28 May 1855 – 3 June 1855

How’s morus not yet, apparently, for two or three days, though the stigmas are obvious. Button- wood stigmas are now brown, since the 24th. P. M. — To Middle Conantum Cliff. Yesterday left my boat at the willow opposite this Cliff, the wind northwest. Now it is southeast, and I can sail back. Our quince open this morning, possibly yesterday; and some others, I believe, much earlier. Do I not hear a short snappish, rasping note from a yellow-throat vireo? I see a tanager, the most bril- liant and tropical-looking bird we have, bright-scarlet with black wings, the scarlet appearing on the rump again between wing-tips. He brings heat, or heat him. A remarkable contrast with the green pines. At this distance he has the aspect and manners of a parrot, with a fullness about the head and throat and beak, indolently inspecting the limbs and twigs — leaning over to it — and sitting still a long time. The female, too, is a neat and handsome bird, with the same in- dolent ways, but very differently colored from the male; all yellow below with merely dusky wings, and a sort of clay(?)-color on back. While we sit by the path in the depths of the woods three quarters of a mile beyond Hayden’s, confessing the influence of almost the first summer warmth, the wood thrush sings steadily for half an hour, now at 2.30 p.M., amid the pines, —loud and clear and sweet. While other birds are warbling betweenwhiles and catching their prey, he alone appears to make a busi- ness of singing, like a true minstrel. Is that one which I see at last in the path, above dusky olive-brown be- coming ferruginous on base of tail, eye not very promi- nent with a white line around it, some dark-colored feathers apparently on outer wing-coverts, very light- colored legs, with dashes on breast which I do not see clearly? I should say that it had not the large black eye of the hermit thrush, and I cannot see the yellowish spot on the wings; yet it may have been this. I find the feathers apparently of a brown thrasher in the path, plucked since we passed here last night. You can generally find all the tail and quill feathers in such a case. The apple bloom is very rich now. Fever-bush shoots are now two inches long; say begin to leaf just before late willow. Black ash shoots three inches long; say with late willow. White pine and pitch pine shoots from two to five inches long. Rubus triflorus at Miles Swamp will apparently open to-mor- row. Some krigia done some days. Silene antirrhina. Barberry open (probably two or more days at Lee’s), C. says he has seen a green snake. Examined my two yellowbirds’ nests of the 25th. Both are destroyed, — pulled down and torn to pieces probably by some bird, — though they [had] but just begun to lay. Large yellow and black butterfly. The leaves of kalmiana lily obvious. I have seen within three or four days two or three new warblers which I have not identified; one to-day, in the woods, all pure white beneath, with a full breast, and greenish-olive-yellow (?) above, with a duskier head and a slight crest muscicapa-like, on pines, etc., high; very small.' Also one all lemon-yellow beneath, except whitish vent, and apparently bluish above.

P. M. — To Island Neck. That willow by the rock south of Island (of May 2d) appears to be without doubt the Salix sericea, — the leaves beginning to turn black quite soon, and the bark is very bitter. ‘There is, then, another small willow or sallow with narrower and shining leaves, very com- mon along river, with longer catkins and very long tapering smooth pods, —I mean the one I have as- sociated with the S. alba. Azalea nudiflora in garden. There are a great many birds now on the Island Neck. The red-eye, its clear loud song in bars contin- uously repeated and varied; all tempered white beneath and dark yellow olive above and on edge of wings, with a dark line on side-head or from root of bill; dusky claws, and a very long bill. The long bill and the dark line on the side of the head, with the white above and beneath, or in the midst of the white, giving it a certain oblong, swelled-cheek look, would dis- tinguish on a side view. There is also the warbling vireo, with its smooth-flowing, continuous, one-barred, shorter strain, with methinks a dusky side-head. Also the yellow-throated vireo — its head and shoulders as well as throat yellow (apparently olive-yellow above), and its strain but little varied and short, not contin- uous. It has dusky legs and two very distinct white bars on wings (the male). I see the first swamp sparrow of the season, and probably heard its loud song; clear, broad, undivided chestnut or bay (? ) crown and clear dark-ash throat and breast, and light, perhaps yellowish, line over eye, dark bill, and much bay (?) on wings. Low, amid the alders. But what is that bird I hear much like the first part of the yellowbird’s strain, only two thirds as long and varied at end, and not so loud, — a-che che che, che-d, or tche tche tche, tche-a, or ah tche tche tche, chit-i-vet ? It is very small, not timid, but incessantly changing its position on the pitch pines, etc. Some a pure dull white, some tawny-white, beneath; some cinereous, others more dusky still, above; with a flycatcher or muscicapa bill and head (head rounded?), but — what is most remarkable —a very deeply forked or divided tail with a broad black tip beneath, and toward the roots a fire-brick-color, this last color much brighter on the sides of the breast, and some of it on the wings in a broad bar, though some perhaps have not the last mark. Did I see some of the yellowish on rump? Dark- ash above and some reddish-brown (?). One is very inquisitive; hops down toward me lower and lower on the pitch pine twigs, while I hold out my hand tll within five feet, but in such a light that I cannot dis- tinguish its colors. ‘There are at least half a dozen of them about; continually flitting about, sometimes in a circle of a few rods’ diameter, one pursuing another, both male and female, back to near the same spot, but I can hardly bring my glass to bear on them before they change their position. It is undoubtedly young males and the females of the redstart, described by Wilson, — very different from the full-plumaged black males. I see on the first limb of a white oak, close to the trunk and about eight feet from the ground, squatting as if asleep, a chipping squirrel two thirds grown. The hole it came out of, apparently, is four or five feet from the base of the tree. When I am about to put my hand on it, it runs feebly up the tree and rests again as much higher in a similar place. When C. climbs after, it runs out quite to the end of a limb, where it can hardly hold on, and I think it will drop every moment with the shaking of the tree.

Saw bird’s nest on an apple by roadside, seven feet high; one egg. Cherry-bird on a cherry; also pecking at the apple blossoms. Minott says that within two or three days a stream of winged ants came out from under his door- sill, and the hens and countless swallows and the kingbirds came and fed on them. Buttonwood flowers now effete; fertile flowers were not brown on the 24th, but were the 28th; say, then, about the 26th. Nuttall thus describes the note of the white-eyed vireo: It is much varied; in March in Florida, “ss’t (with a whistle) wd witte witte wé-wd (the first part very quick);” in June at Fresh Pond, “’tshippewee- wa-say tshippewee-wée-was-say, sweetly whistled,” with great compass of voice and loudness, etc., etc.; other variations. Also “ whip te wot wee, the last syllable but one considerably lengthened and clearly whistled.”’ * Lepidium virginicum, roadside bank at Minott’s. The myrica, bayberry, plucked on the 23d, now first sheds pollen in house, the leaf being but little more expanded on the flowering shoot. Gray says, “somewhat preceding the flowers.” The catkins about a quarter of an inch long, erect, sterile, oval, on the sides of last year’s twigs. P. M. — Up railroad. A strong west wind and much haze. Silvery potentilla, four or five days at least. In the thick of the wood between railroad and Turnpike, hear the evergreen- forest note, and see probably the bird, — black throat, greenish-yellow or yellowish-green head and back, light-slate (?) wings with two white bars. Is it not the black-throated green warbler? I find close by a small fresh egg on the forest floor, with a slight per- foration, white (with perhaps a tinge of flesh-color (? ) when full), and brown spots and black marks at the larger end. In Brewer’s synopsis the egg of the black- throat is described as “light flesh-color with purple spots.” But these spots are not purple. I could find no nest. Senecio in open meadows, say yesterday. See a small black snake run along securely through thin bushes (alders and willows) three or four feet from the ground, passing intervals of two feet easily, — very readily and gracefully, — ascending or descending. Cornus Canadensis out, how long? Green lice from birches (?) get on my clothes. Is it not summer now when the creak of the crickets begins to be general ? Poison-dogwood has grown three or four inches at ends of last year’s shoots, which are three to six feet from ground. Hear a familiar warbler not recognized for some years, in the thick copse in Dennis’s Swamp, south of railroad; considerably yellowbird-like (the note) — tshe tshe tshar tshar tchit, tchit tit te vet. It has ap- parently a yellow head, bluish or slaty wings with two white bars, tail even, wings dusky at tips, legs light, bill dark, beneath all bright-yellow, remarkably striped lengthwise with dusky, more or less dark in different specimens. Can it be the S. maculosa, or black and yellow warbler, seen formerly? I did not see the black —nor indeed the back at all well. It may have been a female, not described by Wilson. Frequents the tops of trees. Ladies’ slipper, apparently.

A very windy day, the third, drowning the notes of birds, scattering the remaining apple blossoms. Rye, to my surprise, three or four feet high and glaucous. Cloudy and rain, threatening withal. Surveying at Holden wood-lot, I notice the Kquisetum hyemale, its black-scaled flowerets now in many cases separated so as to show the green between, but not yet in open rings or whorls like the lamosum. I find the Linnea borealis growing near the end of the ridge in this lot toward the meadow, near a large white pine stump recently cut. C. has found the are- thusa out at Hubbard’s Close; say two or three days at a venture, there being considerable.

Still windier than before, and yet no rain. It is now very dry indeed, and the grass is suffering. Some springs commonly full at this season are dried up. The wind shakes the house night and day. From that cocoon of the Attacus cecropia which I found — I think it was on the 24th of May — on a red maple shrub, three or four feet from the ground, on the edge of the meadow by the new Bedford road just this side of Beck Stow’s, came out this forenoon a splen- did moth. I had pinned the cocoon to the sash at the upper part of my window and quite forgotten it. About the middle of the forenoon Sophia came in and exclaimed that there was a moth on my window. At first I sup- posed that she meant a cloth-eating moth, but it turned out that my A. cecropia had come out and dropped down to the window-sill, where it hung on the side of a slipper (which was inserted into another) to let its wings hang down and develop themselves. At first the wings were not only not unfolded laterally, but not longitudinally, the thinner ends of the forward ones for perhaps three quarters of an inch being very feeble and occupying very little space. It was surpris- ing to see the creature unfold and expand before our eyes, the wings gradually elongating, as it were by their own gravity; and from time to time the insect assisted this operation by a slight shake. It was wonderful how it waxed and grew, revealing some new beauty every fifteen minutes, which I called Sophia to see, but never losing its hold on the shoe. It looked like @ young emperor just donning the most splendid ermine robes that ever emperor wore, the wings every moment acquiring greater expansion and their at first wrinkled edge becoming more tense. At first its wings appeared double, one within the other. At last it advanced so far as to spread its wings completely but feebly when we approached. This occupied sev- eral hours. It continued to hang to the shoe, with its wings ordinarily closed erect behind its back, the rest of the day; and at dusk, when apparently it was waving its wings preparatory to its evening flight, I gave it ether and so saved it in a perfect state. As it lies, not spread to the utmost, it is five and nine tenths inches by two and a quarter. P. M. — To Hill. Equisetum limosum pollen—a few — apparently two or three days. The late crategus on the hill is in full bloom while the other is almost entirely out of bloom. Three yellowbirds’ nests, which I have marked since the 25th of May, the only ones which I have actually inspected, have now all been torn to pieces, though they were in places (two of them, at least) where no boy is at all likely to have found them. I see in the meadow-grass a fine cob- web or spider’s nest three or four inches [in] diameter and, within it, on two twigs, two collections of little yellowish spiders containing a thousand or more, about half as big as a pin-head, like minute fruit- buds or kernels clustered on the twig. One of the clusters disperses when [I stoop over it and spreads over the nest on the fine lines. Hemlock leafed two or three days, the earliest young plants. The black spruce beyond the hill has appar- ently just begun to leaf, but not yet to blossom. Pinus rigida pollen a day or two or three on the plain. Sweet- flag pollen about two days. Mr. Hoar tells me that Deacon Farrar’s son tells him that a white robin has her nest on an apple tree near their house. Her mate is of the usual color. All the family have seen her, but at the last accounts she has not been seen on the nest. Silene, or wild pink, how long? The Azalea nudiflora now in its prime. What splen- did masses of pink! with a few glaucous green leaves sprinkled here and there — just enough for contrast.

A rainy day at last. Caraway in garden apparently three days out.