A rather warm and pleasant day.
Going down-town in the morning, I hear the warbling vireo, golden robin, catbird, and summer yellowbird.
For some days the Salix alba have shown their yellow wreaths here and there, suggesting the coming of the yellowbird, and now they are alive with them.
About 8.30 A.M., I go down the river to Ball's Hill. As I paddle along, hear the Maryland yellow-throat, the bobolink, the oven-bird, and the yellow-throated vireo.
That early glaucous, sharp-pointed, erect sedge, grass like, by the riverside is now apparently in prime. Is it the Carex aquatilis?
I hear in several places the low dumping notes of awakened bullfrogs, what I call their pebbly notes, as if they were cracking pebbles in their mouths; not the plump dont dont or ker dont, but kerdle dont dont. As if they sat round mumbling pebbles.
At length, near Ball's Hill, I hear the first regular bullfrog's trump. Some fainter ones far off are very like the looing of cows. This sound, heard low and far off over meadows when the warmer hours have come, grandly inaugurates the summer. I perspire with rowing in my thick coat and wish I had worn a thin one. This trumpeter, marching or leaping in the van of advancing summer, whom I now hear coming on over the green meadows, seems to say, “Take off your coat, take off your coat, take off your coat!” He says, “Here comes a gale that I can breathe. This is some thing like; this is what I call summer.”
I see three or four of them sitting silent in one warm meadow bay. Evidently their breeding-season now begins. But they are soon silent as yet, and it is only an occasional and transient trump that you hear.
That season which is bounded on the north, on the spring side at least, by the trump of the bullfrog. This note is like the first colored petals within the calyx of a flower. It conducts us toward the germ of the flower summer. He knows no winter. I hear in his tone the rumors of summer heats. By this note he reassures the season. Not till the air is of that quality that it can support this sound does he emit it. It requires a certain sonorousness.
The van is led by the croaking wood frog and the little peeping hylodes, and at last comes this pursy trumpeter, the air growing more and more genial, and even sultry, as well as sonorous. As soon as Nature is ready for him to play his part, she awakens him with a warmer, perchance a sultry, breath and excites him to sound his trombone. It reminds me at once of tepid waters and of bathing. His trump is to the ear what the yellow lily or spatter-dock is to the eye. He swears by the powers of mud.
It is enough for the day to have heard only the first half-trump of an early awakened one from far in some warm meadow bay. It is a certain revelation and anticipation of the livelong summer to come. It gives leave to the corn to grow and to the heavens to thunder and lighten. It gives leave to the invalid to take the air. Our climate is now as tropical as any. It says, Put out your fires and sit in the fire which the sun has kindled. I hear from some far meadow bay, across the Great Meadows, the half-sounded trump of a bullfrog this warm morning.
It is like the tap of a drum when human legions are mustering. It reminds me that summer is now in earnest mustering her forces, and that ere long I shall see their waving plumes and glancing armor and hear the full bands and steady tread. The bullfrog is earth's trumpeter, at the head of the terrene band. He replies to the sky with answering thunder.
I see still five or six ducks, which I scare from the Great Meadows. Some may be going to breed here.
How much expression there is in the Viola pedata! I do not know on the whole but it is the handsomest of them all, it is so large and grows in such large masses. Yet I have thought there was a certain shallowness in its expression. Yet it spreads so perfectly open with its face turned upward that you get its whole expression.
P. M. — To Walden.
R. W. E. is sure that he heard a cuckoo to-day. A hair-bird's nest in his yard with one egg.
The northern wild red cherry by Everett's, apparently to-morrow.
Hear in various woods the yorrick note of the veery. So the bird seen long since probably was not the veery.
A boy found yesterday one or two of the fringed polygala out.
It is remarkable how many new birds have come all at once to-day. The hollow-sounding note of the oven-bird is heard from the depth of the wood. The warbling vireo cheers the elms with a strain for which they must have pined. The trees, in respect to these new arrivers, have been so many empty music-halls. The oriole is seen darting like a bright flash with clear whistle from one tree-top to another over the street. The very catbird's mew in the copse harmonizes with the bare twigs, as it were shaming them into life and verdure, and soon he mounts upon a tree and is a new creature. Toward night wood thrush ennobles the wood and the world with his strain.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 10, 1858
Hear in various woods the yorrick note of the veery. See May 10, 1853 ("[I]n the woods, the veery note.")
The willow and the coming of the yellowbird. See May 10, 1853 ("At this season the traveller passes through a golden gate on causeways where these willows are planted, as if he were approaching the entrance to Fairyland; and there will surely be found the yellowbird, and already from a distance is heard his note, a tche tche tche tcha tchar tcha, — ah, willow, willow."); May 10, 1854 ("I perceive the sweetness of the willows on the causeway."); May 11, 1854 ("The willows on the Turnpike now resound with the hum of bees, and i hear the yellowbird and Maryland yellow-throat amid them. These yellow birds are concealed by the yellow of the willows.") May 11, 1856(" At a distance I hear the first yellow-bird."); May 12, 1853 ("The yellowbird has another note, tchut tchut tchar te tchit e war."); May 14, 1852 (" Going over the Corner causeway, the willow blossoms fill the air with a sweet fragrance, and I am ready to sing, Ah! willow, willow! These willows have yellow bark, bear yellow flowers and yellowish-green leaves, and are now haunted by the summer yellowbird and Maryland yellow-throat.")
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
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