Nests high in white pines.

May 29

May 29, 2020

P. M. – After hawks with Farmer to Easterbrooks Country.

He tells me of a sterile bayberry bush between his house and Abel Davis, opposite a ledge in the road, say half a dozen rods off in the field, on the left, by a brook. Hearing a warbling vireo, he asked me what it was, and said that a man who lived with him thought it said, “Now I have caught it, О how it is sweet!” I am sure only of the last words, or perhaps, “Quick as I catch him I eat him. O it is very sweet.” 

Saw male and female wood tortoise in a meadow in front of his house,-- only a little brook anywhere near. They are the most of a land turtle except the box turtle.

We proceeded to the Cooper’s hawk nest in an oak and pine wood (Clark’s) north of Ponkawtasset.

I found a fragment of one of the eggs which he had thrown out. Farmer’s egg, by the way, was a dull or dirty white, i. e. a rough white with large dirty spots, perhaps in the grain, but not surely, of a regular oval form and a little larger than his marsh hawk’s egg.

I climbed to the nest, some thirty to thirty-five feet high in a white pine, against the main stem. It was a mass of bark-fibre and sticks about two and a half feet long by eighteen inches wide and sixteen high. The lower and main portion was a solid mass of fine bark-fibre such as a red squirrel uses. This was surrounded and sur mounted by a quantity of dead twigs of pine and oak, etc., generally the size of a pipe-stem or less. The concavity was very slight, not more than an inch and a half, and there was nothing soft for a lining, the bark fibres being several inches beneath the twigs, but the bottom was floored for a diameter of six inches or more with flakes of white oak and pitch pine bark one to two inches long each, a good handful of them, and on this the eggs had lain.

We saw nothing of the hawk. This was a dozen rods south of the oak meadow wall.

Saw, in a shaded swamp beyond, the Stellaria borealis, still out, — large, broadish leaves.

Some eighteen feet high in a white pine in a swamp in the oak meadow lot, I climbed to a red squirrel’s nest. The young were two-thirds grown, yet feeble and not so red as they will be. One ran out and along a limb, and finally made off into another tree. This was a mass of rubbish covered with sticks, such as I commonly see (against the main stem), but not so large as a gray squirrel’s.

We next proceeded to the marsh hawk’s nest from which the eggs were taken a fortnight ago and the female shot. It was in a long and narrow cassandra swamp northwest of the lime-kiln and some thirty rods from the road, on the side of a small and more open area some two rods across, where were few if any bushes and more [?] sedge with the cassandra.

The nest was on a low tussock, and about eighteen inches across, made of dead birch twigs around and a pitch pine plume or two, and sedge grass at bottom, with a small cavity in the middle. The female was shot and eggs taken on the 16th; yet here was the male, hovering anxiously over the spot and neighborhood and scolding at us. Betraying himself from time to time by that peculiar clacking note reminding you of a pigeon woodpecker.

We thought it likely that he had already got another mate and a new nest near by. He would not quite withdraw though fired at, but still would return and circle near us. They are said to find a new mate very soon.

In a tall pine wood on a hill, say southwest of this, or northwest of Boaz’s Lower Meadow, I climbed to a nest high in a white pine, apparently a crow’s just completed, as it were on a squirrel’s nest for a foundation, but finished above in a deep concave form, of twigs which had been gnawed off by the squirrel.

In another white pine nearby, some thirty feet up it, I found a gray squirrel’s nest, with young about as big as the red squirrels were, but yet blind. This was a large mass of twigs, leaves, bark-fibre, etc., with a mass of loose twigs on the top of it, which was conical. Perhaps the twigs are piled on the warmer part of the nest to prevent a hawk from pulling it to pieces.

I have thus found three squirrels’ nests this year, two gray and one red, in these masses of twigs and leaves and bark exposed in the tree-tops and not in a hollow tree, and methinks this is the rule and not the exception.

Farmer says that he finds the nests or holes or forms of the gray rabbit in holes about a foot or a foot and a half deep, made sideways into or under a tussock, especially amid the sweet-fern, in rather low but rather open ground. Has found seven young in one.

Has found twenty-four eggs in a quail’s nest.

In many places in the woods where we walk to-day we notice the now tender branches of the brakes eaten off, almost in every case, though they may be eighteen or more inches from the ground. This was evidently done by a rabbit or a woodchuck.

The wild asparagus beyond Hunt’s Bridge will apparently open in two days.

C. has seen to-day an orange-breasted bird which may be the female (?) Blackburnian warbler. The leaves now conceal the warblers, etc., considerably. You can see them best in white oaks, etc., not maples and birches.

I hear that there was some frost last night on Hildreth’s plain; not here.

On the 28th, the latest trees and shrubs start thus in order of leafing

1. Locust

2. Dangle-berry      21st

3. Mountain rhus     22d

4. Poison-dogwood 23d

5. Black spruce       23d

6. Black ash           24th

7. Button-bush       26^th

8. Hemlock            27^th

9. Bayberry           

10. Vaccinium dumosum

11. Holbrook aspens

I hear from vireos (probably red-eyes) in woods a fine harsh note, perhaps when angry with each other

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 29, 1860

"(On this day Thoreau described the nests of a Cooper's hawk, northern harrier, red squirrel, gray squirrel, rabbit, and crow. He also mentioned the nest of a quail [bobwhite].)" ~ Geoff Wisner

Some eighteen feet high in a white pine in a swamp in the oak meadow lot, I climbed to a red squirrel’s nest. See April 1, 1858 ("I see a squirrel's nest twenty-three or twenty-four feet high in a large maple, and, climbing to it, — for it was so peculiar, having a basketwork of twigs about it."); April 23, 1859 ("The owl-hole contains a squirrel's nest . . This nest, which I suppose was that of a red squirrel, was at the bottom of a large hole some eighteen inches deep and twenty-five feet from the ground, where a large limb had been broken off formerly.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Red Squirrel.

We next proceeded to the marsh hawk’s nest from which the eggs were taken a fortnight ago and the female shot. See May 27, 1860 ("J. Farmer found a marsh hawk's nest on the 16th, — near the Cooper ' s hawk nest, — with three fresh eggs")

We thought it likely that he had already got another mate and a new nest near by. See June 4, 1860 ("I hear that the nest of that marsh hawk which we saw on the 29th (q. v.) has since been found with five eggs in it. So that bird (male), whose mate was killed on the 16th of May, has since got a new mate and five eggs laid.") See also  November 20, 1858 ("Martial Miles. . . says that a marsh hawk had his nest in his meadow several years, and though he shot the female three times, the male with but little delay returned with a new mate.") and see  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)

I have thus found three squirrels’ nests this year, two gray and one red, in these masses of twigs and leaves and bark exposed in the tree-tops and not in a hollow tree, and methinks this is the rule and not the exception. See note to June 1, 1860 ("This makes three gray squirrels' nests that I have seen and heard of (seen two of them) this year, made thus of leaves and sticks open in the trees, and I hear of some more similar ones found in former years, so that I think this mode of nesting their young may be the rule with them here. Add to this one red squirrel's nest of the same kind.")

Both the pink and the green are phenomena of the morning.

February 20.

 P. M. – I see directly in front [of] the Depot Lee [?] house, on the only piece of bare ground I see hereabouts, a large flock of lesser redpolls feeding. They must be picking up earth, sand, or the withered grass. They are so intent on it that they allow me to come quite near This, then is one use for the drifting of snow which lays bare some spots, however deep it may be elsewhere, — so that the birds, etc., can come at the earth. I never thought of this use before. 

First the snow fell deep and level on the 18th, then, the 19th, came high wind and plowed it out here and there to the ground; and so it will always be in some places, however deep it may have been. 

J. Farmer tells me that his grandfather once, when moving some rocks in the winter, found a striped squirrel frozen stiff. He put him in his pocket, and when he got home laid him on the hearth, and after a while he was surprised to see him running about the room as lively as ever he was. 

I notice a very pale pink reflection from snowy roofs and sides of white houses at sunrise. So both the pink and the green are phenomena of the morning, but in a much less degree, which shows that they depend more on the twilight and the grossness of the atmosphere than on the angle at which the sunlight falls.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 20, 1860

A large flock of lesser redpolls feeding. See February 12, 1860 ("On the east side of the pond, under the steep bank, I see a single lesser redpoll picking the seeds out of the alder catkins, and uttering a faint mewing note from time to time on account of me, only ten feet off. It has a crimson or purple front and breast.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the lesser redpoll.

The snow fell deep and level on the 18th, then, the 19th, came high wind and plowed it out here  See February 19, 1860 ("Snow maybe near a foot deep, and now drifting.")

Both the pink and the green are phenomena of the morning, but in a much less degree. See notes to January 31, 1859 ("Also the pink light reflected from the low, flat snowy surfaces amid the ice on the meadows, just before sunset, is a constant phenomenon these clear winter days. . . .Perhaps the green seen at the same time in ice and water is produced by the general yellow or amber light of this hour, mingled with the blue of the reflected sky."); and   December 29, 1859 ("I went to the river immediately after sunrise. I could [see] a little greenness in the ice, and also a little rose-color from the snow, but far less than before the sun set. Do both these phenomena require a gross atmosphere? . . .To-night I notice the rose-color in the snow and the green in the ice at the same time, having been looking out for them. ")

The thin ice of the Mill Brook sides at the Turnpike bridge is sprinkled over with large crystals.

January 13

January 13, 2020

Tuttle was saying to-day that he did remember a certain man's living with him once, from something that occurred. It was this: The man was about starting for Boston market for Tuttle, and Mrs. Tuttle had been telling him what to get for her. The man inquired if that was all, and Mrs. Tuttle said no, she wanted some nutmegs. "How many," he asked. Tuttle, coming along just then, said, "Get a bushel." 

When the man came home he said that he had had a good deal of trouble about the nutmegs. He could not find so many as were wanted, and, besides, they told him that they did not sell them by the bushel. But he said that he would take a bushel by the weight. Finally he made out to get a peck of them, which he brought home. It chanced that nutmegs were very high just then, so Tuttle, after selecting a few for his own use, brought the remainder up to town and succeeded in disposing of them at the stores for just what he gave for them. 

One man at the post-office said that a crow would drive a fox. He had seen three crows pursue a fox that was crossing the Great Meadows, and he fairly ran from [them] and took refuge in the woods. 

Farmer says that he remembers his father's saying that as he stood in a field once, he saw a hawk soaring above and eying something on the ground. Looking round, he saw a weasel there eying the hawk. Just then the hawk stooped, and the weasel at the same instant sprang upon him, and up went the hawk with the weasel; but by and by the hawk began to come down as fast as he went up, rolling over and over, till he struck the ground. His father, going up, raised him up, when out hopped the weasel from under his wing and ran off none the worse for his fall. 

The surface of the snow, now that the sun has shone on it so long, is not so light and downy, almost impalpable, as it was yesterday, but is somewhat flattened down and looks even as if [it] had had a skim-coat of some whitewash. I can see sparkles on it, but they are finer than at first and therefore less dazzling. 

The thin ice of the Mill Brook sides at the Turnpike bridge is sprinkled over with large crystals which look like asbestos or a coarse grain. This is no doubt the vapor of last evening crystallized. I see vapor rising from and curling along the open brook and also rising from the end of a plank in the sun, which is wet with melted snow, though the thermometer was 16° only when I left the house. 

I see in low grounds numerous heads of bidens, with their seeds still. 

I see under some sizable white pines in E. Hubbard's wood, where red squirrels have run about much since this snow. They have run chiefly, perhaps, under the surface of the snow, so that it is very much under mined by their paths under these trees, and every now and then they have come to the surface, or the surface has fallen into their gallery. They seem to burrow under the snow about as readily as a meadow mouse. There are also paths raying out on every side from the base of the trees. And you see many holes through the snow into the ground where they now are, and other holes where they have probed for cones and nuts. The scales of the white pine cones are scattered about here and there. They seek a dry place to open them, — a fallen limb that rises above the snow, or often a lower dead stub projecting from the trunk of the tree.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 13, 1860

The scales of the white pine cones are scattered about here and there. See October 6 1857 ("Going through Ebby Hubbard's woods, I see thousands of white pine cones on the ground, fresh light brown, which lately opened and shed their seeds and lie curled up on the ground.")

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky

January 13.  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 13

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 © 2009-2022

The age of poetry.

December 19. 

December 19, 2019

Yarrow too is full of seed now, and the common johnswort has some seed in it still.

Farmer has lately been riding about in the neighboring towns west and northwest, as far as Townsend, buying up their furs, — mink, musquash, and fox. Says that Stow is as good a town for mink as any, but none of them have more musquash than Concord. He, however, saw but one mink-track in all his rides, and thinks that they are scarce this year.

When a man is young and his constitution and body have not acquired firmness, i. e., before he has arrived at middle age, he is not an assured inhabitant of the earth, and his compensation is that he is not quite earthy, there is something peculiarly tender and divine about him. His sentiments and his weakness, nay, his very sickness and the greater uncertainty of his fate, seem to ally him to a noble race of beings, to whom he in part belongs, or with whom he is in communication. 

The young man is a demigod; the grown man, alas! is commonly a mere mortal. He is but half here, he knows not the men of this world, the powers that be. They know him not. 

Prompted by the reminiscence of that other sphere from which he so lately arrived, his actions are unintelligible to his seniors. He bathes in light. He is interesting as a stranger from another sphere. 

He really thinks and talks about a larger sphere of existence than this world. It takes him forty years to accommodate himself to the carapax of this world. This is the age of poetry. 

Afterward he may be the president of a bank, and go the way of all flesh. But a man of settled views, whose thoughts are few and hardened like his bones, is truly mortal, and his only resource is to say his prayers.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 19, 1859

Farmer has lately been riding about in the neighboring towns west and northwest, as far as Townsend, buying up their furs. See March 15, 1855 ("He [Farmer] sells about a hundred mink skins in a year. . . .He says (I think) a mink’s skin is worth two dollars!”); November 27, 1855 ("I hear that he gives $1.75, and sells them again at a profit")

 Yarrow too is full of seed now. See November 18, 1855 ("Tansy still shows its yellow disks, but yarrow is particularly fresh and perfect, cold and chaste, with its pretty little dry-looking rounded white petals and green leaves."

The eddy and wearing away of the bank at the stone bridge.

July 20. 

The little Holbrook boy showed me an egg which I unhesitatingly pronounced a peetweet's, given him by Joe Smith. The latter, to my surprise, declares it a meadow-hen's; saw the bird and young, and says the latter were quite black and had hen bills. Can it be so? 

Humphrey Buttrick says he finds snipes' nests in our meadows oftener than woodcocks'. 

P. M. — To Eddy Bridge. 

Abel Hosmer says that the Turnpike Company did not fulfill their engagement to build a new bridge over the Assabet in 1807; that the present stone bridge was not built till about the time the Orthodox meeting-house was built. (That was in 1826.) Benjamin says it was built soon after the meeting-house, or perhaps 1827, and was placed some fifty feet higher up-stream than the old wooden one. 

Hosmer says that the eddy and wearing away of the bank has been occasioned wholly by the bridge; that there was only the regular bend there before. He had thought that it was in consequence of the bridge being set askew or diagonally with the stream, so that the abutments turned the water and gave it a slant into the banks. I think that this did not create, only increased, the evil. 

The bank which it has worn away rises some sixteen feet above low water, and, considering the depth of the water, you may say that it has removed the sand to a depth of twenty-five feet over an area of a quarter of an acre, or say to the depth of three feet or a yard over two acres, or 9680 cubic yards or cartloads, which, at twenty-five cents per load, it would have cost $2420 to move in the ordinary manner, or enough to fill the present river for a quarter of a mile, calling it six rods wide and twelve feet deep. 

Beside creating some small islands and bars close by, this sand and gravel has, of course, been distributed along in the river and on the adjacent meadows below. 

Hosmer complains that his interval has accordingly been very much injured by the sand washed on to it below, — "hundreds of dollars" damage done to him. All this within some thirty-five years. 

It may well be asked what has become of all this sand? Of course it has contributed to form sand-bars below, possibly a great way below. 

Jacob Farmer tells me that he remembers that when about twenty-one years old he and Hildreth were bathing in the Assabet at the mouth of the brook above Winn's, and Hildreth swam or waded across to a sand bar (now the island there), but the water was so deep on that bar that he became frightened, and would have been drowned if he had not been dragged out and resuscitated by others. This was directly over where that island is now, and was then only a bar beginning under water. That island, as he said, had been formed within thirty-five years, or since the Eddy Bridge was built; and I suggest that it may have been built mainly of the ruins of that bank. 

It is the only island in the Assabet for two and a half miles. 

There is a perfect standstill in the eddy at Eddy Bridge now, and there is a large raft of grass, weeds, and lumber perfectly at rest there, against Hosmer's bank. The coarser materials — stones as big as a hen's egg — are dropped close by, but the sand must have been carried far down-stream. 

Hosmer says that when he digs down in his millet- field, twenty rods or more from the river, in his interval, at three or four feet depth he comes to coarse stones which look like an old bed of the river. I see them at each of the small wooden bridges, and very likely they underlie the whole of that interval, covered with sand. 

Such is the character of a river-bottom, — the stones from a hen's egg to the size of your head dropped down to one level, the sand being washed away, and now found in one stratum. 

So completely emasculated and demoralized is our river that it is even made to observe the Christian Sabbath, and Hosmer tells me that at this season on a Sunday morning (for then the river runs lowest, owing to the factory and mill gates being shut above) little gravelly islands begin to peep out in the channel below. Not only the operatives make the Sunday a day of rest, but the river too, to some extent, so that the very fishes feel the influence (or want of influence) of man's religion. 

The very rivers run with fuller streams on Monday morning. All nature begins to work with new impetuosity on Monday. 

I see where turtles' eggs are still being dug up!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 20, 1859

The coarser materials — stones as big as a hen's egg — are dropped close by, but the sand must have been carried far down-stream. See July 16, 1859 ("It is remarkable how the stones are separated from the sand at the Eddy Bridge and deposited in a bar or islands by themselves a few rods lower down.")

A freshet in midwinter is a most momentous event to the insect world.

January 22. 

January 22, 2019

Apparently the wind south two or three days or thermometer so long above 40° will make a freshet, if there is snow enough on the ground. 

8.30 A. M. — Go to the riverside. It is over the meadows. Hear Melvin’s gun. 

The thick white ice is seen lifted up and resting over the channel several rods from the present shore on the high bank side. As I stand there looking out to that white ice, about four rods distant (at my boat’s place), I notice countless narrow light lines, a third of an inch wide, in or on the very thin, dark, half-cemented ice (hardly so thick as pasteboard) which has formed since midnight on the surface of the risen water between the old ice and the shore. 

At first I thought that these light lines were cracks in that thin ice or crystallization (it is now 34°), occasioned, perhaps, by the mere rising of the water. But observing that some of them were peculiarly meandering, returning on themselves loopwise, I looked at them more attentively, and at length I detected at the inner end of one such line a small black speck about a rod from me. 

Suspecting this to be a caterpillar, I took steps to ascertain if it were, at any rate, a living creature, by discovering if it were in motion. It appeared to me to move, but it was so slowly that I could not be certain until I set up a stick on the shore or referred it to a fixed point on the ice, when I was convinced that it was a caterpillar slowly crawling toward the shore, or rather to the willows. 

Following its trail back with my eye, I found that it came pretty directly from the edge of the old or thick white ice (i. e. from where the surface of the flood touched its sloping surface) toward the willows, from northeast to southwest, and had come about three rods. Looking more sharply still, I detected seven or eight such caterpillars within a couple of square rods on this crystallization, each at the end of its trail and headed toward the willows in exactly the same direction. 

And there were the distinct trails of a great many more which had reached the willows or disappeared elsewhere. 

These trails were particularly distinct when I squatted low and looked over the ice, reflecting more light then. They were generally pretty direct toward the shore, or toward any clump of willows if within four or five rods. I saw one which led to the willows from the old ice some six rods off. 

Slowly as they crawled, this journey must have been made within a few hours, for undoubtedly this ice was formed since midnight. 

Many of the lines were very meandering,
and apparently began and ended within the thin ice. There was not enough ice to support even a caterpillar within three or four feet of the shore, for the water was still rapidly rising and not now freezing, and I noticed no caterpillars on the ice within several feet, but with a long stick I obtained quite a number. 

Among them were three kinds. Probably the commonest were, first, a small flat (beneath) black one with a dark shell head and body consisting of numerous rings, like dark velvet, four or five eighths of an inch long;  second, a black caterpillar about same length, covered with hairy points or tufts, (remind me somewhat of that kind I see on the black willows, which is larger and partly yellow); thirdly, one all brown fuzzy and six or seven eighths of an inch long. 

The last lay at the bottom, but was alive. All curled up when I rescued them. 

There were also many small brown grasshoppers (not to mention spiders of various sizes and snow fleas) on the ice, but none of these left any perceptible track. 

These tracks, thus distinct, were quite innumerable, — there was certainly one for each foot of shore, — many thousands ( ?) within half a dozen rods, — leading commonly from the channel ice to or toward the shore or a tree, but sometimes wandering parallel to the shore. 

Yet comparatively few of the caterpillars were now to be seen. You would hardly believe that there had been caterpillars enough there to leave all these trails within so short a time.

It may be a question how did they come on the channel ice. I answer that they were evidently drowned out of the meadow-grass by the rise of the water, i. e., if  there is sufficient thaw to lay the ground bare (as the musquash are, which I now hear one shooting from a boat), and that they either swam or were washed on to that channel ice by the rising water (while probably others were washed yet higher up the bank or meadow and were not obliged to make this journey ?), and so, as soon as the water froze hard enough to bear, they commenced their slow journey toward the shore, or any other dark terrestrial-looking object, like a tree, within half a dozen rods. 

At first I thought they left a trail because the ice was so very thin and watery, but perhaps the very slight snow that whitened the ground a little had melted on it. 

Possibly some were washed from adjacent fields and meadows into the river, for there has been a great wash, a torrent of water has rushed downward over these fields to the river. There was, perhaps, a current setting from the shore toward the middle, which floated them out. How is it when a river is rising? ‘ 

At any rate, within twenty-four hours this freshet has invaded the Broadways or lower streets of the caterpillar towns, and, within some six hours probably, these innumerable journeys have been performed by wrecked caterpillars over a newly formed ice-bridge, — more such adventurers in our town alone than there are human beings in the United States, — and their trails are there to be seen, every one of them. 

Undespairing caterpillars, determined to reach the shore. What risks they run who go to sleep for the winter in our river meadows! 

Perhaps the insects come up from their winter retreats in the roots of the grass in such warm and sunny days as we have had, and so are the more washed away, and also become food for crows, which, as I noticed, explore the smallest bare tufts in the fields. 

I notice where a musquash has lately swam under this thin ice, breaking it here and there, and his course for many rods is betrayed by a continuous row of numerous white bubbles as big as a ninepence under the ice. 

J. Farmer tells me that he once saw a musquash rest three or four minutes under the ice with his nose against the ice in a bubble of air about an inch in diameter, and he thinks that they can draw air through the ice, and that one could swim across Nagog Pond under the ice. 

I think that the greater part of the caterpillars reaching the few feet of open water next the shore must sink to the bottom, and perhaps they survive in the grass there. A few may crawl up the trees. One which I took off the bottom was alive. A freshet, then, even in midwinter, is a most momentous event to the insect world. 

Perhaps the caterpillars, being in the water, are not frozen in, but crawl out on the ice and steer for the land from wherever they may be. Apparently those which started from the edge of the channel ice must have been drifted there either by the current or wind, because they could not have risen directly up to it from the bottom, since it slopes toward the shore for a rod under water. It is remarkable that the caterpillars know enough to steer for the shore, though four or five rods off. 

I notice that, the river thus breaking up in this freshet, this body of ice over the channel cracks on each side near the line of the willows, a little outside of them, two great rents showing the edge and thickness of the ice, making many a jounce or thankee-marm for the skater when all is frozen again, while between them the ice of the channel is lifted up level, while outside these rents the ice slopes downward for a rod, the shore edge still fastened to the bottom; i. e., the fuller tide, rushing downward, lifts up the main body of the ice, cracking it on each side of the channel, the outside strips remaining attached to the bottom by their shore edges and sloping upward to the rents, so that the freshet runs through, and nearly overflows these two strips, creeping far up the bank or over the meadows on each side. 

P. M. — I see many caterpillars on the ice still, and those glow-worm-like ones. I see several of the black fuzzy (with distinct tufts) caterpillars described above, on the open water next the shore, but none of them is moving; also, in the water, common small black crickets (one alive) and other bugs (commonly alive), which have been washed out of their winter quarters. 

And in the fields generally, exposed on bare, hard ice, the snow being gone and more than half the earth bare, are a great many caterpillars (still two other kinds than yet described), many naked and fishworm-color, four to six inches long, and those glow-worm-like ones (some more brown). They have evidently been washed out of their retreats in the grass by the great flow of water, and left on the ice. They must afford abundant food [for] birds.

Crows which fared hard ten days ago must fare sumptuously now. This will account for their tracks which I saw the other day leading to every little bare strip [?] or exposed tuft of grass,—those warm days.

Perhaps the caterpillars, etc., crawl forth in sunny and warm days in midwinter when the earth is bare, and so supply the birds, and are ready to be washed away by a flow of water! I find thus a great variety of living insects now washed out. 

Four kinds of caterpillars, and also the glow-worm-like creature so common, grasshoppers, crickets, and many bugs, not to mention the mosquito like insects which the warm weather has called forth (flying feebly just over the ice and snow a foot or two), spiders, and snow-fleas. 

A sudden thaw is, then, a great relief to crows and other birds that may have been put to it for food. Their larders are now overstocked. 

Can that glow-worm-like creature, so common on the ice by the riverside and in the fields now, be the female of the lightning-bug? It is about half an inch long by one eleventh of an inch wide, dusky reddish brown above, lighter beneath, with a small black flattish head and about four short antennae, six legs under the forward part of the body, which last consists of twelve ring-like segments. There is one row of minute light-colored dots down the middle of the back, and perhaps (?) others, fainter, on the side. 

Many are out in boats, steering outside the ice of the river over the newly flooded meadows, shooting musquash. Cocks crow as in spring. The energy and excitement of the musquash-hunter even, not despairing of life, but keeping the same rank and savage hold on it that his predecessors have for so many generations, while so many are sick and despairing, even this is inspiriting to me. 

Even these deeds of death are interesting as evidences of life, for life will still prevail in spite of all accidents. I have a certain faith that even musquash are immortal and not born to be killed by Melvin’s double-B (?) shot. 

Methinks the breadth of waves, whether in water or snow or sand or vapor (in the mackerel sky), is determined generally by the force of the wind or other current striking the water, etc. It depends on how much water, etc., the wind has power to displace. 

The musquash-hunter (last night), with his increased supply of powder and shot and boat turned up somewhere on the bank, now that the river is rapidly rising, dreaming of his exploits to-day in shooting musquash, of the great pile of dead rats that will weigh down his boat before night, when he will return wet and weary and weather-beaten to his but with an appetite for his supper and for much sluggish (punky) social intercourse with his fellows, — even he, dark, dull, and battered flint as he is, is an inspired man to his extent now, perhaps the most inspired by this freshet of any, and the Musketaquid Meadows cannot spare him. 

There are poets of all kinds and degrees, little known to each other. The Lake School is not the only or the principal one. They love various things. Some love beauty, and some love rum. Some go to Rome, and some go a-fishing, and are sent to the house of correction once a month. They keep up their fires by means unknown to me. I know not their comings and goings.

How can I tell what violets they watch for? I know them wild and ready to risk all when their muse invites. The most sluggish will be up early enough then, and face any amount of wet and cold. I meet these gods of the river and woods with sparkling faces (like Apollo’s) late from the house of correction, it may be carrying whatever mystic and forbidden bottles or other vessels concealed, while the dull regular priests are steering their parish rafts in a prose mood. 

What care I to see galleries full of representatives of heathen gods, when I can see natural living ones by an infinitely superior artist, without perspective tube? If you read the Rig Veda, oldest of books, as it were, describing a very primitive people and condition of things, you hear in their prayers of a still older, more primitive and aboriginal race in their midst and round about, warring on them and seizing their flocks and herds, infesting their pastures. Thus is it in another sense in all communities, and hence the prisons and police. 

I hear these guns going to-day, and I must confess they are to me a springlike and exhilarating sound, like the cock-crowing, though each one may report the death of a musquash. This, methinks, or the like of this, with whatever mixture of dross, is the real morning or evening hymn that goes up from these vales to-day, and which the stars echo. This is the best sort of glorifying of God and enjoying him that at all prevails here to-day, without any clarified butter or sacred ladles. 

As a mother loves to see her child imbibe nourishment and expand, so God loves to see his children thrive on the nutriment he has furnished them. In the musquash-hunters I see the Almouchicois still pushing swiftly over the dark stream in their canoes. These aboriginal men cannot be repressed, but under some guise or other they survive and reappear continually. 

Just as simply as the crow picks up the worms which all over the fields have been washed out by the thaw, these men pick up the musquash that have been washed out the banks. And to serve such ends men plow and sail, and powder and shot are made, and the grocer exists to retail them, though he may think himself much more the deacon of some church. 

From year to year the snow has its regular retreat and lurking-places when a thaw comes (laying bare the earth), under the southeastward banks. I see it now resting there in broad white lines and deep drifts (from my window), as I have seen it for many years, — as it lay when the Indian was the only man here to see it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 22, 1859

All curled up when I rescued them.  January 8, 1857 ("I picked up on the bare ice of the river, opposite the oak in Shattuck's land, on a small space blown bare of snow, a fuzzy caterpillar, black at the two ends and red-brown in the middle, rolled into a ball.”); November 29, 1857 ("One of those fuzzy caterpillars, black at each end and rust-colored in middle, curled up in a ring, — the same kind that I find on the ice and snow, frozen, in winter.”); December 29, 1858 (“I saw, on the ice off Pole Brook, a small caterpillar curled up as usual (over the middle of the river) but wholly a light yellow-brown. ”)

This will account for their tracks which I saw the other day. See January 19, 1859 (“By the swamp between the Hollow and Peter’s I see the tracks of a crow or crows, ”); January 18, 1859 (“In the expanse this side Mantatuket Rock I see the tracks of a crow or crows in and about the button-bushes and willows.”)

Melvin’s double-B shot. See January 21, 1859 ("Saw Melvin buying an extra quantity of shot in anticipation of the freshet and musquash-shooting to morrow.")

The green of the ice and water begins to be visible about half an hour before sunset.

January 20. 

A second remarkably pleasant day like the last. 

P. M. — Up river. 

I see a large white oak perfectly bare. 

Among four or five pickerel in a “well” on the river, I see one with distinct transverse bars as I look down on its back, — not quite across the back, but plain as they spring from the side of the back, — while all the others are uniformly dark above. Is not the former Esox fasciatus? There is no marked difference when I look at them on their sides. 

I see in various places on the ice and snow, this very warm and pleasant afternoon, a kind of mosquito perhaps, a feeble flyer, commonly resting on the ice.

The green of the ice and water begins to be visible about half an hour before sunset. Is it produced by the reflected blue of the sky mingling with the yellow or pink of the setting sun?

What a singular element is this water! I go shaking the river from side to side at each step, as I see by its motion at the few holes. 

I learn from J. Farmer that he saw to-day in his wood lot, on removing the bark of a dead white pine, an immense quantity of mosquitoes, moving but little, in a cavity between the bark and the wood made probably by some other insect. These were probably like mine. 

There were also wasps and what he calls lightning-bugs there.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 20, 1859

Among four or five pickerel I see one with distinct transverse bars as I look down on its back, — while all the others are uniformly dark above.  See April 6, 1858 (“ I asked him to let me see the fish he had caught. It was a little pickerel five inches long, and appeared to me strange, being transversely barred, and reminded me of the Wrentham pond pickerel; but I could not remember surely whether this was the rule or the exception; but when I got home I found that this was the one which Storer does not name nor describe, but only had heard of. Is it not the brook pickerel?”); April 18, 1858 ("I saw in those ditches many small pickerel, landlocked, which appeared to be transversely barred!”); May 27, 1858 ("De Kay describes the Esox fasciatus, which is apparently mine of May 11th.”); May 11, 1858 ("Thickly barred transversely with broken dark greenish brown lines, alternating with golden ones. The back was the dark greenish brown with a pale-brown dorsal line.”); See also Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History ("[Mr. Putnam] exhibited specimens of the young and adult pickerel, to show that the "short-nosed pickerel " is specifically distinct from the "long-nosed " — the Esox reticulatus — and said that the " short-nosed " species is the Esox fasciatus of Dekay, which is not the young of the Esox reticulates”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

The green of the ice and water begins to be visible about half an hour before sunset. See January 7, 1856 (“Returning, just before sunset, the few little patches of ice look green as I go from the sun (which is in clouds). It is probably a constant phenomenon in cold weather when the ground is covered with snow and the sun is low, morning or evening, and you are looking from it.”); December 25, 1858 (“The sun getting low now, say at 3.30, I see the ice green, southeast.”); February 12, 1860 ("Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green...”)

The green of the ice

begins to be visible

just before sunset.

January 20, 1859

What a singular element is this water! See March 14, 1860 ("No sooner has the ice of Walden melted than the wind begins to play in dark ripples over the surface of the virgin water. Ice dissolved is the next moment as perfect water as if melted a million years.”)

A Red-Shouldered Hawk.

January  12. 

Red-Shouldered Hawk

(Winter Hawk)

Mr. Farmer brings me a hawk which he thinks has caught thirty or forty of his chickens since summer, for he has lost so many, and he has seen a hawk like this catch some of them. Thinks he has seen this same one sitting a long time upright on a tree, high or low, about his premises, and when at length a hen or this year’s chicken had strayed far from the rest, it skimmed along and picked her up without pausing, and bore her off, the chicken not having seen him approaching. He found this, caught by one leg and frozen to death, in a trap which he had set for mink by a spring and baited with fish. 

This measures nineteen by forty-two inches and is, according to Wilson and Nuttall,a young Falco lineatus, or red-shouldered hawk. 

It might as well be called red or rusty breasted hawk. Nuttall says it lives on frogs, crayfish, etc., and does not go far north, — not even to Massachusetts, he thought. Its note, kee-oo. He never saw one soar, at least in winter. 

According to all accounts Wilson’s Falco hyemalis is the old of this bird, for there is a remarkable difference between old and young. 

Mine agrees with Wilson’s F. lineatus, or the young, except that the greater wing-coverts and secondaries are hardly what I should call “pale olive brown thickly spotted,” etc., but rather dusky-brown, somewhat indistinctly barred with whitish (which is pure white on each edge of the feathers) and edged with rusty; that the shafts of the breast-feathers are only dark-brown; that the tail is not quite black, but very dark brown, and is not “broadly tipped” with white, but only with a quarter of an inch of it; vent not “pale ochre,” but white; legs and feet hardly fine yellow, but dull gree ish-yellow; femorals as bright rusty as the breast. 

It differs from Wilson’s winter falcon, which is considered by Audubon and Brewer the same as the lineatus, in not having what I should call a “tooth in the upper mandible;” head, sides of neck, etc., hardly “streaked with white;” above, all primaries and exterior tail feathers not “brownish orange,” and tail not “barred alternately with dark and pale brown,” its inner veins and coverts not “white;” and what is very important, the breast and beneath is not “white.” 

Since Nuttall makes it a southern bird, and it is not likely to come north in the winter, it would seem that it breeds here. 

Farmer says that he saw what he calls the common hen-hawk, one soaring high with apparently a chicken in its claws, while a young hawk circled beneath, when former suddenly let drop the chicken, but the young failing to catch, he shot down like lightning and caught and bore off the falling chicken before it reached the earth.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  January 12, 1859

Farmer brings me a hawk which he thinks has caught thirty or forty of his chickens. See August 29, 1858 (“J. Farmer shot a sharp-shinned hawk this morning, which was endeavoring to catch one of his chickens.”)

January 12. A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 12

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky

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 © 2009-2022

This is the sound which Farmer hears.

August  30. 

P. M. — To bayonet rush by river. Find at Dodd’s shore: Eleocharis obtusa, some time out of bloom (fresh still at Pratt’s Pool); also Juncus acumiuatus (?), just done (also apparently later and yet in bloom at Pout’s Nest);  also what I called Juncus scirpoides, but which  appears to be Juncus paradoxus, with seeds tailed at both ends, (it is fresher than what I have seen before, and smaller), not done. Some of it with few flowers! A terete leaf rises above the flower. It looks like a small bayonet rush.

The Juncus militaris has been long out of bloom. The leaf is three feet long; the whole plant, four or five. It grows on edge of Grindstone Meadow and above. It would look more like a bayonet if the leaf were shorter than the flowering stem, which last is the bayonet part. This is my rainbow rush. 

All over Ammannia Shore and on bare spots in meadows generally, Fimbristylis autumnalis, apparently in prime; minute, two to five inches high, with aspect of F. capillaris. 

As I am now returning over Lily Bay, I hear behind me a singular loud stertorous sound which I thought might have been made by a cow out of order, twice sounded. Looking round, I saw a blue heron flying low, about forty rods distant, and have no doubt the sound was made by him. Probably this is the sound which Farmer hears.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 30, 1858


The sound which Farmer hears. See August 29, 1858 ("He hears — heard a week ago — the sound of a bird flying over, like cra-a-ack, cr-r-r-a-k, only in the night, and thinks it may be a blue heron") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Blue Heron

My knowledge now becomes communicable and grows by communication.

August  29. 

I hear this morning one eat it potter from a golden robin. They are now rarely seen. 

The ghost-horse (Spectrum) is seen nowadays, — several of them. 

All these high colors in the stems and leaves and other portions of plants answer to some maturity in us. I presume if I am the wiser for having lived this season through, such plants will emblazon the truth of my experience over the face of nature, and I shall be aware of a beauty and sweetness there. 

Has not the mind, too, its harvest? Do not some scarlet leaves of thought come scatteringly down, though it may be prematurely, some which, perchance, the summer’s drought has ripened,and the rain loosened? Are there my mind ?

 I remember when boiled green corn was sold piping hot on a muster-field in this town, and my father says that he remembers when it used to be carried about the streets of Boston in large baskets on the bare heads of negro women, and gentlemen would stop, buy an ear, and eat it in the street. 

Ah! what a voice was that hawk’s or eagle’s of the 22d! Think of hearing, as you walk the earth, as usual in leaden shoes, a fine, shrill scream from time to time, which you would vainly endeavor to refer to its truje source if you had not watched the bird in its upward flight. It comes from yonder black spot on the bosom of a cloud. I should not have suspected that sound to have issued from the bosom of a cloud if I had not seen the bird. What motive can an eagle have for screaming among the clouds, unobserved by terrestrial creatures? We walk invested by sound, -— the cricket in the grass and the eagle in the clouds. And so it circled over, and I strained my eyes to follow it, though my ears heard it without effort. ,

Almost the very sands confess the ripening influence of the August sun, and, methinks, with the slender grasses waving over them, reflect a purple tinge. The empurpled sands. Such is the consequence of all this sun shine absorbed into the pores of plants and of the earth. All sap or blood is wine-colored. The very bare sands, methinks, yield a purple reflection. At last we have not only the purple sea, but the purple land

P. M. — To J. Farmer’s via Assabet. 

As, standing up in my boat, I am watching some minnows at the Prichard bend steadily stemming the current in the sunny water between the waving potamogeton, right under my face, I see a musquash gliding along above the sand directly beneath them, a perfect denizen of the water as much as they. This rat was a pale brown, as light as pale-brown paper or perfectly withered white oak leaves. Its coat is never of this color out of water, and I suppose it was because it was completely coated with air. This makes it less visible on a sandy bottom. 

Is not that Eleocharis tenuis, long since out of bloom, growing in the water along the Merrick shore, near the oak; round culms, fifteen inches to two feet high? A spiked rush, without a leaf, and round. I can hardly find a head left on it. Yet Flint says this blooms in August! It grows in dense fields like pipes. Did I find it before this year? 

The mikania is apparently in prime or a little past. Perhaps the front-rank polygonum is in prime now, for there is apparently more than before.

I look along Mantatuket Field hedge to see if there are hazelnuts there, but am surprised to find that thereabouts the bushes have been completely stripped by squirrels already and the rich brown burs are strewn on the ground beneath. What a fine brown these dried burs have already acquired, — not chestnut nor hazel! I fear it is already too late for me, though I find some yet quite green in another place. They must have been very busy collecting these nuts and husking them for a fortnight past, climbing to the extremities of the slender twigs. Who witnesses the gathering of the hazelnuts, the hazel harvest? Yet what a busy and important season to the striped squirrel! Now, if ever, he needs to get up a bee. Every nut that I could find left in that field was a poor one. By more frequented paths the squirrels have not worked yet. Take warning from the squirrel, which is already laying up his winter store.

I see some Cornus sericea berries turning. 

The Assabet helianthus (apparently variety of decapetalus), well out some days at least. Are not the petals peculiarly reflexed? 

Small botrychium in the bobolink meadow, not yet. 

Gentiana Andrewsii, one not quite shedding pollen.

Before bathing at the Pokelogan, I see and hear a school of large suckers, which have come into this narrow bay and are swiftly dashing about and rising to the surface, with a bubbling sound, as if to snatch something from the surface. They agitate the whole bay. They [are] great ruddy-looking fellows, limber with life. How intelligent of all watery knowledge! They seem to measure the length, breadth, and depth of that cove — which perhaps they never entered before — with every wave of their fins. They feel it all at once. With what superfluous vigor they seem to move about restlessly in their element! Lift them but six inches, and they would quirk their tails in vain. They are poor, soft fish, however, large as they are, and taste when cooked at present much like boiled brown, paper. 

The wild Monarda fistulosa is apparently nearly done. 

Cicuta maculata, apparently generally done. 

J. Farmer shot a sharp-shinned hawk this morning, which was endeavoring to catch one of his chickens. I bring it home and find that it measures seventeen inches in length and thirty in alar extent, and the tail extends four inches beyond the closed wings. It has a very large head, and the wing is six and a half inches wide at the secondaries. It is dark-brown above, skirted with ferruginous; scapulars, with white spots; legs, bright-yellow; iris, yellow. Has those peculiar pendulous lobes to the feet, which Farmer thinks are to enable it to hold a small bone of its prey between the nail and the lobe, as it feeds, while perching. The breast and belly feathers are shafted with dark-brown pointed spots. Vent white. There are three obvious slate-colored bars to tail, alternating with the black.

F. says that he has seen the nest of a smaller hawk, the pigeon hawk, heretofore, on an oak (in Owl-Nest Swamp), made of sticks, some fifteen feet from ground. R. Rice says that he has found the nest of the pigeon hawk hereabouts. 

We go to see a bittern nest by Spencer Brook. F. says they call the cardinal-flower “ slink-weed,” and say that the eating it will cause cows to miscarry. He calls the Viburnum nudum “withe-wood,” and makes a withe by treading on one end and twisting by the other till he cracks it and makes it flexible so that it will bend without breaking. 

The bittern’s nest was close to the edge of the brook, eighteen inches above the water, and was made of the withered sedge that had grown close by (i. e. wool-grass, etc.) and what I have called pages back Eleocharis tenuis. It was quite a deep nest, like and as big as a hen’s nest, deep in the grass. He or his son saw the young about it a month ago. 

He hears — heard a week ago — the sound of a bird flying over, like cra-a-ack, cr-r-r-a-k, only in the night, and thinks it may be a blue heron.

We saw where many cranberries had been frost-bitten, F. thinks the night of the 23d. They are much injured. 

Spiranthes cemua, how long? 

Near the bittern-nest, grows what F. calls blue-joint grass; out of bloom. 

Returning, rather late afternoon, we saw some forty martins sitting in a row and twittering on the ridge of his old house, apparently preparing to migrate. He had never seen it before. Soon they all took to flight and filled the air in the neighborhood. 

The sharp-shinned hawk of to-day is much larger than that of July 21st, though the colors, etc., etc., appear to be essentially the same. Yet its leg is not so stout as that which Farrar gave me, but is at least half an inch longer. The toes, especially, are longer and more slender, but I am not sure whether Farrar’s hawk has those pendulous lobes, the foot is so dry, nor if it had sharp-edged shin, it being eaten away by worms. The inner vanes of the primaries of Farrar’s bird are brighter white with much narrower bars of blackish. The longest primary of Farrar’s bird is about ten inches; that of to day, about eight inches. I find the outside tail-feathers of to-day’s bird much harder to pull than the inside ones!‘

Our black willow is of so peculiar and light a green, so ethereal, that, as I look back forty rods at those by the Heron Rock, their outlines are seen with perfect distinctness against the darker green of maples, etc., three or four rods behind them, as if they were a green cloud or smoke blown by. They are seen as distinctly against these other trees as they would be against the sky. 

Rice tells me a queer story. Some twenty-five years ago he and his brother William took a journey in their wagon into the northwest part of Maine, carrying their guns and fishing-tackle with them. At Fryeburg they visited the scene of Lovewell’s Fight, and, seeing some trout in the stream there, they tried to dig some fishworms for bait, but they could not find any. So they asked a boy where they got fishworms, but he did not know what they meant. “Long, slender worms, angle worms,” said they; but he only answered that he had seen worms in their manure-heap (which were grubs). On inquiring further, they found that the inhabitants had never seen nor heard of angleworms, and one old settler, who had come from Massachusetts and had lived there thirty years, declared that there was no such worm in that neighborhood. 

Mr. Farmer gave me a turtle-shaped bug found by Melvin on a board by the river, some time ago. 

I hear A. W. complained of for overworking his cattle and hired men, but there is this to be said in his favor, that he does not spare himself. They say that he made his horse “Tom” draw twenty-nine hundred of hay to Boston the other day, — or night, — but then he put his shoulder to the wheel at every hill. I hear that since then the horse has died, but W. is alive and working.

How hard one must work in order to acquire his language,—-words by which to express himself! I have known a particular rush, for instance, for at least twenty years, but have ever been prevented from describing some [of] its peculiarities, because I did not know its name nor any one in the neighborhood who could tell me it. With the knowledge of the name comes a distincter recognition and knowledge of'the thing. 

That shore is now more describable, and poetic even. My knowledge was cramped and confined before, and grew rusty be cause not used, — for it could not be used. My knowledge now becomes communicable and grows by communication. I can now learn what others know about the same thing.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 29, 1858

The Assabet helianthus (apparently variety of decapetalus), well out some days at least. Are not the petals peculiarly reflexed? See August 29, 1856 ("To J. Farmer's by river. The Helianthus decapetalus, apparently a variety, with eight petals, about three feet high, leaves petioled, but not wing-petioled")

The sharp-shinned hawk of to-day is much larger than that of July 21st, yet its leg is not so stout as that which Farrar gave me. See July 21, 1858 ("A young man killed one of the young hawks, and I saw it. It was the Falco fuscus, the American brown or slate-colored hawk"); October 11, 1856 (“Farrar gave me a wing and foot of a hawk which he shot about three weeks ago . . . . This foot has a sharp shin and stout claws")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the sharp-shinned hawk.

With the knowledge of the name comes a distincter recognition and knowledge of'the thing. See August 20, 1851 ("Botany is worth studying if only for the precision of its terms, — to learn the value of words and of system."); March 1, 1852 (""There is a certain advantage in these hard and precise terms, such as the lichenist uses.); January 15, 1853 ("I have long known this dust, but, as I did not know the name of it, i. e . what others called it, I therefore could not conveniently speak of it, and it has suggested less to me and I have made less use of it. I now first feel as if I had got hold of it."); March 23, 1853 ("One studies books of science merely to learn the language of naturalists , — to be able to communicate with them.")