May day -- an unaccountable sweetness as of flowers in the air.

Rained some in the night; cloudy in the forenoon; clears up in the afternoon. 

P. M. — By boat with Sophia to Conantum, a maying. 

The water has gone down very fast and the grass has sprung up. There is a strong, fresh marsh scent wafted from the meadows, much like the salt marshes. We, sail with a smart wind from the northeast, yet it is warm enough. 

Horse-mint is seen springing up, and for two or three days at the bottom of the river and on shore. 

At Hill Shore the Anemone nemoralis to-morrow. See none wide open. 

The myrtle-bird is one of the commonest and tamest birds now. It catches insects like a pewee, darting off from its perch and returning to it, and sings something like a-chill chill, chill chill, chill chill, a-twear, twill twill twee, or it may be all tw — not loud; a little like the F. hyemalis, or more like pine warbler, —rapid, and more and more intense as it advances. 

There is an unaccountable sweetness as of flowers in the air, — a true May day. 

Raw and drizzling in the morning. The grackle still.

What various brilliant and evanescent colors on the surface of this agitated water, now, as we are crossing Willow Bay, looking toward the half-concealed sun over the foam-spotted flood! It reminds me of the sea. 

At Clamshell, the Viola blanda. I do not look for pollen. I find a clamshell five inches long (wanting one sixteenth) and more than two and a half inches broad and two inches thick. 

What that little dusky colored lichen on the ground at Clamshell end ditch, with a sort of triangular green fruit? or marchantia? 

The maples of Potter’s Swamp, seen now nearly half a mile off against the russet or reddish hillside, are a very dull scarlet, like Spanish brown, but one against a green pine wood is much brighter. 

Thalictrum anemonoides at Conant Cliff. Did not look for pollen. 

Why have the white pines at a distance that silvery look around their edges or thin parts? Is it owing to the wind showing the under sides of the needles? Methinks you do not see it in the winter. 

Went to Garfield’s for the hawk of yesterday. It was nailed to the barn in terrorem and as a trophy. He gave it to me with an egg. He called it the female, and probably was right, it was so large. He tried in vain to shoot the male, which I saw circling about just out of gunshot and screaming, while he robbed the nest. He climbed the tree when I was there yesterday afternoon, the tallest white pine or other tree in its neighborhood, over a swamp, and found two young, which he thought not more than a fortnight old,—with only down, at least no feathers,—and one addled egg, also three or four white-bellied or deer mouse (Mus leucopus), a perch, and a sucker, and a gray rabbit’s skin. He had seen squirrels, etc., in other nests. These fishes were now stale. I found the remains of a partridge under the tree. 

The reason I did not see my hawks at Well Meadow last year was that he found and broke up their nest there, containing five eggs.

The hawk measures exactly 22 1/2 inches in length and 4 feet 4 1/2 inches in alar extent, and weighs 3 1/4 pounds. The ends of closed wings almost two inches short of end of tail. The wing extends nearly two feet from the body, and is 10 3/4 inches wide; from flexure is 15 3/4 inches. [etc.]

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 1, 1855

There is an unaccountable sweetness as of flowers in the air, — a true May day. See May 6, 1855 ("that unaccountable fugacious fragrance, as of all flowers, bursting forth in air,. . .the general fragrance of the year.. . . It surpasses all particular fragrances."); May 16, 1854 ("The earth is all fragrant as one flower. ”) May 16, 1852 (“The whole earth is fragrant as a bouquet held to your nose. A fine, delicious fragrance, which will come to the senses only when it will.”).

Why have the white pines at a distance that silvery look around their edges or thin parts? See February 10, 1860 ("I see that Wheildon's pines are rocking and showing their silvery under sides as last spring, — their first awakening, as it were. ")February 25, 1860 ("I noticed yesterday the first conspicuous silvery sheen from the needles of the white pine waving in the wind."); April 29, 1852 ("The pines have an appearance they have not worn before, yet not easy to describe. The mottled sunlight and shade, seen looking into the woods, is more like summer.”);  May 18, 1852 ("the dark-green pines, wonderfully distinct, near and erect, with their distinct dark stems, spiring tops, regularly disposed branches, and silvery light on their needles.”). February, 5, 1852 ("The boughs, feathery boughs, of the white pines, tier above tier, reflect a silvery light against the darkness of the grove, as if both the silvery-lighted and greenish bough and the shadowy intervals of the shade behind belong to one tree.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons , White Pines