We see and hear more birds than usual this mizzling and still day.

April 26.

A cloudy, still, damp, and at length drizzling day. 

P.M. — To Bayberry and Black Ash Cellar. 

Wheildon’s arbor-vitae well out, maybe for a week.

The silvery abele, probably to-day or yesterday, but I do not see pollen. 

The blossoms of the red maple (some a yellowish green) are now most generally conspicuous and handsome scarlet crescents over the swamps. 

Going over Ponkawtasset, hear a golden-crested wren, — the robin’s note, etc., —in the tops of the high wood; see myrtle-birds and half a dozen pigeons. 

The prate of the last is much like the creaking of a tree. They lift their wings at the same moment as they sit. There are said to be many about now. See their warm-colored breasts. 

I see pigeon woodpeckers billing on an oak at a distance. 

Young apple leafing, say with the common rose, also some early large ones. Bayberry not started much. Fever-bush out apparently a day or two, between Black Birch Cellar and Easterbrook’s. It shows plainly now, before the leaves have come out on bushes, twenty rods off. 

See and hear chewinks, — all their strains; the same date with last year, by accident. 

Many male and female white-throated sparrows feeding on the pasture with the song sparrow. The male’s white is buff in the female. 

A brown thrasher seen at a little distance.

We see and hear more birds than usual this mizzling and still day, and the robin sings with more vigor and promise than later in the season.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 26, 1855

this mizzling and still day . .. the robin sings with more vigor and promise ... See April 26, 1854 ("Birds sing all day when it is warm, still, and overcast as now. . ."); April 16, 1856 ("The robins sing with a will now. . . .A moist, misty, rain-threatening April day. About noon it does mizzle a little. The robin sings throughout it.”); May 14, 1852 (“The robin sings this louring day. They sang most in and about that great freshet storm. The song of the robin is most suggestive in cloudy weather.”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring

See myrtle-birds.  See April 26, 1854 (“The woods are full of myrtle-birds this afternoon”); and note to April 28, 1855 (“There are a great many myrtle-birds here, — they have been quite common for a week,”)

Hear a golden-crested wren, — the robin’s note, etc., —in the tops of the high wood (probably the ruby-crowned kinglet) See April 26, 1860 ("Hear the ruby-crowned wren in the morning, near George Heywood's."). See also May 7, 1854 ("A ruby-crested wren. . .Saw its ruby crest and heard its harsh note. (This was the same I have called golden-crowned . . . except that I saw its ruby crest.. ..Have I seen the two?)”) May 6, 1855 ("Hear at a distance a ruby(?)-crowned wren, . . . I think this the only Regulus I have ever seen.”); December 25, 1859 ("I hear a sharp fine screep from some bird,. . . I can see a brilliant crown. . . . It is evidently the golden-crested wren, which I have not made out before.”). Also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: the ruby-crowned or crested wren.

See and hear chewinks, — all their strains; the same date with last year, by accident. See April 26, 1854 ("Hear the first chewink hopping and chewinking among the shrub oaks.") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chewink (Rufous-sided Towhee)