11 June 1860 – 17 June 1860

6 a.m. — River twelve inches above sum- mer level at 10.30 a. m. Sail to Tall’s Island. Wind northwest, pretty strong, and not a warm day. I notice the patches of bulrushes (Scirpus lacustris) now generally eighteen inches high and very dark green, but recently showing themselves. The evergreens are now completely invested by the deciduous trees, and you get the full effect of their dark green contrasting with the yellowish green of the de- ciduous trees. The wind does not blow through our river-valley just as the vanes indicate at home, but conformably to the form of the valley somewhat. It depends on whether you have a high and hilly shore to guide it, or a flat one which it may blow across. With a north- west wind, it is difficult to sail from the willow-row to Hubbard’s Bath, yet I can sail more westerly from the island point in Fair Haven Bay to the bath-place above; and though I could not do the first to-day, I did sail all the way from Rice’s Bar to half a mile above Sherman’s Bridge by all the windings of the river. If the bend is due east and the wind northwest I can sail round it. Again, as I was approaching Bittern Cliff, I had but little wind, but I said to myself, As soon as I reach the cliff I shall find myself in a current of wind blowing into the opening of the pond valley; and I did. Indeed, the wind flows through that part of the river-valley above the water-line somewhat as the water does below it. I see from time to time a fish, scared by our sail, leap four to six feet through the air above the waves. See many small blue devil’s-needles to-day, but no mates with them, and is it not they that the kingbird stoops to snap up, striking the water each time? I find the Sudbury meadows unexpectedly wet. There is at least one foot of water on the meadows generally. I cut off the principal bends, pushing amid the thin sedge and pipes, and land on Tall’s Island. I had carried india-rubber boots to look for wrens’ nests, but the water was very much too deep, and I could not have used them except on the very edge in some places. Yet the river in Concord this morning was but just one foot above summer level and about eighteen inches above where it was just before the middle of May, when everybody remarked on its extreme lowness, and Ebby Conant observed to me, “It is lower than ever it was known to be, isn’t it?” I told him that I had seen it as low, am the summer, about every other year. If you should lower it eighteen inches now here, there would still be much water on the Sudbury meadows. The amount of it is, the Sudbury meadows are so low, referred to the river, that when the river is nineteen and one eighth inches above extreme low water (the lowest we have had this year) you can push over the greater part of the Sudbury meadows in a boat. Accordingly, on far the greater part of these meadows there is now very little grass, 2. e. sedge, but thin pipes and sedge, — the Carex stricta and monile commonly (too wet for scoparia and stellulata). I do not see the great Scir- pus fluviatilis there yet. The greater part of the meadows are evidently too wet for the C. stricta (occa- sionally some large tussocks surrounded by water) and monile even, and the pipes are but thin. There are many large spaces of pads, —two at Tall’s Island, — showing that they are wet all summer. The sedges, even, are thick and rank only on the more elevated and drier edges of the meadow. This is more like a lagoon than a meadow, in fact. It is too wet even for sedges to flourish, for they are not dense, as on other meadows, except on the higher parts near the hills or shores. C. stricta grows thinly (with thin pipes) or occasionally in large tufts. On dry parts only, the C. monile, etc., ete. Landing on Tall’s Island, I perceive a sour scent from the wilted leaves and scraps of leaves which were blown off yesterday and strew the ground in all woods. Just within the edge of the wood there, I see a small painted turtle on its back, with its head stretched out as if to turn over. Surprised by the sight, I stooped to investigate the cause. It drew in its head at once, but I noticed that its shell was partially empty. I could see through it from side to side as it lay, its entrails having been extracted through large openings just before the hind legs. The dead leaves were flattened for a foot over, where it had been operated on, and were a little bloody. Its paunch lay on the leaves, and contained much vegetable matter, —old cranberry leaves, etc. Judging by the strize, it was not more than five or six years old, — or four or five. Its fore parts were quite alive, its hind legs apparently dead, its inwards gone; apparently its spine perfect. The flies had entered it in numbers. What creature could have done this which it would be difficult for a man to do? I thought of a skunk, weazel, mink, but I do not believe that they could have got their snouts into so small a space as that in front of the hind legs between the shells. The hind legs themselves had not been injured nor the shell scratched. I thought it most likely that it was done by some bird of the heron kind which has a long and powerful bill. And probably this accounts for the many dead turtles which I have found and thought died from disease. Such is Nature, who gave one creature a taste or yearning for another’s entrails as its favorite tidbit!! I thought the more of a bird, for, just as we were shoving away from this isle, I heard a sound just like a small dog barking hoarsely, and, looking up, saw it was made bya bittern (Ardea minor), a pair of which were flapping over the meadows and probably had a nest in some tussock thereabouts. No wonder the turtle is wary, for, notwithstanding its horny shell, when it comes forth to lay its eggs it runs the risk of having its entrails plucked out. That is the reason that the box turtle, which lives on the land, is made to shut itself up entirely within the shell, and I suspect that the mud tortoise only comes forth by night. What need the turtle has of some horny shield over those tender parts and avenues to its entrails! I saw several of these painted turtles dead on the bottom.* Already I see those handsome fungi spots on the red maple leaves, yellow within, with a green centre, then the light-red ring deepening to crimson. The largest a quarter of an inch in diameter. Heard many redstarts on the Island. Saw creepers and one wood pewee nest on a swamp white oak, not quite done. On our way up, we ate our dinner at Rice’s shore, and looked over the meadows, covered there with waving sedge, light-glaucous as it is bent by the wind, reflecting a grayish or light-glaucous light from its under side. That meadow opposite Rice’s Bath is comparatively well covered with sedge, as the great Sudbury meadow is not. I now first begin to notice the silvery under sides of the red maple and swamp white oak leaves, turned up by the wind. Looking at a hillside of young trees, what various shades of green! The oaks generally are a light and tender and yellowish green; the white birches, dark green now; the maples, dark and silvery. Notice pads and pontederias are now pretty thick. The white lily pads reddish, and showing their crimson under sides from time to time when the wind blows hardest. , The potamogeton (the large common one) is remark- able as a brown leaf, — fit color for the brown water on which it floats, — but the potamogetons are few and scarcely obvious yet on the river. A painted turtle laying, at 5 p. m. Saw a sphinx moth night before last. The Carex tentaculata at Clamshell in prime, say one week. It abounds at Forget-me-not Shore, — dense- flowered, spreading spikes. At 9 p.m., 54°, and no toads nor peepers heard. Some fields began to be white with whiteweed on the 9th.

P.M. Up Assabet. I find several Emys insculpta nests and eggs, and see two painted turtles going inland to lay at 3 p. M. At this moment these turtles are on their way inland to lay their eggs all over the State, warily drawing in their heads and waiting when you come by. Here is a painted turtle just a rod inland, its back all covered with the fragments of green leaves blown off and washed up: yesterday, which now line the shore. It has come out through this wrack. As the river has gone down, these green leaves mark the bank in lines just like sawdust. I see a young yellow-spot turtle in the Assabet, still quite broad and roundish though I count about seven strie. It is very handsome. At 7.30 p.m. I hear many toads, it being a warm night, but scarcely any hylodes.' River ten and one third above summer level.

2p.m. To M. Miles’s via Clamshell. Hear of a snapping turtle which had begun to lay her eggs last night in Cyrus Hosmer’s corn-field, this side of Clamshell. He fcund it by its scaring his horse as he was plowing between his corn. The horse started and stopped at it. Isaw its track. I see how I can find them. Select a cultivated field, especially a sandy one near the river or a brook, and walk along its edge, parallel with the stream, at this season, and you will see by the track if a turtle has recently been out that way, — can follow it and find the eggs. I first heard that tchuck sound —as of a fish striking a pad —on the 2d of June, when there were very few weeds in the river, and have since heard it repeatedly. I noticed as I sat in my boat by the riverside last evening, half an hour after sunset, a very low and local, yet dense, fog close to the shore, under the edge of the sedge on one side, a foot high by three or four wide for several rods. It occupied such a space as a shadow does under a hedge. It occurred to me that perhaps the water was cooler there than elsewhere. I find, on the face of Clamshell Hill, Carex Muhlen- bergit about ripe, the perigynia nerved distinctly on both sides. , I think that this is the same with that of May 26 and June 10, etc., — all that I may have thought cepha- lophora this year, — though I did not find them dis- tinctly nerved on both sides. They were younger. The achenium of this is orbicular. It grows, then, here and probably at Lee’s south slope, Annursnack Hill (very common), and is generally long done. I see, at Martial Miles’s, two young woodchucks, taken sixteen days ago, when they were perhaps a fort- night old. ‘here were four in all, and they were dug out by the aid of a dog. The mother successively pushed out her little ones to the dog to save herself, and one was at once killed by the dog. ‘These two are now nearly one-third grown. ‘They have found a hole within the house, into which they run, and whither they have carried shavings, etc., and made a nest. Thence they run outdoors, and feed close along about the house, lurking behind barrels, etc. They eat yarrow, clover], catnep, etc., and are fed with milk and bread. They do not drink the milk like a dog or like a cat, but simply suck it, taking the sharp edge of the shallow tin dish in their mouths. They are said to spit like a cat. They eat bread sitting upright on their haunches and holding it in their fore paws, just like a squirrel. That is their common and natural mode of eating. They are as gray —or grayer (or hoary) —as the old. Mrs. Miles says they sleep on their heads, 2. ¢., curling their heads right under them; also that they can back as straight into their hole as if they went head foremost. I saw a full- grown one this afternoon which stood so erect and still, its paws hanging down and inobvious as its ears, that it might be mistaken for a short and very stout stake. At Ledum Swamp the woodwardia is recent; gener- ally not yet expanded; one of the latest ferns. The Eriophorum vaginatum is generally gone to seed. The Carex canescens (the glaucous scoparia-like) is the pre- vailing Carex there, hanging over the ditches and the pool. I find in J. Hosmer’s spring a seedling skunk-cabbage with the nut attached. It had fallen into the spring, perhaps, from a mouse’s store, and a single green leaf two or three inches long had grown from it while a root had penetrated the mud. The strawberry about Hosmer’s tub spring has its seeds in pits and is therefore Fragarva Virginiana. The Eriophorum polystachyon is well cottoned out. Now perceive the smell of red clover blossoms. This afternoon the streets are strewn with the leaves of the buttonwood, which are still falling. Looking up, I see many more hanging wilted or withered, — half- formed leaves. I think that the leaves of these trees were especially injured by the cold wind of the 10th, as the other trees, and are just now falling in consequence. I can tell when I am under a buttonwood by the number of leaves on the ground. With the other trees it was mainly a mechanical injury, done rather by the wind than the cold, but the tender shoots of this tree were killed. Yesterday I could still see through the bass and the red oak up the Assabet, and the last was a little the densest. On the 11th I saw, swimming near me on the Sudbury meadows, apparently the Bryttus obesus, judging from its stripes and form. It was quite tame and apparently rather sluggish.

I see near at hand two of those large yellow (and black) butterflies which I have probably seen nearly a month. They rest on the mud near a brook. Two and three quarters to three inches in alar extent; yellow with a broad black border, outside of which a row of small yellow spots; three or four black marks transversely to the fore wings, and two fine lines parallel with the body on the hinder (?) wings; a small and slender swallow tail with reddish brown and blue at the tail; body black above and yellow along the sides.’ P. M. — To Second Division. At Dugan Desert many fresh turtle-tracks. They generally steer for some more elevated and perhaps bushy place. The tail makes a serpentine track, the tracks of the flippers and claws quite distinct, and you see where the turtle rested on its shell, flatting the sand, from time to time. You can easily trace one to where the sand has been disturbed, and dig up its eggs, as I did, — six eggs, about two and a half to three inches deep. Emys insculpta. The juncus of Second Division is just beginning? at the west or northwesterly edge, next the higher ground. It may be that most of it does not bloom. The stigmas are prominent [on] a few plants, the anthers scarcely perceptible yet. ‘The sepals are rather a green [ ?] purple, with a green centre, than green. The slender grass mixed with the above, apparently Trisetum palustre, is now very commonly in bloom, ap- parently several days; also the smaller (fifteen-inch) festuca two or three days, in dry ground. The white water ranunculus is abundant in the brook; out say a week, and well open in the sunshine. It is [a] ee ee pretty white flower (with yellow centre) seen above the dark brown-green leaves in the rapid water, its peduncle recurved so as to present the flower erect half an inch to an inch above the surface, while the buds are submerged. See a pigeon. A brood of little partridges in the wood- paths. The old bird utters a loud wiry, mewing sound of alarm, the young a very fine sharp sound like cherry- birds. For a week at least have seen cowbirds about cows. The common cress gone to seed; only a little lingers. I felt that the season of storms, 1. e. of two days’ rain, was past about June Ist. Saw a rainbow in afternoon of 7th.

2 p.m.— River four and one half above summer level. For some time I have not heard toads by day,’ and not for a long time in numbers; yet they still ring at night. Perhaps it is entirely a matter of temperature, — that in June and maybe the latter half of May (?) they require the coolness of the evening to arouse them. The hylodes appear to have done. I paddle to Clamshell. Notice the down of the white willow near the bridge, twenty rods off, whitening Sassafras Shore for two or three rods like a dense white foam. It is all full of lit- tle seeds not sprouted, is as dense as fur, and has first blown fifteen rods overland. This is a late willow to ripen, but the black willow shows no down yet, as I notice. It is very conspicuously white along the shore, a foot or two wide, — a dense downy coat or fleece on the water. Has blown northeast. See froth about the base of some grass in a meadow. The large early wool-grass of the meadows will shed pollen in a day or two —can see stamens — on Hos- mer’s Flat shore. This it is grows in circles. As I stood there I heard that peculiar hawk-like (for rhythm) but more resonant or clanging kind of scream which I may have heard before this year, plover-like, indefinitely far, — over the Clamshell plain. After proceeding half a dozen rods toward the hill, I heard the familiar willet note of the upland plover and, looking up, saw one standing erect — like a large tell- tale, or chicken with its head stretched up — on the rail fence. After a while it flew off southwest and low, then wheeled and went a little higher down the river. Of pigeon size, but quick quivering wings. Finally rose higher and flew more or less zigzag, as if uncertain where it would alight, and at last, when almost out of sight, it pitched down into a field near Cyrus Hubbard’s. It was the same note I heard so well on Cape Cod in July, 55, and probably the same I heard in the Shaw- sheen valley, May 15, 1858. I suspect, then, that it breeds here. The button-bush is at now fairly green. bf. NW The Carex stricta tufts are now as large \! as ever, and, the culms l falling over, they are like great long-haired heads, now drooping around the great tussocks. I know of no other sedge that make so massive and conspic- uous a tussock, yet with a slender leaf. This the one that reflects the peculiar glaucous sheen from its bent surfaces. The turtles are apparently now in the midst of their laying. I go looking for them, to see where they have left the water for this purpose. See a snapping turtle whose shell is about ten inches long making her hole on the top of the sand-bank at the steam-mill site, within four rods of the road. She pauses warily at sound of my boat, but I should have mistaken her for a dark stone if she had [not] lifted her snout above her shell. I went to her as she lay and hissed by the hole at 4p. m. It was about three and a half inches across, and not per- pendicular but chiefly on one side; say five inches deep (as yet), and four plus inches wide beneath, but only about one inch of the bottom exposed when you looked straight down, —in short, like the common Emys picta’s hole. She had copiously wet the ground before or while digging, as the prcta does. Saw two or three similar holes made by her afterward. There was her broad track (some ten inches wide) up the sandy or gravelly bank, and I saw where she had before dug, or begun to dig, within a rod of this, but had retreated to the river. I withdrew to the bridge to observe her (not having touched her), but she took the occasion to hasten to the river. A thunder-shower in the north goes down the Merri- mack. We have had warmer weather for several days, say since 12th. A new season begun, — daily baths, thin coat, etc.! The bullfrogs now commonly trump at night, and the mosquitoes are now really troublesome.

I notice this forenoon, about my melons, an excrement five to six eighths of an inch long, narrowed and with a sort of stem at one end, full of wing-cases of beetles, etc., and black, looking at first like the cocoon of some insect, but moist and fresh. Also saw four or five on the sidewalk as I went to the post-office (after a warm night). It is probably the excrement of the toad, of which I have seen no account. I saw great puffs on the andromeda the 14th. At 2 p. m. 85°, and about same for several days past. I have heard no hylodes since the 12th, and no purring frogs (Rana palustris). Think they ceased about the same time, or with the 85° heat, 2. e. with mbbon for neck and thinnest sack. Thunder-showers show themselves about 2 P. M. in the west, but split at sight of Concord and go east on each side, we getting only a slight shower. At evening paddle to Clamshell. The meadows full of lightning-bugs to-night; first seen the 14th. (There had then been a thunder- shower in the north.) Rose-bugs two or three days at least. It appears to me that these phenomena occur simul- taneously, say June 12th, viz. : — Heat about 85° at 2 p.m. True summer. Hylodes cease to peep. Purring frogs (Rana palustris) cease. Lightning-bugs first seen. Bullfrogs trump generally. Mosquitoes begin to be really troublesome. Afternoon thunder-showers almost regular.! Sleep with open window (10th), and wear thin coat and ribbon on neck. Turtles fairly and generally begun to lay. As I stand at Clamshell, it occurs to me that I never see the stinkpot laying its eggs on land by day; that therefore it must lay its eggs by night.? Where, then, shall I look for them now by night with a lantern? Why not here as well as anywhere? And I turn my eyes in the twilight to the shore there, when I see a turtle just entering the water. Running to it with haste, I see it (after it has entered the river) to be a stinkpot, which probably was frightened by us. Had come forth to lay, or, possibly, was returning. I think I never see the picta and insculpta and yellow-spot ashore by night. The pickerel-weed appears to have suddenly shot up to about its final height, but it is mainly owing to the river having rapidly fallen a foot within a few days. So far as the height of this plant is concerned, the river now reaches its summer régime. Not yet the potamogetons. Channing found a marsh hawk’s nest on the Great Meadows this afternoon, with three eggs considerably de- veloped. This is the third I have heard of this year.*® 1 15th, 16th, 17th.

Quite a fog this morning. About 1 p.m., notice thunder-clouds in west and hear the muttering. As yesterday, it splits at sight of Concord and goes south and north. Nevertheless about 3 P.M. begins a steady gentle rain here for several hours, and in the night again, the thunder, as yesterday, mostly forerunning or superficial to the shower. This the third day of thunder-showers in afternoon, though the 14th it did not rain here. Carex flava out, possibly a week.