16 August 1858 – 22 August 1858

Hear it raining again early when I awake, as it did yesterday, still and steady, as if the season were troubled with a diabetes. P. M. — To Cardinal Ditch. I hear these birds on my way thither, between two and three o’clock: goldfinches twitter over; the song sparrow sings several times; hear a low warble from bluebirds, with apparently their young, the /ink of many bobolinks (and see large flocks on the fences and weeds; they are largish-looking birds with yellow throats); a large flock of red-wings goes tchucking over; a lark twitters; crows caw; a robin peeps; kingbirds twitter, as ever. At sunset I hear a low short warble from a golden robin, and the notes of the wood pewee. In my boating of late I have several times scared up a couple of summer ducks of this year, bred in our meadows. They allowed me to come quite near, and helped to people the river. I have not seen them for some days. Would you know the end of our inter- course? Goodwin shot them, and Mrs. , who never sailed on the river, ate them. Of course, she knows not what she did. What if I should eat her canary? Thus we share each other’s sins as well as burdens. The lady who watches admiringly the matador shares his deed. They belonged to me, as much as to any one, when they were alive, but it was considered of more importance that Mrs. should taste the flavor of them dead than that I should enjoy the beauty of them alive. A three-ribbed goldenrod on railroad causeway, two to three feet high, abundantly out before Solidago nemo- ralis.

Still hear the chip-bird early in the morn- ing, though not so generally as earlier in the season. Minott has only lately been reading Shattuck’s “ His- tory of Concord,” and he says that his account is not right by a jugful, that he does not come within half a mile of the truth, not as he has heard tell. Some days ago I saw a kingbird twice stoop to the water from an overhanging oak and pick an insect from the surface. C. saw pigeons to-day. P. M. — To Annursnack via swimming-ford. The river is twelve to eighteen inches deeper there than usual at this season. Even the slough this side is two feet deep. There has been so much rain of late that there is no curling or drying of the leaves and grass this year. The foliage is a pure fresh green. The aftermath on early- mown fields is a very beautiful green. Being overtaken by a shower, we took refuge in the basement of Sam Barrett’s sawmill, where we spent an hour, and at length came home with a rainbow over- arching the road before us. The dog-days, the foggy and mouldy days, are not over yet. The clouds are like a mildew which over- spreads the sky. It is sticky weather, and the air is filled with the scent of decaying fungi.

P. M.— To Fair Haven Hill. Miss Caroline Pratt saw the white bobolink yesterday where Channing saw it the day before, in the midst of a large flock.* I go by the place this afternoon and see very large flocks of them, certainly several hundreds in all, and one has a little white on his back, but I do not see the white one. Almost every bush along this brook is now alive with these birds. You wonder where they were all hatched, for you may have failed to find a single nest. I know eight or ten active boys who have been searching for these nests the past season quite busily, and they have found but two at most. Surely but a small fraction of these birds will ever return from the South. Have they so many foes there? Hawks must fare well at present. They go off in a straggling flock, and it is a long time before the last loiterer has left the bushes near you. I also see large flocks of blackbirds, blackish birds with chattering notes. It is a fine sight when you can look down on them just as they are settling on the ground with outspread wings, — a hovering flock. Having left my note-book at home, I strip off a piece of birch bark for paper. It begins at once to curl up, yellow side out, but I hold that side to the sun, and as soon as it is dry it gives me no more trouble. 1 | hear also of a swallow (probably barn swallow), perfectly white, killed by John Flint’s son this year and set up by some one in the North Quarter.

P.M.— Sail to Baker Farm shore. It is cool with a considerable northwesterly wind, so that we can sail to Fair Haven. The dog-day weather is suddenly gone and here is a cool, clear, and elastic air. You may say it is the first day of autumn. You — notice the louder and clearer ring of crickets, and the large, handsome red spikes of the Polygonum amphibium are now generally conspicuous along the shore. The P. hydropiperoides fairly begins to show. The front-rank polygonum is now in prime. We scare up a stake-driver several times. The blue heron has within a week reappeared in our meadows, and the stake-driver begins to be seen oftener, and as early as the 5th I noticed young summer ducks about; the same of hawks, owls, etc. This occurs as soon as the young birds can take care of themselves, and some ap- pear to be very early on the return southward, with the very earliest prospect of fall. Such birds are not only more abundant but, methinks, more at leisure now, hav- ing reared their family, and perhaps they are less shy. Yes, bitterns are more frequently seen now to lift them- selves from amid the pontederia or flags, and take their sluggish flight to a new resting-place, —bitterns which — either have got through the labors of breeding or are - now first able to shift for themselves. And likewise blue herons, which have bred or been bred not far from us (plainly), are now at leisure, or are impelled to revisit our slow stream. I have not seen the last since spring.

Edward Hoar has found in his garden two or three specimens of what appears to be the Veronica Buxbaumi, which blossomed at least a month ago. Yet I should say the pods were turgid, and, though obcordate enough, I do not know in what sense they are “obcor- date-triangular.”” He found a Viburnum dentatum with leaves somewhat narrower than common and wedge- shaped at base. He has also the Rudbeckia speciosa, cul- tivated in a Concord garden. Flannery tells me that at about four o’clock this morn- ing he saw white frost on the grass in the low ground near Holbrook’s meadow. Up early enough to see a frost in August! P. M. — To Poplar Hill al the Great Fields. It is still cool weather with a northwest wind. This weather is a preface to autumn. ‘There is more shadow in the landscape than a week ago, methinks, and the creak of the cricket sounds cool and steady. The grass and foliage and landscape generally are of a more thought-inspiring color, suggest what some perchance would call a pleasing melancholy. In some meadows, as I look southwesterly, the aftermath looks a bright yellowish-green in patches. Both willows and poplars have leaves of a light color, at least beneath, contrasting with most other trees. Generally there has been no drought this year. Nothing in the landscape suggests it. Yet no doubt these leaves are, compared with themselves six or eight weeks ago, as usual, cs horny and dry,” as one remarks by my side.

P. M. — A-berrying to Conantum. I notice hardhacks clothing their stems now with their erected leaves, showing the whitish under sides. A pleasing evidence of the advancing season. How yellow that kind of hedgehog (?) sedge,’ in the toad pool by Cyrus Hubbard’s corner. I still see the patch of epilobium on Bee Tree Hill as plainly as ever, though only the pink seed-vessels and stems are left.

P. M. — I have spliced my old sail to a new one, and now go out to try it in a sail to Baker Farm. It is a “ square sail,”’ some five feet by six. I like it much. It pulls like an ox, and makes me think there’s more wind abroad than there is. The yard goes about with a pleasant force, almost enough, I would fain imagine, to knock me overboard. How sturdily it pulls, shooting us along, catching more wind than I knew to be wander- ing in this river valley! It suggests a new power in the sail, like a Grecian god. I can even worship it, after a heathen fashion. And then, how it becomes my boat and the river, — a simple homely square sail, all for use not show, so low and broad! Ajacean. The boat is like a plow drawn by a winged bull. If I had had this a dozen years ago, my voyages would have been performed more quickly and easily. But then probably I should have lived less in them. I land on a remote shore at an unex- pectedly early hour, and have time for a long walk there. Before, my sail was so small that I was wont to raise the mast with the sail on it ready set, but now I have had to rig some tackling with which to haul up the sail. As for the beauty of the river’s brim: now that the mikania begins to prevail the button-bush has done, the pontederia is waning, and the willows are already some- what crisped and imbrowned (though the last may be none the worse for it); lilies, too, are as good as gone. So perhaps I should say that the brim of the river was in its prime about the Ist of August this year, when the pontederia and button-bush and white lilies were in their glory. The cyperus (phymatodes, etc.) now yellows edges of pools and half-bare low grounds. See one or two blue herons every day now, driving them far up or down the river before me. I see a mass of bur-reed, etc., which the wind and waves are sweeping down-stream. The higher water and wind thus clear the river for us. At Baker Farm a large bird rose up near us, which at first I took for a hen-hawk, but it appeared larger. It screamed the same, and finally soared higher and higher till it was almost lost amid the clouds, or could scarcely be distinguished except when it was seen against some white and glowing cumulus. I think it was at least half a mile high, or three quarters, and yet I distinctly heard it scream up there each time it came round, and with my glass saw its head steadily bent toward the ground, look- ing for its prey. Its head, seen in a proper light, was dis- tinctly whitish, and I suspect it may have been a white- headed eagle. It did not once flap its wings up there, as it circled and sailed, though I watched it for nearly a mile. How fit that these soaring birds should be haughty and fierce, not like doves to our race!