A little brown snake with blackish marks.

April 29. 

Storrow Higginson plucked the uva-ursi fully out the 25th; perhaps two or three days, for it was nearly out, he says, the 18th!!! By his account it was on Pine Hill.  

I heard yesterday at Ledum Swamp the lively, sweet, yet somewhat whimsical note of the ruby crowned wren, and had sight of him a moment. Did I not hear it there the 10th? 

Noticed a man killing, on the sidewalk by Minott's, a little brown snake with blackish marks along each side of back and a pink belly. Was it not the Coluber amaenus?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 29, 1858

Heard yesterday at Ledum Swamp the lively, sweet, yet somewhat whimsical note of the ruby crowned wren.  See April 25, 1854 (“A very interesting and active little fellow, darting about amid the tree-tops, and his song quite remarkable and rich and loud for his size. Begins with a very fine note, before its pipes are filled, not audible at a little distance, then woriter weter, etc., etc., winding up with teter teter, all clear and round. (His song is comical and reminds me of the thrasher.)”);  May 6, 1855 ("Hear at a distance a ruby(?)-crowned wren, so robin-like and spirited.  . . . I think this the only Regulus I have ever seen.”); April 30, 1857 (“Hear again the same bird heard at Conantum April 18th, which I think must be the ruby-crowned wren. ”); April 26, 1860 ("Hear the ruby-crowned wren in the morning, near George Heywood’s.”). See also note to April 20, 1859 ("My ruby-crowned or crested wren”) and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau: the ruby-crowned or crested wren.

A man killing a little brown snake with blackish marks along each side of back and a pink belly. See October 11, 1856 (“I find a little snake which somebody has killed with his heel. It is apparently Coluber amaenus, the red snake. Brown above, light-red beneath, about eight inches long . . . It is a conspicuous light red beneath, then a bluish-gray line along the sides, and above this brown with a line of lighter or yellowish brown down the middle of the back. ”); September 9, 1857 ("On my way home, caught one of those little red bellied snakes in the road, where it was rather slugish, as usual. Saw another in the road a week or two ago. The whole length was eight inches. . .It was a dark ash-color above, with darker longitudinal lines, light brick-red beneath. There were three triangular buff spots just behind the head, one above and one each side. It is apparently Coluber amaenus”). See also April 26, 1857 ("I have the same objection to killing a snake that I have to the killing of any other animal, yet the most humane man that I know never omits to kill one.”). Compare April 22, 1857 (“Near Tall's Island, rescue a little pale or yellowish brown snake that was coiled round a willow half a dozen rods from the shore and was apparently chilled by the cold. Was it not Storer's "little brown snake?”) ~ rebellied snake or worm snake or both?: Snakes of Massachusetts