14 June 1858 – 20 June 1858

Miss Pratt brings me the fertile barberry from northeast the great yellow birch. The stami- nate is apparently effete. Young partridges, when? P. M. — To Gowing’s Swamp. I notice interrupted ferns, which were killed, fruit and all, by the frosts of the 28th and 29th of May, now coming up afresh from the root. The barren fronds seem to have stood it better. See in a meadow a song sparrow’s nest with three eggs, and another egg just buried level with the bot- tom of the nest. Probably it is one of a previous laying, which the bird considered addled. I find it to be not at all developed, nor yet spoiled. Common garden columbine, broad and purple, by roadside, fifty rods below James Wright’s. The river is raised surprisingly by the rain of the 12th. The Mill Brook has been over the Turnpike.

Rains steadily again, and we have had no clear weather since the 11th. The river is remarkably high, far higher than before, this year, and is rising. I can paddle into and all about the willowy meadow southwest of Island. I had, indeed, anticipated this on account of the remarkable lowness of the river in the spring. That coarse grass in the Island meadow which grows in full circles, as on the Great Meadows, is wool-grass, though but little blooms. Some is now fairly in bloom and it has the dark bracts of what I observed on the Great Meadows. The peculiarly circular form’ of the patches, sometimes their projecting edges being the arcs of circles, is very obvious now that the lower and different grass around is under water. Many plants have a similar habit of growth. The Osmunda regalis, growing in very handsome hollow circles, or sometimes only crescents or ares of circles, is now generally a peculiarly tender green,—its delicate fronds, — but some has begun to go to seed and look brown. Hollow circles, one or two feet to a rod in diameter. These two are more obvious when, as now, all the rest of the meadow is covered with water. That large grass, five feet high, of the river brink is now just begun. Can it be blue-joint, or Calamagrostis Canadensis ? '

P. M. — To Staples’s Meadow Wood. It is pleasant to paddle over the meadows now, at this time of flood, and look down on the various meadow plants, for you can see more distinctly quite to the bottom than ever. A few sedges are very common and promi- nent, one, the tallest and earliest, now gone and going to seed, which I do not make out, also the Carex sco- parva and the C. stellulata. How will the water affect these plants, standing thus long over them? The head of every sedge that now rises above the surface is swarming with insects which have taken refuge from the flood on it, — beetles, grasshoppers, spiders, cat- erpillars, etc. How many must have been destroyed! No doubt thousands of birds’ nests have been de- stroyed by the flood, — blackbirds’, bobolinks’, song sparrows’, etc. I see a robin’s nest high above the water with the young just dead and the old bird in the water, apparently killed by the abundance of rain, and after- ward I see a fresh song sparrow’s nest which has been flooded and destroyed. Two sternotherus which I smell of have no scent to-day. Looking into Hubbard’s Pool, I at length see one of the minims which I put into it. I brought the last here April 30th. It is now a little perch about an inch and a quarter long; it was then about a quarter of an inch long. I can now see the transverse bars a rod off. It is swimming actively round and round the pool, but avoids the quite shallow water of the edges, so it does not get landlocked or lost in the weedy overflowed edges. I put twenty or thirty into this pool in all. They grow very fast, then, at last. Carrion-flower, how long? Not long. How agreeable and wholesome the fragrance of the low blackberry blossom, reminding me of all the rosaceous fruit- bearing plants, so near and dear to our humanity! It is one of the most deliciously fragrant flowers, re- minding of wholesome fruits. I see a yellow-spotted turtle digging its hole at mid- afternoon, but, like the last of this species I saw, it changed its place after I saw it, and I did not get an egg; it is so wary. Some turtles must lay in pretty low fields, or else make a much longer excursion than I think they do, the water in which they dwell is so far from high land. Among the geraniums which now spot the wood or sprout-land paths, I see some with very broad, short, rounded petals, making a smaller but full round flower. The Salix nigra appears to be quite done. Edward Emerson, Edward Bartlett, and Storrow Higginson come to ask me the names of some eggs to-night. ‘They have the egg of the warbling vireo,' — much like the pepe’s, but smaller. ‘They tell of a hen-hawk’s nest seen the 6th, with two eggs. They have also, undoubtedly, the egg of the purple finch, seen first two or three weeks ago, and they bring me two nests and one egg. Both these nests were in small fir trees, one by the Lee house (that was), Joe Barrett’s, and the other in the New Burying-Ground. The last appeared to have been spoiled by the rain and was against the main stem and contained four fresh eggs, they say, the 14th; the other had five eggs two days earlier; both near the top. The egg is a little more than three quarters of an inch long by nearly five eighths at the bigger end, and so of another from the other nest, rather more slender, —a tapering pale bluish-green egg, with blackish-brown and also dull slate-colored spots and streaks about the larger end and a few very fine spots on the other parts. The Lee nest is somewhat like a hair-bird’s, though larger. They are both about four inches wide, outside to out- side, and two and a half high, two and a quarter to two and a half [in] diameter within, and one and a quarter to one and a half deep. The Lee house one (which had the egg in it) is composed externally of many small weed stems — apparently lepidium, lechea — and root-fibres, and the inner part is very thick and substantial, of root-fibres and bark-shreds and a little * Or is it not yellow-throated vireo’s? Vede nest. From a maple near Hemlocks, Assabet.

P. M. — To hawk’s nest. One egg is hatched since the 8th, and the young bird, all down, with a tinge of fawn or cinnamon, lies motion- less on its breast with its head down and is already about four inches long! An hour or two after, I see the old hawk pursue a stake-driver which was flying over this spot, darting down at him and driving him off. The stake-driver comes beating along, like a long, ungainly craft, or a revenue cutter, looking into the harbors, and if it finds a fisherman there, standing out again. See a painted turtle digging at mid-afternoon. I have only to look at dry fields or banks near water to find the turtles laying there afternoons.

How dogs will resort to carrion, a dead cow or horse, half buried, no matter how stale, — the best-bred and petted village dogs, and there gorge themselves with the most disgusting offal by the hour, as if it were a season of famine! Surely they are foul creatures that we make cossets of. P. M. — To Walden to see a bird’s nest, a red-eye’s, in a small white pine; nest not so high as my head; still laying. A boy climbs to the cat owl’s nest and casts down what is left of it, — a few short sticks and some earthy almost turfy foundation, as if it were the ac- cumulation of years. Beside much black and white skunk-hair, there are many fishes’ scales (!) intimately mixed with its substance, and some skunk’s bones. E. Bartlett has found three bobolinks’ nests. One or more of them he thinks has been covered by the recent flood. A little boy brings me an egg of Wilson’s thrush, which he found in a nest in a low bush about a foot from the ground. Coming across the level pasture west of E. Hubbard’s swamp, toward Emerson’s, I find a young Emys in- sculpta, apparently going to lay, though she had not dug a hole. It was four and a quarter inches long by three and a half wide, and altogether the handsomest turtle of this species, if not of any, that I have ever seen. It was quite fresh and perfect, without wound or im- perfection; its claws quite sharp and slender, and the annual striz so distinct on all the scales above and below that I could count them with ease. It was nine years old, though it would be like an infant among turtles, the successive strize being perfectly parallel at equal distances apart. The sternum, with a large black spot on the rear angle of each scale and else- where a rich brown color, even reminded me of the turtle-shell of commerce. While its upper shell was of a uniform wholesome brown, very prettily marked in- deed, not only by the outlines of the scales, but more distinctly by the lines of prominences raying out from the starting-point of each scale, perfectly preserved in each year’s growth, a most elaborate coat of mail, worthy the lifelong labor of some reptilian Vulcan. This must have been a belle among the EF. insculpta. Nevertheless I did discover that all the claws but one of one hind foot were gone! Had not a bird pecked them off? So liable are they to injury in their long lives. Then they are so well-behaved; can be taken up and brought home in your pocket, and make no unseemly efforts to escape. The upper shell was remarkably spreading and curving upward on the rear edges.

Saturday. 1 do not hear the night-warbler so often as a few weeks ago. Birds generally do not sing so tumultuously. Storrow Higginson and other boys have found this forenoon at Flint’s Pond one or more veery-nests on the ground. Also showed me one of five eggs, far ad- vanced, they found there in a nest some fourteen feet high in a slender maple sapling, placed between many upright shoots, many dry leaves outside. It is a slender clear-blue egg, more slender and pointed at the small end than the robin’s, and he says the bird was thrush- like with a pencilled breast. It is probably the wood thrush. He saw one or two other similar nests, he thought, not yet completed. Also showed me an egg, which answers to the description of the tanager’s. Two fresh eggs in small white oak sapling, some four- teen feet from ground.” They saw a tanager near.® P. M. — To Bateman’s Pond. The swamp-pink, apparently not long, and the maple- leaved viburnum, a little longer, but quite early. Some of the calla is going to seed. See an oven-bird’s nest with two eggs and one young one just hatched. The bird flits out low, and is, I think, the same kind that I saw flit along the ground and trail her wings to lead me off day before yesterday.

P. M. — By boat to Holden Swamp. I heard that snapping sound against a pad on the surface, and at the same time saw a pad knocked up several inches, and a ripple in the water there as when a pickerel darts away. I should say without doubt some fish had darted there against the pad, perhaps at an insect on the under side. Got the marsh hawk’s egg, which was addled. I noticed on the 17th that the hawk (my marsh hawk) was off her nest and soaring above the wood late in the afternoon, as I was returning. I notice that when turtles are floating dead their necks and legs are stretched out. I have seen them this year of every kind but the meleagris and cistudo, in- cluding a snapping turtle with shell some nine inches long, floating or lying dead. What kills them? 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, and also song sparrows. See the redstart and hear many; also hear the blue yellow-backs. Walking in the white pine wood there, I find that my shoes and, indeed, my hat are covered with the greenish-yellow pollen of the white pines, which is now being shed abundantly and covers like a fine meal all the plants and shrubs of the forest floor. I never noticed it in such abundance before. My shoes are green-yellow, or yellow-green, even the next day with it. Dangle-berry well out, how long? Potentilla Nor- vegica, how long? What is that sedge with a long beak, some time out of bloom, now two feet high, common just north of new stone bridge? Vzde pressed one. I see that the French have a convenient word, aunaze, also spelt aulnazve and aulnage, etc., signifying a grove of alders. It reminds me of their other convenient word used by Rasle, cabanage.