8.30 A. M. — To Tarbell’s to get black and canoe birch sap.
Going up the railroad, I see a male and female rusty grackle alight on an oak near me, the latter apparently a flaxen brown, with a black tail. She looks like a different species of bird. Wilson had heard only a tchuck from the grackle, but this male, who was courting his mate, broke into incipient warbles, like a bubble burst as soon as it came to the surface, it was so aerated: Its air would not be fixed long enough.
Saw a kingfisher on a tree over the water. Does not its arrival mark some new movement in its finny prey? He is the bright buoy that betrays it!
The hazel sheds pollen to-day; some elsewhere possibly yesterday.
The sallow up railroad will, if it is pleasant, to-morrow.
When I cut or break white pine twigs now, the turpentine exudes copiously from the bark, even from twigs broken off in the fall and now freshly broken, clear as water, or crystal. How early did it?
Set two spouts in a canoe birch fifteen inches in diameter, and two in a black birch two feet plus in diameter. The canoe birch sap flowed rather the fastest.
I have now got four kinds of birch sap. That of the white birch is a little tinged brown, apparently by the bark; the others are colorless as water. I am struck by the coolness of the sap, though the weather may be warm. Like wild apples, it must be tasted in the fields, and then it has a very slightly sweetish and acid taste, and cool as iced water.
I do not think I could distinguish the different kinds of birch with my eyes shut. I drank some of the black birch wine with my dinner for the name of it; but, as a steady drink, it is only to be recommended to outdoor men and foresters.
Now is apparently the very time to tap birches of all kinds. I saved a bottleful each of the white, canoe, and black birch sap (the yellow I boiled), and, in twenty-four hours, they had all three acquired a slight brown tinge but the white birch the most brown. They were at first colorless.
On the whole, I have not observed so much difference in the amount of sap flowing from the six kinds of trees which I have tapped as I have observed between different trees of the same kind, depending on position and size, etc. This flowing of the sap under the dull rinds of the trees is a tide which few suspect.
Though the snow melted so much sooner on the east side of the railroad causeway than on the west, I notice that it still lies in a broad, deep bank on the east side of Cheney’s row of arbor-vitae, while the ground is quite bare on the west. Whence this difference?
A few more hylas peep to-day, though it is not so warm as the 9th. These warm pleasant days I see very few ducks about, though the river is high.
The current of the Assabet is so much swifter, and its channel so much steeper than that of the main stream, that, while a stranger frequently cannot tell which way the latter flows by his eye, you can perceive the declination of the channel of the former within a very short distance, even between one side of a tree and another. You perceive the waters heaped on the upper side of rocks and trees, and even twigs that trail in the stream.
Saw a pickerel washed up, with a wound near its tail, dead a week at least. Was it killed by a fish hawk? Its oil, when disturbed, smoothed the surface of the water with splendid colors. Thus close ever is the fair to the foul. The iridescent, oily surface. The same object is ugly or beautiful, according to the angle from which you view it.
Here, also, in the river wreck is the never-failing teazle, telling of the factory above, and sawdust from the mill. The teased river! These I do not notice on the South Branch.
I hear of one field plowed and harrowed, — George Heywood’s. Frost out there earlier than last year.
You thread your way amid the rustling oak leaves on some warm hillside sloping to the south, detecting no growth as yet, unless the flower-buds of the amelanchier are somewhat expanded, when, glancing along the dry stems, in the midst of all this dryness, you detect the crimson stigmas of the hazel, like little stars peeping forth, and perchance a few catkins are dangling loosely in the zephyr and sprinkling their pollen on the dry leaves beneath.
You take your way along the edge of some swamp that has been cleared at the base of some south hillside, where there is sufficient light and air and warmth, but the cold northerly winds are fended off, and there behold the silvery catkins of the sallows, which have already crept along their lusty osiers, more than an inch in length, till they look like silvery wands, though some are more rounded, like bullets. The lower part of some catkins which have lost their bud-scales emit a tempered crimson blush through their down, from the small scales within. The catkins grow longer and larger as you advance into the warmest localities, till at last you discover one catkin in which the reddish anthers are beginning to push from one side near the end, and you know that a little yellow flame will have burst out there by to-morrow, if the day is fair.
I might have said on the 8th: Behold that little hemisphere of green in the black and sluggish brook, amid the open alders, sheltered under a russet tussock. It is the cowslips’ forward green. Look narrowly, explore the warmest nooks; here are buds larger yet, showing more yellow, and yonder see two full-blown yellow disks, close to the water’s edge. Methinks they dip into it when the frosty nights come. Have not these been mistaken for dandelions?
Or, on the 9th: This still warm morning paddle your boat into yonder smooth cove, close up under the south edge of that wood which the April flood is bathing, and observe the great mulberry-like catkins of yonder aspen curving over and downward, some an inch or more in length, like great reddish caterpillars covered thickly with down, forced out by heat, and already the sides and ends of some are loose and of a pale straw-color, shedding their pollen. These, for their forwardness, are indebted to the warmth of their position.
Now for the white maple the same day: Paddle under yonder graceful tree which marks where is the bank of the river, though now it stands in the midst of a flood a quarter of a mile from land; hold fast by one of its trailing twigs, for the stream runs swiftly here. See how the tree is covered with great globular clusters of buds. Are there no anthers nor stigmas to be seen? Look upward to the sunniest side. Steady! When the boat 'has ceased its swaying, do you not see two or three stamens glisten like spears advanced on the sunny side of a cluster? Depend on it, the bees will find it out before noon, far over the flood as it is.
Seek out some young and lusty-growing alder (as on the 9th), with clear, shining, and speckled bark, in the warmest possible position, perchance where the heat is reflected from some bank or hillside and the water bathes its foot. The scales of the catkins generally are loosened, but on the (sunniest cheek of the clump, be hold one or two far more considerably loosened, wholly or partially dangling and showing their golden insides. Give the most forward of these a chuck, and you will get a few grains of its yellow dust in your hand. Some will be in full bloom above, while their extremities are comparatively dead, as if struck with a palsy in the winter. Soon will come a rude wind and shake their pollen copiously over the water.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 11, 1856
I see a male and female rusty grackle. . . this male, who was courting his mate, broke into incipient warbles, like a bubble burst See March 29, 1853 ("It would be worth the while to attend more to the different notes of the blackbirds."); March 29, 1858 ("I see what I suppose is the female rusty grackle; black body with green reflections and purplish-brown head and neck, but I notice no light iris."); April 3, 1855 ("The first grackles [rusty grackles, or rusty blackbirds.] I have seen. I detected them first by their more rasping note . . . after a short stuttering, then a fine, clear whistle."); April 9, 1855 ("Wilson says that the only note of the rusty grackle is a chuck, though he is told that at Hudson’s Bay, at the breeding-time, they sing with a fine note. Here they utter not only a chuck, but a fine shrill whistle."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: The grackle arrives.
Now is apparently the very time to tap birches of all kinds. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Birches in Season
A stranger frequently cannot tell which way the [main channel] flows. See April 16, 1852 ("Many a foreigner who has come to this town has worked for years on its banks without discovering which way the river runs.")
The teased river! See April 2, 1853 ("Together with the driftwood on the shore of the Assabet and the sawdust from Heywood's mill, I pick up teasel-heads from the factory with the wool still in them. How many tales the stream tells!”); November 18, 1860 ("I frequently see the heads of teasel, called fuller’s thistle, floating on our river, having come from factories above.")
Saw a kingfisher on a tree over the water. Does not its arrival mark some new movement in its finny prey? See April 1, 1860 ("A kingfisher seen and heard."); April 10, 1859 ("See a kingfisher flying very low, in the ricochet manner, across the water."); April 15, 1855 ("See and hear a kingfisher—do they not come with the smooth waters of April?”); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Kingfisher
The pleasant ringing note of the pine warbler. See April 9, 1856 (While I am looking at the hazel, I hear from the old locality, the edge of the great pines and oaks in the swamp by the railroad, the note of the pine warbler . . . cool and inspiring, like a part of the evergreen forest itself, the trickling of the sap."); April 12, 1858 ("The woods are all alive with pine warblers now. Their note is the music to which I survey."); April 15, 1855 ("In the meanwhile, as we steal through the woods, we hear the pleasing note of the pine warbler, bringing back warmer weather."); April 15, 1859 ("Go to a warm pine wood-side on a pleasant day at this season after storm, and hear it ring with the jingle of the pine warbler. See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pine Warbler.
The hazel sheds pollen to-day; some elsewhere possibly yesterday. . . . the crimson stigmas of the hazel, like little stars peeping forth, and perchance a few catkins are dangling loosely. See March 27, 1853 ("The high color of this minute, unobserved flower, at this cold, leafless, and almost flowerless season! It is a beautiful greeting of the spring"); March 27, 1859 ("Of our seven indigenous flowers which begin to bloom in March, four, i. e. the two alders, the aspen, and the hazel, are not generally noticed so early, if at all, and most do not observe the flower of a fifth, the maple. The first four are yellowish or reddish brown at a little distance, like the banks and sward moistened by the spring rain."); April 4. 1853("The hazel bloom is about one tenth of an inch long (the stigmas) now"); April 7, 1854 ("The hazel stigmas are well out and the catkins loose, but no pollen shed yet. "); April 7, 1855 ("The female flowers of the hazel are just beginning to peep out."); April 9, 1856 ("The stigmas already peep out, minute crimson stars"); April 13, 1855 ("The common hazel just out. It is perhaps the prettiest flower of the shrubs that have opened. A little bunch of (in this case) half a dozen catkins, one and three quarters inches long, trembling in the wind, shedding golden pollen on the hand, and, close by, as many minute, but clear crystalline crimson stars at the end of a bare and seemingly dead twig. For two or three days in my walks, I had given the hazel catkins a fillip with my finger under their chins to see if they were in bloom, but in vain; but here, on the warm south side of a wood, I find one bunch fully out and completely relaxed. They know when to trust themselves to the weather. "); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: the Hazel
The sallow up railroad will [shed pollen], if it is pleasant, to-morrow. . . . the reddish anthers are beginning to push from one side near the end, and you know that a little yellow flame will have burst out there by to-morrow. See April 13, 1856 ("The sallow will not open till some time to-day "); April 17, 1855 ("The second sallow catkin (or any willow) I have seen in blossom —there are three or four catkins on the twig partly open "); April 18, 1852 (" The most interesting fact, perhaps, at present is these few tender yellow blossoms, these half-expanded sterile aments of the willow, seen through the rain and cold, — signs of the advancing year, pledges of the sun's return."); April 18, 1855 ("A little sallow, about two feet high . . . with reddish anthers not yet burst, will bloom to-morrow in Well Meadow Path. ")
I might have said on the 8th: Behold that little hemisphere of green in the black and sluggish brook. See April 8, 1856 ("There, in that slow, muddy brook near the head of Well Meadow, within a few rods of its source, where it winds amid the alders, which shelter the plants some what, while they are open enough now to admit the sun, I find two cowslips in full bloom, shedding pollen. . . if the river had risen as high as frequently, they would have been submerged.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Cowslip in Early Spring
Now for the white maple . . . See how the tree is covered with great globular clusters of buds. . . do you not see two or three stamens glisten like spears advanced on the sunny side of a cluster? See April 10, 1855.(" Early on the morning of the 8th I paddled up the' Assabet looking for the first flowers of the white maple . . . the round clusters of its bursting flower-buds spotting the sky above me, and on a close inspection found a few which . . .blossomed the day before"); April 14, 1855 ("White maples are now generally in bloom."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, White Maple Buds and Flowers
Seek out some young and lusty-growing alder (as on the 9th) . . . Soon will come a rude wind and shake their pollen copiously over the water. See April 9, 1856 ( The Alnus incana, especially by the railroad opposite the oaks, sheds pollen. ""); April 10, 1855 ("Early on the morning of the 8th I paddled . . .slowly along the riverside looking closely at the alder catkins and shaking the most loose, till at length I came to a bush which had. . . one looser and more yellowish catkin, which, as I have said, on a close examination showed some effete anthers near the peduncle"); April 11, 1852 (" I was pleased to find the Alnus incana ( ?) in bloom in the water, its long sterile aments, yellowish-brown, hanging in panicles or clusters at the ends of the drooping branchlets, while all the twigs else are bare and the well-cased and handsome leaf-buds are not yet expanded at all. It is a kind of resurrection of the year, these pliant and pendulous blossoms on this apparently dead bush, while all is sere and tawny around, withered and bleached grass. A sort of harbinger of spring, this and the maple blossoms especially, and also the early willow catkins. . . This and the maple and the earliest willow are the most flower-like now.") See also March 22, 1853 (" The very earliest alder is in bloom and sheds its pollen. I detect a few catkins at a distance by their distinct yellowish color. This the first native flower."); A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Earliest Flower and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Alders
The ringing note of
the pine warbler first heard in
the same two places.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The ringing note of the pine warbler
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2026
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