A Book of the Seasons: April 12 (willow and elm blossoms, flicker and purple finch, snow and rain, pine warbler and red-wing, surveying)

April 12


Saw the first blossoms (bright-yellow stamens or pistils) on the willow catkins to-day . . . The yellow blossom appears first on one side of the ament and is the most of bright and sunny color the spring has shown, the most decidedly flower-like that I have seen. . . It is fit that this almost earliest spring flower should be yellow, the color of the sun. April 12, 1852

Bright-yellow blossoms

on willow catkins today –

color of the sun.

April 12, 1852

I observe that it is when I have been intently, and it may be laboriously, at work, and am somewhat list less or abandoned after it, reposing, that the muse visits me, and I see or hear beauty. It is from out the shadow of my toil that I look into the light. April 12, 1854

It is from out the

shadow of my toil that I

look into the light.

April 12, 1854

A little snow and rain this morning, though the ground is not whitened. I hear a purple finch, nevertheless, on an elm, steadily warbling and uttering a sharp chip from time to time. From the Cliff Hill the mountains are again thickly clad with snow, and, the wind being northwest, this coldness is accounted for. I hear it fell fourteen or fifteen inches deep in Vermont. April 12, 1855

Mountains clad with snow

and the wind being northwest

accounts for this cold.

April 12, 1855

Hazy all day, with wind from the west, threatening rain. Haze gets to be very thick and perhaps smoky in the afternoon . . . There suddenly flits before me and alights on a small apple tree in Mackay’s field, as I go to my boat, a splendid purple finch. Its glowing redness is revealed when it lifts its wings, as when the ashes is blown from a coal of fire . . . Rains considerably in the evening. April 12, 1856

Hazy all day with 

wind from the west threatening 

rain in the evening.

 Suddenly as I

  go to my boat a purple 

finch glowing redness.

April 12, 1856

The woods are all alive with pine warblers now. Their note is the music to which I survey.  April 12, 1858

The woods all alive

with pine warblers notes – music

to which I survey.

April 12, 1858

Pine warblers heard in the woods by C. to-day. This, except the pigeon woodpecker and pigeon and hawks, as far as they are migratory, is the first that I should call woodland (or dry woodland) birds that arrives. The red-wings generally sit on the black willows and the swamp white oaks and maples by the water, and sing o-gurgle-ee this evening, as if glad to see the river's brink appearing again and smooth waters also. The grackles are feeding on the meadow-edge. April 12, 1859

The red-wings  sing  as 

if glad to see the river's 

brink and smooth waters.

April 12, 1859

Elm bud-scales have begun to strew the ground, and the trees look richly in flower.  April 12, 1860

Elm bud-scales start to

strew the ground and the trees look

richly in flower.

April 12, 1860

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 12

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 © 2009-2024