21 June 1858 – 27 June 1858

Vide at Cambridge, apparently in prime, Silene inflata; also, in a rich grass-field on Sacramento Street, what may be Turritis glabra (? ), also in prime, the last three or four feet high. Both pressed. Talked with Mr. Bryant at the Natural History Rooms. He agrees with Kneeland in thinking that what I call the myrtle-bird’s is the white-throat sparrow’s note. Bryant killed one Down East in summer of ’56. He has lived the last fifteen years at Cohasset, and also knows the birds of Cambridge, but talks of several birds as rare which are common in Concord, such as the stake-driver, marsh hawk (have neither of their eggs in the collection), Savannah sparrow, the passerina much rarer, and I think purple finch, etc. Never heard the tea-lee note of myrtle-bird (?) in this State. Their large hawk is the red-shouldered, not hen-hawk. He thinks that the sheldrake of the Maine lakes is the merganser, the serrator belonging rather to the sea- coast. Of the two little dippers or grebes, he thought the white-breasted one would be the commonest, which has also a slender bill, while the other has a brownish breast and a much thicker bill. The egg of the Turdus solitarius in the collection is longer, but marked very much like the tanager’s, only paler-brown. ‘They have also the egg of the T. brunneus, the other hermit thrush, not common here.

Edward Bartlett found what he calls two bobolinks’ nests some weeks ago, with each six eggs. I have one of the nests. There is but little of it, composed simply of some flexible grass without and finer within, kept in form by the thick tussock or tuft of meadow-grass at the bottom and in the midst of which it is placed. He shows me, also, one of three eggs found the 20th in Gourgas’s wood-lot, within a rod of the roadside, in a small slender oak (eighteen feet high), about four- teen feet from the ground, about fifteen rods north of Britton’s corner, in a grove, where two or three small branches left the main stem; eggs somewhat advanced. Says the bird was a thrush of some kind. The egg is one inch by five eighths, rather slender, faint-blue, and quite generally spotted with distinct rather reddish brown, inclining to small streaky blotches, though es- pecially at the larger end; not pale-brown like that de- scribed [on the preceding] page. Can it be the Turdus solitarius ? * Mowing the June grass about our house a few days ago, I disturbed several toads squatted deep in the rankest grass near the house, and wounded one or two with the scythe. They appear to love such cool and shady retreats by day, hopping out at night and in the rain. I see in the river a little pickerel, not quite two inches long, which must have been hatched this year, and probably as early as the perch, since they have more to grow. I notice, after tipping the water out of my boat under the willows, much evidently pine pollen adhering to the inside of the boat along the water-line. Did it fall into it during my excursion to Holden’s Swamp the 20th, or has it floated through the air thus far? ? About the grassy island in front of the Rock, grows abundantly, apparently the Carex crinita, with about four long pendulous fertile spikes and one barren, two and a half feet high and long since done. I think that I first noticed willow down floating on the river about the 16th. Observe a painted turtle laying or digging at 5 p. M. She has not excavated any hole, but has already watered the ground, and, as usual when I take her up under these circumstances, passes more water.

P. M. — With some boys to Flint’s Pond, to see the nests mentioned on last [two pages]. The hermit (?) thrush’s nest referred to on last page is a rather shallow nest of loose construction, though suf- ficiently thick-bottomed, about five inches in diameter and hardly one deep within, externally of rather coarse and loosely arranged stubble, chiefly everlasting stems with the flowers yet emitting some fragrance, some whorled loosestrife with the seed-vessels, etc., ete.; within, finer grass and pine-needles. Yet the grass is as often bent angularly as curved regularly to form the nest. The tanager’s nest of the 19th is four and a half to five inches wide and an inch or more deep, con- siderably open to look through; the outside, of many very slender twigs, apparently of hemlock, some umbelled pyrola with seed-vessels, everlasting, etc.; within, quite round and regular, of very slender or fine stems, apparently pinweed or the like, and pine- needles; hardly any grass stubble about it. The egg is a regular oval nine tenths of an inch long by twenty- seven fortieths, pale-blue, sprinkled with purplish- brown spots, thickest on the larger end. To-day there are three rather fresh eggs in this nest. Neither going nor returning do we see anything of the tanager, and conclude it to be deserted, but perhaps she stays away from it long. That rather low wood along the path which runs parallel with the shore of Flnt’s Pond, behind the rock, is evidently a favorite place for veery-nests. I have seen three there. One lately emptied I got to- day, amid the dry leaves by some withered ferns. It is composed externally of a mass of much withered oak leaves, thick and pretty well stuck together, plas- tered or stuck down over the rim, is five to six inches in diameter and four high, two and a half wide within, and very deep, more than two inches. Next to the leaves come bark-shreds, apparently maple bark, and the lining is of a little fine grass, pine-needles, apparently a little hypnum root-fibre. A very deep well-shaped and rounded cavity. Saw another with two eggs in it, one a much lighter blue than the other. This was by the path leading toward the rock, amid some sprouts at the base of a sapling oak, elevated about six inches above the general level (the veery’s). It was a deep, firm nest three quarters of an inch thick, outwardly oak and chestnut leaves, then rather coarse bark-shreds, maple or oak, lined with the same and a few dark root-fibres. What that empty nest partly of mud, with conspicu- ous saliva, on a middle-sized maple, against main stem, | near wood thrush’s? In the case of the hermit (?) thrush, wood thrush, and tanager’s, each about fourteen feet high in slender saplings, you had to climb an adjacent tree in order to reach them. A male redstart seen, and often heard. What a little fellow! Lysimachia quadrifolia, how long? and veiny-leaved hawkweed, how long? Get an egg out of a deserted bank swallow’s nest, in a bank only about four feet high dug in the spring for a bank wall near Everett’s. The nest is flattish and lined abundantly with the small, somewhat downy, naturally curved feathers of poultry. Egg pure white, long, oval, twenty-seven fortieths by eighteen fortieths of an inch. Take two eggs out of the oviduct of an E. wnsculpta, just run over in the road. They have lately cooked a snapping turtle at Mrs. Wetherbee’s, eggs and all, and she thinks there were just forty-two of them!

Very hot weather. Aralia hispida at Cliffs. Epilobium, how long? Storrow Higginson gives me a bobolink’s egg. It is a regular oval, seven eighths by five eighths inch. It is a dark cream-color with pretty large spots of brown, sometimes blackish, chiefly at the large end, and very faint, more internal pale-purplish spots equally dis- persed.

P. M. — To Conantum. Hotter than yesterday and, like it, muggy or close.

Sunday. P. M. — Up Assabet. Land at old mill-site and walk through the Lee Woods looking for birds’ nests. See an Attacus luna in the shady path, smaller than I have seen before. At first it appears unable or unwilling to fly, but at length it flutters along and upward two or three rods into an oak tree, and there hangs inconspicuous amid the leaves.