A fog this morning.
Our peach out.
P. M. — To beeches.
As I sat by the Riordan crossing, thought it was the tanager I heard? I think now, only because it is so early, that it may have been the yellow-throat vireo. [No; it must have been a tanager, which I hear frequently the 19th.]
l see also, for a moment, in dry woods, a warbler with blue-slate head and apparently all yellow beneath for a minute, nothing else conspicuous; note slightly like tseep, tseep, tseep, tseep, tsit sitter ra-re-ra, the last fast, on maples, etc. Maybe I heard the same yesterday. [No doubt the Sylvia Americana, blue yellow-back or parti-colored warbler; heard before.]
Northern wild red cherry out, out by railroad; maybe day or two elsewhere.
At Heywood Spring I see a clumsy woodchuck, now, at 4 P. M., out feeding, gray or grizzly above, brown beneath. It runs, or waddles, to its hole two or three rods off, and as usual pauses, listening, at its entrance till I start again, then dives in.
Viola cucullata abundant now.
Just on the brink of this Heywood Spring, I find what may be the Stellaria borealis (if it is not the longifolia, but it is not in cymes like that; only a single flower to each axil, now at least), though Bigelow makes its calyx-divisions nerve-less. These are three-nerved, and one flower, at least, has five styles. It has been out perhaps several days. Some of the flowers are without petals, others with those very deeply cleft or divided white petals. The others may have pollen.
Strawberry well out; how long?
On Amelanchier Botryapium, many narrow dark bronze-colored beetles (say three fourths inch long) coupled and at same time eating the flowers, calyx and all.
Night-warbler.
Hickory leafets not so large as beech. Beech leaves two inches long. Say it has leafed a day or two.
White birch pollen. Beech not out yet.
Checker-berries very abundant on south side of Pine Hill, by pitch pine wood. Now is probably best time to gather them.
Cleared out the Beech Spring, which is a copious one. So I have done some service, though it was a wet and muddy job. Cleared out a spring while you have been to the wars. Now that warmer days make the traveller thirsty, this becomes an important work.
This spring was filled and covered with a great mass of beech leaves, amid and beneath which, damp and wet as they Were, were myriads of snow-fleas and also their white exuviae; the latter often whitening a whole leaf, mixed with live ones. It looks as if for coolness and moisture — which the snow had afforded — they were compelled to take refuge here.
Cerasus pumila, south side Pine Hill, not yet by Cut Woods.
Perceive some of that delicious meadow fragrance coming over the railroad causeway.
Measured a chestnut stump cut last winter on Pine Hill; twenty five inches in diameter and fifty-six rings.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 15, 1856
a warbler with blue-slate head and apparently all yellow beneath . . . See. May 27, 1855 ("The blue yellow-back or parti-colored warbler still, with the chestnut crescent on breast, near my Kalmia Swamp nest.");
. . . thought it was the tanager I heard? … See May 13, 1853 (“Methinks I hear and see the tanager now.”); May 16, 1859 ("Hear a tanager to-day, and one was seen yesterday."); May 18, 1851("The scarlet tanagers are come.”). May 19, 1856 (“The tanager is now heard plainly and frequently.”); See also May 20, 1858 (“See tanagers, male and female, in the top of a pine, one red, other yellow, from below. We have got to these high colors among birds”); May 23, 1853 (“At Loring's Wood heard and saw a tanager. That contrast of a red bird with the green pines and the blue sky! Even when I have heard his note and look for him and find the bloody fellow, sitting on a dead twig of a pine, I am always startled. . ..That incredible red, with the green and blue, .. . .I am transported; these are not the woods I ordinarily walk in. . . .How he enhances the wildness and wealth of the woods!”)May 24, 1860 ("You can hardly believe that a living creature can wear such colors.”); May 28, 1855 (" I see a tanager, the most brilliant and tropical-looking bird we have, bright-scarlet with black wings, the scarlet appearing on the rump again between wing-tips. He brings heat, or heat him. A remarkable contrast with the green pines.”) See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Scarlet Tanager
Perceive some of that delicious meadow fragrance coming over the railroad causeway. . . . See May 27, 1855 ("The meadow fragrance to-day.”); May 6, 1855 ("that unaccountable fugacious fragrance, as of all flowers,”); June 3, 1860 ("I perceive the meadow fragrance. . .”)
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