Visit my nighthawk on her nest

June 7. 

Visit my nighthawk on her nest. Can hardly believe my eyes when I stand within seven feet and behold her sitting on her eggs, her head to me. She looks so Saturnian, so one with the earth, so sphinxlike, a relic of the reign of Saturn which Jupiter did not destroy, a riddle that might well cause a man to go dash his head against a stone. 

It is not an actual living creature, far less a winged creature of the air, but a figure in stone or bronze, a fanciful production of art, like the gryphon or phoenix. In fact, with its breast toward me, and owing to its color or size no bill perceptible, it looks like the end of a brand, such as are common in a clearing, its breast mottled or alternately waved with dark brown and gray, its flat, grayish, weather-beaten crown, its eyes nearly closed, purposely, lest those bright beads should betray it, with the stony cunning of the sphinx. A fanciful work in bronze to ornament a mantel. 

It is enough to fill one with awe. The sight of this creature sitting on its eggs impresses me with the venerableness of the globe. There is nothing novel about it. All the while, this seemingly sleeping bronze sphinx, as motionless as the earth, watches me with intense anxiety through those narrow slits in its eyelids. 

Another step, and it flutters down the hill close to the ground, with a wabbling motion, as if touching the ground now with the tip of one wing, now with the other, so ten rods to the water, skims close over a few rods, then rises and soars in the air above me.

Wonderful creature, which sits motionless on its eggs on the barest, most exposed hills, through pelting storms of rain or hail, as if it were a rock or a part of the earth itself, the outside of the globe, with its eyes shut and its wings folded, and, after the two days' storm, when you think it has become a fit symbol of the rheumatism, it suddenly rises into the air a bird, one of the most aerial, supple, and graceful of creatures, without stiffness in its wings or joints!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 7, 1853


Visit my nighthawk on her nest. See June 1, 1853 ("Walking up this side-hill, I disturb a nighthawk eight or ten feet from me, which goes down the hill, half fluttering, half hopping, as far as I can see. . . .Without moving, I look about and see its two eggs on the bare ground") See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,, the Nighthawk

June 7. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, June 7

Wonderful creature

sitting sphinxlike on its eggs –

so one with the earth.

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

Remembering damp and early spring.

June 6. 

4.30 A. M. 

To Linnæa Woods. 

Famous place for tanagers. 

Considerable fog on river. Few sights more exhilarating than one of these banks of fog lying along a stream. 

The linnæa just out.

 

The aspect of the dry rocky hills already indicates the rapid revolution of the seasons. The spring, that early age of the world, following hard on the reign of water and the barren rocks yet dripping with it, is past. 

There is a growth confined to the damp and early spring.  How many plants have already dried - lichens and algae, which we can still remember, as if belonging to a former epoch, saxifrage, crowfoot, anemone, columbine, etc.

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.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 6, 1853

The linnæa just out. See note to June 9, 1851 ("Gathered the Linnæa borealis.")

The spring, that early age of the world, following hard on the reign of water and the barren rocks yet dripping with it, is past. See April 28, 1852 ("This may, perhaps, be nearly the order of the world's creation. Such were the first localities afforded for plants, water-bottoms, bare rocks, and scantily clad lands, and land recently bared of water. Thus we have in the spring of the year the spring of the world represented.")

To Mason's pasture.

The world now full of verdure and fragrance and the air comparatively clear (not yet the constant haze of the dog-days), through which the distant fields are seen, reddened with sorrel, and the meadows wet green, full of fresh grass, and the trees in their first beautiful, bright, untarnished and unspotted green.

May is the bursting into leaf and early flowering, with much coolness and wet and a few decidedly warm days, ushering in summer; June, verdure and growth with not intolerable, but agreeable, heat.

The fresh light green shoots of  the hemlocks have now grown half an inch or an inch, spotting the trees, contrasting with the dark green of last year's foliage. 

The young pitch pines in Mason's pasture are a glorious sight, now most of the shoots grown six inches, so soft and blue-green, nearly as wide as high. It is nature's front yard.

Nature is fair in proportion as the youth is pure. The heavens and the earth are one flower. The earth is the calyx, the heavens the corolla.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 5, 1853

The fresh light green shoots of the hemlocks. See June 11, 1859 ("Hemlocks are about at height of their beauty, with their fresh growth."); June 26, 1860 ("The hemlocks are too much grown now and are too dark a green to show the handsomest bead-work by contrast..")

The heavens and the earth are one flower. See August 6, 1852 ("We live, as it were, within the calyx of a flower."); May 16, 1854 ("The earth is all fragrant as one flower.”); May 16, 1852 ("The whole earth is fragrant as a bouquet held to your nose.")

Painted-Cup Meadow

June 3

Friday. P. M. - To Annursnack. By way of the linnæa, which I find is not yet out. That thick pine wood is full of birds. 

Castilleja coccinea

(Masebrock, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

The painted-cup is in its prime. It reddens the meadow, – Painted-Cup Meadow. 

It is a splendid show of brilliant scarlet, the color of the cardinal flower, and surpassing it in mass and profusion. They first appear on the side of the hill in drier ground, half a dozen inches high, and their color is most striking then, when it is most rare and precious; but they now cover the meadow, mingled with buttercups, etc., and many are more than eighteen inches high. It reminds me of a flame when it first appears. It might be called flame-flower, or scarlet-tip. Here is a large meadow full of it, and yet very few in the town have ever seen it.

The song of the robin and the chirp (?) of the chip-bird now begin prominently to usher in and to conclude the day. The robin's song seems not so loud as in the early spring, perhaps because there are so many other sounds at present. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 3, 1853

To Annursnack. By way of the linnæa, which I find is not yet out. See June 6, 1853 ("To Linnæa Woods . . . The linnæa just out."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Linnaea borealis (Twinflower) [At 365 feet, Annursnack is the highest elevation in Concord; its name derives from an Algonquian word meaning “lookout place.” ~  Ray Angelo, Place Names of Henry David Thoreau in Concord] 

Painted Cup Meadow.  See May 15, 1853 ("The tall buttercup on the west edge of Painted-Cup Meadow for a day or two at least, and the fringed polygala as long.");  May 28, 1856 ("To Painted-Cup Meadow. Potentilla argentea, maybe several days. Trifolium pratense."); May 29, 1856 ("Ride to Painted-Cup Meadow . . . Found a painted-cup with more yellow than usual in it  and at length Edith found one perfectly yellow. What a flowery place, a vale of Enna, is that meadow! Painted-cup, Erigeron bellidifolius, Thalictrum dioicum, Viola Muhlenbergii, fringed polygala, buck-bean, pedicularis, orobanche, etc., etc. Where you find a rare flower, expect to find more rare ones."); June 2, 1854 ("The Painted-Cup Meadow is all lit up with ferns, on its springy slopes."); June 10, 1860 ("There is much handsome interrupted fern in the Painted-Cup Meadow."); July 28, 1860 ("Holcus lanatus long done; very abundant on the west and northwest side of Painted-Cup Meadow."); September 2, 1856 ("In Painted- Cup Meadow the ferns are yellowing, imbrowned, and crisped, as if touched by frost (?), yet it may be owing to the rains."); October 12, 1857 ("The fringed gentian . . . along the north edge of the Painted-Cup Meadows."); September 13, 1858 ("Fringed gentian out well, on easternmost edge of the Painted- Cup Meadows, by wall.") 

The painted-cup is in its prime. It reddens the meadow . . . yet very few in the town have ever seen it. See May 8, 1853 ("At the foot of Annursnack, rising from the Jesse Hosmer meadow, was surprised by the brilliant pale scarlet flowers of the painted-cup (Castilleja coccinea) just coming into bloom. Some may have been out a day or two. Methinks this the most high-colored and brilliant flower yet, not excepting the columbine . . .  In color it matches Sophia's cactus blossoms exactly. It is all the more interesting for being a painted leaf and not petal . . . It is now from three to six inches high, rising from the moist base of the hill. It is wonderful what a variety of flowers may grow within the range of a walk, and how long some very conspicuous ones may escape the most diligent walker. if you do not chance to visit their localities the right week or fortnight, when their signs are out. It is a flaming leaf. The very leaf has flowered; not the ripe tints of autumn, but the rose in the cheek of infancy; a more positive flowering."); May 9, 1855 ("Castilleja show red, one, but will not bloom under a week probably."); May 29, 1856 ("Found a painted-cup with more yellow than usual in it, and at length Edith found one perfectly yellow. What a flowery place, a vale of Enna, is that meadow!”)

[Scarlet painted-cup [Castilleja coccinea] is an annual herb that is hemiparasitic . . . formerly found in several New England states, but is now apparently restricted to Connecticut, where only a small handful of populations remain. GoBotany]

The song of the robin and the chirp of the chip-bird now begin prominently to usher in and to conclude the day. See June 2, 1853 ("3.30 A.M.- When I awake I hear the low universal chirping or twittering of the chip-birds, like the bursting bead on the surface of the uncorked day."); June 16, 1853 ("Before 4 A.M., or sunrise, the sound of chip-birds and robins and bluebirds, etc., fills the air and is incessant.")

June 3. See  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, June 3

It might be called flame-

flower or scarlet tip – few 

have ever seen it.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Painted-Cup Meadow

 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-530603

Awake in a morning fog

June 2.

3.30 A.M.- When I awake I hear the low universal chirping or twittering of the chip-birds, like the bursting bead on the surface of the uncorked day. First come first served.

4 A.M. - To Nawshawtuct. I go to the river in a fog through which I cannot see more than a dozen rods, -three or four times as deep as the houses. As I row down the stream, the dark, dim outlines of the trees on the banks appear, coming to meet me out of the mist on the one hand, while they retreat and are soon concealed in it on the other. My strokes soon bury them behind me. 

The birds are wide awake, as if knowing that this fog presages a fair day. I ascend Nawshawtuct from the north side.  My feet are soon wet with fog. It is, indeed, a vast dew.

Now I have reached the hill top above the fog at a quarter to five, about sunrise, and all around me is a sea of fog, level and white, reaching nearly to the top of this hill, only the tops of a few high hills appearing as distant islands in the main. It resembles nothing so much as the ocean.

An early freight-train of cars is heard, not seen, rushing through the town beneath it. Meanwhile my hands are numb with cold and my wet feet ache with it. 

Now, at 5.15, before this southwest wind, the fog is already grown thin as gossamer in that direction, and woods and houses are seen through it, while it is heaped up toward the sun, and finally becomes so thick there that for a short time it appears in one place a dark, low cloud; and now long, dark ridges of wood appear through it, and now the sun reflected from the river makes a bright glow in the fog, and now, at 5.30, I see the green surface of the meadows and the water through the trees, sparkling with bright reflections. 

Men will go further and pay more to see a tawdry picture on canvas, a poor painted scene, than to behold the fairest or grandest scene that nature ever displays in their immediate vicinity, though they may have never seen it in their lives. You must taste the first glass of the day's nectar, if you would get all the spirit of it.

***

Clintonia borealis, a day or two. 

clintonia borealis June 1, 2017

(avesong)

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, which Bigelow describes truly as "more than half a foot long, oblanceolate, smooth and shining.” They are perfect in form and color, broadly oblanceolate with a deep channel down the middle, uninjured by insects, 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, but without fragrance. 

In fact, the flower is all green, both leaves and corolla. The leaves alone -- and many have no scape --  would detain the walker. Its berries are its flower. 

A single plant is a great ornament in a vase, from the beauty of its form and the rich, unspotted green of its leaves.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 2, 1853

As I row down the stream, the dark, dim outlines of the trees on the banks appear, coming to meet me out of the mist. See September 20, 1857 ("The outlines of trees are more conspicuous and interesting such a day as this, being seen distinctly against the near misty background, – distinct and dark.") November 29, 1850 ("As you advance, the trees gradually come out of the mist and take form before your eyes. "); December 15, 1841 ("The trees have come down to the bank to see the river go by.")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,, The Tallest Aspen ("the most distinct tree/in all the landscape coming/half-way to meet me.") and

quiet morning~

one by one

trees arrive

out of the fog

Tanja‬

‪@joypops.bsky.social‬

·

The birds are wide awake, as if knowing that this fog presages a fair day. See July 22, 1851 (“These are our fairest days, which are born in a fog.”); July 25, 1852 (“his is one of those ambosial, white, ever-memorable fogs presaging fair weather”)

Clintonia berries. See August 27, 1856 ("the peculiar large dark blue indigo clintonia berries of irregular form and dark-spotted, in umbels of four or five on very brittle stems ")

June 2. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,, June 2

The dark dim outlines

of the trees coming to meet

me out of the mist.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Awake in a morning fog

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-530602

It is now the season of growth.

June 1.

Summer begins now about a week past, with the expanded leaves, the shade and warm weather.

Cultivated fields also are leaving out, i.e. corn and potatoes coming up. Most trees have bloomed and are now forming their fruit. Young berries, too, are forming, and birds are being hatched. 

Dor-bugs and other insects have come forth the first warm evening after showers. 

The birds have now all come and no longer fly in flocks. The hylodes are no longer heard. The bullfrogs begin to trump. 

Thick and extensive fogs in the morning begin. 

Plants are rapidly growing, -- shooting. 

Hoeing corn has commenced. 

The first bloom of the year is over -- It is now the season of growth.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 1, 1853

See June 16, 1860 ("It appears to me that these phenomena occur simultaneously")

Summer begins now with the expanded leaves, the shade and warm weather. See June 4, 1860 ("You may say that now, the leafy season has fairly commenced. , , ,, making already a grateful but thin shade, like a coarse sieve, so open that we see the fluttering of each leaf in its shadow.")

Plants are rapidly growing, -- shooting. See June 1, 1854 ("Within little more than a fortnight the woods, from bare twigs, have become a sea of verdure, and young shoots have contended with one another in the race"); and note to May 26, 1854 ("They have accomplished more than half their year's growth, . . . They are properly called shoots. ")

A nighthawk nest

June 1.

Walking up this side-hill, I disturb a nighthawk eight or ten feet from me, which goes down the hill, half fluttering, half hopping, as far as I can see. The mottled creature like a winged toad (as Nuttall says the French of Louisiana call them). 

Without moving, I look about and see its two eggs on the bare ground, on a slight shelf of the hill, on the dead pine-needles and sand, without any cavity or nest whatever, very obvious when once you had detected them, but not easily detected from their color, a coarse gray formed of white spotted with a bluish or slaty brown or umber, - a stone granite color - , like the places it selects.

I advance and put my hand on them, and while I stoop, seeing a shadow on the ground, look up and see the bird, which had fluttered down the hill so blind and helpless, now circling low and swiftly pass over my head, showing the white spot on each wing in true nighthawk fashion. I go a dozen rods when it appears again higher in the air, with its peculiar flitting, limping kind of flight, all the while noiseless.

Suddenly descending, it dashes at me within ten feet of my head, like an imp of darkness, then sweeps away high over the pond, dashing now to this side now to that, on different tacks, as if, in pursuit of its prey, it has already forgotten its eggs on the earth. I can see how it might easily come to be regarded with superstitious awe.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 1, 1853

[S]eeing a shadow on the ground, look up and see the bird . . . now circling low and swiftly pass over my head, showing the white spot on each wing in true nighthawk fashion. See June 5, 1854 ("Now, just be fore sundown, a nighthawk is circling, imp-like, with undulating, irregular flight over the sprout-land on the Cliff Hill, with an occasional squeak and showing the spots on his wings. He does not circle away from this place, and I associate him with two gray eggs somewhere on the ground beneath and a mate there sitting. ")   See also  A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,, the Nighthawk