To the hilltop for a sunrise

April 16. 

5 A. M. 

Clear and cool. A frost whitens the ground; yet a mist hangs over the village. There is a thin ice, reaching a foot from the water’s edge, which the earliest rays will melt. 

I scare up several snipes feeding on the meadow’s edge. It is remarkable how they conceal themselves when they alight on a bare spit of the meadow. I look with my glass to where one alighted four rods off, and at length detect its head rising amid the cranberry vines and withered grass blades,--which last it closely resembles in color, -- with its eye steadily fixed on me. 

The robins, etc., blackbirds, song sparrows sing now on all hands just before sunrise, perhaps quite as generally as at any season. 

Going up the hill, I examine the tree-tops for hawks. What is that little hawk about as big as a turtle dove on the top of one of the white oaks on top of the hill? It appears to have a reddish breast. Now it flies to the bare top of a dead tree. Now some crows join, and it pursues one, diving at it repeatedly from above, down a rod or more, as far as I can see toward the hemlocks. 

Returning that way, I come unexpectedly close to this hawk perched near the top of a large aspen by the river right over my head. He seems neither to see nor hear me. At first I think it a new woodpecker. I have a fair view of all its back and tail within forty feet with my glass. 

Its back is, I should say, a rather dark ash, spotted, and so barred, wings and back, with large white spots, woodpecker-like (not well described in books), probably on the inner vanes of the feathers, both secondaries and primaries, and probably coverts. The tail conspicuously barred with black, three times beyond the covering and feathers and once at least under them. Beneath and under tail, mainly a dirty white with long and conspicuous femoral feathers, unlike sparrow hawk. Head darker and bill dark. 

It is busily pruning itself, and suddenly pitches off downward. What I call a pigeon hawk, probably sharp-shinned. 

In the meanwhile hear the quivet through the wood, and, looking, see through an opening a small compact flock of pigeons flying low about. 

From the Hill-top look to the Great Meadows with glass. They are very smooth, with a slight mist over them, but I can see very clearly the pale salmon of the eastern horizon reflected there, contrasting with an intermediate streak of skim-milk blue, — now, just after sunrise.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 16, 1855

What I call a pigeon hawk, probably sharp-shinned. See 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.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the sharp-shinned hawk.

The robins, etc., blackbirds, song sparrows sing now on all hands just before sunrise, perhaps quite as generally as at any season. See April 16, 1856 ("The robins sing with a will now. What a burst of melody! It gurgles out of all conduits now; they are choked with it. There is such a tide and rush of song as when a river is straightened between two rocky walls. It seems as if the morning’s throat were not large enough to emit all this sound.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring