The awakening of the meadow.

April 5. 

Fast-Day. 9 A. M. —To Sudbury line by boat. 

A still and rather warm morning, with a very thick haze concealing the sun and threatening to turn to rain. 

It is a smooth, April-morning water, and many sportsmen are out in their boats. I see a pleasure-boat, on the smooth surface away by the Rock, resting lightly as a feather in the air. 

Scare up a snipe close to the water’s edge, and soon after a hen-hawk from the Clamshell oaks. The last looks larger on his perch than flying. 

The snipe too, then, like crows, robins, blackbirds, and hens, is found near the waterside, where is the first spring (e.g. alders and white maples, etc., etc), and there too especially are heard the song and tree sparrows and pewees, and even the hen-hawk at this season haunts there for his prey. 

Inland, the groves are almost completely silent as yet. The concert of song and tree sparrows at willow-row is now very full, and their different notes are completely mingled. 

See a single white-bellied swallow dashing over the river. He, too, is attracted here by the early insects that begin to be seen over the water.  See this forenoon a great many of those little fuzzy gnats in the air.

It being Fast-Day, we on the water hear the loud and musical sound of bells ringing for church in the surrounding towns. 

It is a sober, moist day, with a circle round the sun, which I can only see in the reflection in the water.

The river appears to have risen still last night, owing to the rain of the 1st, and many spring cranberries are washed together at last, and now many new seeds, apparently of sedges, are loosened and washed up. 

Now that for the most part it is melted quite to its edge, and there is no ice there, the water has a warmer, April look close under my eye. Now is the first time this year to get spring cranberries. 

In many places now the river wreck is chiefly composed of Juncus militaris. Was it so in fall? 

There is a strong muskrat scent from many a shore. See a muskrat floating, which may have been drowned when the river was so high in midwinter, —for this is the second I have seen, —with the rabbit. 

I saw yesterday a yellow-spot and see to-day a painted tortoise, already out on the bank on a tuft of grass. 

The muskrat-hunter sits patiently with cocked gun, waiting for a muskrat to put out his head amid the button-bushes. He gets half a dozen in such a cruise.

Bush our boat with hemlock to get near some ducks, but another boat above, also bushed, scares them.

Hear from one half-flooded meadow that low, general, hard, stuttering tut tut tut of frogs,—the awakening of the meadow. 

Hear the cry of the peacock again. 

By 4 P. M. it begins to rain gently or mizzle. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 5, 1855

Scare up a snipe close to the water’s edge. See April 2, 1859 (" As I go down the street just after sunset, I hear many snipe to-night. This sound is annually heard by the villagers, but always at this hour, i. e. in the twilight, — a hovering sound high in the air, — and they do not know what to refer it to.");  April 10, 1854 ("There are many snipes now feeding in the meadows, which you come close upon, and then they go off with hoarse cr-r-r-ack cr-r-r-ack. They dive down suddenly from a considerable height sometimes when they alight"); See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: the Snipe

Juncus militaris. Bayonet rush. Inhabits shallow water of lakes and slow-moving rivers.  Its fruit is a capsule, with at least three seeds in it.

Sound of bells on the water. See May 3, 1852 ("There is a grand, rich, musical echo trembling on the air long after the clock has ceased to strike, like a vast organ, filling the air with a trembling music like a flower of sound. Nature adopts it. Beautiful is sound.")

 That low, general, hard, stuttering tut tut tut of frogs,—the awakening of the meadow.. See April 5, 1854 ("the shrill peep of the hylodes borne to me from afar through the woods");  April 5, 1855 ("Hear from one half-flooded meadow that low, general, hard, stuttering tut tut tut of frogs,—the awakening of the meadow.”); April 5, 1857 ("I hear the croaking frogs at 9.30 P. M.");; April 5, 1858 ("The woods resound with the one [R. sylvatica], and the meadows day and night with the other [R. halecina], so that it amounts to a general awakening of the pools and meadows. "); April 5, 1860 (" a very faint distant ring of toads."). See also April 3, 1858 ("This might be called the Day of the Snoring Frogs, or the Awakening of the Meadows."); April 9, 1853 (“The whole meadow resounds, probably from one end of the river to the other, this evening, with this faint, stertorous breathing. It is the waking up of the meadows.")