September 5.
P. M. – To Ball's Hill.
The brink of the river is still quite interesting in some respects, and to some eyes more interesting than ever.
Though the willows and button-bushes have already assumed an autumnal hue, and the pontederia is extensively crisped and blackened, the dense masses of mikania, now, it may be, paler than before, are perhaps more remarkable than ever.
I see some masses of it, overhanging the deep water and completely concealing the bush that supports them, which are as rich a sight as any flower we have, — little terraces of contiguous corymbs, like mignonette (?).
Also the dodder is more revealed, also draping the brink over the water.
The mikania is sometimes looped seven or eight feet high to a tree above the bushes, a manifest vine, with its light-colored corymbs at intervals.
See the little dippers back.
Did I not see a marsh hawk in imperfect plumage? Quite brown, with some white midway the wing and tips of wings black?
What further adds to the beauty of the bank is the hibiscus, in prime and the great bidens.
Having walked through a quantity of desmodium under Ball's Hill , by the shore there (Marilandicum or rigidum), we found our pants covered with its seeds to a remarkable and amusing degree. These green scales closely covering and greening my legs reminded me of the lemna on a ditch. It amounted to a kind of coat of mail.
It was the event of our walk, and we were proud to wear this badge, as if he were the most distinguished who had the most on his clothes.
My companion expressed a certain superstitious feeling about it, for he said he thought it would not be right to walk intentionally amid the desmodium so as to get more of the ticks on us, nor yet to pick them off, but they must be carried about till they are rubbed off accidentally.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 5, 1860
Though the willows and button-bushes have already assumed an autumnal hue, the dense masses of mikaniaare perhaps more remarkable than ever. See
August 2, 1860 ("Mikania begun, and now, perhaps, the river's brink is at its height. ");
August 22, 1858 ("Now that the mikania begins to prevail the button-bush has done . . . and the willows are already somewhat crisped and imbrowned");
August 29, 1858 ("The mikania is apparently in prime or a little past.");
September 20, 1859 ("The button-bushes by the river are generally overrun with the mikania.")
See the little dippers back. See
September 8, 1859 ("See the black head and neck of a little dipper in mid stream, a few rods before my boat. It disappears, and though I search carefully, I cannot detect it again.");
September 9, 1858 ("At length the walker who sits meditating on a distant bank sees the little dipper sail out from amid the weeds and busily dive for its food along their edge: Yet ordinary eyes might range up and down the river all day and never detect its small black head above the water.");
September 27, 1860 ("I see a little dipper in the middle of the river.. . .It has a dark bill and considerable white on the sides of the head or neck, with black between it, no tufts, and no observable white on back or tail.") See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Little Dipper
Did I not see a marsh hawk in imperfect plumage? Quite brown, with some white midway the wing and tips of wings black? See April 10, 1853 ("Saw a pretty large narrow-winged hawk with a white rump and white spots or bars on under ( ?) side of wings. Probably the female or young of a marsh hawk.");
April 13, 1854 (" A small brown hawk with white on rump — I think too small for a marsh hawk — sailed low over the meadow. [May it have been a young male harrier?]");
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]");
October 18, 1855 ("A large brown marsh hawk comes beating the bush along the river, and ere long a slate-colored one (male), with black tips, is seen circling against a distant wood-side.");
May 14, 1857 ("See a pair of marsh hawks, the smaller and lighter-colored male, with black tips to wings, and the large brown female, sailing low") See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)
Having walked through a quantity of desmodium under Ball's Hill we found our pants covered with its seeds to a remarkable and amusing degree. See
August 19, 1856 ("Some of these desmodiums, the
paniculatum, Marilandicum, nudiflorum, rigidum, and
Dillenii, are so fine and inobvious that a careless observer would look through their thin flowery panicles without observing any flower at all
.");
August 26, 1856 ("These desmodiums are so fine and inobvious that it is difficult to detect them. I go through a grove in vain, but when I get away, find my coat covered with their pods. They found me, though I did not them.”);
September 29, 1856 ("How surely the desmodium, growing on some rough cliff-side, or the bidens, on the edge of a pool, prophesy the coming of the traveller, brute or human, that will transport their seeds on his coat!");
October 2, 1852 ("I also find the desmodium sooner thus. . . than if I used my eyes alone.")
What further adds to the beauty of the bank is the great bidens. September 13, 1852 ("The great bidens in the sun in brooks affects me as the rose of the fall, the most flavid product of the water and the sun. They are low suns in the brook. The golden glow of autumn concentrated, more golden than the sun. . . . If I come by at this season, a golden blaze will salute me here from a thousand suns.")
