Equilibrium

May 16. 

2 P. M. — 56° , with a cold east wind. Many people have fires again.

Near Peter's I see a small creeper hopping along the branches of the oaks and pines, ever turning this way and that as it hops, making various angles with the bough; then flies across to another bough, or to the base of another tree, and traces that up, zigzag and prying into the crevices.

Think how thoroughly the trees are thus explored by various birds. You can hardly sit near one for five minutes now, but either a woodpecker or creeper comes and examines its bark rapidly, or a warbler makes a pretty thorough exploration about all its expanding leaflets, even to the topmost twig.

The whole North American forest is being thus explored for insect food. Each is visited by many kinds and thus the equilibrium of the insect and vegetable kingdom is preserved.

Perhaps I may say that each opening bud is thus visited before it has fully expanded.

The golden robin utters from time to time a hoarse or grating cr-r-ack.

The creepers are very common now.

Now that the warblers are here in such numbers is the very time on another account to study them, for the leaf buds are generally but just expanding, and if you look toward the light you can see every bird that flits through a small grove, but a few weeks hence the leaves will conceal them.

The deciduous trees are just beginning to invest the evergreens, and this, methinks, is the very midst of the leafing season, when the oaks are getting into the gray.

A lupine will open to-day.

One wild pink out.

Red cherry apparently in prime.

A golden-crowned thrush keeps the trunks of the young trees between me and it as it hops away.

Are those poplars the tremuliformis which look so dead south of Holbrook ' s land, not having leafed out?

Menyanthes, apparently a day or two.

Andromeda Polifolia, how long

Andromeda calyculata much past prime.

Nemopanthes, maybe a day or two out.

The swamps are exceedingly dry. On the 13th I walked wherever I wanted to in thin shoes in Kalmia Swamp, and to-day I walk through the middle of Beck Stow ' s. The river meadows are more wet, comparatively.

I pass a young red maple whose keys hang down three inches or more and appear to be nearly ripe. This, being in a favorable light (on one side from the sun) and being of a high color, — a pink scarlet, — is a very beautiful object, more so than when in flower. Masses of double samaræ unequally disposed along the branches, trembling in the wind. Like the flower of the shad-bush, so this handsome fruit is seen for the most part now against bare twigs, it is so much in advance of its own and of other leaves. The peduncles gracefully rise a little before they curve downward. They are only a little darker shade than the samaræ. There are sometimes three samaræ together.

Sun goes down red.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, May 16, 1860

I see a small creeper. See November 16, 1859 ("It begins at the base, and creeps rapidly upward by starts, adhering close to the bark and shifting a little from side to side often till near the top, then suddenly darts off downward to the base of another tree, where it repeats the same course."