So each man looks at things from his own point of view.

April 18.

8 a. m. — To the south part of Acton, surveying, with Stedman Buttrick. 

When B. came to see me the other evening, and stood before the door in the dark, my mother asked, 

"Who is it?"

 to which he replied, quite seriously,

 "Left-tenant Stedman Buttrick.” 

B. says that he shot some crossbills which were opening pine cones in the neighborhood of the Easterbrook place some years ago, that he saw two dildees here as much as a month ago at least, and that they used to breed on that island east of his house, — I think he called it Burr's Island. 

He sees the two kinds of telltale here. 

Once shot an eider duck here. Has often shot the pintail (he calls it spindle-tail) duck here. Thinks he has killed four (? !) kinds of teal here. 

Once shot a sheldrake which had a good-sized sucker in its throat, the tail sticking out its bill, so that, as he thought, it could not have flown away with it. It was a full-plumaged male. 

Once, in the fall, shot a mackerel gull on what I call Dove Rock. 

Once shot a whole flock of little ducks not more than two thirds the size of a pigeon, yet full-grown, near the junction of the two rivers. Also got two ducks, the female all white and the male with a long and conspicuous bottle-green crest above the white. looked through Audubon, but could find no account of them. 

Sees two kinds of gray ducks, one larger than a black duck. Has seen the summer duck here carrying its young to the water in her bill, as much as thirty rods. Says that teal have bred here. 

His boy found, one February, as much as a peck of chestnuts in different parcels within a short distance of one another, just under the leaves in Hildreth's chestnut wood, placed there, as he says, by the chip-squirrel, which they saw eating them. 

He has seen the cross fox here. 

I am looking for acorns these days, to sow on the Walden lot, but can find very few sound ones. Those which the squirrels have not got are mostly worm-eaten and quite pulverized or decayed. A few which are cracked at the small [end], having started last fall, have yet life in them, perhaps enough to plant. Even these look rather discolored when you cut them open, but Buttrick says they will do for pigeon-bait. 

So each man looks at things from his own point of view. 

I found by trial that the last or apparently sound acorns would always sink in water, while the rotten ones would float, and I have accordingly offered five cents a quart for such as will sink. You can thus separate the good from the bad in a moment. I am not sure, however, but the germs of many of the latter have been injured by the frost. 

Hear a field sparrow. 

Ed. Emerson shows me his aquarium. 

• He has two minnows from the brook, which I think must be the banded minnow; a little more than an inch long with very conspicuous broad black transverse bars. 

• Some Rana sylvatica spawn just begun to flat out. 

• Also several kinds of larvae in the water, — one very like a dragon fly, with three large feather-like appendages to the tail, small gyrinus, which he says nibbled off the legs of the skater (?), etc., etc., but no dragon fly grubs. 

• Two salamanders, one from Ripple Lake and the other from the pool behind my house that was 

• One some four inches long, with a carinated and waved (crenated) edged tail as well as light-vermilion spots on the back, evidently the Salamandra dorsalis. (This I suspect is what I called S. symmetrica last fall.) (This is pale-brown above.)

• The other two thirds as large, a very handsome bright orange salmon, also with vermilion spots, which must be the true S. symmetrica. Both thickly sprinkled with black dots. The latter's tail comparatively thick and straight-edged. 

Haynes (Heavy) says that trout spawn twice in a year, — once in October and again in the spring. 

Saw snow ice a yard across to-day under the north side of a wood.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 18, 1859


Hear a field sparrow. See April 18, 1855 ("The rush sparrows tinkle now at 3 P. M. far over the bushes, and hylodes are peeping in a distant pool.”); April 18, 1857 ("Hear the huckleberry-bird”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Field Sparrow (Fringilla juncorum)

Ed. Emerson shows me his aquarium. See April 29, 1859 (“E. Emerson's Salamandra dorsalis has just lost its skin.”)

Some Rana sylvatica spawn just begun to flat out. See April 18, 1858 ("The Rana sylvatica tadpoles have mostly wiggled away from the ova")

This I suspect is what I called S. symmetrica last fall. See December 3, 1858 ("The salamander above named, found in the water of the Pout’s Nest, is the Salamandra symmetrica It is some three inches long, brown (not dark-brown) above and yellow with small dark spots beneath, and the same spots on the sides of the tail; a row of very minute vermilion spots, not detected but on a close examination, on each side of the back”); see also note to April 21, 1859 (“The vermilion-spotted salamanders are darting at the various grotesque-formed larvae of the lake.”)

He has seen the cross fox here. See note to May 20, 1858 (“This appears to be nearest to the cross fox of Audubon”)