The dog lies with his paws hanging over the door-sill this agreeably cool morning.

May 30.

May 30, 2014

The morning wind forever blows; the poem of the world is uninterrupted, but few are the ears that hear it.

Forever that strain of the harp which soothed the Cerberus and called me back to life is sounding.

Olympus is the outside of the earth everywhere.

5 A. M. To Cliffs.

High blackberry out.

As I go by Hayden's in the still cool morning, the farmer's door is open — probably his cattle have been attended to — and the odor of the bacon which is being fried for his breakfast fills the air.

The dog lies with his paws hanging over the door-sill this agreeably cool morning.

The cistus out, probably yesterday, a simple and delicate flower, its stamens all swept to one side. It upholds a delicate saffron-golden (?) basin about nine inches from the ground.

As I look off from Fair Haven I perceive that that downy, silvery hoariness has mostly left the leaves (it now comes off on to the clothes), and they are of a uniform smooth light green, while the pines are a dirty dark brown, almost purple, and are mostly merged and lost in the deciduous trees.

The Erigeron bellidifolius is a tender-looking, pale-purple, aster-like flower a foot high in little squads, nodding in the wind on the bare slopes of hill pastures.

Young bush like black cherries a day or two, on Cliffs and in such favorable places.

The hylodes were about done peeping before those last few warm days, — when the toads began in earnest in the river, — but last night being somewhat cooler they were not so loud.

P. M. - To Carlisle Bridge by boat.

A strong but somewhat gusty southerly wind, before which C. and I sailed all the way from home to Carlisle Bridge in not far from an hour; the river unusually high for the season.

Very pleasant to feel the strong, fresh southerly wind from over the water.

There are no clouds in the sky, but a high haziness, as if the moisture drawn up by yesterday's heat was condensed by to-day's comparative coolness.

The water a dull slate-color and waves running high, — a dirty yellow where they break, — and long streaks of white foam, six or eight feet apart, stretching north and south between Concord and Bedford, — without end.

The common blue flag just out at Ball's Hill.

The white maples, especially those shaped like large bushes, on the banks are now full of foliage, showing the white under sides of the leaves in the wind, and the swamp white oak, having similar silvery under sides to its leaves, and both growing abundantly and prevailing here along the river, make or impart a peculiar flashing light to the scenery in windy weather, all bright, flashing, and cheerful.

On the meadows are large yellow-green patches of ferns beginning to prevail.

Passed a large boat anchored off in the meadows not far from the boundary of Concord. It was quite a piece of ocean scenery, we saw it so long before reaching it and so long after; and it looked larger than reality, what with the roaring of the wind in our shrouds and the dashing of the waves. The incessant drifting about of a boat so anchored by a long cable, playing with its halter, now showing more, now less, of its side, is a pleasing sight.

Landed at a high lupine bank by Carlisle Bridge. How many such lupine banks there are! — whose blue you detect many rods off.

There I found, methinks, minute Specularia perfoliata, with small crenate clasping leaves alternate at some distance apart, on upright stems about three inches high, but apparently fruiting in the bud.

Also the Silene antirrhina very abundant there.

The Viola palmata, which is later, and therefore, methinks, fresher than most, is now quite prevalent, one of the most common, in fact, in low ground and a very handsome purple, with more red than usual in its violet.

The pines now dotted with white shoots, the pitch pines a little red dish, are an interesting sight now.

Whence came all those dead suckers, a dozen at least, which we saw floating to-day, some on their sides, transversely barred, some on their backs with their white bellies up and dark fins on each side? Why are they suckers only that we see Can it be because the spearers have thrown them away? Or has some bird of prey dropped them? I rarely see other fish floating.

Melvin gave George Brooks some pink azaleas yesterday, said to have grown in the north part of the town.

The white maple keys falling and covering the river.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 30, 1853

The Erigeron bellidifolius is a tender-looking, pale-purple, aster-like flower a foot high in little squads, nodding in the wind on the bare slopes of hill pastures. See May 29, 1856 ("What a flowery place, a vale of Enna, is that meadow! Painted Cup, Erigeron bellidifolius, Thalictrum dioicum, Viola Muhlenbergii, fringed polygala, buck-bean, pedicularis, orobanche, etc., etc. Where you find a rare flower, expect to find more rare ones”); May 8, 1853 ("It is wonderful what a variety of flowers may grow within the range of a walk, and how long some very conspicuous ones may escape the most diligent walker, if you do not chance to visit their localities the right week or fortnight, when their signs are out.")

The common blue flag just out at Ball's Hill. See June 10, 1858 ("Common blue flag, how long?"); June 14, 1853  ("The blue flag (Iris versicolor) grows in this pure water, rising from the stony bottom all around the shores, and is very beautiful, . . . especially its reflections in the water.; June 15, 1859 ("Blue flag abundant."); June 30,1851 ("The blue flag (Iris versicolor) enlivens the meadow.”)

The Viola palmata, which is later, and therefore, methinks, fresher than most, is now quite prevalent. See May 30, 1852 ("Violets everywhere spot the meadows, some more purple, some more lilac. . . . Distinguished the Viola palmata in Hubbard's meadow") See also May 14, 1858 ("Saw the Viola palmata, early form, yesterday; how long?”); May 17, 1853 ("The Viola palmata is out there, in the meadow. ");  May 21, 1855 ("Viola palmata  pretty common, apparently two or three days.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

Whence came all those dead suckers? See April 18, 1852 ("The sight of the sucker floating on the meadow at this season affects me singularly"); May 23, 1854 ("How many springs shall I continue to see the common sucker (Catostomus Bostoniensis) floating dead on our river!"); ("When I realize that the mortality of suckers in the spring is as old a phenomenon, perchance, as the race of suckers itself, I contemplate it with serenity and joy even, as one of the signs of spring")

Melvin gave George Brooks some pink azaleas yesterday, See May 31, 1853 (' I am going in search of the Azalea nudiflora. Sophia brought home a single flower without twig or leaf from Mrs. Brooks's last evening. Mrs. Brooks. I find, has a large twig in a vase of water, still pretty fresh, which she says George Melvin gave to her son George. . . . Melvin and I and his dog, - and crossed the river in his boat, and he conducted me to where the Azalea nudiflora grew.")

The white maple keys falling and covering the river. See May 21, 1853 ("The white maple keys are nearly two inches long by a half-inch wide, in pairs, with waved inner edges like green moths ready to bear off their seeds"); May 28, 1858 ("See already one or two (?) white maple keys on the water"); May 29, 1854 ("The white maple keys have begun to fall and float down the stream like the wings of great insects.”); June 9, 1858 ("White maple keys are abundantly floating.")

May 30 See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 30

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

These are afternoons when you expect a thunder-shower before night.

May 29.

May 29, 2015

These last two days, with their sultry, hazy air, are the first that suggest the expression “the furnace-like heat.”

Bathing has begun.

In the evening and during the night the ring of the toads fills the air, so that some have to shut the windows toward the river, but when you awake in the morning not one is to be heard. As it grows warmer in the forenoon I hear a few again; but still I do not hear them numerously and loudly as earlier in the season at that hour, though far more numerously and loudly at night.

P. M. - To Hosmer's Holden place.

Thimble-berry two or three days.

Cattle stand in the river by the bridge for coolness.

Place my hat lightly on my head that the air may circulate beneath.

Wild roses budded before you know it — will be out often before you know they are budded.

Fields are whitened with mouse-ear gone to seed 

—a mass of white fuzz blowing off one side — and also with dandelion globes of seeds.

Some plants have already reached their fall.

How still the hot noon; people have retired behind blinds.

Yet the kingbird — lively bird, with white belly and tail edged with white, and with its lively twittering— stirs and keeps the air brisk.

I see men and women through open windows in white undress taking their Sunday-afternoon nap, overcome with heat.

At A. Hosmer's hill on the Union Turnpike I see the tanager hoarsely warbling in the shade; the surprising red bird, a small morsel of Brazil, advanced picket of that Brazilian army, — parrot-like. But no more shall we see; it is only an affair of outposts. It appears as if he loved to contrast himself with the green of the forest.

These are afternoons when you expect a thunder-shower before night; the outlines of cloudy cumuli are dimly seen through the hazy, furnace-like air, rising in the west.

Spergularia rubra, spurry sandwort, in the roadside ditch on left just beyond A. Hosmer's hill; also Veronica peregrina (?) a good while. The last also in Great Fields in the path.

Raspberry out.

That exceedingly neat and interesting little flower blue-eyed grass now claims our attention.

The barrenest pastures wear now a green and luxuriant aspect.

I see many of those round, white, pigeon-egg fungi in the grass since the rains. Do they become puffballs? 

The thyme-leaved veronica shows its modest face in little crescent-shaped regiments in every little hollow in the pastures where there is moisture, and around stumps and in the road ditches.

The Cratægus Crus-Galli this side the Holden place on left, probably yesterday, thorns three inches long, flowers with anthers not conspicuously red.

The Viola debilis near west end of Holden farm in meadow south side of road.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 29, 1853

Bathing has begun. See May 8, 1857 (“Summer has suddenly come upon us, and. . .Some boys have bathed in the river.") May 12, 1860 ("First bathe in the river. Quite warm enough."); May 15, 1853 ("The weather has grown rapidly warm. I even think of bathing in the river .")

Fields are whitened with mouse-ear gone to seed — a mass of white fuzz blowing off one side — and also with dandelion globes of seeds. See May 29, 1854 ("Dandelions and mouse-ear down have been blowing for some time and are seen on water. These are interesting as methinks the first of the class of downy seeds which are more common in the fall.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Mouse-ear

That exceedingly neat and interesting little flower blue-eyed grass now claims our attention. See May 29, 1852 ("Blue-eyed grass [in bloom]."); May 29, 1856 (“Blue-eyed grass, probably to-morrow.”); See also May 31, 1854 (“Blue-eyed grass, apparently in pretty good season.”); June 6, 1855 (“Blue-eyed grass maybe several days in some places.”); June 15, 1851 (“The blue-eyed grass, well named, looks up to heaven.”); June 15, 1852 ("The fields are blued with blue-eyed grass, — a slaty blue. "); June 15, 1859 ("Blue-eyed grass at height."); June 17. 1853 ("The dense fields of blue-eyed grass now blue the meadows, as if, in this fair season of the year, the clouds that envelop the earth were dispersing, and blue patches began to appear, answering to the blue sky. The eyes pass from these blue patches into the surrounding green as from the patches of clear sky into the clouds. "); June 19, 1853 ("I see large patches of blue-eyed grass in the meadow across the river from my window"); July 6, 1851("Blue-eyed grass is now rarely seen. ")

 

In the evening and during the night the ring of the toads fills the air.  See May 20, 1854 ("The steadily increasing sound of toads and frogs along the river with each successive warmer night is one of the most important peculiarities of the season. Their prevalence and loudness is in proportion to the increased temperature of the day.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau: The Ring of Toads

I see the tanager hoarsely warbling in the shade; the surprising red bird, a small morsel of Brazil. . .as if he loved to contrast himself with the green of the forest. See May 23, 1853 ("That contrast of a red bird with the green pines and the blue sky!. . .this bird's colors and his note tell of Brazil. "); May 28, 1855 (" the most brilliant and tropical-looking bird we have, bright-scarlet with black wings, the scarlet appearing on the rump again between wing-tips. He brings heat, or heat him. A remarkable contrast with the green pines. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the  Scarlet Tanager

The Viola debilis near west end of Holden farm in meadow. See May 22, 1853 ("Found an abundance of the Viola Muhlenbergii (debilis of Bigelow), a stalked violet, pale blue and bearded"); May 22, 1856 ("To Viola Muhlenbergii, which is abundantly out; how long? A small pale-blue flower growing in dense bunches, but in spots a little drier than the V. cucullata and blanda.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

The birth of shadow.

May 28.

The trees now begin to shade the streets. When the sun gets high in the sky the trees give shade. With oppressive heats come refreshing shadows.

The buttercups spot the churchyard.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 28, 1851

The trees now begin to shade the streets. See June 2, 1854 ("These virgin shades of the year, when everything is tender, fresh and green, — how full of promise! I would fain be present at the birth of shadow. It takes place with the first expansion of the leaves."); June 6, 1855 ("The dark eye and shade of June”) See also ("I got to-day and yesterday the first decided impression of greenness beginning to prevail, summer-like. . . .It reminds you of the time, not far off, when you will see the dark shadows of the trees there and buttercups spotting the grass.") May 28, 1858 (“These various shades of grass remind me of June.”); May 30, 1852 (Now is the summer come. . . . A day for shadows, even of moving clouds, over fields in which the grass is beginning to wave.”)

The buttercups spot the churchyard. See May 27, 1853 ("A new season has commenced - summer - leafy June. . . . The buttercups in the church-yard and on some hillsides are now looking more glossy and bright than ever after the rain."); May 30, 1857 ("Buttercups thickly spot the churchyard.")

May 28. SeeA Book of the Seasons,, by Henry Thoreau, May 28

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

A rich man's house

May 27.

I saw an organ-grinder this morning before a rich man's house, thrilling the street with harmony, loosening the very paving-stones and tearing the routine of life to rags and tatter, when the lady of the house shoved up a window and in a semiphilanthropic tone inquired if he wanted anything to eat.

But he, very properly it seemed to me, kept on grinding and paid no attention to her question, feeding her ears with melody unasked for.

So the world shoves up its window and interrogates the poet, and sets him to gauging ale casks in return.

It seemed to me that the music suggested that the recompense should be as fine as the gift.

It would be much nobler to enjoy the music, though you paid no money for it, than to presume always a beggarly relation.

It is after all, perhaps, the best instrumental music that we have.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 27, 1851

All nature is a new impression every instant.

May 23. 

Sunday. Barn. - The distant woods are but the tassels of my eye.

Books are to be attended to as new sounds merely.

Most would be put to a sore trial if the reader should assume the attitude of a listener.

They are but a new note in the forest.

To our lonely, sober thought the earth is a wild unexplored. Wildness as of the jay and muskrat reigns over the great part of nature. The oven-bird and plover are heard in the horizon.

Here is a new book of heroes, come to me like the note of the chewink from over the fen, only over a deeper and wider fen.

The pines are unrelenting sifters of thought; nothing petty leaks through them.

Let me put my ear close, and hear the sough of this book, that I may know if any inspiration yet haunts it.

There is always a later edition of every book than the printer wots of, no matter how recently it was published.

All nature is a new impression every instant. 

May 23, 2020

The aspects of the most simple object are as various as the aspects of the most compound.

Observe the same sheet of water from different eminences.

When I have travelled a few miles I do not recognize the profile of the hills of my native village.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 23, 1841

When I have travelled a few miles I do not recognize the profile of the hills of my native village. See June 4, 1858 ("It is remarkable how, as you are leaving a mountain and looking back at it from time to time, it gradually gathers up its slopes and spurs to itself into a regular whole, and makes a new and total impression.")


All nature is a new impression every instant. See June 6, 1857 (“We are conversant with only one point of contact at a time, from which we receive a prompting and impulse and instantly pass to a new season or point of contact”); August 19, 1851("Nature rests no longer at her culminating point than at any other. If you are not out at the right instant, the summer may go by and you not see it.”); Walden: Where I lived and what I lived for ("God Himself culminates in the present moment,"); April 24, 1859 ("There is a season for everything, and we do not notice a given phenomenon except at that season")

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

I drink at it; but while I drink

I see the sandy bottom and

detect how shallow it is.

Its thin current slides away,

but eternity remains.

I would drink deeper;

fish in the sky, whose bottom

is pebbly with stars.

I cannot count one.

I know not the first 

letter of the alphabet.

I have always been regretting that

I was not as wise as the day I was born.

Walden, Where I lived and what I lived for

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

It flies through the green foliage as if it would ignite the leaves.

May 20.

The 18th and 19th a rather gentle and warm May storm, more rain, methinks, than we have had before this spring at one time.

Began with thunder-showers on the night of the 18th, the flashing van of the storm, followed by the long, dripping main body, with, at very long intervals, an occasional firing or skirmishing in the rear or on the flanks.

6 A. M. To Island by river.

Probably a red-wing blackbird's nest, of grass, hung between two button-bushes; whitish eggs with irregular black marks.

Sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis), probably two days.

White oak, swamp white, and chestnut oak probably will open by the 22d.

The white ashes are in full flower now, and how long ? 8 A. M.-To Flint's Pond.

Cornus Canadensis just out.

Probably the C. florida should be set down to-day, since it just begins to shed pollen and its involucre is more open.

It is a fair but cool and windy day, a strong northwest wind, and the grass, to which the rain has given such a start, conspicuously waves, showing its lighter under side, and the buttercups toss in the wind.

The pitch and white pines have grown from one to five inches.

On Pine Hill.

In this clear morning light and a strong wind from the northwest, the mountains in the horizon, seen against some low, thin clouds in the background, look darker and more like earth than usual; you distinguish forest and pasture on them. This in the clear, cool atmosphere in the morning after a rain-storm, with the wind northwest. They will grow more ethereal, melting into the sky, as the day advances.

The beech is already one of the most densely clothed trees, or rather makes a great show of verdure from the size of its fully expanded light-green leaves, though some are later. The fresh shoots on low branches are five or six inches long.

It is an interesting tree to me, with its neat, close, tight-looking bark, like the dress which athletes wear, its bare instep, and roots beginning to branch like bird's feet, showing how it is planted and holds by the ground. Not merely stuck in the ground like a stick.

It gives the beholder the same pleasure that it does to see the timbers of a house above and around.

Do they blossom here? I found nuts, but apparently not sound, at Haverhill the other day,-last year's.

There are some slender, perfectly horizontal limbs which go zigzagging, as it were creeping through the air, only two or three feet above the ground, over the side-hill, as if they corresponded to concealed rills in the ground beneath.

Plenty of arums now in bloom. Probably my earliest one was in bloom, for I did not look within it.

What is that pretty, transparent moss in the brooks, which holds the rain or dewdrops so beautifully on the undersides of the leafets, through which they sparkle crystallinely? 

Fresh checkerberry shoots now.

The cedars are full of yellowish cedar apples and minute berries just formed, the effete staminiferous blossom still on. When did they begin to bloom? 

I find none of the rare hedyotis yet on Bare Hill.

The peach bloom is now gone and the apple bloom come.

Heard the seringo note, like a rattling watch-spring, from a flock passing swiftly overhead.

The wind makes such a din in the woods that the notes of birds are lost, and added to this is the sound of the waves of Flint's Pond breaking on the shore, the fresh surf. The pond is spotted with whitecaps, five or six feet long by one foot, like a thin flock of sheep running toward the southeast shore. The smallest lakes can be lashed into a sort of fury by the wind, and are quite ocean-like then. These caps are a striving to dilute the water with air.

The barberry will probably blossom to-day.

Here, by the side of the pond, a fire has recently run through the young woods on the hillside. It is surprising how clean it has swept the ground; only the very lowest and dampest rotten leaves remaining, but uvularias and smilacinas have pushed up here and there conspicuously on the black ground, a foot high.

At first you do not observe the full effect of the fire, walking amid the bare dead or dying trees, which wear a perfect winter aspect, which, as trees generally are not yet fully leaved out and you are still used to this, you do not notice, till you look up and see the still green tops everywhere above the height of fifteen feet.

Yet the trees do not bear many marks of fire commonly; they are but little blackened except where the fire has run a few feet up a birch, or paused at a dry stump, or a young evergreen has been killed and reddened by it and is now dropping a shower of red leaves.

Hemlock will blossom to-morrow.

The geranium is just out, 

May 20, 2018

and the lady’s-slipper. 

Some with old seed vessels are still seen.

Hear again, what I have heard for a week or more sometimes, that rasping, springy note, a very hoarse chirp, ooh, twee twee twee, from a bluish bird as big as a bluebird, with some bright yellow about head, white beneath and lateral tail-feathers, and black cheeks (?).

This and that sort of brown-creeper-like bird of May 12 — and the chickadee-like bird (which may be the chickadee), and the ah te ter twee of deep pine woods (which also may be the chickadee), I have not identified.

Arbor-vitæ has been out some time and the butter nut some days.

Mountain-ash on the 18th.

Larch apparently ten days.

Nemopanthes several days.

The swamp blueberry abundantly out.

Saw a tanager in Sleepy Hollow. It most takes the eye of any bird. You here have the red-wing reversed,-the deepest scarlet of the red-wing spread over the whole body, not on the wing-coverts merely, while the wings are black. It flies through the green foliage as if it would ignite the leaves.

Of deciduous trees and shrubs, the latest to leaf out, as I find by observation to-day, must be the panicled andromeda, rhodora, and button-bush.

In some places, however, the first has perfectly formed leaves, the rhodora at most not half unfolded, the button-bush for the most part just bursting buds.

But I have not seen the prinos and perhaps one or two other shrubs.

I have no doubt that the button-bush may be called the latest of all.

Is that female ash by river at Lee's Hill a new kind? In bloom fully May 18th.

Even this remote forest, which stands so far away and innocent, has this terrible foe Fire to fear. Lightning may ignite a dead tree or the dry leaves, and in a few minutes a green forest be blackened and killed. This liability to accident from which no part of nature is exempt.

Plucked to-day a bunch of Viola pedata, consisting of four divisions or offshoots around a central or fifth root, all united and about one inch in diameter at the ground and four inches at top. [contained 49 Flowers, 22 Buds] And perhaps more buds would still make their appearance, and undoubtedly half a dozen more would have blown the next day. Forming a complex, close little testudo of violet scales above their leaves.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 20, 1853

Probably a red-wing blackbird's nest, of grass, hung between two button-bushes; whitish eggs with irregular black marks. See May 25, 1855 ("Red-wing’s nest with four eggs. . .curiously and neatly marked with brown-black spots and lines on the large end.”); June 1, 1857 ("A red-wing's nest, four eggs, . . the hieroglyphics on these eggs . . ..who determines the style of the marking?") See See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Red-wing in Spring

It flies through the green foliage as if it would ignite the leaves. See   May 20, 1858 ("See tanagers, male and female, in the top of a pine, one red, other yellow, from below. We have got to these high colors among birds.") See also  A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Scarlet Tanager

The lady’s-slipper just out. See May 20, 1852 ("A lady’s-slipper well budded and now white."); see also May 18, 1851 ("Lady's-slipper almost fully blossomed”).; May 19, 1860 (“At the Ministerial Swamp I see a white lady's-slipper almost out, fully grown, with red ones.”); May 30, 1858 ("Hear of lady's-slipper seen the 23d; how long?")

Lightning here this evening and an aurora in form of a segment of a circle.

May 19. 

Up to about the 14th of May I watched the progress of the season very closely, — though not so carefully the earliest birds, – but since that date, both from poor health and multiplicity of objects, I have noted little but what fell under my observation. 

May 19, 2019

The pear trees are in bloom before the apples. 

The cherries appear to have been blasted by the winter.

 

The lilac has begun to blossom. 

There was the first lightning we have noticed this year, last Sunday evening, and a thunder-storm in Walpole, N. H.  

Lightning here this evening and an aurora in form of a segment of a circle.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 19, 1852

The first lightning we have noticed this year. See May 9, 1859 ("The first thunder this afternoon."); May 10, 1857(" A sudden shower with some thunder and lightning; the first."); May 11, 1854 (“I suspect that summer weather may be always ushered in in a similar manner, — thunder-shower, rainbow, smooth water, and warm night”); May 16, 1853 ("People stand at their doors in the warm evening, listening to the muttering of distant thunder and watching the forked lightning, now descending to the earth, now ascending to the clouds. This the first really warm day and thunder-shower"); May 20, 1856 ("So now is Nature’s grandest voice heard, and her sharpest flashes seen."); May 29, 1857 ("A first regular summer thunder-shower, preceded by a rush of wind.")

An aurora in form of a segment of a circle. See May 10, 1852 ("There is an aurora borealis to-night.")

May 19.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 19

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

Myself, a pine tree, and the moon.

 

May 16. 

May 16, 2019

Heard the whip- poor-will this evening. 

A splendid full moon to - night. 

Walked from 6. 30 to 10 P M. 

Lay on a rock near a meadow, which had absorbed and retained much heat, so that I could warm my back on it, it being a cold night. 

I found that the side of the sand-hill was cold on the surface, but warm two or three inches beneath. 

If there is a more splendid moonlight than usual, only the belated traveller observes it. 

When I am outside, on the outskirts of the town, enjoying the still majesty of the moon, I am wont to think that all men are aware of this miracle, that they too are silently worshipping this manifestation of divinity elsewhere. 

But when I go into the house I am undeceived; they are absorbed in checkers or chess or novel, though they may have been advertised of the brightness through the shutters. 

In the moonlight night what intervals are created! 

The rising moon is related to the near pine tree which rises above the forest, and we get a juster notion of distance. 

The moon is only somewhat further off and on one side. 

There may be only three objects, — myself, a pine tree, and the moon, nearly equidistant. 

Talk of demonstrating the rotation of the earth on its axis, — see the moon rise, or the sun! 

The moonlight reveals the beauty of trees. 

By day it is so light and in this climate so cold commonly, that we do not perceive their shade. 

We do not know when we are beneath them. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 16, 1851

The deciduous trees are a mist of leaflets.

May 15

May 15, 2013

Sunday. P. M. – To Annursnack.

Silvery cinquefoil now open. Its petals, perchance, show the green between them, but the beautiful undersides of the leaves more than make up for it.

What was that bird beyond the Lee place, with a chickadee like note, black head and throat, and light color round the neck and beneath; methinks longer and slenderer than the chickadee?

The golden willow catkins begin to fall; their prime is past.

And buttercups and silvery cinquefoil and the first apple blossoms, and waving grass beginning to be tinged with sorrel, introduce us to a different season.

The huckleberry, resinosa, its red flowers are open, in more favorable places sev eral days earlier, probably; and the earliest shrub and red and black oaks in warm exposures may be set down to to-day.

A red butterfly goes by. Methinks I have seen them before.

The painted-cup is now abundantly and fully out. Six or eight inches high above its spidery leaves, almost like a red flame, it stands on edge of the hill just rising from the meadow, - on the instep of the hill. It tells of July with its fiery color. It promises a heat we have not experienced yet .

This is a field which lies nearer to summer . Yellow is the color of spring; red of midsummer. Through pale golden and green we arrive at the yellow of the buttercup; through scarlet, to the fiery July red, the red lily.

The first cricket's chirrup which I have chanced to hear now falls on my ear and makes me forget all else; all else is a thin and movable crust down to that depth where he resides eternally. He already foretells autumn. Deep under the dry border of some rock in this hill side he sits, and makes the finest singing of birds outward and insignificant, his own song is so much deeper and more significant.

His voice has set me thinking, philosophizing, moralizing at once.It is not so wildly melodious, but it is wiser and more mature than that of the wood thrush. With this elixir I see clear through the summer now to autumn and any summer work seems frivolous. I am disposed to ask this humblebee that hurries humming past so busily if he knows what he is about. At one leap I go from the just opened buttercup to the life-everlasting. This singer has antedated autumn . His strain is superior (inferior ?) [Exaltedly inferior.] to seasons. It annihilates time and space; the summer is for time-servers.

The Erigeron bellidifolius has now spread its rays out flat since last Sabbath. I may set it down to May 10th, methinks. It is the first of what I may call the daisy family, sometimes almost white.

What are those large conical-shaped fungi of which I see a dozen round an apple tree? I thought them pieces of a yellowish wasp-nest, they are so honeycombed.

I looked again on the forest from this hill, which view may contrast with that of last Sunday. The mist produced by the leafing of the deciduous trees has greatly thickened now and lost much of its reddishness in the lighter green of expanding leaves, has be come a brownish or yellowish green, except where it has attained distinctness in the light-green foliage of the birch, the earliest distinct foliage visible in extensive great masses at a great distance, the aspen not being common. The pines and other evergreens are now fast being merged in a sea of foliage.

The weather has grown rapidly warm. Methinks I wore a greatcoat here last Sunday; now an under coat is too much. I even think of bathing in the river .

I love to sit in the wind on this hill and be blown on. We bathe thus first in air; then, when the air has warmed it, in water.

Here are ten cows feeding on the hill beside me. Why do they move about so fast as they feed? They have advanced thirty rods in ten minutes, and some times the [last] one runs to keep up. Is it to give the grass thus a chance to grow more equally and always get a fresh bite?

The tall buttercup on the west edge of Painted-Cup Meadow for a day or two at least, and the fringed polygala as long.

This side stone bridge, Barbarea vulgaris, or common winter cress yellow rocket, also as long.

A thorn will blossom in a day or two, without varnished ashy twigs and with deep-cut lobes.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 15, 1853

The following trees and shrubs methinks leaf out in nearly the following order . The more questionable , or which I have not seen , are marked — ( ? ) . Nemopanthes } ( 7 ) Gooseberry Thorns Swamp white oak Currant Waxwork Chestnut oak Trembles Maples ( ?? ) Hardhack ( ? ) Some willows Shrub oak Salix nigra Young white , red , and Chinquapin oak Grape sugar maples Red White ash Balm - of - Gilead Black Black Elder Scarlet ( ? ) Sumach Meadow - sweet Hazel Beech ( ? ) Diervilla Larch Swamp - pink Black cherry White pine Witch - hazel Ostrya Elm Alder Hornbeam ( ?? ) Prinos Paper birch Cornels ( some later ? ) Clethra Black Chestnut Tupelo Yellow “ Great - leaved poplar Mountain laurel ( ?? ) White Butternut Panicled andromeda Pyrus arbutifolia Hickories Dwarf Apple Bass Rhodora Amelanchier Sassafras Button - bush Choke cherry Locust ( ? ) Hemlock ( ? ) ? ( ? ) ? Dwarf Celtis ( ? ) White spruce Wild red " Pitch pine Black spruce ' Viburnum nudum Juniperus repens Lentago Red cedar The above list made Maple leaved vibur- White num ( ? ) Arbor - vitæ Barberry White oak 66 ( 2 ) May 20th . Seen a day or two after the button - bush started . The hemlock appeared later , but it may [ be ] because it is of slower growth

The painted-cup is now abundantly and fully out. Six or eight inches high above its spidery leaves, almost like a red flame.  See May 8, 1853 (“Was surprised by the brilliant pale scarlet flowers of the painted-cup (Castilleja coccinea) just coming into bloom. . . . Methinks this the most high-colored and brilliant flower yet,. . . It is all the more interesting for being a painted leaf and not petal, and its spidery leaves, pinnatifid with linear divisions, increase its strangeness.”)   See  also note to June 3, 1853 ("The painted-cup is in its prime. It is a splendid show of brilliant scarlet, It might be called flame-flower, or scarlet-tip. Here is a large meadow full of it, and yet very few in the town have ever seen it.")

I looked again on the forest from this hill, which view may contrast with that of last Sunday. See May 8, 1853 ("They have cut off the woods, and with them the shad-bush, on the top of Annursnack, but laid open new and wider prospects. The landscape is in some respects more interesting because of the overcast sky, threatening rain; a cold southwest wind. . . .The pyramidal pine-tops are now seen rising out of a reddish mistiness of the deciduous trees just bursting into leaf. A week ago the deciduous woods had not this misty look, and the evergreens were more sharply divided from them, but now they have the appearance of being merged in or buoyed up in a mist.") 

The mist produced by the leafing of the deciduous trees has greatly thickened now and [t]he pines and other evergreens are now fast being merged in a sea of foliage. See May 15, 1854 ("Looking off from hilltop . . . The aspect of oak and other woods at a distance is somewhat like that of a very thick and reddish or yellowish mist about the evergreens.“); May 15, 1860 (“Looking from the Cliffs through the haze, the deciduous trees are a mist of leaflets, against which the pines are already darkened. At this season there is thus a mist in the air and a mist on the earth. ”) See also May 8, 1852 (“I am most impressed by the rapidity of the changes within a week”); May 26, 1857 ("At the same season with this haze of buds comes also the kindred haziness of the air.”)

And buttercups and silvery cinquefoil and the first apple blossoms, and waving grass introduce us to a different season.Yellow is the color of spring; red of midsummer. Through pale golden and green we arrive at the yellow of the buttercup; through scarlet, to the fiery July red, the red lily. See May 23, 1853 ("At first we had the lighter, paler spring yellows of willows, dandelion, cinquefoil, then the darker and deeper yellow of the buttercup; and then this broad distinction between the buttercup and the senecio, as the seasons revolve toward July."); May 27, 1853 ("A new season has commenced -- summer -- leafy June. . . . The buttercups in the church-yard and on some hillsides are now looking more glossy and bright than ever after the rain."); May 28, 1851 ("The buttercups spot the churchyard."); May 30, 1857 ("Buttercups thickly spot the churchyard."); June 2, 1852 (“Buttercups now spot the churchyard.”);

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

The different moods or degrees of wildness and poetry of which the song of birds is the keynote

May 11.


5 A. M. -- In the morning and evening waters are still and smooth, and dimpled by innate currents only, not disturbed by foreign winds and currents of the air, and reflect more light than at noonday.

P. M. – To Corner Spring via Hubbard's Bathing Place.

The buck-bean is budded, but hard to find now.

The Viola lanceolata is now abundant thereabouts, me thinks larger and quite as fragrant (which is not saying much) as the blanda. How long has it been open? 

May 11, 2019

It is a warm afternoon, and great numbers of painted and spotted tortoises are lying in the sun in the meadow.

I notice that the thin scales are peeling off of one of the painted and curled up more than half an inch at the edges, and others look as if they had just lost them, the dividing-line being of a dull cream color.

Has this lying in the sun anything to do with it? 

I nearly stepped upon a song sparrow and a striped snake at the same time. The bird fluttered away almost as if detained. I thought it was a case of charming, without doubt, and should think so still if I had not found her nest with five eggs there, which will account for her being so near the snake that was about to devour her.

The amelanchier has a sickish fragrance.

It must be the myrtle-bird which is now so common in Hubbard's Meadow Woods or Swamp, with a note somewhat like a yellow bird's, striped olive-yellow and black on back or shoulders, light or white beneath, black dim; restless bird; sharp head.

The catbird has a squeaking and split note with some clear whistles.

The late pipes (limosum?), now nearly a foot high, are very handsome, like Oriental work, their encircled columns of some precious wood or gem, or like small bamboos, from Oriental jungles. Very much like art.

The gold-thread, apparently for a day or two, though few flowers compared with buds; not at once referred to its leaf, so distant on its thread-like peduncle.

The water-saxifrage also for a day or two in some places, on its tall, straight stem, rising from its whorl of leaves.

Sorrel now fairly out in some places. I will put it under May 8th.

A high blueberry by Potter's heater piece.

A yellow lily.

The red-eye at the spring; quite a woodland note.

The different moods or degrees of wildness and poetry of which the song of birds is the keynote. The wood thrush Mr. Barnum never hired nor can, though he could bribe Jenny Lind and put her into his cage.

How many little birds of the warbler family are busy now about the opening buds, while I sit by the spring! They are almost as much a part of the tree as its blossoms and leaves. They come and give it voice.  Its twigs feel with pleasure their little feet clasping them.

I hear the distant drumming of a partridge. Its beat, however distant and low, falls still with a remarkably forcible, almost painful, impulse on the ear, like veritable little drumsticks on our tympanum, as if it were a throbbing or fluttering in our veins or brows or the chambers of the ear, and belonging to ourselves, — as if it were produced by some little insect which had made its way up into the passages of the ear, so penetrating is it. It is as palpable to the ear as the sharpest note of a fife.

Of course, that bird can drum with its wings on a log which can go off with such a powerful whir, beating the air. I have seen a thoroughly frightened hen and cockerel fly almost as powerfully, but neither can sustain it long. Beginning slowly and deliberately, the partridge's beat sounds faster and faster from far away under the boughs and through the aisles of the wood until it becomes a regular roll, but is speedily concluded. 

How many things shall we not see and be and do, when we walk there where the partridge drums! 

As I stand by the river in the truly warm sun, I hear the low trump of a bullfrog, but half sounded, - doubting if it be really July, some bassoon sounds, as it were the tuning that precedes the summer's orchestra; and all is silent again.

How the air is saturated with sweetness on causeways these willowy days! The willow alone of trees as yet makes light, often rounded masses of verdure in large trees, stage above stage. But oftenest they are cut down at the height of four or five feet and spread out thence.

There appear to be most clouds in the horizon on (one) of these days of drifting downy clouds, because, when we look that way, more fall within our field of view, but when we look upward, overhead we see the true proportion of clear blue.

The mountains are something solid which is blue, a terra firma in the heavens; but in the heavens there is nothing but the air.

Blue is the color of the day, and the sky is blue by night as well as by day, because it knows no night.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 11, 1853

May 11, See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 11

It is a warm afternoon, and great numbers of painted and spotted tortoises are lying in the sun in the meadow. See May 10, 1857 ("Now the Emys picta lie out in great numbers, this suddenly warm weather.")

I nearly stepped upon a song sparrow so near a snake that was about to devour her. See May 19, 1856 ("Saw a small striped snake in the act of swallowing a Rana palustris . . .. The snake, being frightened, released his hold, and the frog hopped off to the water. ")

The different moods or degrees of wildness and poetry of which the song of birds is the keynote. See May 11, 1854 ("The true poet will ever live aloof from society, wild to it, as the finest singer is the wood thrush, a forest bird.")

 How many little birds of the warbler family are busy now about the opening buds . . .  They are almost as much a part of the tree as its blossoms and leaves. They come and give it voice. See May 7, 1852 ("For now, before the leaves, they begin to people the trees in this warm weather."); (May 15, 1859 (“Now, when the warblers begin to come in numbers with the leafing of the trees, the woods are so open that you can easily see them. ”);May 15, 1860 ("Deciduous woods now swarm with migrating warblers, especially about swamps.”);May 18, 1856 ("The swamp is all alive with warblers about the hoary expanding buds of oaks, maples, etc., and amid the pine and spruce."); May 23, 1857("This is the time and place to hear the new-arriving warblers, the first fine days after the May storm. When the leaves generally are just fairly expanding,")

It must be the myrtle-bird which is now so common in Hubbard's Meadow Woods or Swamp. See May 1, 1855 ("The myrtle-bird is one of the commonest and tamest birds now. It catches insects like a pewee, darting off from its perch and returning to it, and sings something like a-chill chill, chill chill, chill chill, a-twear, twill twill twee,"); May 4, 1855 ("Myrtle-birds numerous, and sing their tea lee, tea lee in morning"); May 7, 1852 (" One or more little warblers in the woods this morning are new to the season, myrtlebirds among them.")

Beginning slowly and deliberately, the partridge's beat sounds faster and faster from far away under the boughs and through the aisles of the wood until it becomes a regular roll.  See April 19, 1860 ("You will hear at first a single beat or two far apart and have time to say, "There is a partridge," so distinct and deliberate is it often, before it becomes a rapid roll.");April 25, 1854 ("The first partridge drums in one or two places, as if the earth's pulse now beat audibly with the increased flow of life. It slightly flutters all Nature and makes her heart palpitate.")

The sky is blue by night as well as by day. See note to January 21, 1853 (''The blueness of the sky at night — the color it wears by day — is an everlasting surprise to me.")

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

To let the wind blow me also to other climes.

 

May 9. 

Tuesday.

To Boston and Cambridge.

Currant in garden, but ours may be a late kind.

Purple finch still here.

Looking at the birds at the Natural History Rooms, I find that I have not seen the crow blackbird at all yet this season.

Perhaps I have seen the rusty-black bird, though I am not sure what those slaty-black ones are, as large as the red-wings, nor those pure-black fellows, unless rusty blackbirds.

I think that my blackbirds of the morning of the 24th may have been cowbirds.

Sat on end of Long Wharf.

Was surprised to observe that so many of the men on board the shipping were pure countrymen in dress and habits, and the seaport is no more than a country town to which they come a-trading. I found about the wharves, steering the coasters and unloading the ships, men in farmer's dress.

As I watched the various craft successively unfurling their sails and getting to sea, I felt more than for many years inclined to let the wind blow me also to other climes.

Harris showed me a list of plants in Hovey's Magazine (I think for '42 or '43) not in Bigelow's Botany, -- seventeen or eighteen of them, among the rest a pine I have not seen, etc., etc., q. v.

Perla marginata

That early narrow curved-winged insect on ice and river which I thought an ephemera he says is a Sialis, or maybe rather a Perla. Thinks it the Donatia palmata I gave him. Says the shad-flies (with streamers and erect wings ) are ephemeræ. 

He spoke of Podura nivalis, I think meaning ours.

Planted melons.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 9, 1854

May 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: May 9

I think that my blackbirds of the morning of the 24th may have been cowbirds. See April 24, 1854 ("Saw a black blackbird without red, with a purplish-green-black neck, and somewhat less than a red-wing, in company with two smaller slaty black females (?). Can they be rusty grackles?")

As I watched the various craft successively unfurling their sails and getting to sea, I felt more than for many years inclined to let the wind blow me also to other climes See December 25, 1853 ("When I go to Boston, I go naturally straight through the city down to the end of Long Wharf and look off")

That early narrow curved-winged insect on ice and river which I thought an ephemera he says is a Sialis, or maybe rather a Perla. See March 22, 1856 ("On water standing above the ice under a white maple, are many of those Perla (?) insects, with four wings, drowned, though it is all ice and snow around the country over. Do not see any flying, nor before this"); March 24, 1857 ("I see many of those narrow four-winged insects (perla?) of the ice now fluttering on the water like ephemerae. They have two pairs of wings indistinctly spotted dark and light."); March 17, 1858 ("As usual, I have seen for some weeks on the ice these peculiar (perla?) insects with long wings and two tails."); March 7, 1859 ("I also see — but their appearance is a regular early spring, or late winter, phenomenon — a great many of those slender black-bodied insects from one quarter to (with the feelers) one inch long, with six legs and long gray wings, two feelers before, and two forks or tails like feelers for convenience Perla."); March 3, 1860 ("I see one of those gray-winged (long and slender) perla-like insects by the waterside this afternoon.")

Says the shad-flies (with streamers and erect wings ) are ephemeræ. See June 2, 1854 "The whole atmosphere over the river was full of shad-flies.") . . .It was a great flight of ephemera"); June 9, 1854 (" The air is now full of shad-flies, and there is an incessant sound made by the fishes leaping for their evening meal.”); June 8, 1856 (“My boat being by chance at the same place where it was in ’54, I noticed a great flight of ephemera”); June 9, 1856 ("Again, about seven, the ephemera came out, in numbers as many as last night, ... and the fishes leap as before.")

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

The civility of one's ancestors II.

May 8.


P. M. – To Annursnack.

A long row of elms just set out by Wheeler from his  gate to the old Lee place.

The planting of so long a row of trees which are so stately and may endure so long deserves to be recorded. In many localities a much shorter row, or even a few scattered trees, set out sixty or a hundred years since, is the most conspicuous as well as interesting relic of the past in sight.

Nothing more proves the civility of one's ancestors.

The Ribes floridum, wild black currant, just begun by the wooden bridge just this side of the Assabet stone bridge, with dotted leaves.

The thimble-berry and high blackberry leaves are among the most forward.

That large reddish-stemmed cornel shows now narrow green buds tipped with reddish, three quarters of an inch long by one quarter wide.

Some thrashers are plainly better singers than others.

How surprising and interesting this cluster of leek buds on the rock in the Jesse Hosmer farm, composed of thick, succulent green leaves, cactus-like, tipped with dull purple, in buds from a half-inch to three inches in diameter! What tenacity of life! Its leaves so disposed (from circumference to centre) as to break joints.

Some place it on a gate-post to grow high and dry above the earth for a curiosity. It may be a convenient symbol.

At the foot of Annursnack, rising from the Jesse Hosmer meadow, was surprised by the brilliant pale scarlet flowers of the painted-cup (Castilleja coccinea) just coming into bloom. Some may have been out a day or two.

Methinks this the most high-colored and brilliant flower yet, not excepting the columbine. In color it matches Sophia's cactus blossoms exactly. It is all the more interesting for being a painted leaf and not petal, and its spidery leaves, pinnatifid with linear divisions, increase its strangeness.

It is now from three to six inches high, rising from the moist base of the hill.

It is wonderful what a variety of flowers may grow within the range of a walk, and how long some very conspicuous ones may escape the most diligent walker, if you do not chance to visit their localities the right week or fortnight, when their signs are out.

It is a flaming leaf. The very leaf has flowered; not the ripe tints of autumn, but the rose in the cheek of infancy; a more positive flowering.

Still more abundant on the same ground was the Erigeron bellidifolius, robin's-plantain,  with a pale-purple ray still erect, like a small thimble, not yet horizontal. This, then, its very earliest date.

Neither of these did I see last year, and I was affected as if I had got into a new botanical district.

A kind of mint, shoots now six or eight inches high, with a velvety purple or lake under surface to leaves.

They have cut off the woods, and with them the shad-bush, on the top of Annursnack, but laid open new and wider prospects.

The landscape is in some respects more interesting because of the overcast sky, threatening rain; a cold southwest wind.

I am struck and charmed by the quantity of forest, especially in the southwest, after having witnessed the bareness of the Haverhill country. It is as if every farmer had a beautiful garden and boundless plantations of trees and shrubs, such as no imperial wealth can surpass. 

The pyramidal pine-tops are now seen rising out of a reddish mistiness of the deciduous trees just bursting into leaf. A week ago the deciduous woods had not this misty look, and the evergreens were more sharply divided from them, but now they have the appearance of being merged in or buoyed up in a mist.

I am not  sure what is the cause of the reddish line around the lower edges of the wood. It is plainly the red maple, and in many places, no doubt, the shrub oak. The oaks are plainly more gray already and some trees greenish. Vide again after a week.

The catkins of the black birch appear more advanced than those of the white birch. They are very large, four inches long, half a dozen gracefully drooping at the ends of the twigs bent down by their weight, conspicuous at a distance in wisps, as if dry leaves left on, very rich golden.

black birch catkins

May 9, 2015

The yellow birch is the first I have noticed fully in bloom, — considerably in advance of the others. Its flowers smell like its bark.

Methinks the black and the paper birch next, and then the white, or all nearly together.

The leaves of the papyracea unfold like a fan and are sticky. How fresh and glossy !And the catkins I gather shed pollen the next morning.

Some hickory buds are nearly two inches long.

The handsome finely divided leaves of the pedicularis are conspicuous. It is now budded amid the painted-cups.

The fruit of the Populus grandidentata appears puffed up and blasted into a large bright yellow ( sic ), like some plums some seasons.

The thorn bushes have so far leaved out on the north side of Annursnack as to reveal their forms, as I look up the hill and see them against the light. They are remarkably uniform, somewhat like this, the leading shoot finally rising above the rest, somewhat like a broad poplar.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 8, 1853

 See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 8

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

Surprised by the brilliant pale scarlet flowers of the painted-cup (Castilleja coccinea) just coming into bloom. See note to June 3, 1853 ("The painted-cup is in its prime. It is a splendid show of brilliant scarlet, It might be called flame-flower, or scarlet-tip. Here is a large meadow full of it, and yet very few in the town have ever seen it.")

The catkins of the black birch gracefully drooping at the ends of the twigs bent down by their weight, conspicuous at a distance in wisps, very rich golden. See May 12, 1853 ("The black birch is now a beautiful sight, its long, slender, bushy branches waving in the wind ( the leaf-buds but just beginning to unfold ), with countless little tassel like bunches of five or six golden catkins, spotted with brown and three inches long, one bunch at the end of each drooping twig, hanging straight down, or dangling like heads of rye, or blown off at various angles with the horizon."); May 17, 1856 ("The bunches of numerous rich golden catkins, hanging straight down on all sides and trembling in the breeze, contrast agreeably with the graceful attitude of the tree, commonly more or less inclined.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Birches in Season

Some thrashers are plainly better singers than others. See May 3, 1852 ("Hear the first brown thrasher, — two of them. They drown all the rest. He says cherruwit, cherruwit ; go ahead, go ahead; give it to him, give it to him");  May 4, 1859 ("We hear a thrasher sing for half an hour steadily, — a very rich singer and heard a quarter of a mile off very distinctly"); May 12, 1855 (The brown thrasher is a powerful singer; he is a quarter of a mile off across the river, when he sounded within fifteen rods"")

The fruit of the Populus grandidentata appears puffed up. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Big-toothed Aspen