Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/38

28 some of them had dropped on the ground beneath), and this was lined, lined merely, with fine brown stems of weeds, like pinweeds, without any leaves or anything else, a slight nest on the whole. Saw the birds. The male uttered a very peculiar sharp clicking or squeaking note of alarm while I was near the nest. The egg is thickly spotted with reddish brown on a pale blue ground (not white ground, as Buonaparte and the New York ornithologist says), like a hermit thrush's, but rounder, very delicate.

June 2, 1860. A boy brought me yesterday a nest with two Maryland yellow-throat's eggs and two cow-bird's eggs in it, and said that they were all found together.

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, confervæ, and other rubbish neatly removed, and many whitish root fibres of weeds left bare and exposed.

8 Up Assabet. Bats go over, and a king-bird very late Ever and anon we hear the stake-driver from a distance. There is a more distinct sound from animals than by day, and an occasional bull-frog'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 afterwards see on an oak. I