A Book of the Seasons: May 4.

May 4, 2017

May 4.

The woods and paths now

ring with the silver jingle

of the field sparrow.

May 4, 1853.

I yield the point to

the robin who sings his strain

when I think it night.

May 4, 1855

 

The bright blue river

the fresh yellow green meadow

the green river grass.

These several colors 

are as distinct and simple

as a child's painting.

May 4, 1860

. 

 

A robin sings when I, in the house, cannot distinguish the earliest dawning from the full moon light. His song first advertises me of the daybreak, when I think it night, as I lie looking out into the full moonlight. I hear a robin begin his strain, and yield the point to him, believing he is better acquainted with the springs of the day than I, — with the signs of day.  May 4, 1855

Looking across the Peninsula toward Ball's Hill, I am struck by the bright blue of the river (a deeper blue than the sky), contrasting with the fresh yellow green of the meadow (coarse sedges just starting), and, between them, a darker or greener green next the edge of the river, especially where that small sand-bar island is (the green of the early rank river-grass). May 4, 1860

It is stated in the Life of Humboldt that he proved "that the expression, 'the ocean reflects the sky,' was a purely poetical, but not a scientifically correct one, as the sea is often blue when the sky is almost totally covered with light white clouds.” May 4, 1853

Went up Dodge’s (an Englishman who once lived up it and no relation of the last-named) Brook and across Barrett’s dam. May 4, 1856

I hear trees creak here (at Saw Mill Brook) like inn signs in the street. May 4, 1852

To go among the willows now and hear the bees hum is equal to going some hundreds of miles southward toward summer. May 4, 1858

Shad-flies on the water, schooner-like. May 4, 1856

From time to time have seen the large Vanessa Antiopa resting on the black willows, like a leaf still adhering. May 4, 1858

See where a skunk has probed last night, and large black dung with apparently large ants’ heads and earth or sand and stubble or insects’ wings in it; probably had been probing a large ants’ hill. May 4, 1855

The female flower of the sweet-gale, red, like so many female flowers. May 4, 1852

The cowslip's is a vigorous growth and makes at present the most show of any flower. May 4, 1852

The meadow-sweet begins to leave out. May 4, 1852

The male flowers of the maple look yellowish-scarlet, looking up to the sky. May 4, 1852

Red maple blossoms begin to cover ground. May 4, 1855
The elms are still in full blossom. May 4, 1852

I find apparently two varieties of the amelanchier, the first I noticed, with smooth reddish delicate leaves . . .the second to-day, perhaps a little later than the first, leaves light-colored and downy. May 4, 1853

The second amelanchier, , , begin to leaf to-day. May 4, 1855

The white birch leaves are beginning to expand and are shining with some sticky matter. I must attend to their fragrance. May 4, 1853
The aspen there (the Island) just begun to leaf. May 4, 1856

Sweet-fern, and early thorn begin to leaf to-day. May 4, 1855

Sand cherry yesterday leafs. May 4, 1855
Caterpillar nests two or three inches in diameter on wild cherries; caterpillars one third of an inch long. May 4, 1853

The beech leaf-buds are very handsome reddish-brown now, some nearly an inch and a half long and very slender. May 4, 1855

The cowslip's is a vigorous growth and makes at present the most show of any flower. May 4, 1852
The Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum appeared yesterday. May 4, 1853

The currant in bloom.The Canada plum just ready, probably to-day. May 4, 1853

The Missouri currant, probably to-day. May 4, 1858

No goldfinches for long time. May 4, 1855

Hear and see a goldfinch, on the ground. May 4, 1856

What was that large olive-yellow bird on Heywood's apple trees? May 4, 1852

See a peetweet on Dove Rock, which just peeps out. As soon as the rocks begin to be bare the peetweet comes and is seen teetering on them. May 4, 1856

In cut woods a small thrush, with crown inclining to rufous, tail foxy, and edges of wings dark-ash; clear white beneath. I think the golden-crowned? May 4, 1855

The sound of the oven-bird. May 4, 1853

Jays do not scream as early. May 4, 1855

Chickadee, spring notes still. May 4, 1855

Have noticed no ducks for some days. May 4, 1855

Yellow redpolls in numbers May 1st. May 4, 1855

Purple finch sings steadily. May 4, 1855

The indigo-bird and mate. May 4, 1853

White-throated sparrows here, and numerous. May 4, 1855

See more white-throated sparrows than any other bird to day in various parts of our walk, generally feeding in numbers on the ground in open dry fields and meadows next to woods, then flitting through the woods. May 4, 1855

Heard the tweezer note, or screeper note, of the particolored warbler, bluish above, yellow or orange throat and breast, white vent, and white on wings, neck above yellowish, going restlessly over the trees. May 4, 1858

The myrtle-bird. May 4, 1853

Myrtle-birds numerous, and sing their tea lee, tea lee in morning. May 4, 1855

Hear the something like has twe twe twe twé, ter té te twe twe of the myrtle-bird, and see the bird on the swamp white oaks by Island. May 4, 1856

Several larger thrushes on low limbs and on ground, with a dark eye (not the white around it of the wood thrush) and, I think, the nankeen spot on the secondaries. A hermit thrush? May 4, 1855

And anon rises clear over all the smooth, rich melody of the wood thrush. May 4, 1853

Sitting in Abel Brooks’s Hollow, see a small hawk go over high in the air, with a long tail and distinct from wings. It advanced by a sort of limping flight yet rapidly, not circling nor tacking, but flapping briskly at intervals and then gliding straight ahead with rapidity, controlling itself with its tail. It seemed to be going a journey. Was it not the sharp-shinned, or Falco fuscus. May 4, 1855

I think that what I have called the sparrow hawk falsely, and latterly pigeon hawk, is also the sharp-shinned . . .for the pigeon hawk’s tail is white-barred.May 4, 1855

Red tail hawk young fourteen days old. May 4, 1855

As I sit there by the swamp-side this warm summery afternoon, I hear the crows cawing hoarsely, and from time to time see one flying toward the top of a tall white pine. At length I distinguish a hen-hawk perched on the top. The crow repeatedly stoops toward him, now from this side, now from that, passing near his head each time, but he pays not the least attention to it. May 4, 1858

The red-wings, though here and there in flocks, are apparently beginning to build. I judge by their shyness and alarm in the bushes along the river and their richer, solitary warbling. May 4, 1858

All the black blackbirds as plenty as ever, and in flocks. May 4, 1855

Still see three or four crows together, though some at least are building. May 4, 1855

As I stood there I heard a thumping sound, which I referred to Peter’s, three quarters of a mile off over the meadow. But it was a pigeon woodpecker excavating its nest within a maple within a rod of me. Though I had just landed and made a noise with my boat, he was too busy to hear me, but now he hears my tread, and I see him put out his head and then withdraw it warily and keep still, while I stay there. May 4, 1860

Partridges setting. May 4, 1855

A partridge’s grayish tail-feather, with a subterminal dark band. . . . Noticed a perfectly regular circular concavity in a sandy soil in a hollow in birch woods, where apparently a partridge had dusted herself. May 4, 1855

The black and white creeper is hopping along the oak boughs, head downward. May 4, 1853

Have not noticed robins in flocks for two or three days. May 4, 1855

Hear a brown thrasher. May 4, 1855

We hear a thrasher sing for half an hour steadily, — a very rich singer and heard a quarter of a mile off very distinctly. This is first heard commonly at planting-time. He sings as if conscious of his power. May 4, 1859

The dry woods have the smell of fragrant everlasting May 4, 1853

I see the slate-colored snowbird still, — a few. May 4, 1852 

See no gulls, nor F. hyemalis nor tree sparrows now. May 4, 1855

I, sailing in the spring ocean, getting in from my winter voyage, begin to smell the land. I draw near to the land; I begin to lie down and stretch myself on it. After my winter voyage I begin to smell the land. May 4, 1859

A warm rain; and the ring of the toads is heard all through it. May 4, 1857

I find hopping in the meadow a Rana halecina, much brighter than any I have seen this year. There is not only a vivid green halo about each spot, but the back is vivid light-green between the spots. I think this was not the case with any of the hundreds I saw a month ago!! Why??. May 4, 1858

The little frogs begin to peep in good earnest toward sundown. May 4, 1852

The sun sets red, shorn of its beams. May 4, 1860

***

After my winter voyage I begin to smell the land. See note to March 4, 1854 ("I begin to sniff the air and smell the ground.")

Cattle are going up country. See May 10, 1852 ("This Monday the streets are full of cattle being driven up-country, — cows and calves and colts."); May 8, 1854 ("I hear the voices of farmers driving their cows past to their up-country pastures now.");; May 6, 1855 ("Road full of cattle going up country.”); May 7, 1856 ("For a week the road has been full of cattle going up country ")

The sound of the oven-bird. See May 1, 1852 ("I think I heard an oven-bird just now, - wicher wicher whicher wich"): May 7, 1853 ("The woods now begin to ring with the woodland note of the oven-bird.")

The myrtle-bird, which makes me think the more that I saw the black and yellow warbler on Sunday. See May 1, 1853 ("Was it not the black and yellow or spotted warbler I saw by the Corner Spring? . . . I think it much too dark for the myrtle-bird."); May 10, 1853 (" Is it the redstart? I now see one of these. The first I have distinguished. And now I feel pretty certain that my black and yellow warbler of May 1st was this.")

I find apparently two varieties of the amelanchier, . . . ; the second to-day, perhaps a little later than the first. See May 4, 1855 ("The second amelanchier, , , begin to leaf to-day.") See also April 26, 1860 ("The Amelanchier Botryapium . . . will apparently bloom tomorrow or next day."); May 1, 1853 ("Is not the Botryapium our earliest variety of amelanchier?"); May 5, 1860 ("Amelanchier Botryapium flower in prime."); May 8, 1854 ("The early Amelanchier Botryapium overhangs the rocks and grows in the shelves, with its loose, open-flowered racemes, curving downward, of narrow-petalled white flowers, red on the back and innocently cherry-scented"); May 9, 1852 ("The first shad-bush, June- berry, or service-berry (Amelanchier Canadensis), in blossom."); May 13, 1852 ("The amelanchiers are now the prevailing flowers in the woods and swamps and sprout-lands, a very beautiful flower, with its purplish stipules and delicate drooping white blossoms. The shad-blossom days in the woods."); May 13, 1855 ("Saw an amelanchier with downy leaf (apparently oblongifolia) on the southeast edge of Yellow Birch Swamp, about eighteen feet high and five or six inches in diameter, —a clump of them about as big as an apple tree).May 21, 1857 ("It seems to be a common variety of the variety Botryapium and quite downy, though not so downy as those of the oblongifolia.")

The indigo-bird and mate; dark throat and light beneath, and white spot on wings. See June 9, 1857 ("In the sprout-land beyond the red huckleberry, an indigo-bird, which chips about me as if it had a nest there. This is a splendid and marked bird, high-colored as is the tanager, looking strange in this latitude. Glowing indigo."); July 21, 1851 ("a perfect embodiment of the darkest blue that ever fills the valleys at this season")

The black and white creeper is hopping along the oak boughs, head downward, pausing from time to time to utter its note. See May 11, 1856 ("The black and white creeper also is descending the oaks, etc., and uttering from time to time his seeser seeser seeser. "); May 12, 1855 ("Watch a black and white creeper from Bittern Cliff, a very neat and active bird, exploring the limbs on all sides and looking three or four ways almost at once for insects. Now and then it raises its head a little, opens its bill, and, without closing it, utters its faint seeser seeser seeser.");  May 30, 1857  ("In the midst of the shower, though it was not raining very hard, a black and white creeper came and inspected the limbs of a tree before my rock, in his usual zigzag, prying way, head downward often, and when it thundered loudest, heeded it not.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Black and White Creeper

The female flower of the sweet-gale. See May 10, 1857 (“I observe that the fertile flowers of many plants are more late than the barren ones, as the sweet-gale (whose fertile are now in prime),”)

The meadow-sweet begins to leave out. See April 24, 1860  ("The meadow-sweet and hardhack have begun to leaf."); May 5, 1855 ("The trees and shrubs which I observe to make a show now with their green, without regard to the time when they began, are (to put them in the order of their intensity and generalness) :— Gooseberry, both kinds; Raspberry; Meadow-sweet; Choke-cherry shoots [etc.]”

I hear trees creak here (at Saw Mill Brook) like inn signs in the street. See April 9, 1859 (“I hear a singular sound through the roaring of the wind amid the trees, which I think at first some creature forty rods off, but it proves to be the creaking of one bough on another.. . .The fiddles made by the trees whose limbs cross one another, — played on by the wind!”)

each time, but he pays not the least attention to it. See May 13, 1860 ("See two crows pursuing and diving at a hen-hawk very high in the air over the river. [H]e merely winks, as it were, bends or jerks his wings slightly as if a little startled. but never ceases soaring. nor once turns to pursue or shake them off.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

I heard the tweezer note, or screeper note, of the particolored warbler. See  May 13, 1860 ("At Holden Swamp, hear plenty of parti-colored warblers (tweezer-birds) and redstarts."); May 18, 1856 ("A Sylvia Americana, — parti-colored warbler, — in the Holden Wood, sings a, tshrea tshrea tshrea, tshre’ tshritty tshrit’.”)  See note to May 13, 1856 (“At the swamp, hear the yorrick of Wilson’s thrush; the tweezer-bird or Sylvia Americana. Also the oven-bird sings.”) See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the parti-colored warbler (Sylvia Americana)

The aspen there (the Island) just begun to leaf. . . . See  May 5, 1858  ("The aspen leaves at Island to-day appear as big as a nine pence suddenly");  May 17, 1860   ("Standing in the meadow near the early aspen at the island, I hear the first fluttering of leaves, - a peculiar sound, at first unaccountable to me");  May 2, 1859 ("I am surprised by the tender yellowish green of the aspen leaf just expanded suddenly"); May 2, 1855 ("The young aspens are the first of indigenous trees conspicuously leafed"). See also A Book of the Seasons, the Aspens. 

Went up Dodge’s Brook and across Barrett’s dam. See May 31, 1853 ("In the meanwhile, Farmer, who was hoeing, came up to the wall, and we fell into a talk about Dodge's Brook, which runs through his farm.  . . .")

Shad-flies on the water, schooner-like. . . . See May 1, 1854 ("The water is strewn with myriads of wrecked shad-flies, erect on the surface, with their wings up like so many schooners all headed one way. . . .")

s it not the sharp-shinned, or Falco fuscus? See July 21, 1858 (“A young man killed one of the young hawks, and I saw it. It was the Falco fuscus, the American brown or slate-colored hawk.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sharp-shinned Hawk

I think that what I have called the sparrow hawk falsely, and latterly pigeon hawk, is also the sharp-shinned . . .  See July 2, 1856 (“Looked at the birds in the Natural History Rooms in Boston. Observed no white spots on the sparrow hawk’s wing, or on the pigeon or sharp-shinned hawk’s. Indeed they were so closed that I could not have seen them. Am uncertain to which my wing belongs.”) See also  A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Hawk (Merlin)

The sun sets red, shorn of its beams. See May 5, 1859 ("The sun sets red (first time), followed by a very hot and hazy day.”)

May 4.

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 

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