I too have been looking for frogs. If I were to be a frog hawk for a month I should soon know some things.

May 2.

Hepatica, May 2, 2018

Sit without fire to-day and yesterday.

I compare the three Rana palustris caught yesterday with the male and female of April 23d. 

The males agree very well. What I have regarded as the groundwork varies from pale brown to dusky brown, even in the same specimen at different times. 

The present female is larger than that of April 23d, more than half an inch longer than her male, and she has the round dark spots on the orbits and one in front on head and also oblong-square spots on back. She is also dusky-brown like male. 

None of all have any green. 

I at last hear the note, for two are coupled in a firkin in my chamber, under my face. It is made by the male alone, and is, as I supposed, the sound of April 30th and May 1st, — the tut tut tut, more or less rapidly repeated, and a frequent querulous or inquisitive cr-r-rack, half a second long. 

It makes these sounds only when I excite it by putting others of its kind near it. Its pouches are distended laterally, apparently beneath and behind the eye, and not very conspicuous. Close by, it sounds like a dry belching sound, the bursting of little bubbles more or less rapidly, and the querulous note may be the same very rapidly repeated. 

I doubt if I have heard any sound from a bullfrog in river yet. 

P. M. — Down river. 

The Salix Babylonica (fertile) behind Dodd's is more forward than the alba by my boat. Put it just before it. See stake-driver. 

At mouth of the Mill Brook, I hear, I should say, the true R. halecina croak, i. e. with the faint bullfrog-like er-er-er intermixed. Are they still breeding? 

Peetweet on a rock. 

See and hear the red-wings in flocks yet, making a great noise. 

If I were to be a frog hawk for a month I should soon know some things about the frogs. How patiently they skim the meadows, occasionally alighting, and fluttering as if it were difficult ever to stand still on the ground. I have seen more of them than usual since I too have been looking for frogs. 

Hear a tree-toad.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 2, 1858

Sit without fire to-day and yesterday. See May 3, 1857 (“”To-day we sit without fire")
I compare the three Rana palustris caught yesterday with the male and female of April 23d. See April 24, 1858 ("I go at 8 A.M. to catch frogs to compare with the R. palustris and bull frog which I have, but I find it too cold for them")

At mouth of the Mill Brook, I hear, I should say, the true R. halecina croak, i. e. with the faint bullfrog-like er-er-er intermixed. See note to  April 3, 1858 ("Their note is a hard dry tut tut tut tut, . . .  and from time to time one makes that faint somewhat bullfrog-like er er er. Both these sounds, then, are made by one frog, ")


If I were to be a frog hawk for a month I should soon know some things about the frogs. See March 27, 1855 (“See my frog hawk. . . .It is the hen-barrier, i.e. marsh hawk, male. Slate-colored; beating the bush; black tips to wings and white rump. "); March 29, 1854 (See two marsh hawks, white on rump."); March 30, 1856 ("May have been a marsh hawk or harrier.");  April 5, 1854  ("These days . . . bring out the butterflies and the frogs, and the marsh hawks which prey on the last. Just so simple is every year.”); April 8, 1856 ("Marsh hawks circling low shows that frogs must be out."); April 19, 1858 ("He skims along exactly over the edge of the water, on the meadowy side, not more than three or four feet from the ground and winding with the shore, looking for frogs.."); April 22, 1856 (“A marsh hawk, in the midst of the rain, is skimming along the shore of the meadow, close to the ground, . . . It is looking for frogs.”); May 2, 1855 ("Was that a harrier seen at first skimming low then seating and circling, with a broad whiteness on the wings beneath?” ~~ What HDT calls the "frog/marsh hawk/hen harrier" is the northern harrier.