The phe phee-ar of the new muscicapa.

May 23. 

P. M. — To Heywood Spring. 

Sorrel well open on west side of railroad causeway against H. Wheeler’s land. 

Noticed the earliest willow catkins turned to masses of cotton yesterday; also a little of the mouse-ear down begins to be loose. 

Hear often and distinctly, apparently from H. Wheeler’s black spruce wood-lot, the phe phee-ar of the new muscicapa. Red-eye and wood thrush. 

Houstonias whiten the fields, and looked yesterday like snow, a sugaring of snow, on the side of Lee’s Hill. 

Heard partridges drum yesterday and to-day. 

Observed the pads yesterday just begun to spread out on the surface with wrinkled edges and here and there a bullet-like bud; the red white lily pads still more rare as yet. 

The stellaria at Heywood Spring must be the same with that near the E. Hosmer Spring, though the former has commonly fewer styles and rather slenderer leaves.  It appears to be the S. borealia, though the leaves are narrowly lanceolate; has three to seven styles; a few petals (cleft almost to the bottom) or none; pods, some larger than the calyx  and apparently ten-ribbed; petals, now about the length of the sepals.

After sunset on river. A warm summer-like night. A bullfrog trumps once. A large devil’s—needle goes by after sundown. 

The ring of toads is loud and incessant. It seems more prolonged than it is. I think it not more than two seconds in each case. 

At the same time I hear a low, stertorous, dry, but hard-cored note from some frog in the meadows and along the riverside; often heard in past years but not accounted for. Is it a Rana palustris? 

Dor-bugs hum in the yard, — and were heard against the windows some nights ago. The cat is springing into the air for them.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 23, 1856

Hear often and distinctly, apparently from H. Wheeler’s black spruce wood-lot, the phe phee-ar of the new muscicapa. See May 23, 1854 ("The wood pewee sings now in the woods behind the spring in the heat of the day”). see also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Wood-Pewee


Heard partridges drum yesterday and to-day. See February 22, 1855 ("He [Farmer] had seen a partridge drum standing on a wall. Said it stood very upright and produced the sound by striking its wings together behind its back, . . .but did not strike the wall nor its body."); April 19, 1860 ("Toward night, hear a partridge drum. You will hear at first a single beat or two far apart and have time to say, "There is a partridge," so distinct and deliberate is it often, before it becomes a rapid roll."); April 25, 1854 ("The first partridge drums in one or two places, as if the earth's pulse now beat audibly with the increased flow of life. It slightly flutters all Nature and makes her heart palpitate.") April 29, 1857 ("C. says it makes his heart beat with it, or he feels it in his breast.");. May 11, 1853 (" Beginning slowly and deliberately, the partridge's beat sounds faster and faster from far away under the boughs and through the aisles of the wood until it becomes a regular roll, but is speedily concluded") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau May 23

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 © 2009-2021