Their peculiar zigzag manner, rambling about high over the meadow.

April 25.
P. M. —To Hill by boat. 

Sweet-gale is out in some parts of the Island birch meadow, next the Indian field, probably several days, at least in some places. 

Larch not yet sheds pollen. 

The toads have begun fairly to ring at noonday in amid the birches to hear them. The wind is pretty strong and easterly. There are many, probably squatted about the edge of the falling water, in Merrick’s pasture. (The river began to fall again, I think, day before yesterday.) It is a low, terrene sound, the undertone of the breeze. Now it sounds low and indefinitely far, now rises, as if by general consent, to a higher key, as if in another and nearer quarter, — a singular alternation.

The now universal hard metallic ring of toads blended and partially drowned by the rippling wind. The voice of the toad, the herald of warmer weather. 

The cinquefoil well out. I see two or three on the hemlock dry plain, — probably a day or two. 

I observe a male grackle with a brownish head and the small female on one tree, red-wings on another.

Return over the top of the hill against the wind. The Great Meadows now, at 3.30 P. M., agitated by the strong easterly wind this clear day, when I look against the wind with the sun behind me, look particularly dark blue. 

Aspen bark peels; how long? 

I landed on Merrick’s pasture near the rock, and when I stepped out of the boat and drew it up, a snipe flew up, and lit again seven or eight rods off. After trying in vain for several minutes to see it on the ground there, I advanced a step and, to my surprise, scared up two more, which had squatted on the bare meadow all the while within a rod, while I drew up my boat and made a good deal of noise. In short, I scared up twelve, one or two at a time, within a few rods, which were feeding on the edge of the meadow just laid bare, each rising with a sound like squeak squeak, hoarsely. That part of the meadow seemed all alive with them. 

It is almost impossible to see one on the meadow, they squat and run so low, and are so completely the color of the ground. They rise from within a rod, fly, half a dozen rods, and then drop down on the bare open meadow before your eyes, where there seems not stubble enough to conceal, and are at once lost as completely as if they had sunk into the earth. I observed that some, when finally scared from this island, flew off rising quite high, one a few rods behind the other, in their peculiar zigzag manner, rambling about high over the meadow, making it uncertain where they would settle, till at length I lost sight of one and saw the other drop down almost perpendicularly into the meadow, as it appeared. 


Warren Miles had caught three more snapping turtles since yesterday, at his mill, one middling—sized one and two smaller. He said they could come down through his mill without hurt. Were they all bound down the brook to the river? I brought home one of the small ones. It was seven and one eighth inches long. Put it in a firkin for the night, but it got out without upsetting it. It had four points on each side behind, and when I put it in the river I noticed half a dozen points or projections on as many of its rear plates, in keeping with the crest of its tail. It buried itself in the grassy bottom within a few feet of the shore. Moves off very flat on the bottom. These turtles have been disturbed or revealed by his operations.

Anne Kamey, our neighbor, looking over her garden yesterday with my father, saw what she said was shamrock, which the Irish wear on their caps on St. Patrick’s Day, the first she had ever seen in this country. My father pointed it out in his own garden to the Irish man who was working for him, and he was glad to see it, for he had had a dispute with another Irishman as to whether it grew in this country and now he could convince him, and he put it in his pocket. 

I saw it afterward and pronounced it common white clover, and, looking into Webster’s Dictionary, I read, under Shamrock: “The Irish name for a three-leafed plant, the Oxalis Acetosella, or common wood-sorrel. It has been often supposed to be the Trifolium repens, white trefoil or white clover.” This was very satisfactory, though perhaps Webster’s last sentence should have been, The Trifolium repens has often been mistaken for it. 

At evening see a spearer’s light.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 25, 1856

Snipes’ peculiar zigzag manner. See April 18, 1854 ("They circle round and round, and zig zag high over the meadow, and finally alight again, descending abruptly from that height.”)


 At evening see a spearer’s light. See April 25, 1855 ("A spearers’ fire seems three times as far off as it is. ")