First Phoebe

April 1.

At the Pokelogan up the Assabet, I see my first phoebe, the mild bird. It flirts its tail and sings pre vit, pre vit, pre vit, pre vit incessantly, as it sits over the water, and then at last, rising on the last syllable, says pre-VEE, as if insisting on that with peculiar emphasis.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, April 1, 1859

I see my first phoebe. See April 2, 1852 (“For a long distance, as we paddle up the river, we hear the two-stanza'd lay of the pewee on the shore, - pee-wet, pee-wee, etc. Those are the two obvious facts to eye and ear, the river and the pewee. ”)

April 1. Some have planted peas and lettuce. Melvin, the sexton, says that when Loring's Pond was drained once — perhaps the dam broke — he saw there about all the birds he has seen on a salt marsh. Also that he once shot a mackerel gull in Concord, — I think he said it was in May; that he sees the two kinds of yellow-legs here; that he has shot at least two kinds of large gray ducks, as big (one, at least) as black ducks. He says that one winter (it may have been the last) there were caught by him and others at one place in the river below Ball's Hill, in sight of Carlisle Bridge, about two hundred pounds of pickerel within a week, — something quite unprecedented, at least of late years. This was about the last of February or first of March. No males were caught! and he thinks that they had collected there in order to spawn. Perhaps perch and pickerel collect in large numbers for this purpose.

P. M. — To Assabet over meadows in boat; a very strong and a cold northwest wind. I land again at the (now island) rock, on Simon Brown's land, and look for arrowheads, and picked up two pieces of soapstone pottery. One was probably part of the same which C. found with me there the other day. C.'s piece was one side of a shallow dish, say an inch and a half deep, four eighths to six eighths of an inch thick, with a sort of ear for handle on one side, — almost a leg. His piece, like mine, looks as if it had been scratched all  over on the outside by a nail, and it is evident that this is the way it was fashioned. It was scratched with some hard, sharp-pointed stone and so crumbled and worn away. This little knoll was half plowed (through its summit) last fall in order to be cultivated this spring, and the high water standing over all but the apex has for a fortnight been faithfully washing away the soil and leaving the stones — Indian relics and others — exposed. The very roots of the grass, yellowish-brown fibres, are thus washed clean and exposed in considerable quantity there. You could hardly have contrived a better way to separate the arrowheads that lay buried in that sod between the rocks from the sod and soil.

At the Pokelogan up the Assabet, I see my first phcebe, the mild bird. It flirts its tail and sings pre vit, pre vit, pre vit, pre vit incessantly, as it sits over the water, and then at last, rising on the last syllable, says pre-vEE, as if insisting on that with peculiar emphasis.

The villagers remark how dark and angry the water looks to-day. I think it is because it is a clear and very windy day and the high waves cast much shadow. Crow blackbirds common.