The air is suddenly full of fragrance.

May 14.

 5.30 A. M. — Up railroad. 

Hear and see the red-eye on an oak. The tail is slightly forked and apparently three quarters of an inch beyond wings; all whitish beneath. 

Hear and see a redstart. Methinks I did also on the 10th ? The rhythm a little way off is ah, tche  tche tche'-ar. 

10 A. M. — To Hill. 

A kingbird. 

Saw a young robin dead. 

Saw the Viola palmata, early form, yesterday; how long? 

Look at White Avens Shore. See what I call vernal grass in bloom in many places. 

The Salix sericea, large and small, and the petiolaris or loose-catkinned (so far as I know their staminate flowers) are now out of bloom.The rostrata not quite done. Some of its catkins now three and a half inches long. The alba not quite done. S. pedicellaris by railroad about done, and the Torreyana done. 

Picked up, floating, an Emys picta, hatched last year. It is an inch and one twentieth long in the upper shell and agrees with Agassiz's description at that age. Agassiz says he could never obtain a specimen of the insculpta only one year old, it is so rarely met with, and young Emydidae are so aquatic. I have seen them frequently. 

To-day, for the first time, it appears to me summerlike and a new season. There is a tender green on the meadows and just leafing trees. The blossoms of the cherry, peach, pear, etc., are conspicuous, and the air is suddenly full of fragrance. Houses are seen to stand amid blossoming fruit trees, and the air about them is full of fragrance and the music of birds. 

As I go down the railroad at evening, I hear the incessant evening song of the bay-wing from far over the fields. It suggests pleasant associations. Are they not heard chiefly at this season? 

The fruit of the early aspen is almost as large — its catkins — as those of the early willow. It will soon be ripe. The very common puffed-up yellow ovaries make quite a show, like some normal fruit; even quite pretty. 

I discovered this morning that a large rock three feet in diameter was partially hollow, and broke into it at length with a stone in order to reach some large black crystals which I could partly see. I found that it had been the retreat of a squirrel, and it had left many nuts there. It had entered a small hole bristling with crystals, and there found a chamber or grotto a foot long at least, surrounded on all sides by crystals. They thus explore and carry their nuts into every crevice, even in the rocks. 

Celandine by cemetery. 

One tells me he saw to-day the arum flower.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 14, 1858


Kingbird. See May 14, 1852 (“First kingbird. Its voice and flight relate it to the swallow.”)

The evening song of the bay-wing from far over the fields. It suggests pleasant associations. See May 12, 1857 ("It reminded me of many a summer sunset, of many miles of gray rails, of many a rambling pasture, of the farmhouse far in the fields, its milk-pans and well-sweep, and the cows coming home from pasture.”)