27 June 1853 – 3 July 1853

4.30 a. M. — To Island by river. The cuckoo’s nest is robbed, or perhaps she broke her egg because I found it. Thus three out of half a dozen nests which I have revisited have been broken up. It is a very shallow nest, six or seven inches in diameter by two and a half or three deep, on a low bending willow, hardly half an inch deep within; con- cealed by overlying leaves of a swamp white oak on the edge of the river meadow, two to three feet from ground, made of slender twigs which are prettily orna- mented with much ramalina lichen, lined with hickory catkins and pitch pine needles. I have described the rest before. Saw a little pickerel with a minnow in his mouth. It was a beautiful little silver-colored minnow, two inches long, with a broad stripe down the middle. The pickerel held [it] crosswise near the tail, as he had seized it, and as I looked down on him, he worked the minnow along in his mouth toward the head, and then swallowed it head foremost. Was this instinct ? Fishermen should consider this in giving form to their bait. The pickerel does not swallow the bait at once, but first seizes it, then probably decides how it can best be swallowed, and no doubt he lets go again in disgust some baits of which he can make neither head nor tail. The radical leaves (four?) of the floating-heart are triangularly or wedge ovate, on petioles one to two inches long. The two large potamogetons now common on river (the smaller apparently not long in flower), with ovate or elliptical floating leaves sometimes salmon- color, belong to one or two of the first three of Gray. The smaller has its immersed leaves long, narrowly linear, and semicylindrical; those of the largest are pellucid, lanceolate, and waved. That sort of ostrich feather on the bottom appears to be the Potamoge- ton Robbinsiz. What is that foul, submerged, densely whorled and capillary-leaved and forked utricularia- like but bladderless plant? ‘Then there is a pinnate and cut-leafed plant on the bottom. Is it radical leaves of a proserpinaca? or a milfoil? I find a little bug between the calyx and petals of white lilies which have not opened. It has eaten holes in them. The dogsbane is one of the more interesting little flowers.

Nettle out a few days. Pepper-grass, a week or more. Catnep, also, a few days. We have warmer weather now again.

Jersey tea, just beginning. Asclepias obtusifolia, a day or two. Sericocarpus conyzoides.

Succory on the bank under my window, probably from flowers I have thrown out within a year or two. A rainbow in the west this morning. Hot weather.

I am surveying the Bedford road these days, and have no time for my Journal. Saw one of those great pea-green emperor moths, like a bird, fluttering over the top of the woods this forenoon, 10 a. M., near Beck Stow’s. Gathered the early red blackberry in the swamp or meadow this side of Pe- drick’s, where I ran a pole down nine feet. It is quite distinct from the evergreen one and is without prickles. Fruit red, middle-sized, with a few, perhaps ten or twelve, large globules. May be the Rubus triflorus, but not growing on hills.

Elder is now in its prime. Buttercups are almost gone. Clover is blackened. The umbelled pyrola, apparently yesterday, as well as the P. rotundi- folia and the P. ellzptica, or shin-leaf. The P. secunda, or one-sided pyrola, is already out of bloom. The oven-bird’s nest in Laurel Glen is near the edge of an open pine wood, under a fallen pine twig and a heap of dry oak leaves. Within these, on the ground, is the nest, with a dome-like top and an arched en- trance of the whole height and width on one side. Lined within with dry pine-needles. Mountain laurel lingers in the woods still. ‘The chest- nut behind my old house site is fully out, and appar- ently has been partly so for several days. There are no flowers on bass trees commonly this year. Smooth sumach just opening and already resounding with bees. The water-target appears to be in its prime, its flowers rising above the water. Remarkable for the thick jelly on its leaves and stem. A smaller pota- mogeton is in flower there,—the small globose white flower. Why is it so often already torn up by the roots? Poke a day or two in favorable places. Dogsbane and Jersey tea are among the prevailing flowers now. The Utricularia vulgaris now yellows low muddy water, as near the Lincoln bound by Walden. The Vaccinium vacillans a day or two ripe. Black huckle- berries. Tansy on the causeway. The Canada thistle. The pinweeds have a reddish look, as if in flower.