28 May 1860 – 3 June 1860

P.M. — To Deep Cut. Carex debilis, not long. Along the edge of Warren’s wood east of the Cut, see not only the chestnut-sided warbler but the splendid Sylvia pardalina. It is a bright yellow beneath, with a broad black stripe along each side of the throat, becoming longish black marks crescentwise on / ) the fore part of the breast, leaving a distinct /{I clear bright-yellow throat, and all the rest beneath bright-yellow; a distinct bright-yellow ring around eye; a dark bluish brown apparently all above; yellowish legs. Not shy; on the birches. Probably saw it the 23d. I see apparently a vireo, much like the red-eye (no yellow throat), with the white or whitish line above eye ~ but a head differently formed, 2. e., a crest “erectile at will and always prominent. Solid white fog over meadow in evening. I notice to-night that the potamogetons have just reached the surface of the river and begun to spread out there. The surface of the water in shallow places begins to be interrupted or dimpled with small brown leaves. First, from the 9th to 13th the first pads began [to] spread, and the pontederia, etc., showed them- selves. Now the appearance of the potamogetons marks a new era in the vegetation of the river, the com- mencement of its summer stage. Its spring ends now; its time of freshet (generally) 1s over. The river is now some three inches below summer level.

P. M. — After ~~ with Farmer to Easterbrooks Country. He tells me of a sterile bayberry bush between his house and Abel Davis, opposite a ledge in the road, say half a dozen rods off in the field, on the left, by a brook. Hearing a warbling vireo, he asked me what it was, and said that a man who lived with him thought it said, “Now I have caught it, O how it is sweet!’ I am sure only of the last words, or perhaps, “Quick as I catch him I eat him. O it is very sweet.” Saw male and female wood tortoise in a meadow in front of his house, — only a little brook anywhere near. They are the most of a land turtle except the box turtle. We proceeded [to] the Cooper’s hawk nest* in an oak and pine wood (Clark’s) north of Ponkawtasset. I found a fragment [of] one of the eggs which he had thrown out. Farmer’s egg, by the way, was a dull or dirty white, 7. e. a rough white with large dirty spots, perhaps in the grain, but not surely, of a regular oval form and a little larger than his marsh hawk’s egg. I climbed to the nest, some thirty to thirty-five feet high in a white pine, against the main stem. It was a mass of bark-fibre and sticks about two and a half feet long by eighteen inches wide and sixteen high. The lower and main portion was a solid mass of fine bark-fibre such as a red squirrel uses. This was surrounded and sur- mounted by a quantity of dead twigs of pine and oak, etc., generally the size of a pipe-stem or less. The concavity was very slight, not more than an inch and a half, and there was nothing soft for a lining, the bark- fibres being several inches beneath the twigs, but the bottom was floored for a diameter of six inches or more with flakes of white oak and pitch pine bark one to two inches long each, a good handful of them, and on this the eggs had lain. We saw nothing of the hawk. This was a dozen rods south of the oak meadow wall. Saw, in a shaded swamp beyond, the Stellaria borealis, still out, —large, broadish leaves. Some eighteen feet high in a white pine in a swamp in the oak meadow lot, I climbed to a red squirrel’s nest. The young were two-thirds grown, yet feeble and not so red as they will be. One ran out and along a limb, and finally made off into another tree. This was a mass of rubbish covered with sticks, such as I commonly see (against the main stem), but not so large as a gray squirrel’s. We next proceeded to the marsh hawk’s nest from which the eggs were taken a fortnight ago and the female shot.’ It was in a long and narrow cassandra swamp northwest of the lime-kiln and some thirty rods from the road, on the side of a small and more open area some two rods across, where were few if any bushes and more [?] sedge with the cassandra. The nest was on a low tussock, and about eighteen inches across, made of dead birch twigs around and a pitch pine plume or two, and sedge grass at bottom, with a small cavity in the middle. The female was shot and eggs taken on the 16th; yet here was the male, hovering anxiously over the spot and neighborhood and scolding at us. Betraying himself from time to time by that peculiar clacking note reminding you of a pigeon woodpecker. We thought it likely that he had already got another mate and a new nest near by. He would not quite withdraw though fired at, but still would return and circle near us. They are said to find a new mate very soon. In a tall pine wood ona hill, say southwest of this, or northwest of Boaz’s Lower Meadow, I climbed to a nest high in a white pine, apparently a crow’s just completed, as it were on a squirrel’s nest for a foun- dation, but finished above in a deep concave form, of twigs which had been gnawed off by the squirrel. In another white pine near by, some thirty feet up it, I found a gray squirrel’s nest, with young about as big as the red squirrels were, but yet blind. This was a large mass of twigs, leaves, bark-fibre, etc., with a mass of loose twigs on the top of it, which was conical. Per- haps the twigs are piled on the warmer part of the nest to prevent a hawk from pulling it to pieces. I have thus found three squirrels’ nests this year, two gray and one red, in these masses of twigs and leaves and bark exposed in the tree-tops and not in a hollow tree, and methinks this is the rule and not the exception. Farmer says that he finds the nests or holes or forms of the gray rabbit in holes about a foot or a foot and a half deep, made sideways into or under a tussock, especially amid the sweet-fern, in rather low but rather open ground. Has found seven young in one. Has found twenty-four eggs in a quail’s nest. In many places in the woods where we walk to-day we notice the now tender branches of the brakes eaten off, almost in every case, though they may be eighteen or more inches from the ground. This was evidently done by a rabbit or a woodchuck. . The wild asparagus beyond Hunt’s Bridge will ap- parently open in two days.’ C. has seen to-day an orange-breasted bird which may be the female (?) Blackburnian warbler. The leaves now conceal the warblers, ete., consider- ably. You can see them best in white oaks, etc., not maples and birches. I hear that there was some frost last night on Hildreth’s plain; not here. On the 28th, the latest trees and shrubs start thus in order of leafing:* — dead at a little distance, but the bayberry showed growth (including flower-buds). before button-bush. Vide June 4th. 1. Locust 2. Dangle-berry 21st $. Mountain rhus 22d 4. Poison-dogwood 23d 5. Black spruce 23d 6. Black ash 24th 7. Button-bush 26th 8. Hemlock 27th 9. Bayberry 28th 10. Vaccinium dumosum * 11. Holbrook aspens I hear from vireos (probably red-eyes) in woods a fine harsh note, perhaps when angry with each other.

P. M. — To Second Division. A washing southwest wind. George Melvin said yes- terday that he was still grafting, and that there had been a great blow on the apple trees this year, and that the blossoms had held on unusually long. I suggested that it might be because we had not had so much wind as usual. On the wall, at the brook behind Cyrus Hosmer’s barn, I start a nighthawk within a rod or two. It alights again on his barn-yard board — fence, sitting diagonally. Iseethe “% white spot on the edge of its wings as it sits. It flies thence and alights on the ground in his corn-field, sitting flat, but there was no nest under it. This was unusual. Had it not a nest near by? I observed that some of the June-grass was white and withered, being eaten off by a worm several days ago, or considerably before it blossoms. June-grass fills the field south of Ed. Hosmer’s ledge by the road, and gives it now a very conspicuous and agreeable brown or ruddy(?)-brown color, about as ruddy as chocolate, perhaps. This decided color stretching afar with a slightly undulating surface, like a mantle, is a very agreeable phenomenon of the season. ‘The brown pan- icles of the June-grass now paint some fields with the color of early summer. Front-yard grass is mowed by some. The stems of meadow saxifrage are white now. The Saliz tristis generally shows its down now along dry wood-paths. The Juncus filiformis not out yet, though some pani- cles are grown nearly half an inch. Much of it seems to be merely chaffy or effete, but much also plumper, with green sepals and minute stamens to be detected within. It arises, as described, from matted running rootstocks. Perhaps will bloom in a week. A succession of moderate thunder and lightning storms from the west, two or three, an hour apart. Saw some devil’s-needles (the first) about the 25th. I took refuge from the thunder-shower this afternoon by running for a high pile of wood near Second Division, and while it was raining, I stuck three stout cat-sticks into the pile, higher than my head, each a little lower than the other, and piled large flattish wood on them and tossed on dead pine-tops, making a little shed, under which I stood dry.

Rained hard during the night. At 6p. m. the river has risen to half an inch below summer level, having been three to four inches below summer level yesterday morning. I hear the sprayey note of toads now more than ever, after the rain.

2 P.M. — River 12 above summer level. 6 P. M. i ‘§ es Farmer has heard the quail a fortnight. Channing yesterday. The barberry flower is now in prime, and it is very handsome with its wreaths of flowers. Many low blackberry flowers at Lee’s Cliff. June-grass there well out. Krigia, how long? Breams’ nests begun at Hubbard’s Grove shore. They have carefully cleaned the bottom, removing the con- ferva, small weeds, etc., leaving the naked stems of some coarse ones, as the bayonet rush, bare and red. Young Stewart tells me that when he visited again that gray squirrel’s nest which I described about one month ago up the Assabet, the squirrels were gone, and he thought that the old ones had moved them, for he saw the old about another nest. He found another, similar nest with three dead blind gray squirrels in it, the old one probably having been killed. This makes three gray squirrels’ nests that I have seen and heard of (seen two of them) this year, made thus of leaves and sticks open in the trees, and I hear of some more similar ones found in former years, so that I think this mode of nesting their young may be the rule with them here. Add to this one red squirrel’s nest of the same kind.

Saturday. The past has been Anniversary Week in Boston, and there have been several rainy or cloudy days, as the 30th, afternoon and especially night, and 31st, and night of June Ist. Cleared up at noon to-day. This Anniversary Week is said to be commonly rainy. P. M. — To river behind Hubbard’s Grove. Red clover first seen. A boy brought me yesterday a nest with two Maryland yellow-throats’ eggs and two cowbirds’ eggs in it, and said that they were all found together. Saw a pigeon yesterday; a turtle dove to-day. You see now, in suitable shallow and warm places where there is a sandy bottom, the nests of the bream begun, — circular hollows recently excavated, weeds, confervee, and other rubbish neatly removed, and many whitish root-fibres of weeds left bare and exposed. There is a lively and washing northwest wind after the rain, it having cleared up at noon. The waves are breaking on this shore with such a swash that some- times I cannot distinguish the bream poised over her nest within ten feet of me. The air is cleansed and clear, and therefore the waves, as I look toward the sun, sparkle with so bright and white a light, — so pecul- iarly fresh and bright. The impurities have all come down out of the air. The yellow Bethlehem-star is pretty common now. The poison-dogwood is so late, and has such a pro- portion of thick gray stems, that at a little distance they look like dead trees amid the green birches and alders. 8 p.m. — Up Assabet. The river is four inches above summer level. A cool evening. A cold, white twilight sky after the air has been cleared by rain, and now the trees are seen very distinctly against it, —not yet heavy masses of verdure, but a light openwork, the leaves being few and small yet, as regularly open as a sieve. Cool as it is, the air is full of the ringing of toads, peep- ing of hylodes, and purring of (probably) Rana palus- tris. The last is especially hke the snoring of the river. In the morning, when the light is similar, you will not hear a peeper, I think, and scarcely a toad. Bats go over, and a kingbird, very late. Mosquitoes are pretty common. Ever and anon we-bear the stake-driver from a distance. There is more distinct sound from animals than by day, and an occasional bullfrog’s trump is heard. ‘Turning the island, I hear a very faint and slight screwing or working sound once, and suspect a screech owl, which I after see on an oak. I soon hear its mourn- ful scream, probably to its mate, not loud now, but, though within twenty or thirty rods, sounding a mile off. I hear it louder from my bed in the night. Water-bugs dimple the surface now quite across the river, in the moonlight, for it is a full moon. The ever- greens are very dark and heavy. Hear the sound of Barrett’s sawmill, at first like a drum, then like a train of cars. The water has been raised a little by the rain after the long drought, and so he [is] obliged to saw by night, in order to finish his jobs before the sun steals it from him again.

6 a.m. — River three and three sixteenth inches above summer level; 7. ¢., the river has begun to fall within twenty-four hours and less after the rain ceased. 2 p.M. — To bayberry. These are the clear breezy days of early June, when the leaves are young and few and the sorrel not yet in its prime. Perceive the meadow fragrance. Am surprised to [see] some twenty or more crows in a flock still, cawing about us. The roads now strewn with red maple seed. The pines’ shoots have grown generally from three to six inches, and begin to make a distinct impression, even at some distance, of white and brown above their dark green. The foliage of deciduous trees is still rather yellow-green than green. There are in the Boulder Field several of the creep- ing Juniper which grow quite flat on the ground, some- what like the empetrum, most elevated in the middle. Not only brakes, many of them tall, and branching two feet at least from the ground, have their branches nibbled off, but the carrion-flower has very commonly lost its leaves, either by rabbits or woodchucks. Tree-toads heard. See a common toad three quarters of an inch long. There are various sweet scents in the air now. Espe- cially, as I go along an arbor-vitee hedge, I perceive a very distinct fragrance like strawberries from it.