A still cloudy day on the water

April 15.

9 A. M. —— To Atkins’s boat-house. 

No sun till setting. Another still, moist, overcast day, without sun, but all day a crescent of light, as if breaking away in the north. 

The waters smooth and full of reflections. A still cloudy day like this is perhaps the best to be on the water. To the clouds, perhaps, we owe both the stillness and the reflections, for the light is in great measure reflected from the water. 

Robins sing now at 10 A. M. as in the morning, and the phoebe; and pigeon woodpecker’s cackle is heard, and many martins (with white—bellied swallows) are skimming and twittering above the water, perhaps catching the small fuzzy gnats with which the air is filled. 

The sound of church bells, at various distances, in Concord and the neighboring towns, sounds very sweet to us on the water this still day. It is the song of the villages heard with the song of the birds.

The Great Meadows are covered, except a small island in their midst, but not a duck do we see there.

On a low limb of a maple on the edge of the river, thirty rods from the present shore, we see a fish hawk eating a fish. Sixty rods off we can see his white crest. We land and get nearer by stealing through the woods. His legs look long as he stands up on the limb with his back to us, and his body looks black against the sky and by contrast with the white of his head. 

There is a dark stripe on the side of the head. He has got the fish under his feet on the limb, and will bow his head, snatch a mouthful, and then look hastily over his right shoulder in our direction, then snatch another mouthful and look over his left shoulder. At length he launches off and flaps heavily away. 

We find at the bottom of the water beneath where he sat numerous fragments of the fish he had been eating, parts of the fins, entrails, gills, etc., and some was dropped on the bough. From one fin which I examine, I judge that it was either a sucker or a pout. There were small leeches adhering to it. 

In the meanwhile, as we steal through the woods, we hear the pleasing note of the pine warbler, bringing back warmer weather, and we hear one honk of a goose, and, looking up, see a large narrow harrow of them steering northeast. 

Half a mile further we see another fish hawk upon a dead limb midway up a swamp white oak over the water, at the end of a small island. We paddle directly toward him till within thirty rods. A crow comes scolding to the tree and alights within three feet, looking about as large, compared with the hawk, as a crow blackbird to a crow, but he pays no attention to him. 

We have a very good view of him, as he sits sidewise to us, and of his eagle-shaped head and beak. The white feathers of his head, which are erected somewhat, make him look like a copple crowned hen. When he launches off, he utters a clear whistling note, — phe phe, phe phe, phe phe, — somewhat like that of a telltale, but more round and less shrill and rapid, and another, perhaps his mate, fifty rods off, joins him. 

They fly heavily, as we look at them from behind, more like a blue heron and bittern than I was aware of, their long wings undulating slowly to the tip, like the heron’s, and the bodies seeming sharp like a gull’s and unlike a hawk’s. 

In the water beneath where he was perched, we find many fragments of a pout, — bits of red gills, entrails, fins, and some of the long flexible black feelers, — scattered for four or five feet. This pout appeared to have been quite fresh, and was probably caught alive. 

We afterward start one of them from an oak over the water a mile beyond, just above the boat house, and he skims off very low over the water, several times striking it with a loud sound heard plainly sixty rods off at least; and we follow him with our eyes till we can only see faintly his undulating wings against the sky in the western horizon. You could probably tell if any were about by looking for fragments of fish under the trees on which they would perch. 

We scare up but few ducks — some apparently black, which quacked—and some small rolling-pins, probably teal. 

Returning, we have a fine view of a blue heron, standing erect and open to view on a meadow island, by the great swamp south of the bridge, looking as broad as a boy on the side, and then some sheldrakes sailing in the smooth water beyond. These soon sail behind points of meadow. The heron flys away, and one male sheldrake flys past us low over the water, reconnoitring, large and brilliant black and white. 

When the heron takes to flight, what a change in size and appearance! It is presto change! There go two great undulating wings pinned together, but the body and neck must have been left behind somewhere. 

Before we rounded Ball’s Hill, —the water now beautifully smooth,—at 2.30 P. M., we see three gulls sailing on the glassy meadow at least half a mile off, by the oak peninsula, — the plainer because they are against the reflection of the hills. They look larger than afterward close at hand, as if their whiteness is reflected and doubled. 

As we advance into the Great Meadows, making the only ripples in their broad expanse, there being still not a ray of sunshine, only a subdued light through the thinner crescent in the north, the reflections of the maples, of Ponkawtasset and the poplar hill, and the whole township in the southwest, are as perfect as I ever saw. 

A wall which runs down to the water on the hillside, without any remarkable curve in it, is exaggerated by the reflection into the half of an ellipse. The meadow is expanded to a large lake, the shoreline being referred to the sides of the hills reflected in it. It is a scene worth many such voyages to see. 

It is remarkable how much light those white gulls, and also a bleached post on a distant shore, absorb and reflect through that sombre atmosphere, — conspicuous almost as candles in the night. When we get near to the gulls, they rist heavily and flap away, answering a more distant one, with a remarkable, deliberate, melancholy, squeaking scream, mewing, or piping, almost a squeal. It was a little like the loon. Is this sound the origin of the name sea-mew?

Notwithstanding the smoothness of the water, we can not easily see black ducks against the reflection of the woods, but hear them rise at a distance before we see them. 

The birds are still in the middle of the day, but begin to sing again by 4.30 P. M., probably because of the clouds. See and hear a kingfisher—do they not come with the smooth waters of April? — hurrying over the meadow as if on urgent business. 

That general tut tut tut tut, or snoring, of frogs on the shallow meadow heard first slightly the 5th. There is a very faint er er er now and then mixed with it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 15, 1855

The sound of church bells sounds very sweet to us on the water this still day. It is the song of the villages. See April 5, 1855 ("[W]e on the water hear the loud and musical sound of bells ringing for church in the surrounding towns.")

We hear the pleasing note of the pine warbler, bringing back warmer weather. See April 15, 1859 ("The warm pine woods are all alive this afternoon with the jingle of the pine warbler."); April 15, 1860 ("At Conantum pitch pines hear the first pine warbler") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pine Warbler

That general tut tut tut tut, or snoring of frogs . . . a very faint er er er now and then mixed with it. See note to April 3, 1858 ("They were the R. halecina.. . .Their note is a hard dry tut tut tut tut, not at all ringing like the toad’s. . .; and from time to time one makes that faint somewhat bullfrog-like er er er. Both these sounds, then, are made by one frog, . . . This, I think, is the first frog sound I have heard from the river meadows ")