John Burroughs - Riverby

Strange to say, the plant did not appear in that locality the next season, and has never appeared since. Perhaps it will take another dynamite earthquake to wake it up.

This observation was made ten years ago. I have since learned that the plant is Hieracium aurantiacum from Europe, a kind of hawkweed. It is fast becoming a common weed in New York and New England. (1894.)

"A bumblebee came along and lit upon a cluster of asters. Leaving these, it next visited a head of gentians, and with some difficulty thrust its tongue through the valves of the nearest blossom; then it pushed in its head and body until only the hind legs and the tip of the abdomen were sticking out. In this position it made the circuit of the blossom, and then emerged, resting a moment to brush the pollen from its head and thorax into the pollen-baskets, before flying again to a neighboring aster. The whole process required about twenty seconds." Ten New England Blossoms and their Insect Visitors , Clarence Moores Weed, pp. 93, 94.

Bicknell's thrush turns out to be the more southern form of the gray-cheeked thrush, and is found on the higher mountains of New York and New England.