Quickly and surely does a bee find the earliest flower.

April 17.

5 A. M. — Up Assabet. 

Very little frost; a clear morning. The oars still cold to the hand at this hour. Did I not hear an F. juncorum at a distance? See some crow blackbirds inspecting that old nest of theirs. I believe I see a tree sparrow still, but I do not remember an F. hyemalis for two days. 

Geese go over at noon, when warm and sunny. 

P. M. —— To Lee’s Cliff. 

I leave off my greatcoat, though the wind rises rather fresh before I return. It is worth the while to walk so free and light, having got off both boots and greatcoat. 

Great flocks of grackles and red-wings about the Swamp Bridge Brook willows, perching restlessly on an apple tree all at once, and then, with a sweeping or curving flight, alighting on the ground. 

Many robins flit before me in flocks these days. I rarely find a nest (of the right species) near the river but it has a piece of a fish-line in it. 

The yellow-spot tortoises are very common now in the ditches, tumbling in and crawling off, and perhaps burying themselves at your approach. Many are outside. 

The second sallow catkin (or any willow) I have seen in blossom —there are three or four catkins on the twig partly open —I am about to clutch, but find already a bee curved close on each half-opened catkin, intoxicated with its early sweet, —one perhaps a honey-bee, — so intent on its sweets or pollen that they do not dream of flying. Various kinds of bees — some of the honey bees — have little yellow masses of pollen on their thighs; some seem to be taking it into their mouths. 

So quickly and surely does a bee find the earliest flower, as if he had slumbered all winter at the root of the plant. No matter what pains you take, probably —undoubtedly—an insect will have found the first flower before you. 

Yesterday I saw several larger frogs out. Perhaps some were small bullfrogs. That warmth brought them out on to the bank, and they jumped in before me. The general stirring of frogs. To-day I see a Rana palustris — I think the first — and a middling sized bullfrog, I think. I suspect that those first seen in Hubbard’s Close were the little croakers. 

I see by their droppings that many birds — perhaps robins ——-have lately roosted in that wine-glass apple scrub on Conantum, an excellent covert from the hawks, only six or eight feet in diameter. I also see where birds have roosted in a thick white pine in Lee’s Wood. It is easy to detect their roosting-places now, because they are in flocks. 

See a woodchuck. His deep reddish-brown rear, somewhat grizzled about, looked like a ripe fruit mellowed by winter. C. saw one some time ago. They have several holes under Lee’s Cliff, where they have worn bare and smooth sandy paths under the eaves of the rock, and I suspect that they nibble the early leaves there.

They, or the partridges or rabbits, there and at Middle Conantum Cliff, make sad havoc with the earliest radical leaves and flowers which I am watching, and in the village I have to contend with the hens, who also love an early salad. 

Sit at the wall corner to see an eagle’s white head and tail against the red hillside, but in vain. 

The distant white pines over the Spanish Brook seem to flake into tiers; the whole tree looks like an open cone. 

A sudden warm day, like yesterday and this, takes off some birds and adds others. It is a crisis in their career. The fox-colored sparrows seem to be gone, and I suspect that most of the tree sparrows and F. hyemalis, at least, went yesterday. So the pleasanter weather seems not an unmixed benefit. 

The flowers of the common elm at Lee’s are now loose and dangling, apparently well out a day or two in advance of Cheney’s, but I see no pollen. 

Walking under the Cliff, I am struck by the already darker, healthier green of early weeds there—e. g. the little thyme-flowering sand wort — before there is any green to speak of elsewhere. 

Did I not see the yellow redpoll on an apple tree with some robins, by chance in the same place where I saw one last year? Yet I see no chestnut on head, but bright-yellow breast and blackish further extremity. 

The early aspen catkins are now some of them two and a half inches long and white, dangling in the breeze. 

The earliest gooseberry leaves are fairly unfolding now, and show some green at a little distance.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 17, 1855

I believe I see a tree sparrow still, but I do not remember an F. hyemalis for two days. . . .It is a crisis in their career. The fox-colored sparrows seem to be gone, and I suspect that most of the tree sparrows and F. hyemalis, at least, went yesterday. See April 17, 1854 ("There are but few F. hyemalis about now; they appear to have gone north mostly on the advent of warmer weather about the 5th of April . . . The tree sparrow is still the prevailing bird."); April 23, 1859 ("The tree sparrows abundant and singing in the yard, but I have not noticed a hyemalis of late") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Fox-colored Sparrow.See

It is worth the while to walk so free and light, having got off both boots and greatcoat. See March 30, 1860 (“It is time to begin to leave your greatcoat at home, to put on shoes instead of boots and feel lightfooted.”)

So quickly and surely does a bee find the earliest flower . . . See April 6, 1854 ("They know where to look for the white maple and when."); March 18, 1860 ("There is but one flower in bloom in the town, and this insect knows where to find it. You little think that it knows the locality of early flowers better than you. “) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bees

To-day I see a Rana palustris — I think the first.  See note to  April 17, 1860 ("The meadows are alive with purring frogs. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,The Pickerel frog (Rana palustris orLithobates palustris)

The flowers of the common elm at Lee’s are now loose and dangling, apparently well out a day or two in advance of Cheney’s.  See April 15, 1852 ("The broad flat brown buds on Mr. Cheney's elm, containing twenty or thirty yellowish-green threads, surmounted with little brownish-mulberry cups, which contain the stamens and the two styles, -- these are just expanding or blossoming now");  April 15, 1854 ("The arrival of the purple finches appears to be coincident with the blossoming of the elm, on whose blossom it feeds");  . April 15, 1856("The purple finch is singing on the elms "); April 16, 1856 ("Cheney’s elm shows stamens on the warm side pretty numerously.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Elms and the Purple Finch

The early aspen catkins are now some of them two and a half inches long and white, dangling in the breeze. See April 9, 1856 ("Early aspen catkins have curved downward an inch, and began to shed pollen apparently yesterday.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aspens

The earliest gooseberry leaves are fairly unfolding now, and show some green at a little distance. See April 13, 1856 (" The early gooseberry leaf-buds in garden have burst, -- now like small green frilled horns.");April 21, 1855 ("The frost conceals the green of the gooseberry leaves just expanding. ")  See also A Book of the Seasons,, by Henry Thoreau, Leaf-Out