The song of the robin is most suggestive in cloudy weather.

May 14

First kingbird. Its voice and flight relate it to the swallow. 

The maple-keys are already formed, though the male blossoms (on different trees) are not withered.

Going over the Corner causeway, the willow blossoms fill the air with a sweet fragrance, and I am ready to sing, Ah! willow, willow! These willows have yellow bark, bear yellow flowers and yellowish-green leaves, and are now haunted by the summer yellowbird and Maryland yellow-throat. 

They see this now conspicuous mass of yellowish verdure at a distance and fly to it. Single large willows at distance are great nosegays of yellow. This orchard precedes the peach and apple weeks. 

The Salix nigra (?) is leafing out now with its catkins appearing.

The sounds and sights — as birds and flowers — heard and seen at those seasons when there are fewest are most memorable and suggestive of poetic associations.

 The trillium is budded. 

bellwort
May 14, 2017

The Uvularia sessilifolio, a drooping flower with tender stems and leaves; the latter curled so as to show their under sides hanging about the stems, as if shrinking from the cold.

The Ranunculus bulbosus  shows its yellow by this spring thus early (Corner Spring).

The grass is now whitened with bluets; the fields are green, and the roadsides. (I am on the C. Miles road.) Now is the season to travel.

The deciduous trees are rapidly investing the evergreens, making the woods rich and bosky by degrees. 

The robin sings this louring day. They sang most in and about that great freshet storm. The song of the robin is most suggestive in cloudy weather. 

I have not heard any toads during this rain (of which this is the third day), and very few peepers. 

The beautiful birch catkins hang down four inches.

Saw a whip-poor-will sitting in the path in woods on the mill road, — the brown mottled bird. It flutters off blindly, with slow, soft flight. 

Most birds are silent in the storm. Hear the robin, oven-bird, night warbler, and, at length, the towhee's towee, chickadee's phoebe, and a preluding thrasher and a jay.

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, May 14, 1852

The Uvularia sessilifolio, a drooping flower with tender stems and leaves. See  May 16, 1852 ("When you turn up the drooping flower, its petals make a perfect geometrical figure, a six-pointed star.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Bellworts

The Ranunculus bulbosus shows it by this spring thus early (Corner Spring)s yellow. See May 14, 1853 ("The glossy or varnished yellow of buttercups (bulbosus, also abundant, some days out) spots the hillside.") See also May 17, 1856 ("Ranunculus bulbosils a day or two at least.")May 29, 1859 ("The Ranunculus bulbosus are apparently in prime."); May 29, 1857 ("Ranunculus bulbosus in bloom.");

The deciduous trees are rapidly investing the evergreens, making the woods rich and bosky by degrees. See May 18, 1852 ("They are now being invested with the light, sunny, yellowish-green of the deciduous trees.”) May 22, 1855 ("The deciduous trees leafing begin to clothe or invest the evergreens.”); June 9, 1852 (“The deciduous trees have filled up the intervals between the evergreens, and the woods are bosky now.”)

The song of the robin is most suggestive in cloudy weather. See April 26, 1855 ("We see and hear more birds than usual this mizzling and still day, and the robin sings with more vigor and promise than later in the season.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring

May 14. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, May 14.

The sounds and sights of

birds and flowers heard and seen

when they are fewest.