P. M. — Down river and to Yellow Birch Swamp.
Yesterday was the first warm day for a week or two, and to-day it is much warmer still and hazy — as much like summer as it can be without the trees being generally leafed.
I saw a Fringilla hyemalis this morning and heard the golden robin, now that the elms are beginning to leaf, also the myrtle-bird’s tealee.
The earliest gooseberry in garden has opened.
As we float down the river through the still and hazy air, enjoying the June-like warmth, see the first king birds on the bare black willows with their broad white breasts and white-tipped tails; and the sound of the first bobolink floats to us from over the meadows; now that the meadows are lit by the tender yellow green of the willows and the silvery-green fruit of the elms.
I hear from a female red-wing that peculiar rich screwing warble —- not o gurgle ee — made with r, not with l. The whole air too is filled with the ring of toads louder than heretofore.
Some men are already fishing, indistinctly seen through the haze.
Under the hop-horn beam below the monument, observe a large pellet, apparently dropped by some bird of prey, consisting of mouse-hair, with an oat or two in it undigested, which probably the mouse had swallowed. This reminds me that I had read this kind of birds digested the flesh of the animals they swallowed, but not the vegetable food in the stomachs of the latter.
The air is filled with the song of birds, — warbling vireo, gold robin, yellowbirds, and occasionally the bobolink. The gold robin, just come, is heard in all parts of the village.
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| Baltimore Oriole |
I see both male and female.
It is a remarkable difference between this day and yesterday, that yesterday this and the bobolink were not heard and now the former, at least, is so musical and omnipresent.
Even see boys a-bathing, though they must find it cold.
I saw yesterday some of that common orange rust-like fungus already on a Potentilla simplex leaf. Hear the first catbird, more clear and tinkling than the thrasher.
Leave the boat below N. Barrett’s and walk inland. See several handsome red-winged grasshoppers in different parts of our walk; but though we see where they alight, yet several times we can not find them in the grass for all that.
The bayberry apparently will not open under a week. There are now a great many Viola pedata.
The brook in Yellow Birch Swamp is very handsome now — broad and full, with the light-green hellebore eighteen inches high and the small two-leaved Solomon’s-seal about it, in the open wood.
Only a part of the yellow birches are leafing, but not yet generally the large ones. I notice no catkins. One white birch sheds pollen. The white birches on the side of Ponkawtasset are beginning to show faint streaks of yellowish green here and there.
A cooler and stronger wind from the east by midafternoon. The large bass trees now begin to leaf.
Now, about two hours before sunset, the brown thrashers are particularly musical. One seems to be contending in song with another. The chewink’s strain sounds quite humble in comparison.
At 9.30 P.M. I hear from our gate my night-warbler. Never heard it in the village before. I doubt if we shall at any season hear more birds singing than now.
Saw an amelanchier with downy leaf (apparently oblongifolia) on the southeast edge of Yellow Birch Swamp, about eighteen feet high and five or six inches in diameter, —a clump of them about as big as an apple tree.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 13, 1855
Even see boys a-bathing, though they must find it cold. See May 8, 1857 (“Summer has suddenly come upon us, and the birds all together. Some boys have bathed in the river.”)
Hear the first catbird, more clear and tinkling than the thrasher. See May 13, 1853 ("At Corner Spring, stood listening to a catbird, sounding a good way off. Was surprised to detect the singer within a rod and a half on a low twig, the ventriloquist. . . .”)
I hear from our gate my night-warbler. Never heard it in the village before. See note to May 12, 1855
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