The painted tortoises are nowadays laying their eggs.

June 6.

Tuesday.

I perceive the sweetness of the locust blossoms fifteen or twenty rods off as I go down the street.

P. M. – To Assabet Bathing-Place and return by stone bridge.

I see now great baggy light-green puffs on the panicled andromeda, some with a reddish side, two or three inches through.

The Stellaria longifolia has been out, apparently, a day or two.

A slender rush, flowered at the top, at bathing-place, some time.

The painted tortoises are nowadays laying their eggs. I see where they have just been digging in the sand or gravel in a hundred places on the southerly sides of hills and banks near the river, but they have laid their eggs in very few. I find none whole.

Here is one which has made its hole with the hind part of its shell and its tail apparently, and the ground is wet under it. They make a great deal of water at these times, apparently to soften the earth or to give it consistency, or both.

They are remarkably circumspect, and it is difficult to see one working. They stop instantly and draw in their heads, and do not move till you are out of sight, and then probably try a new place.

They have dabbled in the sand and left the marks of their tails all around.

The black oaks, birches, etc., etc., are covered with ephemeræ of various sizes and colors, with one, two, three, or no streamers, ready to take wing at evening, i.e. about seven. I am covered with them and much incommoded.

There is garlic by the wall, not yet out.

The air over the river meadows is saturated with sweetness, but I look round in vain on the yellowish sensitive fern and the reddish eupatorium springing up.

From time to time, at mid-afternoon, is heard the trump of a bullfrog, like a Triton's horn.


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

The Stellaria longifolia has been out, apparently, a day or two. See June 6, 1859 ("Stellaria longifolia, at Well Meadow Head, how long?") See also June 8, 1856 ("Stellaria longrfolia opposite Barbarea Shore not yet out")

The painted tortoises are nowadays laying their eggs. See  June 6, 1858 ("See three or four Emys insculpta about, making their holes in the gravelly bank south of Assabet Bath"); June 6, 1855 ("I see a yellow-spotted tortoise twenty rods from river, and a painted one four rods from it which has just made a hole for her eggs.");  June 7, 1854 ("Yesterday I saw the painted and the wood tortoise out."); June 10, 1857 ("A wood tortoise making a hole for her eggs just like a picta's hole.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle (Emys picta); A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wood Turtlw (Emys insculpta);  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow-Spotted Turtle (Emys guttata)

The black oaks, birches, etc., etc., are covered with ephemeræ of various sizes and colors, with one, two, three, or no streamers, ready to take wing at evening, i.e. about seven. See June 2, 1854 "The whole atmosphere over the river was full of shad-flies.") . . .It was a great flight of ephemera"); June 9, 1854 ("The air is now full of shad-flies, and there is an incessant sound made by the fishes leaping for their evening meal.”); June 8, 1856 (“My boat being by chance at the same place where it was in ’54, I noticed a great flight of ephemera”); June 9, 1856 ("Again, about seven, the ephemera came out, in numbers as many as last night, ... and the fishes leap as before.")

From time to time, at mid-afternoon, is heard the trump of a bullfrog, like a Triton's horn. See May 10, 1858 (" I hear the first regular bullfrog's trump. . . . This sound, heard low and far off over meadows when the warmer hours have come, grandly inaugurates the summer."); May 25, 1855 ("Heard the first regular bullfrog’s trump on the 18th; none since."); June 1, 1853 ("The hylodes are no longer heard. The bullfrogs begin to trump.”); June 4, 1853 ("The bullfrog now begins to be heard at night regularly; has taken the place of the hylodes."); June 13, 1851 ("The different frogs mark the seasons pretty well,- the peeping hyla, the dreaming frog, and the bullfrog . . . The bullfrog belongs to summer."); June 15, 1860 ("The bullfrogs now commonly trump at night, and the mosquitoes are now really troublesome.”)

From time to time, at

mid-afternoon, is heard the 

trump of a bullfrog

Gathered last night the strong, rank, penetrating-scented angelica.

June 6. 

Friday. 

Gathered last night the strong, rank, penetrating-scented angelica. 

Under the head of the Cicuta maculata, or American hemlock, — “It is a rule sanctioned by the observations of medical botanists , that umbelliferous plants, which grow in or about the water, are of a poisonous nature.” He [Bigelow] does not say that the angelica is poisonous, but I suppose that it is. 

It has such a rank, offensive, and killing odor as makes me think of the ingredients of the witches' cauldron. It did not leave my hands, which had carried it, long after I had washed them. A strong, penetrating, lasting, and sickening odor. 

Gathered to-night the Cicuta maculata, American hemlock, the veins of the leaflets ending in the notches and the root fasciculated.

Bigelow says, “The leaves of the Solidago odora have a delightfully fragrant odor, partaking of that of anise and sassafras, but different from either.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 6, 1851

Gathered last night the strong, rank, penetrating-scented angelica. See July 16, 1851 ("The angelica,with its large umbels, is gone to seed.")

Gathered to-night the Cicuta maculata. See August 30, 1857 ("The flower of Cicuta maculata smells like the leaves of the golden senecio..")

A kingfisher's nest, six or seven feet deep in the bank.

June 6.

June 6, 2019

P. M. — To Well Meadow. 

Yellow wood-sorrel out. Umbelled thesium, how long? 

Red avens, how long? 

Stellaria longifolia, at Well Meadow Head, how long? 

Cardamine rhomboidea has green seed.

Hear of a kingfisher's nest, just found in a sand bank behind Abner Buttrick's, with six fresh eggs, of which I have one. The boy said it was six or seven feet deep in the bank.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 6, 1859

Stellaria longifolia, at Well Meadow Head, how long? See June 6, 1854 ("The Stellaria longifolia has been out, apparently, a day or two."); See also June 8, 1856 ("Stellaria longrfolia opposite Barbarea Shore not yet out")

Hear of a kingfisher's nest, just found in a sand bank. See June 16, 1859  ("Examined a kingfisher's nest, — though there is a slight doubt if I found the spot. . . .Could feel nothing in it, but it may have been removed. Have an egg from this.”). See also  April 10, 1859 ("See a kingfisher flying very low, in the ricochet manner, across the water. "); April 11, 1856 ("Saw a kingfisher on a tree over the water. Does not its arrival mark some new movement in its finny prey? He is the bright buoy that betrays it!"); April 15, 1855 ("See and hear a kingfisher—do they not come with the smooth waters of April? — hurrying over the meadow as if on urgent business.”); April 17, 1858 ("See several kingfishers"); April 22, 1855 ("The bluish band on the breast of the kingfisher leaves the pure white beneath in the form of a heart"); April 23, 1854 (“A kingfisher with his crack, — cr-r-r-rack.”); April 24, 1854 ("The kingfisher flies with a crack cr-r-r-ack and a limping or flitting flight from tree to tree before us ”); May 10, 1854 ("Above the railroad bridge I see a kingfisher twice sustain himself in one place, about forty feet above the meadow, by a rapid motion of his wings, somewhat like a devil's-needle, not progressing an inch, apparently over a fish.”); June 9, 1854 ("The air is now full of shad-flies, and there is an incessant sound made by the fishes leaping for their evening meal, . . .Meanwhile the kingfishers are on the lookout for the fishes as they rise. I see one dive in the twilight and go off uttering his cr-r-ack, cr-r-rack. "); June 12, 1854 ("Scare a kingfisher on a bough over Walden. As he flies off, he hovers two or three times thirty or forty feet above the pond, and at last dives and apparently catches a fish, with which he flies off low over the water to a tree."); June 25, 1854 ("I observe many kingfishers at Walden and on the Assabet, very few on the dark and muddy South Branch.”); July 28, 1858 ("Heard a kingfisher, which had been hovering over the river, plunge forty rods off. "); August 6, 1858 ("The kingfisher is seen hovering steadily over one spot, or hurrying away with a small fish in his mouth, sounding his alarum nevertheless. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The Kingfisher

Tp Painted-Cup Meadow via Assabet Bath.

June 6. 

June 6, 2018

P. M. – Cornus florida at Island well out, say the 3d. 

I hear of linnaea out in a pitcher and probably (?) in woods. 

Go to Painted-Cup Meadow via Assabet Bath. 

See three or four Emys insculpta about, making their holes in the gravelly bank south of Assabet Bath, and a few holes which must have been made a day or two, probably by the same. 

Golden senecio is not uncommon now. 

Am surprised to find that the buck bean flowers are withered, being killed by the recent frosts. 

Yellow Bethlehem-star.

Edith Emerson has found, in the field (Merriam’s) just south of the Beck Stow pine grove, Lepidium campestre, which may have been out ten days.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal , June 6, 1858

Cornus florida at Island well out, say the 3d. See June 4, 1858 ("I find the Cornus florida out in my pitcher when I get home June 4th, though it was not out on Island May 31st, and it is well out on Island when I look June 6th. I will say, therefore, that it opened June 3d."); See also May 25, 1855 ("Cornus florida, no bloom. Was there year before last? Does it not flower every other year?”); May 22, 1856("The Cornus florida does not bloom this year.")

Golden senecio is not uncommon now. See May 23, 1853 ("I am surprised by the dark orange-yellow of the senecio. At first we had the lighter, paler spring yellows of willows, dandelion, cinquefoil, then the darker and deeper yellow of the buttercup; and then this broad distinction between the buttercup and the senecio, as the seasons revolve toward July."); May 27, 1859 ("Golden senecio, at least to-morrow. ");May 29, 1856 (" Ride to Painted-Cup Meadow. . . . Golden senecio there, a day or two, at least"); June 9, 1853 ("The meadows are now yellow with the golden senecio, a more orange yellow, mingled with the light glossy yellow of the buttercup") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Golden Senecio

Yellow Bethlehem-star. See June 5, 1855 ("Yellow Bethlehem-star in prime.")

Edith Emerson has found Lepidium campestre. See note to May 29, 1856 ("Found a painted-cup with more yellow than usual in it, and at length Edith found one perfectly yellow") [ Lepidium campestre--. Cow cress. See June 12, 1859, referring to  Lepidium campestre field.]

Now I am ice, now I am sorrel

June 6

8 a. m. — To Lee's Cliff by river. 

Salix pedicellaris off Holden's has been out of bloom several days at least. So it is earlier to begin and to end than our S. lucida. 

This is June, the month of grass and leaves. The deciduous trees are investing the evergreens and revealing how dark they are. 

Already the aspens are trembling again, and a new summer is offered me. I feel a little fluttered in my thoughts, as if I might be too late. 

June 6, 2012

Each season is but an infinitesimal point. It no sooner comes than it is gone. It has no duration. It simply gives a tone and hue to my thought. Each annual phenomenon is a reminiscence and prompting. Our thoughts and sentiments answer to the revolutions of the seasons, as two cog-wheels fit into each other. We are conversant with only one point of contact at a time, from which we receive a prompting and impulse and instantly pass to a new season or point of contact. A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. Now I am ice, now I am sorrel. Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind. 

I see a man grafting, for instance. What this imports chiefly is not apples to the owner or bread to the grafter, but a certain mood or train of thought to my mind. That is what this grafting is to me. Whether it is anything at all, even apples or bread, to anybody else, I cannot swear, for it would be worse than swearing through glass. 

For I only see those other facts as through a glass darkly. 

Crataegus Crus-Galli, maybe a day. 

Early iris. 

Viburnum-Lentago, a day or more. 

Krigias, with their somewhat orange yellow, spot the dry hills all the fore noon and are very common, but as they are closed in the afternoon, they are but rarely noticed by walkers. 

The long mocker-nut on Conantum not yet out, and the second, or round, one will be yet later. Its catkins are more grayish. 

I see many great devil's-needles in an open wood, — and for a day or two, — stationary on twigs, etc., standing out more or less horizontally like thorns, holding by their legs and heads(?). They do not incline to move when touched, and their eyes look whitish and opaque, as if they were blind. 

They were evidently just escaped from the slough. I often see the slough on plants and, I think, the pupa in the water, as at Callitriche Pool. 

As I sit on Lee's Cliff, I see a pe-pe on the topmost dead branch of a hickory eight or ten rods off. Regularly, at short intervals, it utters its monotonous note like till-till-till, or pe-pe-pe. Looking round for its prey and occasionally changing its perch, it every now and then darts off (phoebe-like), even five or six rods, to ward the earth to catch an insect, and then returns to its favorite perch. If I lose it for a moment, I soon see it settling on the dead twigs again and hear its till, till, till. It appears through the glass mouse-colored above and head (which is perhaps darker), white throat, and narrow white beneath, with no white on tail. 

There is a thorn now in its prime, i. e. near the beaked hazel, Conantum, with leaves more wedge-shaped at base than the Cratcegus coccinea; apparently a variety of it, between that and Crus-Galli. (In press.) 

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. 

A brown thrasher's nest, with two eggs, on ground, near lower lentago wall and toward Bittern Cliff. 

The Ranunculus Purshii is in some places abundantly out now and quite showy. It must be our largest ranunculus (flower).

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

Salix pedicellaris off Holden's has been out of bloom several days at least. See May 4, 1858 (“Salix pedicellaris at Holden's Swamp, staminate, out apparently two days.”); May 28, 1858 ("The Salix pedicellaris, which abounds in the Great Meadows, is a peculiar and rather interesting willow, some fifteen inches high and scarcely rising above the grass even now."); May 28, 1859 ("S. pedicellaris long out of bloom.")

Already the aspens are trembling again, and a new summer is offered me. I feel a little fluttered in my thoughts. Compare Walden ("Solitude") ("Sympathy with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath; yet, like the lake, my serenity is rippled but not ruffled")

Each annual phenomenon is a reminiscence and prompting. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting

Each season is but an infinitesimal point. See  May 23, 1841 ("All nature is a new impression every instant");August 19, 1851("The seasons do not cease a moment to revolve, and therefore Nature rests no longer at her culminating point than at any other. If you are not out at the right instant, the summer may go by and you not see it.”); January 26, 1852 (" The moment always spurs us. The spurs of countless moments goad us incessantly into life."); Walden:  Where I lived and what I lived for ("God Himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages.") and Economy, ("In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.”); Walden ("To effect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”);  April 24, 1859 ("The moods and thoughts of man are revolving just as steadily and incessantly as nature's. Nothing must be postponed. Take time by the forelock. Now or never! You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.") December 8, 1859 ("Only the poet has the faculty to see present things as if also past and future, as if universally significant.”)

I see many great devil's-needles in an open wood, They were evidently just escaped from the slough. See June 10, 1857 ("Many creatures — devil's- needles, etc., etc. — cast their sloughs now. Can't I?") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau.the Devil's-needle

As I sit on Lee's Cliff, I see a pe-pe on the topmost dead branch of a hickory eight or ten rods off. . . .mouse-colored above and head (which is perhaps darker), white throat, and narrow white beneath, with no white on tail. See June 10, 1855 ("Nest of the Muscicapa Cooperi, or pe pe, on a white spruce in the Holden Swamp . . ."); June 5, 1856 ("The Muscicapa Cooperi sings pe pe pe’, sitting on the top of a pine . . .”); June 8, 1856 ("At Cedar Swamp, saw the pe-pe catching flies like a wood pewee, darting from its perch on a dead cedar twig from time to time and returning to it. “); 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.”).

A brown thrasher's nest, with two eggs, on ground. See May 23, 1858 ("Brown thrasher's nest on ground, under a small tree, with four eggs."); ,June 5, 1856 ("A brown thrasher’s nest with four eggs . . . under a small white pine"): See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Brown Thrasher

June 6.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 6.

The trembling aspens

offer me a new summer –

fluttering my thoughts.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Now I am ice, now I am sorrel

 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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-570606

A Book of the Seasons: June 6 (ephemeral seasons, falling maple keys, turtles lay, devils needles, evening on the river)

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

June 6.

June 6, 2012

The dark eye and shade

of June seen on the river

as well as on land.

June 6, 1855

A year is made up 

of a certain series of 

sensations and thoughts.

 June 6, 1857

The trembling aspens

offer me a new summer

fluttering my thoughts.

June 6, 1857

The air full of sound,

sunset after a rain-storm.

Every bird singing.

June 6, 1860

A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. June 6, 1857

Each season is but an infinitesimal point. June 6, 1857

This is June, the month of grass and leaves. June 6, 1857

You see the dark eye and shade of June on the river as well as on land, and a dust-like tint on river, apparently from the young leaves and bud-scales, covering the waters, which begin to be smooth, and imparting a sense of depth. June 6, 1855

Already the aspens are trembling again, and a new summer is offered me. I feel a little fluttered in my thoughts, as if I might be too late. June 6, 1857

It no sooner comes than it is gone. June 6, 1857

We receive a prompting and impulse and instantly pass to a new season. June 6, 1857

The aspect of the dry rocky hills already indicates the rapid revolution of the seasons. June 6, 1853

I perceive the sweetness of the locust blossoms fifteen or twenty rods off as I go down the street. June 6, 1854

The air over the river meadows is saturated with sweetness June 6, 1854

It is Lee's Cliff I am on. How dry and crisp the turf feels there now, not moist with melted snows, remembering, as it were, when it was the bottom of the sea. June 6, 1853

From time to time, at mid-afternoon, is heard the trump of a bullfrog, like a Triton's horn. June 6, 1854

The painted tortoises are nowadays laying their eggs. June 6, 1854

I see a yellow-spotted tortoise twenty rods from river, and a painted one four rods from it which has just made a hole for her eggs. June 6, 1855

See three or four Emys insculpta about, making their holes in the gravelly bank south of Assabet Bath" June 6, 1858

I notice a clam lying up, and two or three cleared or light-colored places, apparently bream-nests commenced. June 6, 1855

First devil's-needles in the air, and some smaller, bright-green ones on flowers. June 6, 1852

I see many great devil's-needles in an open wood — and for a day or two, — stationary on twigs, etc.,. . . They were evidently just escaped from the slough. June 6, 1857

The white maple keys are about half fallen. June 6, 1855

It is remarkable that this happens at the time the emperor moth (cecropia) comes out. June 6, 1855

How well suited the lining of a bird’s nest, not only for the comfort of the young, but to keep the eggs from breaking! June 6, 1856

Two catbirds’ nests in the thickest part of the thicket on the edge of Wheeler’s meadow near Island. June 6, 1855

A catbird nest on shore of Andromeda and in shrub oak, three feet high, twigs and bark shreds lined with root-fibres; three eggs. June 6, 1856

Those nests in the andromeda are blackbird’s. Many sound the alarm while I am wading through the swamp. June 6, 1856

Hear of a kingfisher's nest, just found in a sand bank behind Abner Buttrick's, with six fresh eggs, of which I have one. The boy said it was six or seven feet deep in the bank. June 6, 1859

A brown thrasher's nest, with two eggs, on ground, near lower lentago wall and toward Bittern Cliff. June 6, 1857

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. June 6, 1857

Another in black willow south of long cove (east side, north of Hubbard's Grove) and another north of said cove. June 6, 1857

That willow, male and female, opposite to Trillium Woods on the railroad, I find to be the Salix rostrata, or long-beaked willow, one of the ochre-flowered (I had remarked the peculiar yellow of its flowers) willows (fulvae) of Barratt. It is now just beginning to open its long beaks. June 6, 1856

The S. cordata is another of the ochre-flowered ones. June 6, 1856

The Salix cordata (which apparently blossomed some days after the S. sericea) is very common on Prichard’s shore and also Whiting’s. June 6, 1855

Also at the last place is a small shrub, —a little of it, — perhaps S. lucida, which apparently blossomed about same time, or a day or two after, the sericea. June 6, 1855

Salix pedicellaris off Holden's has been out of bloom several days at least. So it is earlier to begin and to end than our S. lucida. June 6, 1857

There is a thorn now in its prime, i. e. near the beaked hazel, Conantum, with leaves more wedge-shaped at base than the Cratcegus coccinea; apparently a variety of it, between that and Crus-Galli. (In press.) June 6, 1857

Crataegus Crus-Galli, maybe a day. June 6, 1857

Cornus florida at Island well out, say the 3d. June 6, 1858

Gathered last night the strong, rank, penetrating-scented angelica . . . A strong, penetrating, lasting, and sickening odor. June 6, 1851

Gathered to-night the Cicuta maculata, American hemlock, the veins of the leaflets ending in the notches and the root fasciculated. June 6, 1851

A slender rush, flowered at the top, at bathing-place, some time. June 6, 1854

Yellow wood-sorrel out. Umbelled thesium, how long? June 6, 1859

Red avens, how long? June 6, 1859

The Stellaria longifolia has been out, apparently, a day or two. June 6, 1854

Stellaria longifolia, at Well Meadow Head, how long? June 6, 1859

Cardamine rhomboidea has green seed. June 6, 1859

I hear of linnaea out in a pitcher and probably (?) in woods. June 6, 1858

Golden senecio is not uncommon now. June 6, 1858

There is garlic by the wall, not yet out. June 6, 1854

Am surprised to find that the buck bean flowers are withered, being killed by the recent frosts. June 6, 1858

Yellow Bethlehem-star. June 6, 1858

Edith Emerson has found, in the field (Merriam’s) just south of the Beck Stow pine grove, Lepidium campestre, which may have been out ten days. June 6, 1858

Early iris. June 6, 1857

Viburnum-Lentago, a day or more. June 6, 1857

Krigias, with their somewhat orange yellow, spot the dry hills all the fore noon and are very common, but as they are closed in the afternoon, they are but rarely noticed by walkers. June 6, 1857

The long mocker-nut on Conantum not yet out, and the second, or round, one will be yet later. Its catkins are more grayish. June 6, 1857

The Ranunculus Purshii is in some places abundantly out now and quite showy. It must be our largest ranunculus (flower). June 6, 1857

Waxwork open and pollen one or two days. June 6, 1855

One thimble-berry blossom done— probably several days. June 6, 1855

Blue-eyed grass maybe several days in some places. June 6, 1855

Carex crinita, a few days, along bank of Assabet. June 6, 1855

Whiteweed, Merrick’s pasture shore, these two or three days. June 6, 1855

The side-flowering sandwort, an inconspicuous white flower like a chickweed. June 6, 1852

The earliest blueberries are now forming as greenberries. June 6, 1852

Rain still (the second day) clears up before night, and so cool that many have fires. June 6, 1860

The wind already injures the just-expanded leaves, tearing them and making there turn black. June 6, 1853

I see the effects of recent frosts on the young oaks in hollows in the woods. June 6, 1852

The leaves are turned dry, black, and crisp. June 6, 1852

As I sit on Lee's Cliff, I see a pe-pe on the topmost dead branch of a hickory eight or ten rods off. June 6, 1857

Looking round for its prey and occasionally changing its perch, it every now and then darts off (phoebe-like), even five or six rods, to ward the earth to catch an insect, and then returns to its favorite perch. June 6, 1857

On the Island I hear still the redstart—tsip tsip tsip tsip, tsit-i-yet, or sometimes tsip tsip tsip tsip, tse vet. A young male. It repeats this at regular intervals for a long time, sitting pretty still now. June 6, 1855

Still see cherry-birds in flocks of five or six. June 6, 1856

Every bird seems to be singing in the wood across the steam. June 6, 1860

How full the air of sound at sunset and just after, at the end of a rain-storm! June 6, 1860

All sounds are more distinctly heard. June 6, 1860

The black oaks, birches, etc., etc., are covered with ephemeræ of various sizes and colors, with one, two, three, or no streamers, ready to take wing at evening. June 6, 1854

There are now those large swarms of black-winged millers a half-inch long, with two long streamers ahead, fluttering three to six inches over the water; not long, methinks; also other insects. June 6, 1855

As the light is obscured after sunset, the birds rapidly cease their songs, and the swallows cease to flit over the river. June 6, 1860

Soon the bats are seen taking the places of the swallows, flying back and forth like them. June 6, 1860

After the bats, half an hour after sunset, the water-bugs begin to spread themselves over the stream, - now, when it is difficult to see them or the dimples they make, except when you look toward the reflected western sky. June 6, 1860

Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind. June 6, 1857

It simply gives a tone and hue to my thought. June 6, 1857

Each annual phenomenon is a reminiscence and prompting. June 6, 1857

June 6, 2019

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, As the Seasons Revolve

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Maple Keys

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle (Emys picta); A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wood Turtlw (Emys insculpta)

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow-Spotted Turtle (Emys guttata)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau.the Devil's-needle

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,

Insect Hatches in Spring (millers, perla, shad-flies or ephemera)

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Water-bug (Gyrinus) and Skaters (Hydrometridae)

*****

Already the aspens are trembling again, and . . .I feel a little fluttered in my thoughts . . Each annual phenomenon is a reminiscence and prompting See May 17, 1860 ("Standing in the meadow near the early aspen at the island, I hear the first fluttering of leaves, - a peculiar sound, at first unaccountable to me.")

Late rose now in prime.

The memory of roses

along the river.

July 23, 1860

******

The dark eye and shade of June. See June 4, 1855 ("dark shadows on field and wood are the more remarkable by contrast with the light yellow-green foliage now, and when they rest on evergreens they are doubly dark, like dark rings about the eyes of June. "); June 4, 1860 (" a grateful but thin shade, like a coarse sieve, so open that we see the fluttering of each leaf in its shadow.”); June 9. 1856 ("Now I notice where an elm is in the shadow of a cloud,—the black elm-tops and shadows of June. It is a dark eyelash which suggests a flashing eye beneath. It suggests houses that lie under the shade, the repose and siesta of summer noons, the thunder-cloud, bathing, and all that belongs to summer. ") June 11, 1856 ("I observe and appreciate the shade, as it were the shadow of each particular leaf on the ground. . . . the leaves are rapidly acquiring a darker green, are more and more opaque, and, besides, the sky is lit with the intensest light. It reminds me of the thunder-cloud and the dark eyelash of summer. "); June 26, 1854 ("the peculiar agreeable dark shade of June, a clear air, and bluish light on the grass and bright silvery light reflected from fresh green leaves.")

The painted tortoises are nowadays laying their eggs. Three or four Emys insculpta about, making their holes in the gravelly bank. A yellow-spotted tortoise twenty rods from rive.  See June 7, 1854 ("Yesterday I saw the painted and the wood tortoise out."); June 8, 1859 ("See a painted turtle beginning to lay. She has merely scratched the ground a little, and moistened it very much. This must be to make it adherent."); June 9, 1858 ("See a yellow spotted turtle digging her hole at 5 P.M. . . . It is made under one side like the picta’s. "); June 10, 1857 ("A wood tortoise making a hole for her eggs just like a picta's hole.") 

The white maple keys are about half fallen. It is remarkable that this happens at the time the emperor moth (cecropia) comes out. See May 29, 1854 ("The white maple keys have begun to fall and float down the stream like the wings of great insects");  June 2, 1855   (" From that cocoon of the Attacus cecropia which I found. . . came out this forenoon a splendid moth.");  June 9, 1858("White maple keys are abundantly floating. ")

First devil's-needles evidently just escaped from the slough. See June 8, 1855 (“A great many devil’s-needles in woods within a day or two."); June 11, 1860 (“See many small blue devil's-needles, but no mates with them.”); June 13, 1854 (“. . . my sail so idle that I count ten devil's-needles resting along it at once.”); June 19, 1860("The devil's-needles now abound in wood-paths and about the Ripple Lakes. “); June 23, 1853 (“Here are thousands of devil's-needles of all sizes hovering over the surface of this shallow pond in the woods”); July 16, 1854 (“Methinks there were most devil's-needles a month ago.”) 

Golden senecio is not uncommon now. See May 23, 1853 ("I am surprised by the dark orange-yellow of the senecio. At first we had the lighter, paler spring yellows of willows, dandelion, cinquefoil, then the darker and deeper yellow of the buttercup; and then this broad distinction between the buttercup and the senecio, as the seasons revolve toward July."); May 27, 1859 ("Golden senecio, at least to-morrow. ");May 29, 1856 (" Ride to Painted-Cup Meadow. . . . Golden senecio there, a day or two, at least"); June 9, 1853 ("The meadows are now yellow with the golden senecio, a more orange yellow, mingled with the light glossy yellow of the buttercup") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Golden Senecio

The earliest blueberries are now forming as greenberries. See June 7, 1854 (“I am surprised at the size of green berries, -- shad-bush, low blueberries, choke-cherries, etc., etc. It is but a step from flowers to fruit.”)

Half an hour after sunset the water-bugs begin to spread themselves over the stream, when it is difficult to see them. See June 2, 1860 ("Water-bugs dimple the surface now quite across the river, in the moonlight, for it is a full moon.") 

The reflected western sky. See October 20, 1858 ("There is one advantage in walking eastward these afternoons, at least, that in returning you may have the western sky before you."); November 15, 1853 (“Just after sundown, the waters become suddenly smooth, and the clear yellow light of the western sky is . . . reflected in the water . . . diffusing light from below as well as above”); December 25, 1858 ("How full of soft, pure light the western sky now, after sunset!”); January 17, 1852 ("In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky sunset these winter days."); August 2, 1854 (“I am compelled to stand to write where a soft, faint light from the western sky came in between two willows.”); August 5, 1851 (“The light from the western sky is stronger still than that of the moon”) 

June 6, 2016

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

June 5  < <<<<<. June 6  >>>>>  June 7

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 6.

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 © 2009-2022

https://tinyurl.com/HDT6June

To rescue a star-nosed mole.

June 6, 2016

June 6 

P. M. — To Andromeda Ponds. 

Cold mizzling weather. 

In the large circular hole or cellar at the turntable on the railroad, which they are repairing, I see a star-nosed mole endeavoring in vain to bury himself in the sandy and gravelly bottom. 

Some inhuman fellow has cut off his tail. 

It is blue-black with much fur, a very thick, plump animal, apparently some four inches long, but he occasionally shortens himself a third or more. Looks as fat as a fat hog. His fore feet are large and set sidewise or on their edges, and with these he shovels the earth aside, while his large, long, starred snout is feeling the way and breaking ground. I see deep indentations in his fur where his eyes are situated, and once I saw distinctly his eye open, a dull blue (?) black head, not so very small, and he very plainly noticed my movements two feet off. He was using his eye as plainly as any creature that I ever saw. Yet Emmons says it is a question whether their eyes are not merely rudimentary. I suppose this was the Condylura macroma, since that is most common, but only an inch of its tail was left, and that was quite stout. 

I carry him along to plowed ground, where he buries himself in a minute or two. 

Still see cherry-birds in flocks of five or six. 

A catbird nest on shore of Andromeda and in shrub oak, three feet high, twigs and bark shreds lined with root-fibres; three eggs. 

Those nests in the andromeda are blackbird’s. Many sound the alarm while I am wading through the swamp. Noticed one with three eggs. 

Salix bebbiana (Wikipedia)

Salix rostrata (Trees and Shrubs of Massachusetts)

That willow, male and female, opposite to Trillium Woods on the railroad, I find to be the Salix rostrata, or long-beaked willow, one of the ochre-flowered (I had remarked the peculiar yellow of its flowers) willows (fulvae) of Barratt. It is now just beginning to open its long beaks. The S. cordata is another of the ochre-flowered ones. 

How well suited the lining of a bird’s nest, not only for the comfort of the young, but to keep the eggs from breaking! Fine elastic grass stems or root-fibres, pine needles, or hair, or the like. These tender and brittle things which you can hardly carry in cotton lie there without harm. 

J. Hosmer, who is prosecuting Warner for flowing his land, says that the trees are not only broken off when young by weight of ice, but, being rubbed and barked by it, become warty or bulge out there.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 6, 1856

I see a star-nosed mole . . . blue-black with much fur, a very thick, plump animal, apparently some four inches long. . . fore feet are large and set sidewise or on their edges, and with these he shovels the earth aside, while his large, long, starred snout is feeling the way.   See note to February 20, 1852 ("We . . . rarely see these animals, though their tracks are so common. "); February 8, 1856  ("Puffer saw a star - nosed mole yesterday in the road.  Its track was  dog-like ."); September 12, 1859 ("I saw a star-nosed mole dead in the path on Conantum yesterday, with no obvious wound.") See also Animal Diversity Web, Condylura cristata

I carry him along to plowed ground, where he buries himself in a minute or two. See July 23, 1856 ("Saw . . . a small bullfrog in the act of swallowing a young but pretty sizable apparently Rana palustris, . . . I sprang to make him disgorge, but it was too late to save him. "); April 22, 1857 (“Near Tall's Island, rescue a little pale or yellowish brown snake that was coiled round a willow half a dozen rods from the shore and was apparently chilled by the cold.”); August 28, 1854 (“The meadow is drier than ever, and new pools are dried up. The breams, from one to two and a half inches long, lying on the sides and quirking from time to time. . . — pretty green jewels, dying in the sun. I saved a dozen or more by putting them in deeper pools.”); April 12, 1858 (“We came upon a partridge standing on the track, between the rails over which the cars had just passed. She had evidently been run down, but. . . was apparently more disturbed in mind than body. I took her up and carried her one side to a safer place.”)

Still see cherry-birds in flocks of five or six.  See  June 2, 1853 ("Cherry-birds are the only ones I see in flocks now. I can tell them afar by their peculiar fine springy note.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Cherry-Bird (cedar waxwing)

A catbird nest on shore of Andromeda and in shrub oak. See June 6, 1855  ("Two catbirds’ nests in the thickest part of the thicket on the edge of Wheeler’s meadow near Island."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Catbird nests

Those nests in the andromeda are blackbird’s. See  May 25, 1855 ("Red-wing’s nest with four eggs — white, very faintly tinged with (perhaps) green and curiously and neatly marked with brown-black spots and lines on the large end.") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Red-wing in Spring

That willow, male and female, opposite to Trillium Woods on the railroad . .. Salix rostrata, or long-beaked willow, See May 10, 1856 {"On the railroad causeway against Trillium Wood, I see an apparently native willow, a shrub, with greenish bark and conspicuous yellow catkins, now in full bloom, apparently a little earlier than the Salix alba, but its leafets or bracts much less advanced and conspicuous. Another on the Walden road. What is it?"); May 6, 1858 (“The Salix rostrata staminate flowers are of very peculiar yellow, — a bright, what you might call yellow yellow.”)

The S. cordata is another of the ochre-flowered ones. See June 6, 1855 ("The Salix cordata (which apparently blossomed some days after the S. sericea) is very common on Prichard’s shore and also Whiting’s.")

J. Hosmer . . . is prosecuting Warner for flowing his land. See June 3, 1856 ("Surveying for John Hosmer beyond pail-factory”); June 4, 1856 (“Surveying for J. Hosmer . . . running a line on the west edge of Loring’s Pond, south of the brook.”).; May 19, 1858 ("Surveying for Warner the meadow surveyed for John Hosmer in June, ’56.") 

June 6. See  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 6

The long-beaked willow, 

one of the ochre-flowered, 

now just beginning . . .

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, To rescue a star-nosed mole

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-560606