River higher than before since winter. Whole of Lee Meadow covered.
Saw two pigeon woodpeckers approach and, I think, put their bills together and utter that o-week, o-week.
The currant and second gooseberry are bursting into leaf.
P.M. — To Cedar Swamp via Assabet.
Warm and pretty still. Even the riversides are quiet at this hour (3 P.M.) as in summer; the birds are neither seen nor heard.
The anthers of the larch are conspicuous, but I see no pollen. White cedar to-morrow.
See a frog hawk beating the bushes regularly. What a peculiarly formed wing! It should be called the kite. Its wings are very narrow and pointed, and its form in front is a remarkable curve, and its body is not heavy and buzzard-like. It occasionally hovers over some parts of the meadow or hedge and circles back over it, only rising enough from time to time to clear the trees and fences.
Soon after I see hovering over Sam Barrett’s, high sailing, a more buzzard-like brown hawk, black-barred beneath and on tail, with short, broad, ragged wings and perhaps a white mark on under side of wings. The chickens utter a note of alarm. Is it the broad-winged hawk (Falco Pennsylvanicus)? (Probably not.)
But why should the other be called F. fuscus? I think this is called the partridge hawk. The books are very unsatisfactory on these two hawks.
Apparently barn swallows over the river. And do I see bank swallows also?
C. says he has seen a yellow-legs.
I have seen also for some weeks occasionally a brown hawk with white rump, flying low, which I have thought the frog hawk in a different stage of plumage; but can it be at this season? and is it not the marsh hawk? Yet it is not so heavy nearly as the hen-hawk -- probably female hen-harrier [i. e. marsh hawk].
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 23, 1855
Saw two pigeon woodpeckers approach and, I think, put their bills together and utter that o-week, o-week. See April 8, 1855 (" Hear and see a pigeon woodpecker, something like week-up week-up. April 15, 1858 (" See a pair of woodpeckers on a rail and on the ground a-courting. One keeps hopping near the other, and the latter hops away a few feet, and so they accompany one another a long distance, uttering sometimes a faint or short a-week"); April 22, 1856 ("Going through Hubbard’s root-fence field, see a pigeon woodpecker on a fence post. He shows his lighter back between his wings cassock-like and like the smaller woodpeckers. Joins his mate on a tree and utters the wooing note o-week o-week,"); October 5, 1857 ("The pigeon woodpecker utters his whimsical ah-week ah-week, etc., as in spring."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Woodpecker (flicker).
Confusing hawks. See also May 4, 1855 ("I think that what I have called the sparrow hawk falsely, and latterly pigeon hawk, is also the sharp-shinned (vide April 26th and May 8th, 1854, and April 16th, 1855), for the pigeon hawk’s tail is white-barred. “); July 2, 1856 (“Looked at the birds in the Natural History Rooms in Boston. Observed no white spots on the sparrow hawk’s wing, or on the pigeon or sharp-shinned hawk’s. Indeed they were so closed that I could not have seen them. Am uncertain to which my wing belongs.”) See also A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Hawk (Merlin)
A brown hawk with white rump, flying low, which I have thought the frog hawk in a different stage of plumage. . . probably female hen-harrier. See May 1, 1855 (" What I have called the frog hawk is probably the male hen-harrier, . . .MacGillivray . . .says . . . the large brown bird with white rump is the female"); March 21, 1859 ("I see a female marsh hawk. . I not only see the white rump but the very peculiar crescent-shaped curve of its wings. "); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)
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