A warm, moist night, the moon partially obscured by misty clouds, all the village asleep.

April 15.

6.30 A. M. —To Hill. 

It is warmer and quite still; somewhat cloudy in the east. The water quite smooth, — April smooth waters. 

I hear very distinctly Barrett’s sawmill at my landing.

The purple finch is singing on the elms about the house, together with the robins, whose strain its resembles, ending with a loud, shrill, ringing chili chilt chilt chilt. 

I push across the meadow and ascend the hill. The white-bellied swallows are circling about and twittering above the apple trees and walnuts on the hillside. Not till I gain the hilltop do I hear the note of the Fringilla juncorum (huckleberry-bird) from the plains beyond. 

Returned again toward my boat, I hear the rich watery note of the martin, making haste over the edge of the flood. A warm morning, over smooth water, before the wind rises, is the time to hear it.

Near the water are many recent skunk probings, as if a drove of pigs had passed along last night, death to many beetles and grubs. 

From amid the willows and alders along the wall there, I hear a bird sing, a-chitter chitter chitter chitter chitter chitter, che che che che, with increasing intensity and rapidity, and the yellow redpoll hops in sight. 

A grackle goes over (with two females), and I hear from him a sound like a watchman’s rattle, — but little more musical. 

What I think the Alnus serrulata (?) will shed pollen to-day on the edge of Catbird Meadow. Is that one at Brister’s Spring and at Depot Brook crossing? Also grows on the west edge of Trillium Wood. 

Coming up from the riverside, I hear the harsh rasping char-r char-r of the crow blackbird, like a very coarsely vibrating metal, and, looking up, see three flying over. 

Some of the early willow catkins have opened in my window. As they open, they curve backwards, exposing their breasts to the light. 

By 9 A. M. the wind has risen, the water is ruffled, the sun seems more permanently obscured, and the character of the day is changed. It continues more or less cloudy and rain-threatening all day. 

First salmon and shad at Haverhill to-day. 

Ed. Emerson saw a toad in his garden to-day, and, coming home from his house at 11 P. M., a still and rather warm night, I am surprised to hear the first loud, clear, prolonged ring of a toad, when I am near Charles Davis’s house. The same, or another, rings again on a different key. I hear not more than two, perhaps only one. 

I had only thought of them as commencing in the warmest part of some day, but it would seem that they may first be heard in the night. Or perhaps this one may have piped in the day and his voice been drowned by day’s sounds. Yet I think that this night is warmer than the day has been. While all the hillside else, perhaps, is asleep, this toad has just awaked to a new year. 

It is a rather warm, moist night, the moon partially obscured by misty clouds, all the village asleep, only a few lights to be seen in some Windows, when, as I pass along under the warm hillside, I hear a clear, shrill, prolonged ringing note from a toad, the first toad of the year, sufficiently countenanced by its Maker in the night and the solitude, and then again I hear it (before I am out of hearing, i.e. it is deadened by intervening buildings), on a little higher key. 

At the same time, I hear a part of the hovering note of my first snipe, circling over some distant meadow, a mere waif, and all is still again. A-lulling the watery meadows, fanning the air like a spirit over some far meadow’s bay. 

And now for vernal sounds there is only the low sound of my feet on the Mill-Dam sidewalks.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 15, 1856

The purple finch is singing on the elms . . . See April 15, 1854 ("The arrival of the purple finches appears to be coincident with the blossoming of the elm, on whose blossom it feeds.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Elms and the Purple Finch

The yellow redpoll hops in sight. . . . See April 15, 1854 ("The yellow redpoll hops along the limbs within four or five feet of me"). See also April 21, 1855 ("I see yellow redpolls on the bushes near the water, — handsome birds, -— but hear no note."); April 23, 1856 ("Hear the yellow redpoll sing on the maples below Dove Rock, —a peculiar though not very interesting strain, or jingle.”)

By 9 A. M. the wind has risen, the water is ruffled, the sun seems more permanently obscured, and the character of the day is changed. See August 25, 1852 ("What a salad to my spirits is this cooler, darker day!”); February 5, 1855 ("In a journal it is important in a few words to describe the weather, or character of the day, as it affects our feelings."); February 18, 1860 ("Sometimes, when I go forth at 2 P.M. there is scarcely a cloud in the sky, but soon one will appear in the west and steadily advance and expand itself, and so change the whole character of the afternoon and of my thoughts.")

First salmon and shad at Haverhill to-day. . . . I am surprised to hear the first loud, clear, prolonged ring of a toad . . . See April 13, 1853 ("First hear toads ... a loud, ringing sound filling the air, which yet few notice. First shad caught at Haverhill to-day."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Ring of Toads.