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.”)

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 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

The phe phee-ar of the new muscicapa.

May 23. 

P. M. — To Heywood Spring. 

Sorrel well open on west side of railroad causeway against H. Wheeler’s land. 

Noticed the earliest willow catkins turned to masses of cotton yesterday; also a little of the mouse-ear down begins to be loose. 

Hear often and distinctly, apparently from H. Wheeler’s black spruce wood-lot, the phe phee-ar of the new muscicapa. Red-eye and wood thrush. 

Houstonias whiten the fields, and looked yesterday like snow, a sugaring of snow, on the side of Lee’s Hill. 

Heard partridges drum yesterday and to-day. 

Observed the pads yesterday just begun to spread out on the surface with wrinkled edges and here and there a bullet-like bud; the red white lily pads still more rare as yet. 

The stellaria at Heywood Spring must be the same with that near the E. Hosmer Spring, though the former has commonly fewer styles and rather slenderer leaves.  It appears to be the S. borealia, though the leaves are narrowly lanceolate; has three to seven styles; a few petals (cleft almost to the bottom) or none; pods, some larger than the calyx  and apparently ten-ribbed; petals, now about the length of the sepals.

After sunset on river. A warm summer-like night. A bullfrog trumps once. A large devil’s—needle goes by after sundown. 

The ring of toads is loud and incessant. It seems more prolonged than it is. I think it not more than two seconds in each case. 

At the same time I hear a low, stertorous, dry, but hard-cored note from some frog in the meadows and along the riverside; often heard in past years but not accounted for. Is it a Rana palustris? 

Dor-bugs hum in the yard, — and were heard against the windows some nights ago. The cat is springing into the air for them.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 23, 1856

Hear often and distinctly, apparently from H. Wheeler’s black spruce wood-lot, the phe phee-ar of the new muscicapa. See May 23, 1854 ("The wood pewee sings now in the woods behind the spring in the heat of the day”). see also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Wood-Pewee


Heard partridges drum yesterday and to-day. See February 22, 1855 ("He [Farmer] had seen a partridge drum standing on a wall. Said it stood very upright and produced the sound by striking its wings together behind its back, . . .but did not strike the wall nor its body."); April 19, 1860 ("Toward night, hear a partridge drum. You will hear at first a single beat or two far apart and have time to say, "There is a partridge," so distinct and deliberate is it often, before it becomes a rapid roll."); April 25, 1854 ("The first partridge drums in one or two places, as if the earth's pulse now beat audibly with the increased flow of life. It slightly flutters all Nature and makes her heart palpitate.") April 29, 1857 ("C. says it makes his heart beat with it, or he feels it in his breast.");. May 11, 1853 (" Beginning slowly and deliberately, the partridge's beat sounds faster and faster from far away under the boughs and through the aisles of the wood until it becomes a regular roll, but is speedily concluded") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

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

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

There, along with me in the deep, wild swamp, above the andromeda, amid the spruce.

MAY 17, 2016

May 17. Rain still or lowering. 

P. M. —To my boat at Cardinal Shore, thence to Lee’s Cliff.

Kingbird. 

The beech twigs I gathered the 15th show anthers to-day in chamber; so it probably blossoms to-day or to-morrow in woods. 

Vaccinium vacillans apparently a day or two at least.

Veronica serpylléfolia abundant now on banks, erected. 

Maryland yellow throat heard afar in meadows, as I go along the road towards Hubbard’s Bridge. 

It is warm, but still overcast and sprinkling occasionally, near the end of the rain, and the birds are very lively. A goldfinch twitters over. 

In the dry lupine bank pasture, about fifteen rods from the river, apparently travelling up the hill, I see a box tortoise, the first I have found in Concord. 

Beside being longer (its upper shell five and one half by four and one fourth inches), it is much flatter and more oblong, less oval, than the one I found on Cape Cod last July. Especially it is conspicuously broader and flatter forward. The two rear marginal plates have a triangular sinus between them while the Cape Cod ones come to a point.The fifth and sixth marginal plates do not project by their edges beyond the shell.

The yellow marks are much narrower, and more interrupted and like Oriental characters, than in the Cape Cod one. The sternum also is less oval, uniformly blackish-brown except a few slight bone-[?] or horn-colored blotches, while the Cape Cod one is light yellow with a few brown blotches. The scales of the sternum in this are much less sharp-angled than in the Cape Cod one. The sternum more hollow or depressed. 

The tail about three eighths of an inch long only, beyond the anus (?). The bill is very upright:  A beak like any Caesar's. Forelegs covered  with orange-colored scales. Hind ones mostly brown or bronze with a few orange spots. 

Beside the usual hiss, uttered in the evening as I was carrying it, a single, as it were involuntary, squeak much like a croaking frog. Iris, bright light red, or rather vermilion, remarkable. Head, brown above with yellow spots; orange beneath and neck. 

The river is about a foot lower than on the 13th, notwithstanding yesterday’s and to-day’s rain. At the Kalmia Swamp, see and hear the redstart, very lively and restless, flirting and spreading its reddish tail. 

The sylvias — S. Americana and redstart and summer yellowbird, etc. — are very lively there now after the rain, in the warm, moist air, amid the hoary bursting buds of maples, oaks, etc. 

I stand close on the edge of the swamp, looking for the kalmia. Nothing of its flower to be seen yet. The rhodora there will open in a day or two. 

Meanwhile I hear a loud hum and see a splendid male hummingbird coming zigzag in long tacks, like a bee, but far swifter, along the edge of the swamp, in hot haste. He turns aside to taste the honey of the Andromeda calyculata (already visited by bees) within a rod of me. This golden-green gem. Its burnished back looks as if covered with green scales dusted with gold. It hovers, as it were stationary in the air, with an intense humming before each little flower-bell of the humble Andromeda calyculata, and inserts its long tongue in each, turning toward me that splendid ruby on its breast, that glowing ruby. Even this is coal-black in some lights! 

There, along with me in the deep, wild swamp, above the andromeda, amid the spruce. Its hum was heard afar at first, like that of a large bee, bringing a larger summer. This sight and sound would make me think I was in the tropics, —in Demerara or Maracaibo. [Another on our cherry blossoms the next day. A long, slender black bill.]

Nemopanthes on that very swamp-edge. Vaccinium corymbosum (?) or the high blueberry. 

Hear the first veery note and doubtless the Muscicapa olivacea. 

The Sylvia Americana (parti-colored warbler, etc.) is very numerous there, darting about amid the hoary buds of the maples and oaks, etc. It seems the most restless of all birds, blue more or less deep above, with yellow dust on the back, yellow breast, and white beneath (the male with bright—orange throat, and some with a rufous crescent on breast); wings and tail, dark, black, with two white bars or marks, dark bill and legs. 

At Lee’s the Turritis stricta pods three inches long, and plant two and a half feet high by measure. Get some to press. Myosotis stricta above there, maybe several days. Ranunculus bulbosils a day or two at least. Arenaria serpyllifolia. 

Mrs. Ripley showed me, from her son Gore in Minnesota, a few days ago, the first spring flower of the prairie there, a hairy-stemmed, slender-divisioned, and hairy-involucred, six-petalled blue flower, probably a species of hepatica. No leaves with it. Not described in Gray. 

Yellow columbine well out at Lee’s, one rod from rock, one rod east of ash. 

How plainly we are a part of nature! For we live like the animals around us. All day the cow is cropping the grass of yonder meadow, appropriating, as it were, a part of the solid earth into herself, except when she rests and chews the end; and from time to time she wends her way to the river and fills her belly with that. Her food and drink are not scarce and precious, but the commonest elements of which nature is composed. The dry land in these latitudes, except in woods and deserts, is almost universally clothed with her food, and there are inland seas, ready mixed, of the wine that she loves. The Mississippi is her drink, the prairie grass her food.

The shrub oak and some other oak leafets, just expanding, now begin to be pretty. 

Within the shell of my box turtle, in the cavity be tween its thighs and its body, were small dry leaves and seeds, showing where it laid. From these I should say it had come from amidst the alders.

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

. . . A splendid male hummingbird coming zigzag. . . bringing a larger summer. . . See May 16, 1852 ("I hear a hummingbird about the columbines.");  May 15, 1855 ("Hear a hummingbird in the garden.");May 16, 1858 ("A hummingbird yesterday came into the next house and was caught.")

Kingbird. . . . Maryland yellow throat heard afar in meadows . . .Hear the first veery note and doubtless the Muscicapa olivacea. See May 17, 1860; ("By Sam Barrett's meadow-side I see a female Maryland yellow-throat busily seeking its food amid the dangling fruit of the early aspen, in the top of the tree.");  May 10, 1853 (" New days, then, have come, ushered in by the warbling vireo, yellowbird, Maryland yellow-throat, and small pewee, and now made perfect by the twittering of the kingbird . . . and, in the woods, the veery note."); May 18, 1855 ("First veery strain."); May 23, 1857 ("Hear the first veery strain.")


The Muscicapa olivacea or  Red-eyed Flycatcher a/k/a Red-eyed Vireo (Vireo olivaceus.)

I do not remember such violent and incessant gusts at this season.

June 10

P. M. -- To owl’s nest.

A remarkably strong wind from the southwest all day, racking the trees very much and filling the air with dust. I do not remember such violent and incessant gusts at this season. Many eggs, if not young, must have been shaken out of birds’ nests, for I hear of some fallen. It is almost impossible to hear birds— or to keep your hat on. The waves are like those of March. 

June 10, 2016

That common grass (June-grass), which was in blossom a fortnight since, and still on our bank, began a week ago to turn white here and there, killed by worms. 

Veronica scutellata, apparently a day or two. 

Iris versicolor, also a day or two. 

A red maple leaf with those crimson spots. 

clintonia borealis June 1, 2017

(avesong)

Clintonia, apparently four or five days (not out at Hubbard’s Close the 4th). 

A catbird’s nest of usual construction, one egg, two feet high on a swamp-pink; an old nest of same near by on same. 

Some Viola cucullata are now nine inches high, and leaves nearly two inches wide. 

,Archangelica staminiferous umbellets, say yesterday, but some, apparently only pistilliferous ones, look some days at least older; seed-vessel pretty large.

Oven-bird’s nest with four eggs two thirds hatched, under dry leaves, composed of pine-needles and dry leaves and a hair or two for lining, about six feet south west of a white oak which is six rods southwest of the hawk pine. 

The young owls are gone. 

The Kalmia glauca is done before the lambkill is begun here; apparently was done some days ago. A very few rhodoras linger. 

Nest of the Muscicapa Cooperi, or pe pe, on a white spruce in the Holden Swamp, about fifteen feet high, on a small branch near the top, of a few twigs and pine-needles, and an abundance of usnea mainly composing and lining and overflowing from it, very open beneath and carelessly built, with a small concavity; with three eggs pretty fresh, but apparently all told, cream-color before blowing, with a circle of brown spots about larger end. 

The female looked darker beneath than a kingbird and uttered that clear plaintive till tilt, like a robin somewhat, sitting on a spruce. 

C. finds an egg to-day, somewhat like a song sparrow’s, but a little longer and slenderer, or with less difference between the ends in form, and more finely and regularly spotted all over with pale brown. -It was in a pensile nest of grape-vine bark, on the low branch of a maple. Probably a cowbird’s; fresh-laid. 

He has found in nests of grass in thick bushes near river what he thought red-wing’s eggs, but they are pale-blue with large black blotches — one with a very I large black spot on one side. Can they be bobolinks? or what?  Probably red-wings.

My partridge still sits on seven eggs. 

The black spruce which I plucked on the 2d expanded a loose, rather light brown cone on the 5th, say. Can that be the pistillate flower? The white spruce cones are now a rich dark purple, more than a half inch long. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 10, 1855

A remarkably strong wind from the southwest all day, racking the trees. . . It is almost impossible to hear birds. See June 1, 1855 ("A very windy day, the third, drowning the notes of birds."); June 2, 1855 ("Still windier than before . . .The wind shakes the house night "); June 20, 1855 ("A robin's nest with young, which was lately, in the great wind, blown down and somehow lodged on the lower part of an evergreen by arbor, without spilling the young!")

That common grass (June-grass), which was in blossom a fortnight since, and still on our bank, began a week ago to turn white here and there, killed by worms. See May 30, 1860 ("I observed that some of the June-grass was white and withered, being eaten off by a worm several days ago, or considerably before it blossoms. June-grass fills the field south of Ed. Hosmer’s ledge by the road, and gives it now a very conspicuous and agreeable brown or ruddy(?)-brown color,. . with a slightly undulating surface, like a mantle, is a very agreeable phenomenon of the season. The brown panicles of the June-grass now paint some fields with the color of early summer.");  June 11, 1853 ("The upland fields are already less green where the June-grass is ripening its seeds.")

Iris versicolor . . . a day or two. See June 6, 1857 ("Early iris.") ; June 10, 1858 ("Common blue flag, how long? "): June 12, 1852 ("The blue flag (Iris versicolor). Its buds are a dark indigo-blue tip beyond the green calyx. It is rich but hardly delicate and simple enough; a very handsome sword-shaped leaf . . .The blue flag, notwithstanding its rich furniture, its fringed recurved parasols over its anthers, and its variously streaked and colored petals, is loose and coarse in its habit."); June 15, 1859 ("Blue flag abundant."); June 30,1851 ("The blue flag (Iris versicolor) enlivens the meadow. "); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Flag Iris (Versicolor)

Clintonia, apparently four or five days. See June 2, 1853 ("Clintonia borealis, a day or two. This is perhaps the most interesting and neatest of what I may call the liliaceous (?) plants we have. Its beauty at present consists chiefly in its commonly three very handsome, rich, clear dark-green leaves . . . arching over from a centre at the ground, sometimes very symmetrically disposed in a triangular fashion; and from their midst rises the scape [ a ] foot high, with one or more umbels of “green bell - shaped flowers,” yellowish-green, nodding or bent downward"); June 4, 1853 ("The clintonia is abundant there along by the foot of the hill, and in its prime.");  June 12, 1852 ("Clintonia borealis  amid the Solomon's-seals in Hubbard's Grove Swamp. ")

 A catbird’s nest of usual construction, one egg, two feet high on a swamp-pink; an old nest of same near by on same.  See  June 6, 1855 ("Two catbirds’ nests in the thickest part of the thicket on the edge of Wheeler’s meadow near Island. One. . .composed of dead twigs and a little stubble, then grape vine bark, and is lined with dark root-fibres."); June 6, 1855 ("Another . . . has some dry leaves with the twigs, and one egg,—about six feet high."); June 8, 1855 ("A catbird’s nest on the peninsula of Goose Pond. . . as usual of sticks, dry leaves, and bark lined with roots."); June 9, 1855 ("A catbird’s nest, three eggs, in a high blueberry, four feet from ground, with rather more dry leaves than usual"); June 9, 1855 ("Catbird’s nest, one egg, on a blueberry bush, three feet from ground, of (as usual) sticks, leaves, bark, roots. "); June 12, 1855 ("In a hedge thicket by meadow near Peter’s Path, a catbird’s nest, one egg; as usual in a high blueberry, in the thickest and darkest of the hedge, and very loosely built beneath on joggle-sticks"); June 12, 1855 ("Catbird's nest with four eggs in a swamp-pink, three and a half feet up.") See Also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Catbird nests

Oven-bird’s nest with four eggs. . . See Early June, 1850;  (". Who taught the oven-bird to conceal her nest ? It is on the ground, yet out of sight.Only the escape of the bird betrays it.")June 1, 1853 ("Eggs in oven- bird's nest.”); June 18, 1854 (Observe in two places golden-crowned thrushes, near whose nests I must have been, hopping on the lower branches and in the underwood, — a somewhat sparrow-like bird, with its golden-brown crest and white circle about eye, carrying the tail somewhat like a wren, and inclined to run along the branches.”); July 3, 1853 ("The oven-bird's nest in Laurel Glen is near the edge of an open pine wood, under a fallen pine twig and a heap of dry oak leaves. Within these, on the ground, is the nest, with a dome-like top and an arched entrance of the whole height and width on one side. Lined within with dry pine-needles.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Oven-bird

The young owls are gone. See May 26, 1855("At the screech owl's nest I now find two young slumbering.")

The Kalmia glauca is done before the lambkill is begun here . . . A very few rhodoras linger. See May 23, 1857 ("Kalmia glauca yesterday. Rhodora, on shore there, a little before it.");  May 26, 1855 ("To my surprise the Kalmia glauca almost all out; perhaps began with rhodora. A very fine flower, the more interesting for being early."); May 26, 1855 ("The lambkill is just beginning to be flower-budded");  June 9, 1855 ("Lambkill out"); June 13, 1852 ("Lambkill is out. I remember with what delight I used to discover this flower in dewy mornings."); June 13, 1854 ("How beautiful the solid cylinders of the lamb-kill now just before sunset, ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia)

Nest of the Muscicapa Cooperi, or pe pe, on a white spruce in the Holden Swamp .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..”).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.“); . June 20, 1858 ("I wade about Holden Swamp, looking for birds’ nests. The spruce there are too thin-foliaged for nests, though I hear a pepe expressing anxiety") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Olive-sided flycatcher or pe-pe

My partridge still sits on seven eggs. See May 12, 1855 ("I find the partridge-nest of the 7th partially covered with dry oak leaves, and two more eggs only, three in all, cold. Probably the bird is killed."); May 26, 1855 ("The partridge which on the 12th had left three cold eggs covered up with oak leaves is now sitting on eight.") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

June 10. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 10

A strong wind all day

impossible to hear birds

or keep your hat on.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A strong wind all day.

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

  ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2025

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