For the first time
I perceive this spring
that the year is a circle.
I would make a chart of our life,
know why just this circle of creatures
completes the world.
Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852
You are always surprised by
the sight of the first spring bird or insect;
they seem premature,
[yet] there is no such evidence
of spring as themselves,
so that they literally fetch the year about.
It is thus when I hear the first robin
see the first water-bugs out circling. But you think,
They have come, and Nature cannot recede.
March 10, 1855
The robin is the only
bird as yet that makes a
business of singing.
April 13, 1852
February 25. I hear that robins were seen a week or more ago. February 25, 1859
February 25. Goodwin says he saw a robin this morning. February 25, 1857
February 28. C. saw a dozen robins to-day on the ground on Ebby Hubbard's hill by the Yellow Birch Swamp. February 28, 1860
March 14. Count over forty robins with my glass in the meadow north of Sleepy Hollow, in the grass and on the snow. March 14, 1854
The peep.
February 27. Before I opened the window this cold morning, I heard the peep of a robin, that sound so often heard in cheerless or else rainy weather, so often heard first borne on the cutting March wind or through sleet or rain, as if its coming were premature. February 27, 1857
February 27. Mother hears a robin to-day. February 27, 1861
March 7. NThe birds which [THE SHRIKE] imitated — if it imitated any this morning — were the catbird and the robin, neither of which probably would it catch. . .Hearing a peep, I looked up and saw three or four birds passing . . . They were robins, but the shrike instantly hid himself behind a bough and in half a minute flew off to a walnut and alighted, as usual, on its very topmost twig, apparently afraid of its visitors. The robins kept their ground, one alighting on the very point which the shrike vacated. March 7, 1859
March 7. The first note which I heard from the robins, far under the hill, was sveet sveet, suggesting a certain haste and alarm, and then a rich, hollow, somewhat plaintive peep or peep-eep-eep, as when in distress with young just flown. When you first see them alighted, they have a haggard, an anxious and hurried, look. March 7, 1859
March 8. I hear the hasty, shuffling, as if frightened, note of a robin from a dense birch wood, —. . . This sound reminds me of rainy, misty April days in past years. March 8, 1855
March 12. I hear my first robin peep distinctly at a distance. No singing yet. March 12, 1854
March 16. Saw a large flock of geese go over Cambridge and heard the robins in the College Yard. March 16, 1852
March 17. Sitting under the handsome scarlet oak beyond the hill,
I hear a faint note
far in the wood which reminds
me of the robin.
Again I hear it; it is he, — an occasional peep. These notes of the earliest birds seem to invite forth vegetation. No doubt the plants concealed in the earth hear them and rejoice. They wait for this assurance. March 17, 1858
March 18. I stand still now to listen if I may hear the note of any new bird, for the sound of my steps hinders, and there are so few sounds at this season in a still afternoon like this that you are pretty sure to detect one within a considerable distance. Hark ! Did I not hear the note of some bird then? Methinks it could not have been my own breathing through my nose. No, there it is again, — a robin; and we have put the winter so much further behind us. What mate does he call to in these deserted fields? It is as it were, a scared note as he whisks by, followed by the familiar but still anxious toot, toot, toot. He does not sing as yet . . . The bluebird and song sparrow sing immediately on their arrival. . .But the robin and blackbird only peep and chuck at first. March 18, 1853
March 18. I now again hear the song sparrow’s tinkle along the riverside, probably to be heard for a day or two, and a robin, which also has been heard a day or two. March 18, 1857
March 18. The robin does not come singing, but utters a somewhat anxious or inquisitive peep at first. March 18, 1858
March 18. Three days ago, the 15th, we had steady rain with a southerly wind, with a clear interval and a brilliant double rainbow at sunset, — a day when all the russet banks were dripping, saturated with wet, and the peep of the robin was heard through the drizzle and the rain. March 18, 1859
March 21. The robin is heard further off, and seen flying rapidly, hurriedly through the orchard . . . How suddenly the newly arrived birds are dispersed over the whole town! How numerous they must be! Robins are now quite abundant, flying in flocks. One after another flits away before you from the trees, somewhat like grasshoppers in the grass, uttering their notes faintly, ― ventriloquizing, in fact. I hear [one] meditating a bar to be sung anon, which sounds a quarter of a mile off, though he is within two rods However, they do not yet get to melody. March 21, 1853
March 22. Overcast and cold. Yet there is quite a concert of birds along the river; the song sparrows are very lively and musical . . . I also hear a short, regular robin song, though many are flitting about with hurried note. March 22, 1855
March 24. The chip of the [song sparrow] resembles that of a robin, i.e., its expression is the same, only fainter, and reminds me that the robin's peep, which sounds like a note of distress, is also a chip, or call-note to its kind. March 24, 1858
March 25. Hear the hurried and seemingly frightened notes of a robin and see it flying over the railroad lengthwise, and afterwards its tut tut at a distance. This and the birds of yesterday have come, though the ground generally is covered deep with snow. They will not only stay with us through a storm, but come when there are but resting-places for them. It must be hard for them to get their living now. March 25, 1856
April 2. The robin now peeps with scared note in the heavy overcast air, among the apple trees. The hour is favorable to thought. April 2, 1852
April 2. Sitting on the rail over the brook, I hear something which reminds me of the song of the robin in rainy days in past springs. April 2, 1854
April 2. Robins are peeping and flitting about. Am surprised to hear one sing regularly their morning strain, seven or eight rods off, yet so low and smothered with its ventriloquism that you would say it was half a mile off. It seems to be wooing its mate, that sits within a foot of it. April 2, 1856
The song.
March 17. I hear a robin fairly singing. March 17,1859
March 20. Now first I hear a very short robin's song. March 20, 1858
March 31. The robins sing at the very earliest dawn. I wake with their note ringing in my ear. March 31, 1852
March 31. At even I hear the first real robin's song. March 31, 1860
April 1. I hear a robin singing in the woods south of Hosmer's, just before sunset. It is a sound associated with New England village life. It brings to my thoughts summer evenings when the children are playing in the yards before the doors and their parents conversing at the open windows. It foretells all this now, before those summer hours are come. April 1, 1852
April 1. The robin now begins to sing sweet powerfully. April 1, 1854
April 1. It is a true April evening, feeling and looking as if it would rain, and already I hear a robin or two singing their evening song. April 1, 1857
April 2. The air is full of the notes of birds, - song sparrows, red-wings, robins (singing a strain), bluebirds, - and I hear also a lark, - as if all the earth had burst forth into song. April 2, 1852
April 3. I see small flocks of robins running on the bared portions of the meadow.. . . Coming home along the causeway, a robin sings (though faintly) as in May. April 3, 1856
April 4. The robins sang this morning, . . . and now more than ever hop about boldly in the garden in the rain, with full, broad, light cow-colored breasts. April 4, 1853
April 4. The birds sing quite numerously at sunrise about the villages, - robins, tree sparrows, and methinks I heard the purple finch. The birds are eager to sing, as the flowers to bloom, after raw weather has held them in check. April 4, 1860
April 6. Now see considerable flocks of robins hopping and running in the meadows. April 6, 1856
April 8. The robins now sing in full blast April 8, 1855
April 9. At sunset after the rain, the robins and song sparrows fill the air along the river with their song. April 9, 1855
April 9. A robin peeping at a distance is mistaken for a hyla. April 9, 1856
April 13. Heard the robin singing as usual last night, though it was raining. April 13, 1852
April 13. The robin is the only bird as yet that makes a business of singing, steadily singing, — sings continuously out of pure joy and melody of soul. . . .[T]he song of the robin on the elms or oaks, loud and clear and heard afar through the streets of a village, makes a fit conclusion to a spring day. . . . The robin is the prime singer as yet. April 13, 1852
April 14. It being completely overcast, having rained a little, the robins, etc., sing at 4.30 as at sundown usually. The waters, too, are smooth and full of reflections. April 14, 1855
April 15. Robins sing now at 10 A. M. as in the morning. April 15, 1855
April 16. The robins, etc., blackbirds, song sparrows sing now on all hands just before sunrise, perhaps quite as generally as at any season. April 16, 1855
April 16. The robins sing with a will now. What a burst of melody! It gurgles out of all conduits now; they are choked with it. There is such a tide and rush of song as when a river is straightened between two rocky walls. It seems as if the morning’s throat were not large enough to emit all this sound. The robin sings most before 6 o’clock now. I note where some suddenly cease their song, making a quite remarkable vacuum. . . . A moist, misty, rain-threatening April day. About noon it does mizzle a little. The robin sings throughout it. April 16, 1856
April 21. The robins sing through the ceaseless rain. . .On the east side of Ponkawtasset I hear a robin singing cheerily from some perch in the wood, in the midst of the rain. . . . It sings with power, like a bird of great faith that sees the bright future through the dark present . . . It is a pure, immortal melody. . . . I have not this season heard more robins sing than this rainy day. April 21, 1852
April 26. We see and hear more birds than usual this mizzling and still day, and the robin sings with more vigor and promise than later in the season. April 26, 1855
May 4. A robin sings when I, in the house, cannot distinguish the earliest dawning from the full moon light. May 4, 1855
May 6. The song of the robin heard at 4:30 P. M., this still and hazy day, sounds already vespertinal. May 6, 1860
May 9. The robin's strain is less remarkable. May 9, 1853
May 14. Most birds are silent in the storm. Hear the robin, oven-bird, night warbler, and, at length, the towhee's towee, chickadee's phoebe, and a preluding thrasher and a jay. May 14, 1852
May 14, 1852 (“The robin sings this louring day. . . . The song of the robin is most suggestive in cloudy weather.”).
Nests and eggs.
May 6. Four large robin's eggs in an apple tree. May 6, 1853
May 6. A robin’s nest with two eggs, betrayed by peeping. May 6. 1855
May 13. A robin's nest, with young, on the causeway. May 13, 1853
May 19. The robin's nest and eggs are the earliest I see. May 19, 1854
May 21. A robin's nest and eggs in the crotch of a maple. May 21, 1852
May 21. A robin’s nest without mud, on a young white oak in woods, with three eggs. May 21, 1856
Young Robins.
May 24. Young robins some time hatched. May 24, 1855
June 9. A young robin abroad. June 9, 1856
June 10. We hear the cool peep of the robin calling to its young, now learning to fly. June 10, 1853
June 15. Young robins, dark-speckled. June 15, 1852
June 15. Robin’s nest in apple tree, twelve feet high — young nearly grown. June 15, 1855
June 18. I think I heard the anxious peep of a robin whose young have just left the nest. June 18, 1854
June 20. A robin’s nest with young, which was lately, in the great wind, blown down and somehow lodged on the lower part of an evergreen by arbor,—without spilling the young! June 20, 1855
Reminiscence
July 25. The wood thrush and the jay and the robin sing around me here, and birds are heard singing from the midst of the fog. July 25, 1852
This sound reminds me of rainy, misty April days in past years. MRCH 8, 1855'
April 2, 1854 (" I hear something which reminds me of the song of the robin in rainy days in past springs.");
October 10. The faint suppressed warbling of the robins sounds like a reminiscence of the spring. October 10, 1853
November 1. I now hear a robin, and see and hear some noisy and restless jays, and a song sparrow chips faintly. As I return, I notice crows flying southwesterly in a very long straggling flock, of which I see probably neither end. November 1, 1853
See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting
I heard a robin in the distance,
the first I had heard for many a thousand years, methought,
whose note I shall not forget for many a thousand more,—
the same sweet and powerful song as of yore.
O the evening robin, at the end of a New England summer day!
If I could ever find the twig he sits upon! I mean he; I mean the twig.
~ Walden
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Robin in Spring
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 © 2009-2026
