April 3, 2015
It is a clear day with a cold westerly wind, the snow of yesterday being melted. When the sun shines unobstructedly the landscape is full of light, for it is reflected from the withered fawn-colored grass . . . The bluebird carries the sky on his back . . .I have observed much snow lately on the north slopes where shrub oaks grow; where probably the ground is frozen, more snow, I think, than lies in the woods in such positions. It is even two or three feet deep in many such places, though few villagers would believe it. One side of the village street, which runs east and west, appears a month in advance of the other. I go down the street on the wintry side; I return through summer. How agreeable the contrasts of light and shade, especially when the successive swells of a hill side produce the shade! The clouds are important to-day for their shadows. If it were not for them, the landscape would be one glare of light without variety. By their motion they still more vary the scene . . . Many clouds go over without our noticing them, for it would not profit us much to notice it, but few cattle pass by in the street or the field without our knowing it. The moon appears to be full to-night.. April 3, 1852
How agreeable
the contrasts of light and shade
clouds and their shadows.
P. M. – To Cliffs. At Hayden's I hear hylas on two keys or notes. Heard one after the other, it might be mistaken for the varied note of one. The little croakers, too, are very lively there. I get close to them and witness a great commotion and half hopping, half swimming, about, with their heads out, apparently in pursuit of each other, — perhaps thirty or forty within a few square yards and fifteen or twenty within one yard. There is not only the incessant lively croaking of many together, as usually heard, but a lower, hoarser, squirming, screwing kind of croak, perhaps from the other sex. As I approach nearer, they disperse and bury themselves in the grass at the bottom; only one or two remain outstretched on the surface, and, at another step, these, too, conceal themselves. Looking up the river yesterday, in a direction opposite to the sun, not long before it set, the water was of a rich, dark blue — while looking at it in a direction diagonal to this, i. e. northeast, it was nearly slate-colored.
To my great surprise the saxifrage is in bloom. It was, as it were, by mere accident that I found it. I had not observed any particular forwardness in it, when, happening to look under a projecting rock in a little nook on the south side of a stump, I spied one little plant which had opened three or four blossoms high up the Cliff. Evidently you must look very sharp and faithfully to find the first flower, such is the advantage of position, and when you have postponed a flower for a week and are turning away, a little further search may reveal it . . . . Some flowers, perhaps, have advantages one year which they have not the next. This spring, as well as the past winter, has been remarkably free from snow, and this reason, and the plant being hardy withal, may account for its early blossoming. With what skill it secures moisture and heat, growing commonly in a little bed of moss which keeps it moist, and lying low in some cleft of the rock! The sunniest and most sheltered exposures possible it secures. This faced the southeast, was nearly a foot under the eaves of the rock, of buds in the least above the level of its projecting, calyx-like leaves. It was shelter within shelter. The blasts sweep over it. Ready to shoot upward when it shall be warm. The leaves of those which have been more exposed are turned red. It is a very pretty, snug plant with its notched leaves, one of the neatest and prettiest leaves seen now . . .
The female Populus tremuliformis catkins, narrower and at present more red and somewhat less downy than the male, west side of railroad at Deep Cut, quite as forward as the male in this situation. The male P. grandidentata's a little further west are nearly out.
April 3, 1853
Saxifrage in bloom
in a little nook under
a projecting rock.
P.M. — To Cliffs by boat. The water has gone down so much that I have to steer carefully to avoid the thick hummocks left here and there on the meadow by the ice. I see the deep holes they were taken out of. The wind is southeasterly. This is methinks the first hazy day, and the sough of the wind in the pines sounds warmer, whispering of summer.
I think I may say that Flint's broke up entirely on the first wet day after the cold spell, — i.e. the 31st of March, — though I have not been there lately. Fair Haven will last some days yet.
April 3, 1854
This first hazy day
wind in the pines sounds warmer –
whispering summer.
It is somewhat warmer, but still windy, and I go to sail down to the Island and up to Hubbard’s Causeway. Most would call it cold to-day. I paddle without gloves. It is a coolness like that of March 29th and 30th, pleasant to breathe, and, perhaps, like that, presaging decidedly warmer weather. It is an amelioration, as nature does nothing suddenly. The shores are lined with frozen spray-like foam, with an abrupt edge, a foot high often on the waterside. Occasionally where there are twigs there is a nest of those short, thick bulls’-horn icicles, pointing in every direction.
I see many hens feeding close to the river’s edge, like the crows, - and robins and blackbirds later, - and I have no doubt they are attracted by a like cause. The ground being first thawed there, not only worms but other insect and vegetable life is accessible there sooner than elsewhere.
See several pairs of ducks, mostly black.
Returning, when off the hill am attracted by the noise of crows, which betray to me a very large hawk, large enough for an eagle, sitting on a maple beneath them. Now and then they dive at him, and at last he sails away low round the hill, as if hunting.
The hillside is alive with sparrows, red-wings, and the first grackles I have seen.
Crows betray to me
a very large hawk on a
maple beneath them.
When I awake this morning I hear the almost forgotten sound of rain on the roof. Looking out, I see the air full of fog, and that the snow has gone off wonderfully during the night. . . .The pattering of the rain is a soothing, slumberous sound, which tempts me to lie late, yet there is more fog than rain. Here, then, at last, is the end of the sleighing, which began the 25th of December. Not including that date and to-day it has lasted ninety-nine days. P. M. — To Hunt’s Bridge. It is surprising how the earth on bare south banks begins to show some greenness in its russet cheeks in this rain and fog, -- a precious emerald-green tinge . . . How encouraging to perceive again that faint tinge of green, spreading amid the russet on earth’s cheeks! I revive with Nature; her victory is mine. This is my jewelry.
It rains very little, but a dense fog, fifteen or twenty feet high, rests on the earth all day, spiriting away the snow . . .The osiers look bright and fresh in the rain and fog, like the grass. Close at hand they are seen to be beaded with drops from the fog . . .
The white maple buds on the south side of some trees have slightly opened, so that I can peep into their cavities and detect the stamens. They will probably come next to the skunk-cabbage this year, if the cowslip does not. Yet the trees stand in the midst of the old snow.
I see small flocks of robins running on the bared portions of the meadow. Hear the sprayey tinkle of the song sparrow along the hedges. Hear also squeaking notes of an advancing flock of redwings somewhere high in the sky. At length detect them high overhead, advancing northeast in loose array, with a broad extended front, competing with each other, winging their way to some northern meadow which they remember. Coming home along the causeway, a robin sings (though faintly) as in May.
The road is a path, here and there shovelled through drifts which are considerably higher than a man’s head on each side.
April 3, 1856
White maple trees stand
in the midst of the old snow –
buds slightly opened.
About 9 A. M., C. and I paddle down the river. It is a remarkably warm and pleasant day. The shore is alive with tree sparrows sweetly warbling, also blackbirds, etc. The crow blackbirds which I saw last night are hoarsely clucking from time to time. Approaching the island, we hear the air full of the hum of bees, which at first we refer to the near trees. It comes from the white maples across the North Branch, fifteen rods off. We hear it from time to time, as we paddle along all day, down to the Bedford line. There is no pause to the hum of the bees all this warm day. It is a very simple but pleasing and soothing sound, this susurrus, thus early in the spring.
When off the mouth of the Mill Brook, we hear the stertorous tut tut tut of frogs from the meadow, with an occasional faint bullfrog-like er er er intermingled. I land there to reconnoitre . . .
There, too, are countless painted turtles out, around on the banks and hummocks left by the ice. Their black and muddy backs shine afar in the sun, and though now fifteen to twenty rods off, I see through my glass that they are already alarmed, have their necks stretched out and are beginning to slip into the water, where many heads are seen.
Resolved to identify this frog, one or two of whose heads I could already see above the surface with my glass, I picked my way to the nearest pool. Close where I landed, an R. halecina lay out on some sedge. In went all the turtles immediately, and soon after the frogs sank to the bottom, and their note was heard only from more distant pools. I stood perfectly still, and ere long they began to reappear one by one, and spread themselves out on the surface. They were the R. halecina. I could see very plainly the two very prominent yellow lines along the sides of the head and the large dark ocellated marks, even under water, on the thighs, etc. Gradually they begin to recover their voices, but it is hard to say at first which one of the dozen within twenty feet is speaking. They begin to swim and hop along the surface toward each other. Their note is a hard dry tut tut tut tut, not at all ringing like the toad’s, and produced with very little swelling or motion of the throat, but as much trembling of the whole body; and from time to time one makes that faint somewhat bullfrog-like er er er. Both these sounds, then, are made by one frog, and what I have formerly thought an early bullfrog note was this. This, I think, is the first frog sound I have heard from the river meadows or anywhere, except the croaking leaf-pool frogs and the hylodes. They are evidently breeding now like toads, and probably are about the water as exclusively as the toads will soon be.
This sound we continue to hear all day long, especially from the broad meadows in Bedford. Close at hand a single one does not sound loud, yet it is surprising how far a hundred or thousand croaking ( ? ) at once can be heard. It comes borne on the breeze from north over the Bedford meadows a quarter of a mile off, filling the air. It is like the rattling of a wagon along some highway, or more like a distant train on a railroad, or else of many rills emptying in, or more yet like the sound of a factory, and it comes with an echo which makes it seem yet more distant and universal. At this distance it is a soft and almost purring sound, yet with the above-named bullfrog-like variation in it.
Sometimes the meadow will be almost still; then they will begin in earnest, and plainly excite one an other into a general snoring or eructation over a quarter of a mile of meadow. It is unusually early to hear them so numerously, and by day, but the water, being so very low and shallow on the meadows, is unusually warm this pleasant day. This might be called the Day of the Snoring Frogs, or the Awakening of the Meadows . . .
It remains now to detect the note of the palustris, wood frog, and fontinalis. I am not sure but I heard one kind of bullfrog’s note along the river once or twice. I saw several middle-sized frogs with green noses and dark bodies, small, bullfrog-like (? ?), sitting along the shore . . . Hear the Rana halecina in the evening also, from my window.
Early in the spring
this susurrus as we paddle –
the hum of the bees.
An easterly wind and rain. P. M. — To White Pond . . .The baeomyces is in its perfection this rainy day. I have for some weeks been insisting on the beauty and richness of the moist and saturated crust of the earth. It has seemed to me more attractive and living than ever, — a very sensitive cuticle, teeming with life, especially in the rainy days. I have looked on it as the skin of a pard. And on a more close examination I am borne out by discovering, in this now so bright baeomyces and in other earthy lichens and in cladonias, and also in the very interesting and pretty red and yellow stemmed mosses, a manifest sympathy with, and an expression of, the general life of the crust. This early and hardy cryptogamous vegetation is, as it were, a flowering of the crust of the earth. Lichens and these mosses, which depend on moisture, are now most rampant. If you examine it, this brown earth-crust is not dead. We need a popular name for the baeomyces. C. suggests "pink mould." Perhaps "pink shot" or "eggs" would do . . .
It does not rain hard to-day, but mizzles, with considerable wind, and your clothes are finely bedewed with it even under an umbrella. The rain-drops hanging regularly under each twig of the birches, so full of light, are a very pretty sight as you look forth through the mizzle from under your umbrella. In a hard rain they do not lodge and collect thus . . .
I see by the White Pond path many fox-colored sparrows apparently lurking close under the lee side of a wall out of the way of the storm. Their tails near the base are the brightest things of that color — a rich cinnamon -brown — that I know. Their note to-day is the chip much like a tree sparrow's. We get quite near them.
Near to the pond I see a small hawk, larger than a pigeon hawk, fly past, — a deep brown with a light spot on the side. I think it probable it was a sharp- shinned hawk.
Rain-drops full of light
hanging so regularly
April 3, 2015
xxx
*****
April 2, 1852 (" 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 ("I hear a solitary hyla for the first time.")
April 2 1853 ("I can see far into the pine woods to tree behind tree, and one tower behind another of silvery needles, stage above stage, relieved with shade. The edge of the wood is not a plane surface, but has depth")
April 2, 1856 ("Robins are peeping and flitting about. Am surprised to hear one sing regularly their morning strain") April 2, 1856 (" I hear a few song sparrows tinkle on the alders by the railroad. They skulk and flit along below the level of the ground in the ice-filled ditches")
April 2, 1856 ("It will take you half a lifetime to find out where to look for the earliest flower")
April 2, 1856 ("Here, where I come for the earliest flowers, I might also come for the earliest birds. They seek the same warmth and vegetation. And so probably with quadrupeds,—rabbits, skunks, mice, etc. I hear now, as I stand over the first skunk-cabbage, the notes of the first red-wings, like the squeaking of a sign, over amid the maples yonder. ") April 2, 1858 ("I catch a large Rana halecina, which puffs itself up “)
April 2, 1858 ("See how those black ducks, swimming in pairs far off on the river, are disturbed by our appearance, swimming away in alarm, and now, when we advance again, they rise and fly up-stream and about, uttering regularly a crack cr-r-rack of alarm, even for five or ten minutes, as they circle about, long after we have lost sight of them. Now we hear it on this side, now on that.")
April 4, 1853 ("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, 1855 ("All the earth is bright; the very pines glisten, and the water is a bright blue.") April 4, 1855 ("Now the hedges and apple trees are alive with fox colored sparrows, all over the town, and their imperfect strains are occasionally heard. Their clear, fox colored backs are very handsome. I get quite near to them.")April 4, 1857 (“Caught a croaking frog in some smooth water in the railroad gutter. Above it was a uniform (perhaps olive?) brown, without green, and a yellowish line along the edge of the lower jaws. . . What frog can it be?”)
April 4, 1858 ("To my surprise the female was the ordinary light-reddish-brown wood frog (R. sylvatica), with legs distinctly barred with dark, while the male, whose note alone I have heard, methinks, was not only much smaller, but of a totally different color, a dark brown above with dark-slate colored sides, and the yet darker bars on its posterior extremities and the dark line from its snout only to be distinguished [on] a close inspection")
*****
April 3, 2021
(blue waters in spring)
If you make the least correct
observation of nature this year,
you will have occasion to repeat it
with illustrations the next,
and the season and life itself is prolonged.
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality.”
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024
tinyurl.com/HDT03April
