8 A. M. — By boat to Kalmia glauca and thence to scouring-rush.
Again a strong cold wind from the north by west, turning up the new and tender pads.
The young white lily pads are now red and crimson above, while greenish beneath.
Nightshade dark-green shoots are eight inches long. Button-bush would commonly be said to begin to leaf.
At Clamshell. Ranunculus acris and bulbosus pollen apparently about two or three days. Comandra pollen apparently two days there. Arenaria serpyllifolia and scleranthus, how long?
White oak pollen. The oaks apparently shed pollen about four days later than last year; may be owing to the recent cold weather.
Interrupted fern pollen the 23d; may have been a day or two. Cinnamon fern to-day.
Checkerberry shoots one inch high.
Carex stipata? Close-spiked sedge in Clamshell Meadow some time.
Early willow on right beyond Hubbard’s Bridge leafed since 12th; say 19th or generally before button-bush.
At Kalmia Swamp.
Nemopanthes, apparently several days, and leaf say before tupelo. White spruce pollen one or two days at least, and now begins to leaf.
To my surprise the Kalmia glauca almost all out; perhaps began with rhodora. A very fine flower, the more interesting for being early. The leaf say just after the lambkill.
I was wading through this white spruce swamp just to look at the leaves. The more purple rhodora rose here and there above the small andromeda, so that I did not at first distinguish the K. glauca. When I did, probably my eyes at first confounded it with the lambkill, and I did not remember that this would not bloom for some time. There were a few leaves just faintly started.
But at last my eyes and attention both were caught by those handsome umbels of the K. glauca, rising, one to three together, at the end of bare twigs, six inches or more above the level of the andromeda, etc., together with the rhodora. The rhodora did not accompany it into the more open and level and wet parts, where was andromeda almost alone.
Umbels, one and one half inches [in] diameter, of five to eighteen flowers on red threads three quarters to an inch long, at first deep rose-color, after pale rose. Twigs bare except two or three small old leaves close to the end of the dry-looking twigs. Flowers not arranged in whorls about the twig, but rising quite above it. The larger flowers about nine-sixteenths inch diameter. Flowers somewhat larger, methinks, and more terminal than lambkill. The whole about two feet high in sphagnum.
The lambkill is just beginning to be flower-budded.
What that neat song-sparrow-like nest of grass merely, in the wet sphagnum under the andromeda there, with three eggs, -- in that very secluded place, surrounded by the watery swamp and andromeda -- from which the bird stole like a mouse under the andromeda? Vide egg. It is narrower and more pointed at one end and lighter, a little, -- the brown less confluent, -- than that of the song sparrow with one spot on breast which took from ivy tree tuft. The last is bluish-white very thickly spotted and blotched with brown. Four eggs first seen, I think, the 22d.
Swamp-pink leaf before lambkill. A mosquito. Lupine in house from Fair Haven Hill, and probably in field.
At the screech owl’s nest I now find two young slumbering, almost uniformly gray above, about five inches long, with little dark-grayish tufts for incipient horns (?). Their heads about as broad as their bodies. I handle them without their stirring or opening their eyes. There are the feathers of a small bird and the leg of the Mus leucopus in the nest.
The partridge which on the 12th had left three cold eggs covered up with oak leaves is now sitting on eight. She apparently deserted her nest for a time and covered it.
Already the mouse-ear down begins to blow in the fields and whiten the grass, together with the bluets.
In Conant’s thick wood on the White-Pond-ward lane, hear the evergreen-forest note, but commonly, at a distance, only the last notes — a fine sharp té te'. The tanager?
See a beautiful blue-backed and long-tailed pigeon sitting daintily on a low white pine limb.
I perceive no new life in the pipes (Equisetum hyemale), except that some are flower-budded at top and may open in a week, and on pulling them up I find a new one just springing from the base at root. The flower—bud is apparently on those dry-looking last year’s plants which I thought had no life in them.
Returning, I lay on my back again in Conant’s thick wood. Saw a redstart over my head there; black with a sort of brick red on sides of breast, spot on wing, and under root of tail. Note heard once next day, at Kalmia Swamp, somewhat like aveet a'veet aveet a'veet.
Two-leaved Solomon’s-seal pollen not long in most places. Ranunculus recurvatus at Corner Spring up several days at least; pollen.
Trillium pollen maybe several days. Arum, how long? The Ranunculus Purshii in that large pool in the Holden Swamp Woods makes quite a show at a little distance now.
See to-day (and saw the 23d) a larger peetweet like bird on the shore, with longer, perhaps more slender, wings, black or blackish without white spots; all white beneath; and when it goes off it flies higher. Is it not the Totanus solitarius, which Brown found at Goose Pond?
I think that the red-fruited choke-berry has shed pollen about a day, though I have not examined. The leaves are a little downy beneath and the common peduncle and the pedicels stout and quite hairy, while the black-fruited is smooth and gloossy.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 26, 1855
Saw a redstart over my head there; black with a sort of brick red on sides of breast. See A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The American Redstart
The Blackbumian warbler. See A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blackburnian Warbler
But at last my eyes and attention both were caught by those handsome umbels of the K. glauca. See November 4, 1858 ("Objects are concealed from our view not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray (continued) as because there is no intention of the mind and eye toward them. We do not realize how far and widely, or how near and narrowly, we are to look. The greater part of the phenomena of nature are for this reason concealed to us all our lives.. . . We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else."); January 9, 1855 ("Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp, I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots . . . the Kalmia glauca var.rosmarinifolia.")
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