, patches of sky in the west just before sunset "); January 17, 1852 ("Those western vistas through clouds to the sky show the clearest heavens, clearer and more elysian than if the whole sky is comparatively free from clouds.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky

It is surprising that so many birds find hair enough to line their nests with.

June 24.

P. M. – Boated to Clamshell Hill. 


My lilies in the pan have revived with the cooler weather since the rain. (It rained a little last night.) This is what they require that they may keep.

Mayweed yesterday.

The calopogon is a more bluish purple than the pogonia.

The Gnaphalium uliginosum seems to be almost in blossom.

Gratiola out in mud near river, — those bare, rather hard, muddy tracts on the edge of the meadow next the river, where mint grows and the mud has wide cracks, some nearly an inch wide, produced by the sun since the water went down.

It is cooler and remarkably windy this afternoon, showing the under sides of the leaves and the pads, the white now red beneath and all green above.

Wind northwest.

Found what I take to be an Indian hoe at Hubbard Bathing - Place, sort of slate stone four or five eighths of an inch thick, semi circular, eight inches one way by four or more the other, chipped down on the edges.

At the Clamshell curve, great masses of a kind of fresh - water eel - grass have lodged against the potamogeton in mid - channel, as against a shore, half a foot deep, and stretch across the river, long, green, narrow, ribbon - like.

It is apparently the Vallisneria spiralis, eel-grass, tape - grass. It grows at the bottom in shallow places, slanting and waving down - stream.

But what has collected it here all at once? Is it this strong wind operating on shallow places at curves? Or is it that some animal — muskrat or what-not — has loosened it? Or have men been at work up-stream somewhere? Does it always happen at this season? By the botany it does not blossom till August.

There were piles of dried heart - leaf on shore at the bathing - place, a foot high and more.

Were they torn up and driven ashore by the wind? I suspect it is the wind in both cases.

As storms at sea tear up and cast ashore the seaweeds from the rocks. These are our seaweeds cast ashore in storms, but I see only the eel-grass and the heart leaf thus served.

Our most common in the river appears to be between the Potamogeton natans and pulcher; it answers to neither, but can be no other described.

See it in fruit.

I do not see the ranunculus flowers very abundant yet — will it not be this year? Then there is that long, somewhat cylindrical, fine - capillary and bladdery leaved plant which I had wrongly thought belonged to the Ranunculus.

Is it not a utricularia ? All these, but especially the R. Purshii, have a strong fresh - water marsh smell, rather agree able sometimes as a bottle of salts, like the salt marsh and seaweeds, invigorating to my imagination.

In our great stream of distilled water going slowly down to ocean to be salted.

Sparganium, some time.

Pontederia, just out.

The lower translucent, waved leaves of the potamogeton are covered with a sort of very minute black caddis-case.

The peat [?] - black petioles of these leaves are much like seaweed.

There are the heart-leaf ponds, but I cannot say the potamogeton rivers on account of the tautology, and, beside, I do not like this last name, which signifies that it grows in the neighborhood of rivers, when it is not a neighbor but an indweller.

You might as well describe the seaweeds as growing in the neighborhood of the sea.

The brown thrasher’s nest (vide 21st) has been robbed, probably by some other bird. It rested on a branch of a swamp-pink and some grape-vines, effectually concealed and protected by grape-vines and green briar in a matted bower above it.

The foundation of pretty stout twigs, eight or nine inches in diameter, surmounted by coarse strips of grape bark, giving form to the nest, and then lined with some harsh, wiry root-fibres ; within rather small and shallow, and the whole fabric of loose texture, not easy to remove.

Also got a blackbird’s nest whose inhabitants had flown, hung by a kind of small dried rush (?) between two button - bushes which crossed above it  of meadow grass and sedge, dried Mikania scandens vine, horse tail, fish-lines, and a strip apparently of a lady’s bathing-dress, lined with a somewhat finer grass; of a loose and ragged texture to look at.

Green mikania running over it now.

A yellowbird’s nest (vide 21st ) in a fork of a willow on Hubbard’s Causeway, resting chiefly on the leading branch; of fine grass, lined with hair, bottom outside puffing out with a fine, light, flax - like fibre, perhaps the bark of some weed, by which also it is fastened to the twigs.

It is surprising that so many birds find hair enough to line their nests with.

If I wish for a horsehair for my compass sights I must go to the stable, but the hair-bird, with her sharp eyes, goes to the road.

The small white (perhaps sometimes violet or puplis) aster-like flower of Hubbard’s meadow, for some days.

If an aster, then the earliest one.

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal , June 24, 1853

The calopogon is a more bluish purple than the pogonia. See June 21, 1853 ("Calopogon out. I think it surpasses the pogonia, though the latter is sometimes high colored and is of a handsome form; "); June 23, 1853 ("Pogonias are now very abundant in the meadow-grass, and now and then a calopogon is mixed with them .The last is broader and of more singular form, commonly with an unopened bud above on one side."); July 5, 1852 (The calopogon, or grass-pink, now fully open, . . — its four or five open purple flowers — . . . makes a much greater show than the pogonia. It is of the same character with that and the arethusa. "); July 7, 1852 ("The Arethusa bulbosa, " crystalline purple;" Pogonia ophioglossoides, snake-mouthed arethusa, "pale purple;" and the Calopogon pulchellus, grass pink, "pink purple," make one family in my mind, — next to the purple orchis, or with it, — being flowers par excellence, all flower, all color, with inconspicuous leaves, naked flowers,")

The brown thrasher’s nest (vide 21st) has been robbed. See June 21, 1853 ("The nest of a brown thrasher with three eggs, on some green- riar, perfectly concealed by a grape-vine running over it ; eggs greenish -brown; nest of dry sticks, lined with fibres of grape bark and with roots.")  See also May 23, 1858 ("Brown thrasher's nest on ground, under a small tree, with four eggs"); May 27, 1855 ("A thrasher’s nest on the bare open ground with four eggs which were seen three days ago. The nest is as open and exposed as it well can be, lined with roots, on a slight ridge where a rail fence has been, some rods from any bush."); June 5, 1856 ("A brown thrasher’s nest with four eggs considerably developed, under a small white pine on the old north edge of the desert, lined with root-fibres."); June 6, 1857("A brown thrasher's nest, with two eggs, on ground, near lower lentago wall and toward Bittern Cliff. ")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Brown Thrasher

A yellowbird’s nest in a fork of a willow on Hubbard’s Causeway. See . June 21,1853 ("I saw a yellowbird's nest in the willows on the causeway this afternoon and three young birds, nearly ready to fly, overflowing the nest, all holding up their inute or more, on noise of my approach")  See also e.g.  June 5, 1859 ("A yellowbird's nest; four eggs, open bills and keeping them steadily open for a mdeveloped. ")June 7, 1855 ("A yellowbird’s nest on a willow bough against a twig, ten feet high, four eggs."); June 9, 1855 ("A yellowbird’s nest eight feet from ground in crotch of a very slender maple"); June 9, 1856 ("A yellowbird’s nest in a poplar on Hubbard’s Bridge; four fresh eggs; ten feet high, three rods beyond fence."); . June 20, 1855 ("A summer yellowbird’s, saddled on an apple, of cotton-wool, lined with hair and feathers, three eggs, white with flesh-colored tinge and purplish-brown and black spots") and A Book of the Seasons,: the Summer Yellowbird

The simple peep peep of the peetweet.

May 8

A cloudy day. 

The small pewee, how long. 

The night-warbler's note. 

River four and seven eighths inches below summer level. 

Stone-heaps, how long? 

I see a woodchuck in the middle of the field at Assabet Bath. He is a  heavy fellow with a black tip to his tail, poking about almost on his belly, — where there is but little greenness yet, — with a great heavy head. He is very wary, every minute pausing and raising his head, and sometimes sitting erect and looking around. He is evidently nibbling some green thing, maybe clover. He runs at last, with an undulating motion, jerking his lumbering body along, and then stops when near a hole. But on the whole he runs and stops and looks round very much like a cat in the fields. 

The cinquefoil is closed in a cloudy day, and when the sun shines it is turned toward it. 

The simple peep peep of the peetweet, as it flies away from the shore before me, sounds hollow and rather mournful, reminding me of the seashore and its wrecks, and when I smell the fresh odor of our marshes the resemblance is increased. 

How the marsh hawk circles or skims low, round and round over a particular place in a meadow, where, perhaps, it has seen a frog, screaming once or twice, and then alights on a fence-post! How it crosses the causeway between the willows, at a gap in them with which it is familiar, as a hen knows a hole in a fence! I lately saw one flying over the road near our house. 

I see a gray squirrel ascend the dead aspen at the rock, and enter a hole some eighteen feet up it. Just below this, a crack is stuffed with leaves which project. Probably it has a nest within and has filled up this crack. 

Now that the river is so low, the bared bank, often within the button-bushes, is seen to be covered with that fine, short, always green Eleocharis acicularis (?).

C. has seen a brown thrasher and a republican swallow to-day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 8, 1860


The small pewee, how long. See May 7, 1852 (" The first small pewee sings now che-vet, or rather chirrups chevet, tche-vet — a rather delicate bird with a large head and two white bars on wings."). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,the “Small Pewee"

The night-warbler's note. See May 8, 1852 ("The night-warbler while it is yet pretty light.");  May 28, 1854 ("The night-warbler, after his strain, drops down almost perpendicularly into a tree-top and is lost.”);  According to Emerson the night warbler is "a bird he had never identified, had been in search of twelve years, which always, when he saw it, was in the act of diving down into a tree or bush.” Probably the flight song of the oven-bird. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Oven-bird.

Stone-heaps, how long? See May 4, 1858 ("I asked [a fisherman] if he knew what fish made the stone-heaps in the river. He said the lamprey eel.”) May 8, 1858 ("Mr. Wright . . ., an old fisherman, remembers the lamprey eels well, which he used to see in the Assabet there, but thinks that there have been none in the river for a dozen years and that the stone-heaps are not made by them. "); May 12, 1858 ("George, the carpenter, says that he used to see a great many stone-heaps in the Saco in Bartlett, near the White Mountains, like those in the Assabet, and that there were no lampreys there and they called them “snake-heaps.”); July 31, 1859 ("A man fishing at the Ox-Bow said without hesitation that the stone-heaps were made by the sucker, at any rate that he had seen them made by the sucker in Charles River,")

The cinquefoil is closed in a cloudy day, and when the sun shines it is turned toward it. See May 2, 1860 ("The early potentillas are now quite abundant."); May 17, 1853 ("The early cinquefoil is now in its prime and spots the banks and hillsides and dry meadows with its dazzling yellow. How lively! It is one of the most interesting yellow flowers. ")

The simple peep peep of the peetweet, as it flies away from the shore before me, sounds hollow and rather mournful. See  April 30, 1856 (“As I go along the Assabet, a peetweet skims away from the shore.”);  May 2, 1859 ("The river seems really inhabited when the peetweet is back . . . This bird does not return to our stream until the weather is decidedly pleasant and warm . . .Its note peoples the river, like the prattle of children once more in the yard of a house that has stood empty."); May 4, 1856 (“As soon as the rocks begin to be bare the peetweet comes and is seen teetering on them and skimming away from me.”) [Thoreau's Peetweet  is the Spotted Sandpiper  (Actitis macularia)]

How the marsh hawk circles or skims low, round and round over a particular place in a meadow. See May 2, 1855 ("Was that a harrier seen at first skimming low then seating and circling, with a broad whiteness on the wings beneath"); May 2, 1858 (" How patiently they skim the meadows, occasionally alighting, and fluttering "); May 14, 1855 (" See a male hen-harrier skimming low along the side of the river, often within a foot of the muddy shore . . . Occasionally he alights and walks or hops flutteringly a foot or two over the ground")

 C. has seen a brown thrasher and a republican swallow to-day. See  May 7, 1852 ("Beginning, I may say, with robins, song sparrows, chip-birds, bluebirds, etc., I walk through larks, pewees, pigeon woodpeckers, chickadees, towhees, huckleberry-birds, wood thrushes, brown thrasher, jay, catbird, ");May 8, 1857  ("The ring of toads, the note of the yellowbird, the rich warble of the red-wing, the thrasher on the hillside, the robin's evening song, the woodpecker tapping some dead tree across the water")

*****

 I had a minor discovery in the wildflower garden while trimming branches off the ten-year old white pines i had cut there. Deep into the work I suddenly saw that the branches come in whorls of five, just as the white pine needles are in bundles of five. According to my friend Henry your true discoveries are made when you’re doing something else.  Amid the tedium and torment of cutting the little branches into four-foot lengths  I saw they were growing in  whorls of five . . . 5.   5!   5 !   Five whorls. Five needles. May 8, 2020

A lightning trench

May 23. 

In Worcester. 

5 A. M.  Walk with Blake, Brown, and Rogers to Quinsigamond Pond, carrying our breakfast. 

Paddled up the pond northerly three quarters of a mile from the bridge, and lunched in Shrewsbury on the east side. See some quite fresh frog-spawn of the dark kind, like the Rana palustris, for instance. Cross and ascend Wigwam Hill. Krigia and comandra out there. Brown thrasher's nest on ground, under a small tree, with four eggs. 

Found in the water, eight or ten inches deep, just behind the Lake House, a nasturtium not quite open, which I think must be a variety of the horse-radish (N. Armoracia). Yet such a variety is not described by Gray, for the immersed stem leaves were all narrowly dissected and pinnate (vide pressed specimen), and I saw similar ones in the streets in Worcester in dry ground. The lowest portion — for I had not the root — had the true horse-radish taste. It seemed to be the result of its growing at some time in water. Has the N. lacustre the common horse-radish taste? 

A little south of the Boston and Worcester turnpike, and six rods from the west side of the pond, I saw a chestnut about eighteen inches in diameter which was struck by lightning in the night some ten days ago. There was left standing only a splinter of the stump, some seven feet high, with the main limbs fallen upon and around it. The bark and thin slivers or strips of the wood had been cast to a dozen rods around in all directions, the ground being strewn with them, and some rested on the top of an adjacent wood-pile. Also one. or two large limbs were thrown to a distance. 

But what was most remarkable and peculiar, there was a trench somewhat more than two rods long, five feet wide at top, and more than two feet deep, leading perfectly straight from the foot of the tree toward the pond, large old roots being burst through, in the gravelly soil, and masses of the earth cast a rod each way, yet most of the dirt formed a bank to the trench. It would have taken an Irishman at least three hours to have dug this. Then, after an interval of three or four rods, where the ground was a little higher, the trench reappeared at the water's edge, though quite short there, exactly in the line of the first ditch continued, and there some two cartloads of gravelly soil were thrown out, and the water stood in it.

I counted in all nine places within eight or ten rods along the water's edge, or six or eight rods from the tree, where it had made a short furrow in the ground; and in some cases there were slight furrows here and there between these and the tree, as if the lightning had diverged in rays from the base of the tree, perhaps (?) at first along the roots to the pond.

Did it pass through the ground when it did not break the surface? The bark was not so much stripped off as I have seen, but the wood was finely splintered.

H. d. Thoreau, Journal, May 23, 1858

See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau May 23

Eighteen-inch chestnut 

struck by lightning – only a 

splinter left standing.

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

Thirteen wood tortoises on the grass, at 4 P. M. this cloudy afternoon.

Foamflower
May 14, 2017

May 14. 

P. M. — To Assabet Bath and stone bridge. 

I hear two thrashers plainly singing in emulation of each other. 

At the temporary brush fence pond, now going down, amid the sprout-land and birches, I see, within a dozen rods along its shore, one to three rods from edge, thirteen wood tortoises on the grass, at 4 P. M. this cloudy afternoon. 

This is apparently a favorite resort for them, — a shallow open pool of half an acre, which dries up entirely a few weeks later, in dryish, mossy ground in an open birch wood, etc., etc. They take refuge in the water and crawl out over the mossy ground. They lie about in various positions, very conspicuous there, at every rod or two. 

They are of various forms and colors: some almost regularly oval or elliptical, even pointed behind, others very broad behind, more or less flaring and turned up on the edge; some a dull lead-color and almost smooth, others brown with dull-yellowish marks. 

I see one with a large dent three eighths of an inch deep and nearly two inches long in the middle of its back, where it was once partially crushed. Hardly one has a perfect shell. 

The males (?), with concave sternums; the females, even or convex. They have their reddish-orange legs stretched out often, listlessly, when you approach, draw in their heads with a hiss when you take them up, commonly taking a bit of stubble with them.

See a pair of marsh hawks, the smaller and lighter-colored male, with black tips to wings, and the large brown female, sailing low over J. Hosmer's sprout-land and screaming, apparently looking for frogs or the like. 

Or have they not a nest near? They hover very near me. 

The female, now so near, sails very grandly, with the outer wing turned or tilted up when it circles, and the bars on its tail when it turns, etc., reminding me of a great brown moth. 

Sometimes alone; and when it approaches its mate it utters a low, grating note like cur-r-r. 

Suddenly the female holds straight toward me, descending gradually. Steadily she comes on, without swerving, until only two rods off, then wheels. 

I find an old bog-hoe left amid the birches in the low ground, the handle nearly rotted off. 

In the low birch land north of the pear tree the old corn-hills are very plain still, and now each hill is a dry moss-bed, of various species of cladonia. What a complete change from a dusty corn-hill! 

Abel Hosmer tells me that he has collected and sown white pine seed, and that he has found them in the crop of pigeons. (?) 

Salix lucida at bridge; maybe staminate earlier. 

Herb-of-St.-Barbara, how long?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 14, 1857


I hear two thrashers plainly singing in emulation of each other. See May 13, 1855 ("Now, about two hours before sunset, the brown thrashers are particularly musical. One seems to be contending in song with another.")
 
At the temporary brush fence pond . . . thirteen wood tortoises on the grass . . . See May 14, 1856 ("Yesterday and to-day I see half a dqzen tortoises on a rail, — their first appearance in numbers.”); May 4, 1855 ("Yesterday a great many spotted and wood tortoises in the Sam Wheeler birch-fence meadow pool, which dries up.. . .”)

See a pair of marsh hawks, the smaller and lighter- colored male, with black tips to wings, and the large brown female, sailing low . . .  and screaming . . . have they not a nest near?  See May 14,1855 (“See a male hen-harrier skimming low along the side of the river, often within a foot of the muddy shore, looking for frogs”). See also  March 27, 1855 (“[M]arsh hawk, male. Slate-colored; beating the bush; black tips to wings and white rump.”); March 29, 1854 ("See two marsh hawks, white on rump. “); April 8, 1856 ("See two marsh hawks this afternoon, circling low over the meadows along the water’s edge. This shows that frogs must be out.”);  April 23, 1855 (" I have seen also for some weeks occasionally a brown hawk with white rump, flying low, which I have thought the frog hawk in a different stage of plumage; but can it be at this season? and is it not the marsh hawk? Yet it is not so heavy nearly as the hen-hawk -- probably female hen-harrier [i. e. marsh hawk]”);   May 2, 1855 ("Was that a harrier seen at first skimming low then seating and circling, with a broad whiteness on the wings beneath?”);  May 20, 1856 (“Two marsh hawks, male and female, flew about me a long time, screaming, the female largest, with ragged wing ,. . . they have, no doubt, a nest thereabouts. ”); May 30, 1858 ("The hawk rises when we approach and circles about over the wood, uttering a note singularly like the common one of the flicker.");     And see A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)

Salix lucida at bridge . . . See September 2, 1856 (“[A]t the stone bridge, am surprised to see the Salix lucida, a small tree with very marked and handsome leaves, on the sand, water's edge, at the great eddy. . . .”); May 12, 1858 (“The Salix lucida above Assabet Spring will not open for several days.”)

While at work I hear the bobolink.

May 6. 

Wednesday. A beautiful and warm day. 

May 6, 2017

I go to build an arbor for R. W. E. The thrasher has been heard this morning. While at work I hear the bobolink and, methinks, peetweet along the brook (surely see it on the 9th). 

Sugar maple by Dr. Barrett's, possibly to-day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 6, 1857

While at work I hear the bobolink. See May 10, 1853 (“All at once a strain that sounds like old times and recalls a hundred associations. Not at once do I remember that a year has elapsed since I heard it, and then the idea of the bobolink is formed in my mind.”); May 16, 1854 ("The earth is all fragrant as one flower. And bobolinks tinkle in the air. Nature now is perfectly genial to man.”); and note to May 12, 1856 (“We hear the first bobolink. . . How much life the note of the bobolink imparts to the meadow! ”)

Sugar maple by Dr. Barrett’s. See May 5, 1855 (“The sugar maples on the Common have just begun to show their stamens peeping out of the bud, but that by Dr. Barrett’s has them an inch and a half long or more.”); May 6, 1855 (“The young sugar maples leafing are more conspicuous now than any maples.”); May 8, 1857 (“The sugar maple at Barrett's is now in full bloom.”)

Red lady’s-slippers over the red pine leaves on the forest floor,

June 5 

Thursday. P. M. — To Indian Ditch. 

Achillea Millefolium. Black cherry, apparently yesterday. 

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

Return by J. Hosmer Desert. 

Everywhere now in dry pitch pine woods stand the red lady’s-slippers over the red pine leaves on the forest floor, rejoicing in June, with their two broad curving green leaves, —some even in swamps. Uphold their rich, striped red, drooping sack. 

This while rye begins to wave richly in the fields. 

A brown thrasher’s nest with four eggs considerably developed, under a small white pine on the old north edge of the desert, lined with root-fibres. The bird utters its peculiar tchuck near by. 

Pitch pine out, the first noticed on low land, maybe a day or two. Froth on pitch pine. 

A blue jay’s nest on a white pine, eight feet from ground, next to the stem, of twigs lined with root-fibres; three fresh eggs, dark dull greenish, with dusky spots equally distributed all over, in Hosmer (?) pines twenty seven paces east of wall and fifty-seven from factory road by wall. Jay screams as usual. Sat till I got within ten feet at first.

A cuckoo’s nest with three light bluish-green eggs partly developed, short with rounded ends, nearly of a size; in the thicket up railroad this side high wood, in a black cherry that had been lopped three feet from ground, amid the thick sprouts; a nest of nearly average depth (?), of twigs lined with green leaves, pine needles, etc., and edged with some dry, branchy weeds. The bird stole off silently at first. Five rods south of railroad. 

I must call that cerastium of May 22d C. nutans (?), at least for the present, though I do not see grooves in stem. Oakes, in his catalogue in Thompson’s “History of Vermont,” says it is not found in New England out of that State. The pods of the common one also turn upward. It is about four flowered; no petals; pods, which have formed in tumbler, more than twice but not thrice as long as calyx, bent down nearly at right angles with peduncles and then curving upward. The common cerastium is in tufts, spreading, a darker green and much larger, hairy but not glutinous, pods but little longer than calyx (as yet) and upright.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 5, 1856

The Muscicapa Cooperi sings pe pe pe’, sitting on the top of a pine. See May 15, 1855 ("I hear from the top of a pitch pine in the swamp that loud, clear, familiar whistle . . . I saw it dart out once, catch an insect, and return to its perch muscicapa-like. As near as I could see it had a white throat .”). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Olive-sided flycatcher or pe-pe

Everywhere now in dry pitch pine woods stand the red lady’s-slippers. See  June 5, 1850 ("When the lady’s-slipper and the wild pink have come out in sunny places on the hillsides, then the summer is begun according to the clock of the seasons.") See also note to May 30, 1856 (“The lady’s-slipper in pitch pine wood-side near J. Hosmer’s Desert, probably about the 27th.”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lady Slipper

Froth on pitch pine. See June 4, 1854 ("I now notice froth on the pitch and white pines.”); June 15, 1851("A white froth drips from the pitch pines, just at the base of the new shoots. It has no taste.”)

A blue jay’s nest on a white pine, See June 8, 1855 ("A jay’s nest with three young half fledged in a white pine, six feet high. . . made of coarse sticks.”); June 10, 1859 ("A blue jay's nest about four feet up a birch, quite exposed beneath the leafy branches. “) 

I must call that cerastium of May 22d C. nutans See  May 6, 1856 ("Cerastium out there under the bank"); May 22, 1856 ("A little clammy hairy cerastium (?) (like a Cerastium viscosum, slender and erect), about three inches high, will open in a day or two on the rock near the bass."); May 31, 1856 ("That little cerastium on the rock at the Island, noticed the 22d . . . seems to be the C. nutans (?), from size, erectness, and form of pods and leaves.”) 

A brown thrasher’s nest with four eggs considerably developed, under a small white pine See June 6, 1857 ("A brown thrasher's nest, with two eggs, on ground, near lower lentago wall and toward Bittern Cliff. ")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Brown Thrasher

Red lady’s-slippers, 

with two broad curving green leaves,

rejoicing in June.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Red lady’s-slippers

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 © 2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560605

Hearing with the side of the ear.

April 30

Surveying the Tommy Wheeler farm. A fine morning. 

I hear the first brown thrasher singing within three or four rods of me on the shrubby hill side in front of the Hadley place. I think I had a glimpse of one darting down from a sapling-top into the bushes as I rode by the same place on the morning of the 28th. This, I think, is the very place to hear them early, a dry hillside sloping to the south, covered with young wood and shrub oaks. 

I am the more attracted to that house as a dwelling-place. To live where you would hear he first brown thrasher! First, perchance, you have a glimpse of one’s ferruginous long brown back, instantly lost amid the shrub oaks, and are uncertain if it was a thrasher, or one of the other thrushes; and your uncertainty lasts commonly a day or two, until its rich and varied strain is heard. 

Surveying seemed a noble employment which brought me within hearing of this bird. I was trying to get the exact course of a wall thickly beset with shrub oaks and birches, making an opening through them with axe and knife, while the hillside seemed to quiver or pulsate with the sudden melody. 

Again, it is with the side of the ear that you hear. The music or the beauty belong not to your work itself but some of its accompaniments. You would fain devote yourself to the melody, but you will hear more of it if you devote yourself to your work. 

June 30, 2017

Cutting off the limbs of a young white pine in the way of my compass, I find that it strips freely. How long this? By the time I have run through to the Harvard road, I hear the small pewee’s tche-vet’ repeatedly.

The Italian with his hand-organ stops to stare at my compass, just as the boys are curious about his machine. We have exchanged places. 

As I go along the Assabet, a peetweet skims away from the shore. 

The canoe birch sap still flows. It is much like that of the white, and is now pink, white, and yellow on the bark. 

Bluets out on the bank by Tarbell’s spring brook, maybe a day or two.

This was a very warm as well as pleasant day, but at one o’clock there was the usual fresh easterly wind and sea-turn, and before night it grew quite cold for the season. The regularity of the recurrence of this phenomenon is remarkable. I have noticed it, at least, on the 24th late in the day, the 28th and the 29th about 3 P. M., and to-day at 1 P. M. It has been the order. 

Early in the afternoon, or between one and four, the wind changes (I suppose, though I did not notice its direction in the forenoon), and a fresh cool wind from the sea produces a mist in the air. 

About 3.30 P. M., when it was quite cloudy as well as raw, and I was measuring along the river just south of the bridge, I was surprised by the great number of swallows—white-bellied and barn swallows and perhaps republican — flying round and round, or skimming very low over the meadow, just laid bare, only a foot above the ground. 

Either from the shape of the hollow or their circling, they seemed to form a circular flock three or four rods in diameter and one swallow, deep. There were two or three of these centres and some birds equally low over the river. It looked like rain, but did not rain that day or the next. Probably their insect food was flying at that height over the meadow at that time. 

There were a thousand or more of swallows, and I think that they had recently arrived together on their migration. Only this could account for there being so many together. We were measuring through one little circular meadow, and many of them were not driven off by our nearness. The noise of their wings and their twittering was quite loud.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  April 30, 1856


You have a glimpse of one’s ferruginous long brown back, instantly lost amid the shrub oaks, and are uncertain if it was a thrasher; and your uncertainty lasts commonly a day or two, until its rich and varied strain is heard.  See May 3, 1852 ("Hear the first brown thrasher, — two of them.  They drown all the rest. He says cherruwit, cherruwit ; go ahead, go ahead; give it to him, give it to him. ");  May 4, 1859 ("We hear a thrasher sing for half an hour steadily, — a very rich singer and heard a quarter of a mile off very distinct . . . He sings as if conscious of his power.");  May 12, 1855 (“The brown thrasher is a powerful singer; he is a quarter of a mile off across the river, when he sounded within fifteen rods.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Brown Thrasher

Again, it is with the side of the ear that you hear. . . . you will hear more of it if you devote yourself to your work. See November 18, 1851 ("The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work.”); November 20, 1851 ("Hard and steady and engrossing labor with the hands, especially out of doors, is invaluable to the literary man and serves him directly. Here I have been for six days surveying in the woods, and yet when I get home at evening, somewhat weary at last, and beginning to feel that I have nerves, I find myself more susceptible than usual to the finest influences, as music and poetry. The very air can intoxicate me, or the least sight or sound, as if my finer senses had acquired an appetite by their fast.");  June 14, 1853 (“You see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before.”); April 12, 1854 ("I observe that it is when I have been intently, and it may be laboriously, at work, and am somewhat listless or abandoned after it, reposing, that the muse visits me, and I see or hear beauty."); December 11, 1855 ("Beauty and music are not mere traits and exceptions. They are the rule and character. It is the exception that we see and hear. “);  April 28, 1856 ("I am reminded of the advantage to the poet, and philosopher, and naturalist, and whomsoever, of pursuing from time to time some other business than his chosen one, — seeing with the side of the eye. The poet will so get visions which no deliberate abandonment can secure. The philosopher is so forced to recognize principles which long study might not detect. And the naturalist even will stumble upon some new and unexpected flower or animal.”); May 12, 1857 (“Methinks I hear these sounds, have these reminiscences, only when well employed.”);April 15, 1859 (. If you yield for a moment to the impressions of sense, you hear some bird giving expression to its happiness in a pleasant strain. We are provided with singing birds and with ears to hear them ")

I hear the small pewee’s tche-vet’ repeatedly.  See . May 3, 1854 ("What I have called the small pewee on the willow by my boat, — quite small, uttering a short tchevet from time to time.”); May 3, 1855 ("Small pewee; tchevet, with a jerk of the head.”); May 7, 1852 ("The first small pewee sings now che-vet, or rather chirrups chevet, tche-vet — a rather delicate bird with a large head and two white bars on wings.) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, ,the “Small Pewee" [Empidonax minimus]

As I go along the Assabet, a peetweet skims away from the shore. See May 2, 1859 ("The river seems really inhabited when the peetweet is back . . . This bird does not return to our stream until the weather is decidedly pleasant and warm. . . .Its note peoples the river, like the prattle of children once more in the yard of a house that has stood empty."); May 4, 1856 (“As soon as the rocks begin to be bare the peetweet comes and is seen teetering on them and skimming away from me.”) [Thoreau's Peetweet  is the Spotted Sandpiper  (Actitis macularia)]

Bluets out on the bank by Tarbell’s spring brook, maybe a day or two.  See April 24, 1857 ("Bluets numerous and fully out at the Smith hillside"); April 25, 1859 ("Bluets and potentilla are first noticed by me"); May 7, 1860 ("I saw bluets whitening the fields yesterday a quarter of a mile off. "); May 14, 1852 ("The grass is now whitened with bluets; the fields are green.")

Early in the afternoon . . . the wind changes and a fresh cool wind from the sea produces a mist in the air. See April 28, 1856 ("On our return the wind changed to easterly, and I felt the cool, fresh sea-breeze.");  April 29, 1856 ("About 3 P. M. I felt a fresh easterly wind, and saw quite a mist in the distance produced by it, a sea-turn,") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Sea-turn

The great number of swallows . . . flying round and round. See April 30, 1855 ("Circling about and flying . . . about six inches above the water, — it was cloudy and almost raining”); April 29, 1854 (" The barn swallows are very numerous, flying low over the water in the rain.”) and note to  April 29, 1856 ("Barn swallows and chimney, with white-bellied swallows, are flying together over the river."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White-bellied Swallow

April 30. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, April 30

Sudden melody –

absorbed in my work I hear 

my first brown thrasher.

Early afternoon

a fresh cool wind from the sea –

a mist in the air.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Hearing with the side of the Ear

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 © 2009-2024

tinyurl.com/hdt-560430