A Book of the Seasons, Signs of the Spring: The Water-bug (Gyrinus)

No mortal is alert enough 

to be present at the first dawn of the spring. 

Henry Thoreau, March 17, 1857

To-day they are here 

and yesterday they were not.

First water bugs out.

March 10, 1855

February 8. About an old boat frozen in, I see a great many little gyrinus-shaped bugs swimming about in the water above the ice. February 8, 1860

February 10. Those little gyrinus-shaped bugs of the 8th, that had come out through a crevice in the ice about a boat frozen in, and were swimming about in the shallow water above the ice, I see are all gone now that that water is frozen, — have not been frozen in; so they must have returned back under the ice when it became cold, and this shows that they were not forced up accidentally in the first place, but attracted by the light and warmth, probably as those minnows were some time ago. That is, in a thaw in the winter some water-insects — beetles, etc. — will come up through holes in the ice and swim about in the sun. February 10, 1860

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

March 3.  See two small water-bugs at the spring; none elsewhere. March 3, 1859

March 5. I saw on the ice, quite alive, some of those black water-beetles, which apparently had been left above by a rise of the river. Were they a Gyrinus? March 5, 1859

March 6.  The small gyrinus is circling in the brook. March 6, 1855

March 10. You are always surprised by the sight of the first spring bird or insect; they seem premature, and there is no such evidence of spring as themselves, so that they literally fetch the year about. It is thus when I hear the first robin or bluebird or, looking along the brooks, see the first water-bugs out circling. But you think, "They have come, and Nature cannot recede." Thus, when on the 6th I saw the gyrinus at Second Division Brook, I saw no peculiarity in the water or the air to remind me of them, but to-day they are here and yesterday they were not. I go looking deeper for tortoises, when suddenly my eye rests on these black circling apple seeds in some smoother bay. March 10, 1855

March 15.  C. says he has heard a striped squirrel and seen a water-bug (Gyrinus), — it must have been on Saturday (12th). March 15, 1853

March 17.  Saw a small gyrinus at the brook bridge behind Hubbard's Grove. March 17, 1854

March 18. Within the brook I see quite a school of little minnows, an inch long, amid or over the bare dead stems of polygonums, and one or two little water-bugs (apple seeds). The last also in the broad ditch on the Corner road, in Wheeler’s meadow. Notwithstanding the backwardness of the season, all the town still under deep snow and ice, here they are, in the first open and smooth water, governed by the altitude of the sun. March 18, 1856

March 19.  In the smooth open water there [the broad ditch on the Corner road], small water-bugs were gyrating singly, not enough to play the game. March 19, 1856

March 19.  Myriads of water-bugs of various sizes are now gyrating, and they reflect the sun like silver. Why do they cast a double orbicular shadow on the bottom? March 19, 1860

March 20.  Saw a large dead water-bug on Walden. I suspect he came out alive. March 20, 1853

March 22.   At Nut Meadow Brook, water-bugs and skaters are now plenty. March 22, 1853

March 22.  The phenomena of an average March . . . Many insects and worms come forth and are active, — and the perla insects still about ice and water, — as tipula, grubs, and fuzzy caterpillars, minute hoppers on grass at springs; gnats, large and small, dance in air; the common and the green fly buzz outdoors; the gyrinus, large and small, on brooks, etc., and skaters; spiders shoot their webs, and at last gossamer floats; the honey bee visits the skunk - cabbage; fishworms come up, sow-bugs, wireworms, etc.; various larvæ are seen in pools; small green and also brown grasshoppers begin to hop, small ants to stir ( 25th ); Vanessa Antiopa out 29th; cicindelas run on sand; and small reddish butter flies are seen in wood-paths, etc., etc., etc. March 22, 1860

So I came in and

shut the door and passed my first

spring night in the woods.

Walden, Spring

See also Signs of the Spring:

• A Change in the Air
• A Sunny Nook in Spring
• 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
• Greening Grasses and Sedges
• Insects and Worms Come Forth and are Active
• Listening for the Bluebird
• March is famous for its Winds
• Mosses Bright Green
• 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 Eaves Begin to Run
• The Gobbling of Turkeys
• The Grackle Arrives
• The Hawks of March
• 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)
• Walking without Gloves
• Woodpeckers Tapping
  

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,

Signs of the Spring, the water-bug (Gyrinus)

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/HDTgyrinus

Gyrinus

November 11.

Did Harris call the water-bug Gyrinus to-day ?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 11, 1852

Harris. (Thaddeus William Harris 1795-1856: the librarian of Harvard University, and one of Thoreau's professors).See January 1, 1853 ('Sibley told me that Agassiz told him that Harris was the greatest entomologist in the world, and gave him permission to repeat his remark."); November 10, 1854 ("Got some donacia grubs for Harris, but find no chrysalids.")

The water-bug Gyrinus  Compare October 11, 1852 (" I could detect the progress of a water-bug over the smooth surface in almost any part of the pond, for they furrow the water slightly, making a conspicous ripple bounded by two diverging lines") with Walden ("You can even detect a water-bug (Gyrinus) ceaselessly progressing over the smooth surface a quarter of a mile off; for they furrow the water slightly, making a conspicuous ripple bounded by two diverging lines"). See    November 3, 1853 ("A small gyrinus in Nut Meadow Brook."). See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Water-bug (Gyrinus) and Skaters (Hydrometridae)

No finer walking than up or down a broad field of smooth ice like this in a cold, glittering winter day.

February 10

A very strong and a cold northwest wind to-day, shaking the house, — thermometer at 11 a. m., 14°, — consumes wood and yet we are cold, and drives the smoke down the chimney. 

I see that Wheildon's pines are rocking and showing their silvery undersides as last spring, — their first awakening, as it were. 

P. M. — The river, where open, is very black, as usual when the waves run high, for each wave casts a shadow. [Call it Black Water.] Theophrastus notices that the roughened water is black, and says that it is because fewer rays fall on it and the light is dissipated. 

It is a day for those rake and horn icicles; the water, dashing against the southeast shores where they chance to be open, i. e. free of ice, and blown a rod inland, freezes to the bushes, forming rakes and oftener horns. If twigs project above the ice-belt thus: the water freezes over them thus : — The very grass stubble is completely encased for a rod in width along the shore, and the trunks of trees for two or three feet up. 

Any sprig lying on the edge of the ice is completely crusted. Sometimes the low button-bush twigs with their few remaining small dark balls, and also the drooping corymbs of the late rose hips, are completely encased in an icicle, and you see their bright scarlet reflected through the ice in an exaggerated manner. 

If a hair is held up above the ice where this spray is blowing, it is sufficient to start a thick icicle rake or horn, for the ice forming around it becomes at once its own support, and gets to be two or three inches thick. 

Where the open water comes within half a dozen feet of the shore, the spray has blown over the intervening ice and covered the grass and stubble, looking like a glaze, — countless loby fingers and horns over some fine stubble core, — and when the grass or stem is horizontal you have a rake. Just as those great organ-pipe icicles drip from rocks have an annular structure growing downward, so these on the horizontal stubble and weeds, when directed to the point toward which the wind was blowing; i. e., they grow thus southeast. 

Then there is the thickened edge of the ice, like a cliff, on the southeast sides of openings against which the wind has dashed the waves, especially on the southeast side of broad meadows.

No finer walking in any respect than on our broad meadow highway in the winter, when covered with bare ice. If the ice is wet, you slip in rubbers; but when it is dry and cold, rubbers give you a firm hold, and you walk with a firm and elastic step. I do not know of any more exhilarating walking than up or down a broad field of smooth ice like this in a cold, glittering winter day when your rubbers give you a firm hold on the ice. 

I see that the open places froze last night only on the windward side, where they were less agitated, the waves not yet running so high there. 

A little snow, however, even the mere shavings or dust of ice made by skaters, hinders walking in rubbers very much, for though the rubber may give a good hold on clear ice, when you step on a little of the ice dust or snow you slide on that. 

Those little gyrinus-shaped bugs of the 8th, that had come out through a crevice in the ice about a boat frozen in, and were swimming about in the shallow water above the ice, I see are all gone now that that water is frozen, — have not been frozen in; so they must have returned back under the ice when it became cold, and this shows that they were not forced up accidentally in the first place, but attracted by the light and warmth, probably as those minnows were some time ago. That is, in a thaw in the winter some water-insects — beetles, etc. — will come up through holes in the ice and swim about in the sun.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 10, 1860

A very strong and a cold northwest wind to-day, shaking the house, consumes wood and yet we are cold, and drives the smoke down the chimney. See February 10, 1858 ("Grows cold toward night, and windy."); see also February 3, 1856 (“The wind whistles round the northwest corner of the house and penetrates every crevice and consumes the wood in the stoves, — soon blows it all away. An armful goes but little way. Such a day makes a great hole in the wood-pile.”); February 13, 1856 (“Grew cold again last night, with high wind. . . . I think a high wind commonly follows rain or a thaw in winter.”) and note to November 20, 1857 ("High wind in the night, shaking the house, apparently from the northwest")

Wheildon's pines are rocking and showing their silvery undersides as last  spring, — their first awakening. See  February 4, 1852 ("Anon a lively, silvery light plays on them, and they seem to erect themselves unusually; . . . The sun loves to nestle in the boughs of the pine and pass rays through them. "); February 25, 1860 ("The first conspicuous silvery sheen from the needles of the white pine waving in the wind");  March 20, 1853 ("In this spring breeze, how full of life the silvery pines.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: First silvery sheen from needles of the white pine waving in the wind

The river, where open, is very black, as usual when the waves run high See  March 29, 1852 (“The water on the meadows looks very dark from the street. . . . There is more water and it is more ruffled at this season than at any other, and the waves look quite angry and black. ”); April 9, 1859( "For three weeks past, when I have looked northward toward the flooded meadows they have looked dark-blue or blackish, in proportion as the day was clear and the wind high from the north west, making high waves and much shadow.”); May 8, 1854 ("They are melaina . . .  This is our black sea"); October 15, 1851 (“It is delightful to be tossed about . . . and see the waves look so angry and black.”)

Theophrastus notices that the roughened water is black, and says that it is because fewer rays fall on it and the light is dissipated. See Theophrastus On Colors (“Darkness is due to privation of light. For we see black under three different conditions. Either (1) the object of vision is naturally quite black (for black light is always reflected from black objects); or (2) no light at all passes to the eyes from the object (for an invisible object surrounded by a visible patch looks black) ; and (3) objects always appear black to us when the light reflected from them is very rare and scanty. This last condition is the reason why shadows appear black. It also explains the blackness of ruffled water, e.g. of the sea when a ripple passes over it: owing to the roughness of the surface few rays of light fall on the water and the light is dissipated, and so the part which is in shadow appears black.”)

No finer walking in any respect than on our broad meadow highway in the winter, when covered with bare ice. See February 9, 1851 ("It is easier to get about the country than at any other season."); see also note to February 13, 1859 ("Winter comes to make walking possible where there was no walking in summer.")

In a thaw in the winter some water-insects will come up through holes in the ice and swim about in the sun. See February 8, 1860 ("About an old boat frozen in, I see a great many little gyrinus-shaped bugs swimming about in the water above the ice"); March 18, 1856 ("Here they are, in the first open and smooth water, governed by the altitude of the sun") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Water-bug (Gyrinus) and  Skaters (Hydrometridae)

February 10. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 10

A strong northwest wind

shaking the house and driving

smoke down the chimney.

No finer walking  

this glittering winter day –

a broad field of ice.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2026

The forms of ice-crystals must include all others.

February 8. 

2 p. m. — Up river to Fair Haven Hill. Thermometer 43. 

40° and upward may be called a warm day in the winter. We have had much of this weather for a month past, reminding us of spring. February may be called earine (springlike). 

There is a peculiarity in the air when the temperature is thus high and the weather fair, at this season, which makes sounds more clear and pervading, as if they trusted themselves abroad further in this genial state of the air. 

A different sound comes to my ear now from iron rails which are struck, as from the cawing crows, etc. Sound is not abrupt, piercing, or rending, but softly sweet and musical. It will take a yet more genial and milder air before the bluebird's warble can be heard.

Walking over Hubbard's broad meadow on the softened ice, I admire the markings in it. The more interesting and prevailing ones now appearing ingrained and giving it a more or less marbled look, — one, what you may call checkered marbling (?), consisting of small polygonal figures three quarters [of an inch in] diameter, bounded by whitish lines more or less curved within the ice, and apparently covered with an entire thin surface ice, and so on for rods (these when five or six inches wide make a mackerel-sky ice); the other apparently passing from this into a sort of fibrous structure of waving lines, hair-like or rather flame-like, — call it phlogistic : — only far more regular and beautiful than I can draw. 

Sometimes like perhaps a cassowary's feathers, the branches being very long and fine. This fibrous or phlogistic structure is evidently connected with the flow of the surface water, for I see some old holes, now smoothly frozen over, where these rays have flowed from all sides into the hole in the midst of the checked ice, making a circular figure which reminded me of a jellyfish:  only far more beautiful than  this. 

The whitish lines which bound these figures and form  the parallel fibres are apparently lines of fine bubbles more dense than elsewhere. I am not sure that these markings always imply a double or triple ice, i. e. a thinner surface ice, which contains them. 

The ice is thus marked under my feet somewhat as the heavens overhead; there is both the mackerel sky and the fibrous flame or asbestos-like form in both. The mackerel spotted or marked ice is very common, and also reminds me of the reticulations of the pickerel. 

I see some quite thin ice which had formed on puddles on the ice, now soaked through, and in these are very interesting figures bounded by straight and crinkled particularly white lines. I find, on turning the ice over, that these lines correspond to the raised edges of and between bubbles which have occupied a place in the ice, i. e. upward [?] in it. 

Then there is occasionally, where puddles on the ice have frozen, that triangular rib-work of crystals, — a beautiful casting in alto-relievo of low crystaling as to form triangular and other figures. Shining splinters in the sun. Giving a rough hold to the feet.

One would think that the forms of ice-crystals must include all others.

I see hundreds of oak leaves which have sunk deep into the ice. Here is a scarlet oak leaf which has sunk one inch into the ice, and the leaf still rests at the bottom of this mould. Its stem and lobes and all their bristly points are just as sharply cut there as is the leaf itself, fitting the mould closely and tightly, and, there being a small hole or two in the leaf, the ice stands up through them half an inch high, like so many sharp tacks. 

Indeed, the leaf is sculptured thus in bas-relief, as it were, as sharply and exactly as it could be done by the most perfect tools in any material. But as time has elapsed since it first began to sink into the ice, the upper part of this mould is enlarged by melting more or less, and often shows the outline of the leaf exaggerated and less sharp and perfect. 

You see these leaves at various depths in the ice, — many quite concealed by new ice formed over them, for water flows into the mould and thus a cast of it is made in ice. 

So fragments of rushes and sedge and cranberry leaves have on all sides sunk into the ice in like manner. 

The smallest and lightest-colored object that falls on the ice begins thus at once to sink through it, the sun as it were driving it; and a great many, no doubt, go quite through.This is especially common after a long warm spell like this. 

I see, even, that those colored ridges of froth which have bounded the water that overflowed the ice, since they contain most of the impurities or coloring matter, sink into the ice accordingly, making rough furrows an inch or more deep often. The proper color of water is perhaps best seen when it overflows white ice. Pliny could express a natural wonder. 

About an old boat frozen in, I see a great many little gyrinus-shaped bugs swimming about in the water above the ice. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 8, 1860



40° and upward may be called a warm day in the winter. See January 25, 1860 ("Above 40° is warm for winter.") ; March 20, 1855 ("It is remarkable by what a gradation of days which we call pleasant and warm, beginning in the last of February, we come at last to real summer warmth. At first a sunny, calm, serene winter day is pronounced spring, or reminds us of it; and then the first pleasant spring day perhaps we walk with our greatcoat buttoned up and gloves on.”); April 26, 1860 (" To-day it is 53° at 2, yet cold, such a difference is there in our feelings.What we should have called a warm day in March is a cold one at this date in April.”)

February may be called earine (springlike). There is a peculiarity in the air at this season, which makes sounds more clear and pervading.. . .It will take a yet more genial and milder air before the bluebird's warble can be heard. See February 8, 1857("Music is perpetual, and only hearing is intermittent. I hear it in the softened air of these warm February days which have broken the back of the winter") See also  February 9, 1854 (" There is a peculiar softness and luminousness in the air this morning, perhaps the light being diffused by vapor. It is such a warm, moist, or softened, sunlit air as we are wont to hear the first bluebird's warble in. . . .The voices of the school-children sound like spring. . . . February belongs to the spring; it is a snowy March"); February 24, 1857 ("[A]s I cross from the causeway to the hill, thinking of the bluebird, I that instant hear one's note from deep in the softened air.") See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: Change in the Air

A different sound comes to my ear now from iron rails which are struck  See   February 16, 1855 ("Sounds sweet and musical through this air, as crows, cocks, and striking on the rails at a distance.”); February 24, 1852 ("I now hear at a distance the sound of the laborer's sledge on the rails. The very sound of men's work reminds, advertises, me of the coming of spring.”)

Here is a scarlet oak leaf which has sunk one inch into the ice, and the leaf still rests at the bottom of this mould. Compare February 2, 1860 (" Oak leaves, absorbing the heat of the sun, have sunk into the ice an inch in depth and afterward been blown out, leaving a perfect type of the leaf with its petiole and lobes sharply cut, with perfectly upright sides, so that I can easily tell the species of oak that made it.")

I see a great many little gyrinus-shaped bugs swimming about in the water above the ice. See February 10, 1860 ("Those little gyrinus-shaped bugs of the 8th, that had come out through a crevice in the ice about a boat frozen in, and were swimming about in the shallow water above the ice, I see are all gone now that that water is frozen, — have not been frozen in; so they must have returned back under the ice when it became cold,. . .That is, in a thaw in the winter some water-insects — beetles, etc. — will come up through holes in the ice and swim about in the sun."); February 28. 1860 ("Looking from Hubbard's Bridge, I see a great water-bug even on the river, so forward is the season.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Water-bug (Gyrinus) and Skaters (Hydrometridae)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 8

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 ©  2009-2023

A splendid sunset.

January 17. 

Another mild day. 

January 17, 2020

P. M. — To Goose Pond and Walden.  Sky overcast, but a crescent of clearer in the northwest. 

I see on the snow in Hubbard's Close one of those rather large flattish black bugs some five eighths of an inch long, with feelers and a sort of shield at the forward part with an orange mark on each side of it. 

In the spring-hole ditches of the Close I see many little water-bugs (Gyrinus) gyrating, and some under water. It must be a common phenomenon there in mild weather in the winter. 

I look again at that place of squirrels (of the 13th). As I approach, I have a glimpse of one or two red squirrels gliding off silently along the branches of the pines, etc. They are gone so quickly and noiselessly, perhaps keeping the trunk of the tree between you and them, that [you] would not commonly suspect their presence if you were not looking for them. 

But one that was on the snow ascended a pine and sat on a bough with its back to the trunk as if there was nothing to pay. Yet when I moved again he scud up the tree, and glided across on some very slender twigs into a neighboring tree, and so I lost him. 

Here is, apparently, a settlement of these red squirrels. 

There are many holes through the snow into the ground, and many more where they have probed and dug up a white pine cone, now pretty black and, for aught I can see, with abortive or empty seeds; yet they patiently strip them on the spot, or at the base of the trees, or at the entrance of their holes, and evidently find some good seed. The snow, however, is strewn with the empty and rejected seeds. 

They seem to select for their own abode a hillside where there are half a dozen rather large and thick white pines near enough together for their aerial travelling, and then they burrow numerous holes and depend on finding (apparently) the pine cones which they cast down in the summer, before they have opened. In the fall they construct a nest of grass and bark-fibres, moss, etc., in one of the trees for winter use, and so apparently have two resources. 

I walk about Ripple Lake and Goose Pond. I see the old tracks of some foxes and rabbits about the edge of these ponds (over the ice) within a few feet of the shore. I think that I have noticed that animals thus commonly go round by the shore of a pond, whether for fear of the ice, or for the shelter of the shore, i. e. not to be seen, or because their food and game is found there. But a dog will oftener bolt straight across.
 

January 16, 2018

When I reached the open railroad causeway returning, there was a splendid sunset. The northwest sky at first was what you may call a lattice sky, the fair weather establishing itself first on that side in the form of a long and narrow crescent, in which the clouds, which were uninterrupted overhead, were broken into long bars parallel to the horizon — 

Alcott said well the other day that this was his definition of heaven, "A place where you can have a little conversation."

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 17, 1860

In the spring-hole ditches of the Close I see many little water-bugs (Gyrinus) gyrating. See January 23, 1858 ("Standing on the bridge over the Mill Brook on the Turnpike, there being but little ice on the south side, I see several small water-bugs (Gyrinus) swimming about, as in the spring."); January 24, 1858 ("At Nut Meadow Brook the small-sized water-bugs are as abundant and active as in summer. I see forty or fifty circling together in the smooth and sunny bays all along the brook. This is something new to me. What must they think of this winter?"); January 30, 1860 ("The small water-bugs are gyrating abundantly in Nut Meadow Brook") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Water-bug (Gyrinus) and  Skaters (Hydrometridae)

I look again at that place of squirrels (of the 13th). See January 13, 1860 ("I see under some sizable white pines in E. Hubbard's wood, where red squirrels have run about much since this snow.") See also 
 January 17, 1854 ("Surveying for William O. Benjamin in east part of Lincoln. Saw a red squirrel on the wall, it being thawing weather. ") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Red Squirrel

I see the old tracks of some foxes and rabbits about the edge of these ponds (over the ice) within a few feet of the shore. See January 8, 1860 ("We see no fresh tracks. The old tracks of the rabbit, now after the thaw, are shaped exactly like a horse shoe, an unbroken curve. Those of the fox which has run along the side of the pond are now so many snowballs, raised . . . above the level of the water-darkened snow.") See also January 2, 1856 (“As for the fox and rabbit race described yesterday, I find that the rabbit was going the other way, and possibly the fox was a rabbit, for, tracing back the rabbit, I found that it had first been walking with alternate steps, fox-like.”)

When I reached the open railroad causeway returning, there was a splendid sunset. See January 17, 1852 ("In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky sunset these winter days.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Sunsets and  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky

I break my way into the midst of Holden Swamp to get a specimen of Kalmia glauca leaf

November 15. 

The obvious falling of leaves (i.e., not to include the fall of the pitch pines and larches and the complete fall of the birches, white willows, etc.) ended about the first of November. 

A very few bright-colored leaves on small shrubs, such as oak sprouts, black cherry, blueberry, etc., have lingered up to this time in favorable places. By the first of November, or at most a few days later, the trees generally wear, in the main, their winter aspect, their leaves gradually falling until spring. 

P. M. — To Holden Swamp and C. Miles Swamp. 

Where the earth has been freshly exposed and so lies light, it is now heaved up and white with asbestos like crystals two or three inches long, which sink and are crunched by my feet. Cold pools in shady woods and under the north sides of walls are now skimmed over. Ice a quarter of an inch thick. I see its large flaky crystals like low undulations, a mosaic of slightly concave, perhaps triangular pieces. The paths whose surface was frozen each night are now thawing and wet. 

The water of the brook beyond Hubbard’s Grove, where it spreads out a little, though not frozen, is clear, cold, and deserted of life. There are no water-bugs nor skaters on it. Rennie, in “ Library of Entertaining Knowledge,” says they are seen all winter on some pools in England, i. e. the Gyrinus natator. 

I see no ants on the great ant-hills, and methinks I have not for three weeks at least. There is but little insect-life abroad now. You wonder what nourishment the cattle can extract from the withered and bleached grass. This cold blast has swept the water-bugs from the pools. My walk is the more lonely when I perceive that there are no ants now upon their hillocks in field or wood. These are deserted mounds. They have commenced their winter's sleep. 

I break my way into the midst of Holden Swamp to get a specimen of Kalmia glauca leaf. The surface is composed of great porous tussocks, or hummocks, of sphagnum, fifteen or twenty inches high or more, about the stems of blueberry bushes, choke-berry, water andromeda, swamp-pink, spruce, etc., etc., in which my feet sink five or six inches, and my shoes are filled with the rubbish. The water is frozen solid in the leaves of the pitcher plants. This is the thickest ice I’ve seen. This water was most exposed in the cool swamp. I part the scraggy bushes with my hands and press my way through them. I come out covered with the fragments of lichens and rotten twigs and sphagnum.

Going by my owl-nest oak, I saw that it had broken off at the hole and the top fallen, but, seeing in the cavity some leaves, I climbed up to see what kind of nest it was and what traces of the owls were left. Having shinned up with some difficulty to the top of this great. stump some fifteen or eighteen feet high, I took out the leaves slowly, watching to see what spoils had been left with them. Some were pretty green, and all had evidently been placed there this fall. 

When I had taken all out with my left hand, holding on to the top of the stump with my right, I looked round into the cleft, and there I saw, sitting nearly erect at the bottom in one corner, a little Mus leucopus, panting with fear and with its large black eyes upon me. I held my face thus within seven or eight inches of it as long as I cared to hold on there, and it showed no sign of retreating. When I put in my hand, it merely withdrew downward into a snug little nest of hypnum and apparently the dirty-white wool-like pappus of some plant as big as a batting-ball. 

Wishing to see its tail, I stirred it up again, when it suddenly rushed up the side of the cleft, out over my shoulder and right arm, and leaped off, falling down through a thin hemlock spray some fifteen or eighteen feet to the ground, on the hillside, where I lost sight of it, but heard it strike. It will thus make its nest at least sixteen feet up a tree, improving some cleft or hollow, or probably bird's nest, for this purpose. These nests, I suppose, are made when the trees are losing their leaves, as those of the squirrels are. 

At C. Miles Swamp, I see that the larches have finished falling since the 8th (say the 12th ?). 

Find plenty of Andromeda Polifolia there, where you can walk dry-shod in the spruce wood, together with Kalmia glauca. The former is linear, about twice as long and two thirds as broad as the latter, alternate mucronate, round-stemmed. The Kalmia glauca has fewer leaves now, opposite, glossy above; a very sharp two-edged twig, the edges springing from the base of the leaves and decussating like them, so that when the twig is held up to the light it appears alternately thicker and thinner. This plant is commonly seen now with only a few narrow and erect young leaves in a tuft near the end of the twigs, but in many cases older, broader, and nearly horizontal ones, half a dozen of them along the last four or five inches of the twig. The andromeda is most white beneath; the other is more greenish. 

The white willows, which retain many of their leaves even yet, are of a peculiar buff (?) or fawn (?) color. 

Raspberry shoots, too, have their bloom like the thimble-berry, but they are not so rank nor smooth. 

Of the evergreen trees described by Loudon, methinks these it would be worth the while to have on one's premises: — 

• Pinus sylvestris, Scotch pine or fir; the most valuable pine of Europe. Looks like our pitch pine. 
• Pinus Pinaster, which is planted on the sands in France. 
• Abies excelsa, the lofty or Norway spruce fir. 
• Perhaps Picea pectinata, the comb-like-leaved sil ver fir. 
• The Scotch larch, which is not indigenous in Britain, but on the mountains of the middle of Europe. I have, 

Of western American trees: — 

• The Pinus Lambertiana, the gigantic or Lambert's pine, Columbia River, one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet high, twenty to near sixty in circumference, allied closely to P. Strobus. 
• Abies Douglassii, northwestern America, one hundred to one hundred and eighty feet high. 
• Picea grandis, great silver fir, northern California, one hundred and seventy to two hundred feet high.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 15, 1857


Going by my owl-nest oak . . .   See May 26, 1855 ("At Kalmia Swemp ... At the screech owl’s nest I now find two young slumbering."); May 7, 1855 ("I observe a middling-sized red oak standing a little aslant on the side-hill over the swamp, with a pretty large hole in one side about fifteen feet from the ground, where apparently a limb on which a felled tree lodged had been cut some years before and so broke out a cavity. . . .This is a very fit place for hawks and owls to dwell in, — the thick woods just over a white spruce swamp, in which the glaucous kalmia grows.").

Find plenty of Andromeda Polifolia there, where you can walk dry-shod in the spruce wood, together with Kalmia glauca. See December 6, 1856 ("I can walk through the spruce swamp now dry-shod, amid the water andromeda and Kalmia glauca.")

The Kalmia glauca has fewer leaves now, opposite, glossy above; a very sharp two-edged twig ... See January 9, 1855 ("Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp, I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots . . .the Kalmia glauca var.rosmarinifolia.Very delicate evergreen opposite linear leaves, strongly revolute, somewhat reddish-green above, the blossom-buds quite conspicuous. . . .The pretty little blossom-buds arranged crosswise in the axils of the leaves as you look down on them.")

.At C. Miles Swamp, I see that the larches have finished falling since the 8th (say the 12th?). See November 1, 1857 ("The larches are at the height of their change."); November 4, 1855 ("Larches are now quite yellow, — in the midst of their fall.") November 5, 1857 ("The pitch pines generally have lost their leaves now, and the larches are fast falling.”); November 16, 1858 (“Probably the larch about fallen.”)

An olive-sided flycatcher?

May 15

May 15.  P. M. —To Beck Stow’s. 

Suddenly very warm. 

Hear a hummingbird in the garden. Pear blossomed, -- some perhaps yesterday. Locust, black and scarlet oak, and some buttonwoods leaf. 

A yellow butterfly. 

I hear from the top of a pitch pine in the swamp that loud, clear, familiar whistle which I have sometimes wrongly referred to the wood pewee,  whip-ter-phe-ee. Is it the whip-tom-kelly note which Soane and Wilson gave to the red-eye, but which Nuttall says he never heard from it? Some times ter-phee-e. This is repeated at considerable intervals, the bird sitting quite still a long time. I saw it dart out once, catch an insect, and return to its perch muscicapa-like.  As near as I could see it had a white throat, was whitish, streaked with dark, beneath, darker tail and wings, and maybe olivaceous shoulders; bright yellow within bill. Probably M. Cooperi.

Andromeda calyculata begins to leaf -- separate twigs from blossoming ones. Andromeda Polifolia just open.

Buck-bean, apparently in three days (in house the 18th). 

The 13th, saw large water-bugs (Gyrinus) crawled up high on rocks. 

Watch a pine warbler on a pitch pine, slowly and faithfully searching it creeper-like. It encounters a black and white creeper on the same tree; they fly at each other, and the latter leaves, apparently driven off by the first. This warbler shuts its bill each time to produce its peculiar note. 

Rhodora will apparently open in two or three days. 

See and hear for a moment a small warbler-like bird in Nemopanthes Swamp which sings somewhat like tchut a-worieter-worieter-worieter-woo. 

The greater part of the large sugar maples on the Common leaf. Large red maples generally are late to leaf. 

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, May 15, 1855

A white throat, was whitish, streaked with dark, beneath, darker tail and wings, and maybe olivaceous shoulders; bright yellow within bill. Probably M. Cooperi. See  June 5, 1856. ("The Muscicapa Cooperi sings pe pe pe’, sitting on the top of a pine, and shows white rump”); June 8, 1856 ("At Cedar Swamp, saw the pe-pe catching flies like a wood pewee, darting from its perch on a dead cedar twig from time to time and returning to it. ...black crown with some crest, yellowish (?) bill, gray-brown back, black tail, two faint whitish bars on wings, a dirty cream-white throat, and a gray or ash white breast and beneath, whitest in middle"); June 10, 1855 ("Nuttall thus describes the Muscicapa Cooperi, olive sided flycatche  or pe - pe . . . head darker, without discolored spot ; sides olive grey; lateral space beneath the wing white; lower mandible purplish horn color; tail nearly even and extending but little beyond the closed wings. ” No white on tail") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Olive-sided flycatcher or pe-pe

Looking for tortoises, see the first water-bugs out circling.

March 10

Snowed in the night, a mere whitening. In the morning somewhat overcast still, cold and quite windy. The first clear snow to whiten the ground since February 9th. 

I am not aware of growth in any plant yet, unless it be the further peeping out of willow catkins. They have crept out further from under their scales, and, looking closely into them, I detect a little redness along the twigs even now. 

You are always surprised by the sight of the first spring bird or insect; they seem premature, and there is no such evidence of spring as themselves, so that they literally fetch the year about. It is thus when I hear the first robin or bluebird or, looking along the brooks, see the first water-bugs out circling. But you think, They have come, and Nature cannot recede. 

Thus, when on the 6th I saw the gyrinus at Second Division Brook, I saw no peculiarity in the water or the air to remind me of them, but to-day they are here and yesterday they were not. 

I go looking deeper for tortoises, when suddenly my eye rests on these black circling apple seeds in some smoother bay. 

Those reddening leaves, as the checkerberry, lambkill, etc., etc., which at the beginning of winter were greenish, are now a deeper red, when the snow goes off. 

No more snow since last night, but a strong, cold northerly wind all day, with occasional gleams of sunshine. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 10, 1855

Surprised by the sight of the first spring bird or insect; . . .But you think, They have come, and Nature cannot recede.  See March 23, 1856 ("How many springs I have had this same experience! I am encouraged, for I recognize this steady persistency and recovery of Nature as a quality of myself.”)

I go looking deeper for tortoises, when suddenly my eye rests on these black circling apple seeds in some smoother bay. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:

• the water-bug                          
• frogs and turtles stirring

To-day they are here

and yesterday they were not –

first water bugs out.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

Looking for tortoises, see the first water-bugs out circling.

 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 © 2009-2025