Before the woods leaf out.

May 1.

I hear the first towhee finch. He says to-wee, to-wee, and another, much farther off than I supposed when I went in search of him, says whip your ch-r-r-r-r-r-r, with a metallic ring. 

I hear the first catbird also, mewing, and the wood thrush, which still thrills me, -a sound to be heard in a new country,- from one side of a clearing. I think I heard an oven-bird just now, - wicher wicher whicher wich.

I am on the Cliff. It is about six. The flicker cackles. I hear a woodpecker tapping. The tinkle of the huckleberry-bird comes up from the shrub oak plain. A partridge bursts away from under the rock below me on quivering wings. Leaving the woods I hear the hooting of an owl, which sounds very much like a clown calling to his team.

We have, then, flowers and the song of birds before the woods leaf out  – like poetry. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 1, 1852

I think I heard an oven-bird just now, - wicher wicher whicher wich. See April 27, 1854 (“Hear a faint sort of oven-bird's (?) note.”); May 4, 1855 (“In cut woods a small thrush, with crown inclining to rufous, tail foxy, and edges of wings dark-ash; clear white beneath. I think the golden-crowned?”);  May 7, 1852 (“The first oven-bird.”);  May 7, 1853 (“The woods now begin to ring with the woodland note of the oven-bird.”); May 9, 1857 (“Golden-crowned thrush note. ”);  May 10, 1858 (“As I paddle along, hear the Maryland yellow-throat, the bobolink, the oven-bird, and the yellow-throated vireo.”); May 12, 1855 (“Hear an oven-bird.”);  May 13, 1856 (“Also the oven-bird sings.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Oven-bird.

Leaving the woods I hear the hooting of an owl, which sounds very much like a clown calling to his team. See November 18, 1851 (“ Now at sundown I hear the hooting of an owl, — hoo hoo hoo, hoorer hoo. It sounds like the hooting of an idiot or a maniac broke loose”) See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Voice of the Barred Owl

We have, then, flowers and the song of birds before the woods leaf out – like poetry. See April 28, 1852 ("The spring flowers wait not to perfect their leaves before they expand their blossoms. The blossom in so many cases precedes the leaf; so with poetry? They flash out.")

We have flowers and

birdsong – like poetry –

before woods leaf out.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2024

I was going to say
“I was just thinking about you”
But you didn’t call.
zphx 20220501