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 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 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.
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.
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.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 14, 1852
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
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