A Book of the Seasons, Signs of the Spring: The Spring Note of the Chickadee

 

No mortal is alert enough 

to be present at the first dawn of the spring. 

Henry Thoreau, March 17, 1857

Chickadee passes

the news through all the forest --

spring is approaching.

February 21, 1855

On the first spring day

we first hear the phe-be note

of the chickadee.

March 1, 1856

Interesting that 

this winter bird has a note

to welcome the spring.

March 21, 1858

January 9.  Some chickadees come flitting close to me, and one utters its spring note, phe-be, for which I feel under obligations to him. January 9, 1858

February 9. The chickadees flew to me, as if glad to see me . . . I heard one wiry phe-be. February 9, 1854

February 9. I hear a phoebe note from a chickadee. February 9, 1856

February 14.  The titmice keep up an incessant faint tinkling tchip; now and then one utters a lively day day day, and once or twice one commenced a gurgling strain quite novel, startling, and springlike. The chickadee has quite a variety of notes. The phebe one I did not hear to-day. February 14, 1854

February 21. It is whispered through all the aisles of the forest that another spring is approaching. The wood mouse listens at the mouth of his burrow, and the chickadee passes the news along. February 21, 1855

February 23.   I have seen signs of the spring.  February 23, 1857

February 24.    I walk without a greatcoat. A chickadee with its winter lisp flits over, and I think it is time to hear its phebe note, and that instant it pipes it forth.  February 24, 1857

February 25.  I heard this morning a nuthatch on the elms in the street. I think that they are heard oftener and again at the approach of spring, just as the phoebe note of the chickadee is; and so their gnah gnah is a herald of the spring. February 25, 1859

March 1. The sunlight looks and feels warm, and a fine vapor fills the lower atmosphere. I hear the phoebe or spring note of the chickadee, and the scream of the jay is perfectly repeated by the echo from a neighboring wood.  March 1, 1854

March 1.  I hear several times the fine-drawn phe-be note of the chickadee, which I heard only once during the winter. Singular that I should hear this on the first spring day. March 1, 1856

March 8.   Heard the phebe, or spring note of the chickadee, now, before any spring bird has arrived. March 8, 1853

March 10.  Hear the phoebe note of the chickadee to-day for the first time.  I had at first heard their day-day-day ungratefully,- ah! you but carry my thoughts back to winter, - but anon I find that they too have become spring birds; they have changed their note. Even they feel the influence of spring. March 10, 1852

March 11.  Air full of birds, — bluebirds, song sparrows, chickadee (phoebe notes), and blackbirds. Bluebirds' warbling curls in elms.  March 11, 1854

March 13.  I hear only crows and blue jays and chickadees lisping. Excepting a few bluebirds and larks, no spring birds have come, apparently. The woods are still. March 13, 1853

March 14.  I see a flock of blackbirds and hear their conqueree. The ground is mostly bare now. Again I hear the chickadee's spring note. March 14, 1852

March 19.   Hear the phebe note of a chickadee. March 19, 1858

March 20. For two or three days I have heard the gobbling of turkeys, the first spring sound, after the chickadees  and hens, that I think of.  March 20, 1856

March 21.  Standing by the mud-hole in the swamp, I hear the pleasant phebe note of the chickadee. It is, methinks, the most of a wilderness note of any yet. It is peculiarly interesting that this, which is one of our winter birds also, should have a note with which to welcome the spring.  March 21, 1859

March 22. The jays scream. I hear the downy woodpecker’s rapid tapping and my first distinct spring note (phe-be) of the chickadee. March 22, 1855

March 22.  The phenomena of an average March . . .  About twenty-nine migratory birds arrive (including hawks and crows), and two or three more utter their spring notes and sounds, as nuthatch and chickadee, turkeys, and woodpecker tapping. March 22, 1860 

March 30. I hear many phe-be notes from the chickadees, as if they appreciated this slightly warmer and sunny morning. A fine day. March 30, 1855

So I came in and

shut the door and passed my first

spring night in the woods.

Walden, Spring

See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:

• A Change in the Air
• Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding
• Braided Ripples of Melting Snow Shine in the Ruts
• Bright Blue Water
• Buzzing Flies
• Ducks Afar, Sailing on the Meadow
• Frogs, and Turtles Stirring
• Geese Overhead
• Greening Grasses and Sedges
• I begin to think that my wood will last
• Insects and Worms Come Forth and are Active
• Listening for the Bluebird
• March is famous for its Winds
• Mosses Bright Green
• My Greatcoat on my Arm
• Perla-like Insects Appear
• Red Maple Sap Flows
• Ripples made by Fishes
• Skunks Active
• The Anxious Peep of the Early Robin
• The crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows
• The Days have grown Sensibly Longer
• The Eaves Begin to Run
• The Gobbling of Turkeys
• The Grackle Arrives
• The Hawks of March
• The New Warmth of the Sun
• The Note of the Dark-eyed Junco Going Northward
• The Red-Wing Arrives
• The Skunk Cabbage Blooms
• The Softened Air of these Warm February Days
• The Song Sparrow Sings
• The Spring Note of the Chickadee
• The Spring Note of the Nuthatch
• The Striped Squirrel Comes Out
• The Water Bug (Gyrinus)
• The Woodchuck Ventures Out
• Walking without Gloves
• Woodpeckers Tapping

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

Signs of the Spring, the spring note of the chickadee

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 ©  2009-2024

tinyurl.com/hdt-springckdee

Distant well-known blue mountains in the horizon - pine leaves are fallen.

November 9.

November 9, 2022

It is a pleasant surprise to walk over a hill where an old wood has recently been cut off, and, on looking round, to see, instead of dense ranks of trees almost impermeable to light, distant well-known blue mountains in the horizon and perchance a white village over an expanded open country. I now take this in preference to all my old familiar walks. So a new prospect and walks can be created where we least expected it.

***

The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer and nearer inquisitively, from pine bough to pine bough, till within four or five feet, occasionally lisping a note.

The pitcher plant, though a little frost-bitten and often cut off by the mower, now stands full of water in the meadows. I never found one that had not an insect in it. 

***

I found many fresh violets (Viola pedata) to-day (November 9th) in the woods. 

***

The leaves of the larch are now yellow and falling off. 

Just a month ago, I observed that the white pines were parti-colored, green and yellow, the needles of the previous year now falling. Now I do not observe any yellow ones, and I expect to find that it is only for a few weeks in the fall after the new leaves have done growing that there are any yellow and falling, — that there is a season when we may say the old pine leaves are now yellow, and again, they are fallen.

The trees were not so tidy then; they are not so full now. They look best when contrasted with a field of snow.  

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 9, 1850

A pleasant surprise to walk over a hill . . . to see. . . distant well-known blue mountains in the horizon and perchance a white village. See November 9, 1851 ("To-day the mountains seen from the pasture above are dark blue, so dark that they look like new mountains and make a new impression, and the intervening town of Acton is seen against them in a new relation, a new neighborhood"); November 11, 1851 ("The horizon has one kind of beauty and attraction to him who has never explored the hills and mountains in it, and another ... to him who has."); November 22, 1860 ("Simply to see to a distant horizon through a clear air, - the fine outline of a distant hill or a blue mountaintop through some new vista, - this is wealth enough for one afternoon.") See also September 12, 1851 ("It is worth the while to see the mountains in the horizon once a day."); October 22, 1857 (" But what a perfect crescent of mountains we have in our northwest horizon! Do we ever give thanks for it?"); November 4, 1857("But those grand and glorious mountains, how impossible to remember daily that they are there, and to live accordingly! They are meant to be a perpetual reminder to us, pointing out the way."); December 8, 1854("Why do the mountains never look so fair as from my native fields?"); See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Mountains in the Horizon

November 9, 2024

Distant mountain top

as blue to the memory

as now to the eyes.

March 31, 1853

I found many fresh violets. See  November 7, 1851 ("Viola pedata in blossom."); November 8, 1851 ("Like Viola pedata, I shall be ready to bloom again here in my Indian summer days.") See also 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer and nearer See November 8, 1857 ("I do not know exactly what that sweet word is which the chickadee says when it hops near to me now in those ravines.
The chickadee /Hops near to me.") See also A Book of the Seasons,by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

The pitcher plant, though a little frost-bitten . . . now stands full of water in the meadows. See November 11, 1858 ("In the meadows the pitcher-plants are bright-red. "); November 15, 1857 ("The water is frozen solid in the leaves of the pitcher plants.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

The leaves of the larch are now yellow and falling off.  See November 9, 1858 (" The trees on the hill just north of Alcott’s land, which I saw yesterday so distinctly from Ponkawtasset, and thought were either larches or aspens, prove to be larches. On a hill like this it seems they are later to change and brighter now than those in the Abel Heywood swamp, which are brownish-yellow. The first-named larches were quite as distinct amid the pines seen a mile off as near at hand.") See also November 8, 1853("The yellow larch leaves still hold on, — later than those of any of our pines. "); November 13, 1858 ("Larches now look dark or brownish yellow. Now, on the advent of much colder weather, the last Populus tremuliformis has lost its leaves, the sheltered dogwood is withered, and even the scarlet oak may be considered as extinguished, and the larch looks brown and nearly bare."). and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Larch

It is only for a few weeks in the fall after the new leaves have done growing that there are any yellow and falling. See .November 21, 1850 ("It is remarkable that the old leaves turn and fall in so short a time")

There is a season when we may say the old pine leaves are now yellow, and again, they are fallen. See
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The October Pine Fall

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

There is a season 

when old pine leaves are yellow – 

then they are fallen.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Distant well-known blue mountains

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 © 2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-501109

Flowers advance as steadily as a clock. Nature loses not a moment, takes no vacation.

 

April 6.

6 A. M. – To Cliffs.

April 6, 2021

The robin is the singer at present, such is its power and universality, being found both in garden and wood. Morning and evening it does not fail, perched on some elm or the like, and in rainy days it is one long morning or evening.

The song sparrow is still more universal but not so powerful.

The lark, too, is equally constant, morning and evening, but confined to certain localities, as is the blackbird to some extent.

The bluebird, with feebler but not less sweet warbling, helps fill the air, and the pheobe does her part.

The tree sparrow, F. hyemalis, and fox-colored sparrows make the meadow-sides or gardens where they are flitting vocal, the first with its canary-like twittering, the second with its lively ringing trills or jingle. The third is a very sweet and more powerful singer, which would be memorable if we heard him long enough.

The woodpecker's tapping, though not musical, suggests pleasant associations in the cool morning,-is inspiriting, enlivening.

I hear no hylas nor croakers in the morning. Is it too cool for them?

The gray branches of the oaks, which have lost still more of their leaves, seen against the pines when the sun is rising and falling on them, how rich and interesting! 

From Cliffs see on the still water under the hill, at the outlet of the pond, two ducks sailing, partly white.

Hear the faint, swelling, far-off beat of a partridge.

Saw probably female red-wings (?), grayish or dark ashy-brown, on an oak in the woods, with a male (?) whose red shoulder did not appear.

How many walks along the brooks I take in the spring! What shall I call them? Lesser riparial excursions? Prairial? rivular?

When I came out there was not a speck of mist in the sky, but the morning without a cloud is not the fairest.

Now, 8.30 A. M., it rains. Such is April.

A male willow, apparently same with that at H.'s Bridge, or No. 2, near end of second track on west. Another male by ring-post on east side, long cylindrical catkins, now dark with scales, which are generally more rounded than usual and reddish at base and not lanceolate, turning backwards in blossom and exposing their sides or breasts to the sun, from which side burst forth fifty or seventy-five long white stamens like rays, tipped with yellow anthers which at first were reddish above, spears to be embraced by invisible Arnold Winkelrieds; — reddish twigs and clear gray beneath.

These last colors, especially, distinguish it from Nos. 1 and 2. Also a female, four or five rods north of last, just coming into bloom, with very narrow tapering catkins, lengthening already, some to an inch and a half, ovaries conspicuously stalked; very downy twigs, more reddish and rough than last below.

If we consider the eagle as a large hawk, how he falls in our estimation! 

Our new citizen Sam Wheeler has a brave new weathercock all gilt on his new barn. This morning at sunrise it reflected the sun so brightly that I thought it was a house on fire in Acton, though I saw no smoke, but that might well be omitted.

The flower-buds of the red maple have very red inner scales, now being more and more exposed, which color the tree-tops a great distance off.

P. M.-To Second Division Brook.

Near Clamshell Hill, I scare up in succession four pairs of good-sized brown or grayish-brown ducks. They go off with a loud squeaking quack. Each pair is by itself. One pair on shore some rods from the water.  Is not the object of the quacking to give notice of danger to the rest who cannot see it? 

All along under the south side of this hill on the edge of the meadow, the air resounds with the hum of honey-bees, attracted by the flower of the skunk cabbage. I first heard the fine, peculiarly sharp hum of the honey-bee before I thought of them. Some hummed hollowly within the spathes, perchance to give notice to their fellows that plant was occupied, for they repeatedly looked in, and backed out on finding another.

It was surprising to see them, directed by their instincts to these localities, while the earth has still but a wintry aspect so far as vegetation is concerned, buzz around some obscure spathe close to the ground, well knowing what they were about, then alight and enter. As the cabbages were very numerous for thirty or forty rods, there must have been some hundreds of bees there at once, at least.

I watched many when they entered and came out, and they all had little yellow pellets of pollen at their thighs.

As the skunk-cabbage comes out before the willow, it is probable that the former is the first flower they visit. It is the more surprising, as the flower is for the most part invisible within the spathe.

Some of these spathes are now quite large and twisted up like cows ' horns, not curved over as usual. Commonly they make a pretty little crypt or shrine for the flower, like the overlapping door of a tent.

It must be bee-bread (?), then, they are after. Lucky that this flower does not flavor their honey.

I have noticed for a month or more the bare ground sprinkled here and there with several kinds of fungi, now conspicuous, — the starred kind, puffballs, etc. 

Now it is fair, and the sun shines, though it shines and rains with short intervals to-day.

I do not see so much greenness in the grass as I expected, though a considerable change. No doubt the rain exaggerates a little by showing all the greenness there is ! The thistle is now ready to wear the rain-drops.

I see, in J. P. Brown's field, by Nut Meadow Brook, where a hen has been devoured by a hawk probably. The feathers whiten the ground. They cannot carry a large fowl very far from the farmyard, and when driven off are frequently baited and caught in a trap by the remainder of their quarry.

The gooseberry has not yet started.

I cannot describe the lark's song.

I used these syllables in the morning to remember it by, -- heetar-su-e-00.

The willow in Miles's Swamp which resembles No. 2 not fairly in blossom yet.

Heard unusual notes from, I think, a chickadee in the swamp, elicited, probably, by the love season, -- che che vet, accent on last syllable, and vissa viss a viss, the last sharp and fine.

Yet the bird looked more slender than the common titmouse, with a longer tail, which jerked a little, but it seemed to be the same bird that sang phebe and he-phebe so sweetly. The woods rang with this.

Nuttall says it is the young that phebe in winter.

I noticed some aspens (tremuliformis) of good size there, which have no flowers! 

The first lightning I remember this year was in the rain last evening, quite bright; and the thunder followed very long after. A thunder-shower in Boston yesterday.

One cowslip, though it shows the yellow, is not fairly out, but will be by to-morrow. How they improve their time ! Not a moment of sunshine lost.

One thing I may depend on : there has been no idling with the flowers. They advance as steadily as a clock. Nature loses not a moment, takes no vacation.

These plants, now protected by the water, just peeping forth. I should not be surprised to find that they drew in their heads in a frosty night.

Returning by Harrington's, saw a pigeon woodpecker flash away, showing the rich golden under side of its glancing wings and the large whitish spot on its back, and presently I heard its familiar long-repeated loud note, almost familiar as that of a barn-door fowl, which it somewhat resembles.

The robins, too, now toward sunset, perched on the old apple trees in Tarbell's orchard, twirl forth their evening lays unweariedly.

Is that a willow, the low bush from the fireplace ravine which from the lichen oak, fifty or sixty rods distant, shows so red in the westering sun light? More red, I find, by far than close at hand.

To-night for the first time I hear the hylas in full blast.

Is that pretty little reddish-leaved star-shaped plant by the edge of water a different species of hypericum from the perforatum?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 6, 1853

The robin is the singer at present, such is its power and universality, . . .The song sparrow is still more universal but not so powerful . . .and the pheobe does her part. See April 6, 1856 ("the note of the first pewee! If there is one within half a mile, it will be here, and I shall be sure to hear its simple notes from those trees, borne over the water") see also April 1, 1854 (" The robin now begins to sing sweet powerfully"); 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 9, 1855 ("At sunset after the rain, the robins and song sparrows fill the air along the river with their song.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia); A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring

 

The air resounds with the hum of honey-bees, attracted by the flower of the skunk cabbage. See April 6, 1854 ("I am surprised to find so much of the white maples already out. The light-colored stamens show to some rods. They resound with the hum of honey-bees, ").  See also   March 18, 1860 ("The first sunny and warmer day in March the honeybee leaves its home. . .There is but one flower in bloom in the town, and this insect knows where to find it. . . . it knows a spot a mile off under a warm bank-side where the skunk-cabbage is in bloom. No doubt this flower, too, has learned to expect its winged visitor knocking at its door in the spring. ");  April 7, 1855  ("At six this morn to Clamshell. The skunk-cabbage open yesterday, — the earliest flower this season") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau , the Skunk Cabbage; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Earliest Flower

To-night for the first time I hear the hylas in full blast. See April 6, 1858 ("I hear hylas in full blast 2.30 P. M.") See also  March 26, 1857 ("The notes of the croaking frog and the hylodes are not only contemporary with, but analogous to, the blossoms of the skunk-cabbage and white maple."); March 31, 1855 ("I go listening for the croak of the first frog, or peep of a hylodes."); March 31, 1857 ("The shrill peeping of the hylodes locates itself nowhere in particular.");  April 1, 1860 ("I hear the first hylodes by chance, but no doubt they have been heard some time"); April 2, 1852 ("I hear a solitary hyla for the first time."). April 5, 1854("Hark! while I write down this field note, the shrill peep of the hylodes is borne to me from afar through the woods") and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The first frogs to begin calling

Flowers advance as steadily as a clock. See April 6, 1860 ("Vegetation thus comes forward rather by fits and starts than by a steady progress. . . .The spring thus advances and recedes repeatedly, — its pendulum oscillates, — while it is carried steadily forward.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Nature

April 6. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 6

Flowers advance as

steadily as a clock. Nature

loses no moment.

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 © 2009-2024

A Book of the Seasons: November 26 (boat out, winter birds, the wild)

 

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

November 26.

Got my boat up this

Thanksgiving day afternoon –

one end frozen in.

November 26, 1857

In this oak wood hear 

the faint note of a nuthatch 

like a creaking limb. 

November 26, 1860

I detect it much

nearer than I suspected –

its mate not far off.

November 26, 1860

November 26, 2012

I love to have the river

closed up for a season

and a pause put to my boating

to be obliged to get my boat in.

I shall launch it again in the spring

with so much more pleasure.

I love best to have each thing

in its season only

and enjoy doing without it

at all other times. 

December 5, 1856

Boats are drawn up high which will not be launched again till spring. November 26, 1850

Bottom of boat covered with ice. The ice next the shore bears me and my boat. November 26, 1855

Got my boat up this afternoon. (It is Thanksgiving Day.) One end had frozen in. November 26, 1857

Got in boat on account of Reynolds’s new fence going up (earlier than usual). November 26, 1858

Walden is very low, compared with itself for some years. November 26, 1858

And what is remarkable, I find that not only Goose Pond also has fallen correspondingly within a month, but even the smaller pond-holes only four or five rods over, such as Little Goose Pond, shallow as they are. November 26, 1858

In this mud I found two small frogs, one apparently a Rana palustris less than an inch long.  November 26, 1858

Minott's is a small, square, one-storied and unpainted house, with a hipped roof and at least one dormer window, a third the way up the south side of a long hill. November 26, 1857

Not that its form is so incomparable, nor even its weather-stained color, but chiefly, I think, because of its snug and picturesque position on the hillside. November 26, 1857

It is there because somebody was independent or bold enough to carry out the happy thought of placing it high on the hillside. November 26, 1857

The spring comes earlier to that dooryard than to any, and summer lingers longest there. November 26, 1857

It is the locality, not the architecture, that takes us captive. November 26, 1857

In the oak wood counting the rings of a stump, I hear the faint note of a nuthatch like the creak of a limb. I detect it on the trunk of an oak much nearer than I suspected, and its mate or companion not far off November 26, 1860

This is a phenomenon of the late fall or early winter; for we do not hear them in summer that I remember. November 26, 1860

Commonly they are steadily hopping about the trunks in search of insect food. Yet today the nuthatch picks out from a crevice in the bark of an oak trunk, where it was perpendicular, something white and pretty large. November 26, 1860

The chickadee is the bird of the wood the most unfailing. November 26, 1859

When, in a windy, or in any, day, you have penetrated some thick wood like this, you are pretty sure to hear its cheery note therein. November 26, 1859

At this season it is almost their sole inhabitant. November 26, 1859

I see here today one brown creeper busily inspecting the pitch pines. November 26, 1859

It begins at the base, and creeps rapidly upward by starts, adhering close to the bark and shifting a little from side to side often till near the top, then suddenly darts off downward to the base of another tree, where it repeats the same course. November 26, 1859

What that little long-sharp-nosed mouse I found in the Walden road to-day? November 26, 1854

I see in the open field east of Trillium Wood a few pitch pines springing up, from seeds blown from the wood a dozen or fifteen rods off. November 26, 1860

It would be mistaken for a single sprig of moss - that came from the seed this year. It is, as it were, a little green star with many rays, half an inch in diameter.  November 26, 1860

These which are now mistaken for mosses in the grass may become lofty trees which will endure two hundred years, under which no vestige of this grass will be left. November 26, 1860

Thus from pasture this portion of the earth's surface becomes forest. November 26, 1860

No doubt several creatures, like otter and mink and foxes, know where to resort for their food at this season. This is now a perfect otter’s or mink’s preserve. November 26, 1858 

Woods, both the primitive and those which are suffered to spring up in cultivated fields, preserve the mystery of nature. November 26, 1859

It is worth the while to have these thickets on various sides of the town, where the rabbit lurks and the jay builds its nest. November 26, 1859

 

November 26, 2017

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Boat in. Boat out.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Pitch Pine. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The   Pickerel frog  (Rana palustris)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Brown Creeper

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Winter Birds

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November days

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

The world can never be more beautiful than now

*****

November 26, 2017

Walking ("A town is saved by the woods and swamps that surround it.”)

April 27, 1854 ("That is a very New England landscape. Buttrick's yellow farmhouse nearby is in harmony with it.")

May 1850 ("I still sit on its Cliff in a new spring day, and look over the awakening woods and the river, and hear the new birds sing, with the same delight as ever. It is as sweet a mystery to me as ever, what this world is.")

May 12, 1857 ("It reminded me of many a summer sunset, of many miles of gray rails, of many a rambling pasture, of the farmhouse far in the fields, its milk-pans and well-sweep, and the cows coming home from pasture.”).

May 16, 1860 ("[brown creeper] flies across to another bough, or to the base of another tree, and traces that up, zigzag and prying into the crevices.”)

May 31, 1858 ("I see, running along on the flat side of a railroad rail on the causeway, a wild mouse with an exceedingly long tail. Perhaps it would be called the long-tailed meadow mouse.s ")

June 15, 1859 (“A regular old-fashioned country house, long and low, one story unpainted, with a broad green field, half orchard, for all yard between it and the road, — a part of the hill side, — and much June-grass before it. This is where the men who save the country are born and bred.”)

August 26, 1856 ("What is a New England landscape this sunny August day? A weather-painted house and barn, with an orchard by its side, in midst of a sandy field surrounded by green woods, with a small blue lake on one side.”); 

October 20, 1856 ("Think I hear the very faint gnah of a nuthatch. “)

November 4, 1853 ("Hear a nuthatch.")

November 4, 1855 (“The birds are almost all gone. The note of the dee de de sounds now more distinct, prophetic of winter”)

November 7, 1855 ("See a nuthatch flit with a ricochet flight across the river, and hear his gnah half uttered when he alights.”)

November 7, 1858 ("The nuthatch is another bird of the fall which I hear these days and for a long time, — apparently ever since the young birds grew up.")

November 7, 1858 ("The very earth is like a house shut up for the winter, and I go knocking about it in vain. But just then I heard a chickadee on a hemlock, and was inexpressibly cheered to find that an old acquaintance was yet stirring about the premises, and was, I was assured, to be there all winter.")

November 16, 1860 (“In my two walks I saw only one squirrel and a chickadee. Not a hawk or a jay.”)

November 18,1851 ("Surveying these days the Ministerial Lot . . . I hear the hooting of an owl . . . Here hawks also circle by day, and chickadees are heard, and rabbits and partridges abound.")

November 18, 1855 (I am prepared to hear sharp, screaming notes rending the air, from the winter birds."")

November 19, 1857 ("In Stow's sprout-land west of railroad cut, I see where a mouse which has a hole under a stump has eaten out clean the insides of the little Prinos verticillatus berries.  What pretty fruit for the mice, these bright prinos berries!")

November 22, 1860 ("...and still nature is genial to man. Still he beholds the same inaccessible beauty around him.”)
November 25, 1857 ("Mr. Wesson says that he has seen a striped squirrel eating a white-bellied mouse")

November 28, 1858 ("More small birds —tree sparrows and chickadees — than usual about the house.")

November 29, 1860 (“Get up my boat, 7 a. m. Thin ice of the night is floating down the river.”)

November 30, 1855 (“Got in my boat. River remained iced over all day. ”

December 1, 1853 ("I hear their faint, silvery, lisping notes, like tinkling glass, and occasionally a sprightly day-day-day, as they inquisitively hop nearer and nearer to me. They are our most honest and innocent little bird, drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances, and deserve best of any of the walker.”)

December 1, 1857 ("I thus always begin to hear [the nuthatch] on the approach of winter, as if it did not breed here, but wintered here * [but] Hear it all the fall (and occasionally through the summer of ’59")
December 2, 1854 (“Got up my boat and housed it, ice having formed about it.”)

December 2, 1856 (“Got in my boat . . . It made me sweat to wheel it home through the snow”)

December 3, 1856 ("Six weeks ago I noticed the advent of chickadees and their winter habits.")

December 5, 1853 ("Got my boat in. The river frozen over thinly in most places and whitened with snow”

December 10, 1859 (“Get in my boat, in the snow. The bottom is coated with a glaze.”)

December 11, 1854 ("The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely; the morning and the evening twilight make the whole day. . . .I hear rarely a bird except the chickadee, or perchance a jay or crow.")

December 13, 1852 ("I observed a mouse . . . reddish brown above and cream-colored beneath,. . .. I think it must be the Gerbillus Canadensis, or perhaps the Arvicola Emmonsii, or maybe the Arvicola hirsutus, meadow mouse")

December 13, 1852 (“I judge from his account of the rise and fall of Flint's Pond that, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and outlet, it sympathizes with Walden")

December 27, 1853 (“ I had not seen a meadow mouse all summer, but no sooner does the snow come and spread its mantle over the earth than it is printed with the tracks of countless mice")

January 22, 1852 ("I see, one mile to two miles distant on all sides from my window, the woods, which still encircle our New England towns. . . Where still wild creatures haunt. How long will these last?”)

January 29, 1853 ("I saw a little grayish mouse frozen into Walden, three or four rods from the shore, its tail sticking out a hole. It had apparently run into this hole when full of water, as if on land, and been drowned and frozen.")

February 9, 1858 (“A distant farmhouse on a hill, French’s or Buttrick's, perhaps.”) 

February 24, 1854 ("Nuthatches are faintly answering each other, — tit for tat, — on different keys, — a faint creak. Now and then one utters a loud distinct gnah.”)

November 26, 2017

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.

  April 7, 1853 

November 25 <<<<<<<<  November 26.  >>>>>>>> November 27

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November 26

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