Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/76

66 fighting in the water, and sometimes dead in the spring, perhaps killed by the ice.

Common iris some days, one withered.

Saw again what I have pronounced the yellow-winged sparrow, Fringilla passerina, with white line down head, and yellow over eyes, and my seringo note. But this time the yellow of wings is not apparent; ochreous throat and breast. Quite different from the bay-wing and smaller.

This muggy evening I see fire-flies, the first I have seen or heard of this year.

June 7, 1855. I have heard no musical gurgle-ee from blackbirds for a fortnight. They are now busy breeding.

June 7, 1858. To Walden. Warm weather has suddenly come, beginning yesterday. To-day it is yet warmer, 87° at 3, compelling me to put on a thin coat, and I see that a new season has arrived. June shadows are moving over waving grass fields, the crickets chirp uninterruptedly, and I perceive the agreeable acid scent of high blueberry bushes in bloom. The trees having leaved out, you notice their rounded tops suggesting shade. The night-hawk booms over arid hill-sides and sproutlands.

It is evidence enough against crows, hawks, and owls, proving their propensity to rob birds' nests of eggs and young, that smaller birds pursue them so often. You do not need the