Tuesday, April 8, 2014

A white-headed eagle

April 8

Methinks I do not see such great and lively flocks of hyemalis and tree sparrows in the morning since the warm days, the 4th, 5th, and 6th. Perchance after the warmer days, which bring out the frogs and butterflies, the alders and maples, the greater part of them leave for the north and give place to newcomers.

Am surprised to find two crowfoot blossoms withered. They undoubtedly opened the 5th or 6th; say the last. They must be earlier here than at the Cliffs, where I have observed them the last two years. 

They are a little earlier than the saxifrage around them here, of which last I find one specimen at last, in a favorable angle of the rock, just opening. I have not allowed enough for the difference of localities.

The columbine shows the most spring growth of any plant.

Saw a large bird sail along over the edge of Wheeler's cranberry meadow just below Fair Haven, which I at first thought a gull, but with my glass found it was a hawk and had a perfectly white head and tail and broad or blackish wings. It sailed and circled along over the low cliff, and the crows dived at it in the field of my glass, and I saw it well, both above and beneath, as it turned, and then it passed off to hover over the Cliffs at a greater height. It was undoubtedly a white-headed eagle. It was to the eye but a large hawk.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 8, 1854

The warmer days, which bring out the frogs and butterflies
. See April 5, 1854 ("These days, when a soft west or southwest wind blows and it is truly warm, and an outside coat is oppressive, — these bring out the butterflies and the frogs, and the marsh hawks which prey on the last. Just so simple is every year. ")

Lively flocks of hyemalis and tree sparrows. See March 23, 1854 ("The birds in yard active now, — hyemalis, tree sparrow, and song sparrow. The hyemalis jingle easily distinguished. "): March 24, 1854 ("Great flocks of hyemalis drifting about with their jingling note"); March 30, 1854 ("Great flocks of tree sparrows and some F. hyemalis on the ground and trees on the Island Neck, making the air and bushes ring with their jingling. March 30, 1854"); April 1, 1854 ("The tree sparrows, hyemalis, and song sparrows are particularly lively and musical in the yard this rainy and truly April day. The air rings with them. ");April 2, 1854 ("The tree sparrows make the alders, etc. ring. They have a metallic chirp and a short canary- like warble . They keep company with the hyemalis.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: Signs of the Spring, the note of the dark-eyed junco going northwardA Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis); A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow

Am surprised to find two crowfoot blossoms withered. . . They must be earlier here than at the Cliffs, . . . They are a little earlier than the saxifrage around them here.  See April 8, 1856 ("On the Fair Haven Cliff, crowfoot and saxifrage are very backward");   April 3, 1853 ("To my great surprise the saxifrage is in bloom. It was, as it were, by mere accident that I found it. I had not observed any particular forwardness in it, when, happening to look under a projecting rock in a little nook on the south side of a stump, I spied one little plant which had opened three or four blossoms high up the Cliff.") April 10, 1853 ("Two crowfoots out on the Cliff. A very warm and dry exposure but no further sheltered were they. Pale yellow offering of spring. The saxifrage is beginning to be abundant, elevating its flowers somewhat, pure, trustful, white amid its pretty notched and reddish cup of leaves . The white saxifrage is a response from earth to the increased light of the year; the yellow crowfoot to the increased heat of the sun");   April 13, 1854 ("The saxifrage is pretty common, ahead of the crowfoot now, and its peduncles have shot up.");   April 23, 1854 (Crowfoot is not yet abundant , though it was earlier than saxifrage, which has now gone ahead"") and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Crowfoot (Ranunculus fascicularis)A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Saxifrage in Spring (Saxifraga vernalis)

The columbine shows the most spring growth of any plant.  See  April 8, 1855 ("The columbine leaves in the clefts of Cliffs are one of the very earliest obvious growths. I noticed it the first of April.");  April 1, 1855 ("At the first Conantum Cliff I am surprised to see how much the columbine leaves have grown in a sheltered cleft")

A white-headed eagle. See March 13, 1854 ("Bought a telescope to-day for eight dollars"); April 10, 1854 ("I bought me a spy-glass some weeks since. I buy but few things, and those not till long after I begin to want them, so that when I do get them I am prepared to make a perfect use of them and extract their whole sweet"); April 23, 1854 (" Saw my white - headed eagle again , first at the same place. . .We who live this plodding life here below never know how many eagles fly over us"); April 23, 1854 ("I think I have got the worth of my glass now that it has revealed to me the white-headed eagle");  See also April 6, 1856 (" Looking with my glass, I saw that it was a great bird.. . . I am not sure whether it was a white-headed eagle or a fish hawk. . . . then, with its rear to me, presenting the least surface, it moved off steadily in its orbit over the woods northwest, with the slightest possible undulation of its wings, — a noble planetary motion, like Saturn with its ring seen edgewise.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White-headed Eagle

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