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| May 12 |
Cold enough for a fire this many a day.
6 A. M. — To Hill.
I hear the myrtle-bird’s te-e-e, te-e-e, t t t, t t t, clear flute-like whistle, and see eight or ten crow blackbirds together.
P. M. —To Lee’s Cliff.
C. says he saw upland plover two or three nights ago. The sweet-gale begins to leaf.
I perceive the fragrance of the Salix alba, now in bloom, more than an eighth of a mile distant. They now adorn the causeways with their yellow blossoms and resound with the hum of bumblebees, etc., etc. I have found half a dozen robins’ nests with eggs already, —one in an elm, two in a Salix alba, one in a Salix nigra, one in a pitch pine, etc., etc.
I find the partridge-nest of the 7th partially covered with dry oak leaves, and two more eggs only, three in all, cold. Probably the bird is killed.
As I approach the owl’s nest, I see her run past the hole up into that part of the hollow above it, and probably she was there when I thought she had flown on the 7th. I look in, and at first did not know what I saw. One of the three remaining eggs was hatched, and a little downy white young one, two or three times as long as an egg, lay helpless between the two remaining eggs. Also a dead white-bellied mouse (Mus leucopus) lay with them, its tail curled round one of the eggs.
Wilson says of his red owl (Strix asio), — with which this apparently corresponds, and not with the mottled, though my egg is not “pure white,” —that “the young are at first covered with a whitish down.”
Hear an oven-bird.
Passing on into the Miles meadow, am struck by the interesting tender green of the just springing foliage of the aspens, apples, cherries (more reddish), etc. It is now especially interesting while you can see through it, and also the tender yellowish-green grass shooting up in the bare river meadows and prevailing over the dark and sere.
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| Mniotilta varia |
From beyond the orchard see a large bird far over the Cliff Hill, which, with my glass, I soon make out to be a fish hawk advancing. Even at that distance, half a mile off, I distinguish its gull-like body, — pirate-like fishing body fit to dive, — and that its wings do not curve upward at the ends like a hen-hawk’s (at least I could not see that they did), but rather hang down. It comes on steadily, bent on fishing, with long and heavy undulating wings, with an easy, sauntering flight, over the river to the pond, and hovers over Pleasant Meadow a long time, hovering from time to time in one spot, when more than a hundred feet high, then making a very short circle or two and hovering again, then sauntering off against the wood side. At length he reappears, passes downward over the shrub oak plain and alights on an oak (of course now bare), standing this time apparently length wise on the limb.
Soon takes to wing again and goes to fishing down the stream a hundred feet high. When just below Bittern Cliff, I observe by its motions that it observes something. It makes a broad circle of observation in its course, lowering itself somewhat; then, by one or two steep sidewise flights, it reaches the water, and, as near as intervening trees would let me see, skims over it and endeavored to clutch its prey in passing. It fails the first time, but probably succeeds the second. Then it leisurely wings its way to a tall bare tree on the east end of the Cliffs, and there we leave it apparently pluming itself.
It had a very white belly, and indeed appeared all white be neath its body. I saw broad black lines between the white crown and throat.
The brown thrasher is a powerful singer; he is a quarter of a mile off across the river, when he sounded within fifteen rods.
Hear the night-warbler.
Slippery elm leaf more forward than the common; say yesterday; only young common yet. White ash begins to shed pollen at Lee’s; yesterday, or possibly day before, but no leaves on the same.
Hear the first creak of a cricket beneath the rocks there, so serene and composing. Methinks it surpasses the song of all birds; sings from everlasting to everlasting.
Apparently a thousand little slender catchflies shooting up on the top of the cliff.
The red oak there leafed a day or two, or one day earlier than hickory, and the black near it not yet. Rhus radicans leafed there a day or two.
See one white-throat sparrow still. The hearing of the cricket whets my eyes.
I see one or two long lighter and smoother streaks across the rippled pond from west to east, which preserve their form remarkably, only are bent somewhat at last. The zephyr does not strike the surface from over the broad button-bush row till after a rod or so, leaving a perfectly smooth border, with a fine, irregular shaded edge where the rippling begins.
I now begin to distinguish where at a distance the Amelanchier Botryapium, with its white against the russet, is waving in the wind.
Under Lee’s Cliff, about one rod east of the ash, am surprised to find some pale-yellow columbines, — not a tinge of scarlet, —the leaves and stem also not purplish, but a yellowish and light green, with leaves differently shaped from the common, the parts, both flower and leaves, more slender, and the leaves not so flat, but inclining to fold.
One flower of the Polygonatum pubescens open there; probably may shed pollen to-morrow.
Returning over Conantum, I direct my glass toward the dead tree on Cliffs, and am surprised to see the fish hawk still sitting there, about an hour after he first alighted; and now I find that he is eating a fish, which he had under his feet on the limb and ate as I have already described. At this distance his whole head looked white with his breast.
Just before sundown, we take our seats before the owl’s nest and sit perfectly still and await her appearance. We sit about half an hour, and it is surprising what various distinct sounds we hear there deep in the wood, as if the aisles of the wood were so many ear trumpets,-- the cawing of crows, the peeping of hylas in the swamp and perhaps the croaking of a tree-toad, the oven-bird, the yorrick of Wilson’s thrush, a distant stake-driver, the night-warbler and black and white creeper, the lowing of cows, the late supper horn, the voices of boys, the singing of girls, -- not all together but separately, distinctly, and musically, from where the partridge and the red-tailed hawk and the screech owl sit on their nests.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 12, 1855
Cold enough for a fire this many a day. See May 21, 1855 ( “[C]old weather, indeed, from the 20th to 23d inclusive. Sit by fires, and sometimes wear a greatcoat and expect frosts.”); May 21, 1860 (“Cold, at 11 A.M. 50°; and sit by a fire”; May 22, 1860 (Another cold and wet day, requiring fire.”)
Under Lee’s Cliff, . . . am surprised to find some pale-yellow columbines . . . See March 18,1853 (" At Conantum Cliff the columbines have started and the saxifrage even,. . .Both these grow there in high and dry chinks in the face of tire cliff, where no soil appears, and the sunnier the exposure the more advanced."); April 27, 1852 ("[The early saxifrage] can take advantage of a perpendicular cliff where the snow cannot lie and fronting the south. In exactly the same places grows the columbine, now well budded and seven or eight inches high. The higher up the rock and the more sheltered and sunny the location, the earlier they are.") April 30, 1855 (" Columbine just out; one anther sheds."); May 1, 1854 ("I think that the columbine cannot be said to have blossomed there [Lee's Cliff] before to-day, — the very earliest."); May 6, 1852(" The first columbine (Aquilegia Canadensis) to-day, on Conantum."); May 16, 1852 ("Methinks the columbine here is more remarkable for growing out of the seams of the rocks than the saxifrage, and perhaps better deserves the latter name.[ Latin, saxifragus breaking rocks, from saxum rock + frangere to break] It is now in its prime, ornamental for nature's rockwork. It is a beautiful sight to see large clusters of splendid scarlet and yellow flowers growing out of a seam in the side of this gray cliff.”)
The night-warbler. See May 12, 1857 ("A night-warbler, plainly light beneath. It always flies to a new perch immediately after its song");.According to Emerson, the night warbler was "a bird he had never identified, had been in search of twelve years, which always, when he saw it, was in the act of diving down into a tree or bush.” See also May 17, 1858 ("Just after hearing my night-warbler I see two birds on a tree. ...[One perhaps golden-crowned thrush. ]”); May 19, 1858 (“Heard the night-warbler begin his strain just like an oven-bird! I have noticed that when it drops down into the woods it darts suddenly one side to a perch when low."); May 28, 1854 ("The night-warbler, after his strain, drops down almost perpendicularly into a tree-top and is lost.”)
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