A kind of mining bee.

May 10.

River six and one eighth inches below summer level.

Thermometer at 2 P. M., 71°. The winds died away with April. 

In the midst of a remarkable drought. Hear of great fires in the woods up country the past week, it is so dry. Some farmers plowed around their houses to save them. 

P. M. – To Bateman’s Pond.

Salix alba flower in prime and resounding with the hum of bees on it. The sweet fragrance fills the air for a long distance. How much the planting of this willow adds to the greenness and cheerfulness of our landscape at this season! 

As I stand on Hunt’s Bridge, I notice the now comparatively dark green of the canary grass (Phalaris), the coarse grass vigorously springing up on the muddy islands and edges, the glaucous green of Carex stricta tufts, and the light yellowish green of the very coarse sedges of the meadow. 

Going over the hill behind S. Brown’s, when we crossed the triangular space between the roads beyond the pump-maker’s, I saw countless little heaps of sand like the small ant-hills, but, looking more closely, the size of the holes (a little less than a quarter of an inch) and the comparative irregularity of the heaps — as if the sand had been brought forth and dropped in greater quantity at once — attracted my attention and I found they were the work of bees.

The bees were hovering low over the surface, and were continually entering and issuing from the holes. They were about the size of a honey-bee, black bodied, with, I thought, yellow thighs, -- if it was not pollen. Many of the holes appeared to have been freshly stopped up with granules of moist sand. These holes were made close together in the dry and sandy soil there, with very little grass on it, sloping toward the west, between the roads, and covered a triangular space some seven rods by three. I counted twenty-four in a square foot. There must have been some twenty-five thousand of these nests in all. The surface was yellowed with them. Evidently a kind of mining bee. 

I see in roadside hard sward, by the brook beyond, a sedge darker than the stricta and not in tufts, quite short. Is it the C. vulgaris? Its leading spikes are effete. 

Evergreen-forest note.

Some very young oaks — white oak, etc. — in woods begin to leaf. 

Hear the first cricket. 

The red maples, fruiting now, are in the brick-red state. 

I heard yesterday one or two warblers. One’s note was, in rhythm, like a very feeble field sparrow. Was it the redstart? Probably one or two strange warblers now. Was it not the parti-colored warbler, — with bluish head and yellow beneath, but not the screeper note, but note ending with a jingle slightly like the field sparrow? 

Meadow fox-tail grass out several days.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 10, 1860

Salix alba flower in prime and resounding with the hum of bees. See May 10, 1853 ("At this season the traveller passes through a golden gate on causeways where these willows are planted, as if he were approaching the entrance to Fairyland."); May 10, 1854 ("I perceive the sweetness of the willows on the causeway."). See also May 3, 1853  ('The willows (Salix alba) where I keep my boat resound with the hum of bees and other insects"); May 9, 1852 ("I smell the blossoms of the willows, . . . a quarter of a mile to windward. "); May 11, 1854 ("The willows on the Turnpike now resound with the hum of bees,"); May 12, 1855 ("I perceive the fragrance of the Salix alba, now in bloom, more than an eighth of a mile distant. They now adorn the causeways with their yellow blossoms and resound with the hum of bumblebees,"); May 14, 1852 ("Going over the Corner causeway, the willow blossoms fill the air with a sweet fragrance, and I am ready to sing,")

The glaucous green of Carex stricta tufts, and the light yellowish green of the very coarse sedges of the meadow. By the brook beyond, a sedge darker than the stricta and not in tufts, quite short. See May 10, 1858 ("That early glaucous, sharp-pointed, erect sedge, grass like, by the riverside is now apparently in prime.") See also June 19, 1859 ("The prevailing sedge of Heywood Meadow by Bartlett Hill-side, that which showed yellow tops in the spring, is the Carex stricta.")

One or two strange warblers now. See April 19, 1854 ("Within a few days the warblers have begun to come."); April 30, 1859 ("This first off-coat warmth just preceding the advent of the swamp warblers (parti-colored, red start, etc.) brings them out."); May 7, 1852 ("For now, before the leaves, they begin to people the trees in this warm weather."); May 11, 1853 ("How many little birds of the warbler family are busy now about the opening buds, while I sit by the spring! They are almost as much a part of the tree as its blossoms and leaves. They come and give it voice. "); May 15, 1859 (“Now, when the warblers begin to come in numbers with the leafing of the trees, the woods are so open that you can easily see them. ”);May 15, 1860 ("Deciduous woods now swarm with migrating warblers, especially about swamps.”);May 18, 1856 ("The swamp is all alive with warblers about the hoary expanding buds of oaks, maples, etc., and amid the pine and spruce."); May 23, 1857("This is the time and place to hear the new-arriving warblers, the first fine days after the May storm. When the leaves generally are just fairly expanding,")

May 10. SeeA Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 10

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2021

Dragon-flies have begun to come out in numbers.

May 25. 

May 25,2019

Dragon-flies have begun to come out of their larva state in numbers, leaving the cases on the weeds, etc. See one tender and just out this forenoon.

Meadow fox-tail grass abundantly out (how long?), front of E. Hosmer's by bars and in E. Hubbard's meadow, front of meeting-house. 

The Salix petiolaris is either entire or serrate, and generally, I should now say, was becoming serrate, the later leaves, e. g. that one, a fertile one, nearly opposite the Shattuck oak. 

The river is quite high for the season, on account of the late rains. 

Hear within a day or two what I call the sprayey note of the toad, different and later than its early ring.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 25, 1859

Hear within a day or two what I call the sprayey note of the toad, different and later than its early ring.  See May 25, 1851 (“I hear the dreaming of the frogs.  So it seems to me, and so significantly passes my life away. It is like the dreaming of frogs in a summer evening.”); May 25, 1855 ("Hear . . . the summer spray frog, amid the ring of toads.”); May 25, 1860  ("5 P.M. the toads ring loud and numerously, as if invigorated by this little moisture and coolness.”) See also  May 13, 1860 ("It is so warm that I hear the peculiar sprayey note of the toad generally at night."); May 16, 1853 ("Nature’appears to have passed a crisis. . ..  The sprayey dream of the toad has a new sound"); May 20, 1854 ("The steadily increasing sound of toads and frogs along the river with each successive warmer night is one of the most important peculiarities of the season. Their prevalence and loudness is in proportion to the increased temperature of the day. It is the first earth-song, beginning with the croakers, (the cricket's not yet), as if the very meads at last burst into a meadowy song."); June 12, 1855 (“I hear the toad, which I have called “spray frog” falsely, still. . . .A peculiarly rich, sprayey dreamer, now at 2 P. M.! . . . This rich, sprayey note possesses all the shore. It diffuses itself far and wide over the water and enters into every crevice of the noon, and you cannot tell whence it proceeds”); Compare May 25, 1852 ("I hear the first troonk of a bullfrog.”);  And see also June 13, 1851 ("The different frogs mark the seasons pretty well,- the peeping hyla, the dreaming frog, and the bullfrog.") and note to May 6, 1858 ("I think that the different epochs in the revolution of the seasons may perhaps be best marked by the notes of reptiles. They express, as it were, the very feelings of the earth or nature.")(catologing the frogs of Massachsetts)