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| FEBRUARY 18, 2017 |
Another remarkably warm and pleasant day. The nights of late nearly as warm as the day.
When I step out into the yard I hear that earliest spring note from some bird, perhaps a pigeon woodpecker (or can it be a nuthatch, whose ordinary note I hear?), the rapid whar whar, whar whar, whar whar, which I have so often heard before any other note.
The snow is nearly all gone, and it is so warm and springlike that I walk over to the hill, listening for spring birds.
The roads are beginning to be settled. I step excited over the moist mossy ground, dotted with the green stars of thistles, crowfoot, etc., the outsides of which are withered.
Amid the pitch pines by the hemlocks I am surprised to find a great mildew on the ground, three or four feet long by two and a half wide and one fourth to one inch thick, investing the pine-needles and grass stubble and fallen hemlock twigs, like a thick cobweb or veil, through which the ground, etc., is seen dimly. It has a regular vegetable or lichen-like border, creeping out ward from a centre, and is more cottony and fibrous there.
Like the ground generally thereabouts, it has an inspiring sweet, musty scent when I stoop close to it. I was surprised to find how sweet the whole ground smelled when I lay flat and applied my nose to it; more so than any cow; as it were the promise of the perfect man and new springs to eternity.
The mildew apparently occupied the place where a mass of snow ice rested yesterday (it was not yet wholly gone on one side). It was the snow-bank's footprint, or rather its plantain. One of the first growths of the new year, surely. Further in the pines there was more of it whereever the snow had but just disappeared, a great many square rods of it all put together.
But also there was, very similar to it, yet only a thin veil, the apparent gossamer of spring and fall, close to the edge of the melting snow, and I saw a spider or two. This had only the thickness of a cobweb and was covered with dew, yet was rather hard to distinguish from the mildew. Thin cobwebs were very widely dispersed in the meadows where the snow had just melted. [Vide Mar. 4, 1860.]
I thought at one time that I heard a bluebird.
Hear a fly buzz amid some willows.
Thermometer at 1 p.m., 65.
Sophia says that Mrs. Brooks's spiraeas have started considerably!
I hear that geese went over Cambridge last night.
I sit all this day and evening without a fire, and some even have windows open.
P. M. — To Hubbard's Bath.
The frost out of the ground and the ways settled in many places.
I see much more of that gossamer (?) of the morning, — still regarding the large mildew as different. It abounds in all low grounds where there is a firm pasture sod, where a snow-bank has just melted or on the edge of one that is fast disappearing. I observe some remarkable ones on Hubbard's land just below the mountain sumachs.
They are thin webs over the grass just laid bare close to the snow commonly and over the icy edge of the snow. They are not under the snow. I thought at first it had been formed on the surface of the snow and when it melted rested lightly on the stubble beneath, but I could detect none extending more than three or four inches over the icy edge of the snow, though every stubble half exposed amid the snow even was the source or point d'appui of some.
Sometimes, to my surprise, it was an extremely thin, but close-woven (?), perhaps air-tight veil, of the same color but still thinner than the thinnest tissue paper or membrane, in patches one to three feet in diameter, resting lightly on the stubble, which supports it in the form of little tents. This is now dry and very brittle, yet I can get up pieces an inch across.
It suggests even a scum on the edge of the melting snow, which has at last dried and hardened into a web. Here is one which, as commonly, springs from three or four inches within the melted snow, partly resting close and flat upon it, and extends thence several feet from its edge over the stubble.
None of these have the thickness of mildew, and for cobwebs I see but two or three spiders about and cannot believe that they can have done all this in one night, nor do they make a close web. It lies lightly upon the stubble and the edge of the snow, as if it had settled in the night from the atmosphere.
Can it be a scum formed on the melting snow, caught at last on the stubble like the pap of paper taken up in a sieve?
Further off on every side I see the same now fretted away, like a coarse and worn-out sieve, where it was perfect perhaps yesterday. Thus it lasts all day, conspicuous many rods off. I think there must be a square mile of this, at least, in Concord. It is after a very warm, muggy, but fair night, the last snow going off and the thermometer at 50°. Thinnest, frailest, gossamer veils dropped from above on the stubble, as if the fairies had dropped their veils or handkerchiefs after a midnight revel, rejoicing at the melting of the snow.
What can it be?
Is it animal or vegetable?
I suspect it is allied to mould; or is it a scum? or have the spiders anything to do with it?
It suggests even a nebulous vegetable matter in the air, which, under these cir cumstances, in a muggy night, is condensed into this primitive vegetable form.
Is it a sort of flowing of the earth, a waste fertility anticipating the more regular growths of spring?
Has not some slightly glutinous substance been deposited from the atmosphere on the snow, which is thus collected into a thin sort of paper, even like the brown-paper conferva?
Is it a species of conferva?
I am excited by this wonderful air and go listening for the note of the bluebird or other comer. The very grain of the air seems to have undergone a change and is ready to split into the form of the bluebird's warble. Methinks if it were visible, or I could cast up some fine dust which would betray it, it would take a corresponding shape. The bluebird does not come till the air consents and his wedge will enter easily.
The air over these fields is a foundry full of moulds for casting bluebirds' warbles. Any sound uttered now would take that form, not of the harsh, vibrating, rending scream of the jay, but a softer, flowing, curling warble, like a purling stream or the lobes of flowing sand and clay. Here is the soft air and the moist expectant apple trees, but not yet the bluebird. They do not quite attain to song.
What a poem is this of spring, so often repeated! I am thrilled when I hear it spoken of, — as the spring of such a year, that fytte of the glorious epic.
Picked up a mouse-nest in the stubble at Hubbard's mountain sumachs, left bare by the melting snow. It is about five inches wide and three or four high, with one, if not two, small round indistinct entrances on the side, not very obvious till you thrust your finger through them and press aside the fine grass that closes them, ready to yield to the pressure of the mouse's body. It is made very firmly and round, far more so than an oven-bird's nest, of the rye and grass stubble which was at hand under the snow, gnawed off to convenient lengths. A very snug and warm nest, where several might have lain very cosily under the snow in the hardest winter.
Near by were collected many large green droppings of the usual form, as if for cleanliness, several feet off. Many galleries were visible close to the ground, in the withered grass under the snow. Is it not the nest of a different mouse from the Mus leucopus of the woods?
Mr. Prichard says that when he first came to Concord wood was $2.50 per cord. Father says that good wood was $3.00 per cord, and he can remember the longest; white pine, $2.00; maple, sixteen shillings.
When I approached the bank of a ditch this after noon, I saw a frog diving to the bottom. The warmer water had already awaked him, and perhaps he had been sitting on the bank.
The above-described gossamer often has small roundish spots on it, two or three inches in diameter, which are whiter and much thicker, even like the silvery scales under which some kinds of insects lurk, somewhat. I see none of this over sand or in the road, as I suppose would be the case if it were a mere scum on the snow, or a deposition from the atmosphere.
Must it not be of the nature of mildew? It is as if it were a thin and tender membrane that envelops the infant earth in earliest spring, at once rent and dissipated.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 18, 1857
I hear that earliest spring note from some bird. . . the rapid whar whar, whar whar, whar whar, which I have so often heard before any other note. See February 17, 1855 (The jays are uttering their unusual notes, and this makes me think of a woodpecker. It reminds me of the pine warbler, vetter vetter vetter vetter vet, except that it is much louder, and I should say has the sound of l rather than t, — veller, etc., perhaps. Can it be a jay? or a pigeon woodpecker? Is it not the earliest springward note of a bird? In the damp misty air.”); March 18, 1857 ("I hear the faint fine notes of apparent nuthatches coursing up the pitch pines. . .Then, at a distance,
that whar-whar whar-whar-whar-whar, which after all I suspect
may be the note of the nuthatch and not a woodpecker."); March 5, 1859 ("Going down-town this forenoon, I heard a white-bellied nuthatch on an elm within twenty feet, uttering peculiar notes and more like a song than I remember to have heard from it.. . .It was something like to-what what what what what, rapidly repeated, and not the usual gnah gnah; and this instant it occurs to me that this may be that earliest spring note which I hear, and have referred to a woodpecker! . . .It is the spring note of the nuthatch"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Woodpecker (flicker)
I am excited by this wonderful air and go listening for the note of the bluebird . . . See February 9, 1854 ("It is such a warm, moist, or softened, sunlit air as we are wont to hear the first bluebird's warble in"); February 18, 1855 ("Now for the first time decidedly there is something spring-suggesting in the air and light. . . .I listen ever for something springlike in the notes of birds, some peculiar tinkling notes.”); February 22, 1855 ("Remarkably warm and pleasant weather, perfect spring. I even listen for the first bluebird.”); February 23,, 1859 (“[In Worcester] I first hear and then see eight or ten bluebirds going over. Perhaps they have not reached Concord yet. One boy tells me that he saw a bluebird in Concord on Sunday, the 20th.”); February 27, 1861 ("It occurs to me that I have just heard a bluebird"); March 7, 1854 ("Heard the first bluebird"); March 10, 1852 ("I see flocks of a dozen bluebirds together"); March 19, 1855 (“ I hear my first bluebird”).
. . the harsh, vibrating, rending scream of the jay, See February 2, 1854 ("The scream of the jay is a true winter sound. It is wholly without sentiment, and in harmony with winter."); February 12, 1854 ("the unrelenting steel-cold scream of a jay, unmelted, that never flows into a song, a sort of wintry trumpet, screaming cold; hard, tense, frozen music, like the winter sky itself; in the blue livery of winter's band. It is like a flourish of trumpets to the winter sky.”)
What a poem is this of spring, so often repeated! I am thrilled when I hear it spoken of, — as the spring of such a year, that fytte of the glorious epic. See December 7, 1856 ("That grand old poem called Winter is round again without any connivance of mine. . . .As fast as snowflakes, Summer was, now Winter is. Nature loves this rhyme.”)
I am excited by this wonderful air and go listening for the note of the bluebird . . . See February 9, 1854 ("It is such a warm, moist, or softened, sunlit air as we are wont to hear the first bluebird's warble in"); February 18, 1855 ("Now for the first time decidedly there is something spring-suggesting in the air and light. . . .I listen ever for something springlike in the notes of birds, some peculiar tinkling notes.”); February 22, 1855 ("Remarkably warm and pleasant weather, perfect spring. I even listen for the first bluebird.”); February 23,, 1859 (“[In Worcester] I first hear and then see eight or ten bluebirds going over. Perhaps they have not reached Concord yet. One boy tells me that he saw a bluebird in Concord on Sunday, the 20th.”); February 27, 1861 ("It occurs to me that I have just heard a bluebird"); March 7, 1854 ("Heard the first bluebird"); March 10, 1852 ("I see flocks of a dozen bluebirds together"); March 19, 1855 (“ I hear my first bluebird”).
. . the harsh, vibrating, rending scream of the jay, See February 2, 1854 ("The scream of the jay is a true winter sound. It is wholly without sentiment, and in harmony with winter."); February 12, 1854 ("the unrelenting steel-cold scream of a jay, unmelted, that never flows into a song, a sort of wintry trumpet, screaming cold; hard, tense, frozen music, like the winter sky itself; in the blue livery of winter's band. It is like a flourish of trumpets to the winter sky.”)
What a poem is this of spring, so often repeated! I am thrilled when I hear it spoken of, — as the spring of such a year, that fytte of the glorious epic. See December 7, 1856 ("That grand old poem called Winter is round again without any connivance of mine. . . .As fast as snowflakes, Summer was, now Winter is. Nature loves this rhyme.”)
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