I hear the Hermit Thrush for the first time. Have I heard it before and not noticed? -- The Spring Arrival of the Hermit Thrush

April 16, 2017

 I hear the Hermit Thrush for the first time. Have I heard it before and not noticed?

Walking the dog just after 7 AM I notice that I am hearing a hermit thrush singing a call so familiar it seems like it had always been here.  The world can never be more beautiful. 

It’s hard to explain. I was present with the song until a moment when I noticed it. Then there was a flood of excitement and confusion whether the bird had been singing all along, or even yesterday. But clearly now later as I write, the bird has just first arrived. And, as I walk around the trails near the house with the dog this song both stops and starts —as the bird does not sing constantly— and the song also comes in and out of consciousness -- especially returning up the stairs, projecting my thoughts forward into the day and room ahead, the voice  comes to me again: it is here in my presence but I hear it only now. To hear without listening. To listen without hearing. To hear with the side of the ear.  zphx ~April 16, 2022 7AM

I am a body

connected to all bodies

awake in the world.

See May 23, 1841 ("All nature is a new impression every instant"); April 5, 1860 ("Thus gradually and moderately the year begins. It creeps into the ears so gradually that most do not observe it, and so our ears are gradually accustomed to the sound, and perchance we do not perceive it when at length it has become very much louder and more general."); April 15, 1859 ("[W]hether he is conscious of it or not, that the world is beautiful and life a fair enterprise to engage in . . . If you yield for a moment to the impressions of sense, you hear some bird giving expression to its happiness in a pleasant strain. We are provided with singing birds and with ears to hear them "); April 30, 1856 ("I was trying to get the exact course of a wall thickly beset with shrub oaks and birches, making an opening through them with axe and knife, while the hillside seemed to quiver or pulsate with the sudden melody. Again, it is with the side of the ear that you hear. The music or the beauty belong not to your work itself but some of its accompaniments. You would fain devote yourself to the melody, but you will hear more of it if you devote yourself to your work."); January 12, 1855 ("What a delicious sound! . . .for it speaks to me too. I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A body awake in the world.
I

The Spring Arrival of the Hermit Thrush

Aprill 6. l hear my first hermit thrush sing east of the house while walking the dog in the morning. April 6, 2025. 

April 10. Hear my first hermit thrush midafternoon at the fort. Vreee vreeen; then the song. She is looking at a trillium at the noisy stream and does not hear. April 10, 2021

April 10. I hear the vreeen call at sunset north of the house after a drizzly day, distinctly as a new sound and think hermit -- but no song.  April 10, 2024

April 11. On the way back on the road for the first time this spring  we both hear the hermits' song in the hemlocks  We stop and listen.  Heard the call note last night.

We stop and listen -

the song of the Hermit Thrush

among the hemlocks

April 11, 2024

April 12. The ice is out on Lake Champlain. April 12, 1856.  

April 12. This morning  it comes to me that I am listening to a hermit thrush while walking the dog. April 12, 2023

April 14. Hear my first hermit thrush of the season this morning before dawn on my way to work -- later I learn the ice is out of the Broad lake and it reaches 80° in Burlington. April 14, 2014

April 14. Just at dusk we hear the hermit thrush ( I for the first time) and then later in Eastland its clucking sound. I have to be reminded it is the hermit.  April 14, 2017 

April 15. Open the garage early this morning and hear the hermit thrush after a night of rain. April 15, 2019

April 16. She says that hermit thrush is back. Not singing, but clucking. April 16, 2016

April 16. A quarter moon in the sky follows us back through the old growth trees, coming home after our walk at dusk,  orange sky in the west, to end a perfect day we first hear the hermit thrush. April 16, 2016

April 16. I hear the hermit thrush singing it’s familiar song near the driveway first thing in the morning. April  16, 2022 

April 16.  I first hear the Hermit thrush singing this morning, west of the house. April 16, 2026

April 18.  Was surprised to see a wagtail thrush, the golden-crowned, at the Assabet Spring, which inquisitively followed me along the shore over the snow, hopping quite near. I should say this was the golden-crowned thrush without doubt, though I saw none of the gold, if this and several more which I saw had not kept close to the water. May possibly be the aquaticus. Have a jerk of the forked tail. April 18, 1854.

April 18. Coming back next to the pond. There we stop and listen to the Hermit Thrush. The first clear song. Evoking memories. April 18, 2024 

April 19.  First thrush heard in the morning. April 19, 2015.

April 20. H. Mann brings me the hermit thrush. April 20, 1861

April 21. At Cliffs, I hear at a distance a wood [sic] thrush. It affects us as a part of our unfallen selves.  April 21, 1855

April 21. The hermit thrush loudly sounds it's vreeen note but does not sing. April 21, 2017.

April 21,  At the top of the upper ramp She sees a hermit thrush.  April 21, 2018

April 24. Returning, in the low wood just this side the first Second Division Brook, near the meadow, see a brown bird flit, and behold my hermit thrush, with one companion, flitting silently through the birches. I saw the fox-color on his tail-coverts, as well as the brown streaks on the breast. Both kept up a constant jerking of the tail as they sat on their perches.  April 24, 1856

April 25. Hermit thrush is back! The first day. Perhaps five in one spot. She teaches me how to distinguish its voice from the wood thrush. Aprill 25, 2009 

April 27. What a shy fellow my hermit thrush!  April 27, 1854

May 4.  Several larger thrushes on low limbs and on ground, with a dark eye (not the white around it of the wood thrush) and, I think, the nankeen spot on the secondaries. A hermit thrush?  May  4, 1855 

May 6. And on the way home at dusk the hermit thrush and Woodthrush (ee-oo-LAY) alternate.  May 6, 2017. 

May 7. A wood [sic] thrush which . . . betrayed himself by moving, like a large sparrow with ruffled feathers, and quirking his tail like a pewee,  on a low branch. May 7, 1852 . 

May 12. Hermit thrushes are still singing in the woods in the nearly complete darkness. May 12, 2016 

 

May 29. Dusk. We go out after the rain to find the Lady's slipper.  The woods are dripping wet, the hemlocks' bright new growth just beginning to show.   The hermit thrush sings. Along the cliff edge three Lady's slippers in bloom.  May 29, 2016

.

HDT needed brushing up on his thrushes. See May 7, 1852 ("A wood [sic] thrush which. . .betrayed himself by moving, like a large sparrow with ruffled feathers, and quirking his tail like a pewee, on a low branch.”); May 22, 1852 ("On my way to Plymouth, looked at Audubon in the State-House. The female (and male?) wood thrush spotted the whole length of belly; the hermit thrush not so.”);; April 18, 1854 ("Was surprised to see a wagtail thrush, the golden-crowned, at the Assabet Spring,”); September 29, 1855 ("At Natural History Library saw Dr. Cabot, who says that he has heard either the hermit, or else the olivaceous, thrush sing,—very like a wood thrush, but softer. Is sure that the hermit thrush sometimes breeds hereabouts.”); April 21, 1855 ("At Cliffs, I hear at a distance a wood [sic] thrush. It affects us as a part of our unfallen selves..”); May 4, 1855 ("Several larger thrushes on low limbs and on ground, with a dark eye (not the white around it of the wood thrush) and, I think, the nankeen spot on the secondaries. A hermit thrush?).

 

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

Reflecting water alternating with unreflecting ice.

April 6

7 A. M. — To Willow [Lily] Bay. 

The meadow has frozen over, skimmed over in the night. The ducks must have had a cold night of it. 

I thought I heard white-bellied swallows over the house before I arose. 

The hedges resound with the song of the song sparrow. He sits high on a spray singing, While I stand near, but suddenly, becoming alarmed, drops down and skulks behind the bushes close to the ground, gradually removing far to one side. 

 What a sly, skulking fellow! I have a glimpse of him skulking behind a stone or a bush next to the ground, or perhaps he drops into a ditch just before me, and when I run forward he is not to be seen in it, having flitted down it four or five rods to where it intersected with another, and then up that, all beneath the level of the surface, till he is in the rear of me. 

Just beyond Wood’s Bridge, I hear the pewee. With What confidence after the lapse of many months, I come out to this waterside, some warm and pleasant spring morning, and, listening, hear, from farther or nearer, through the still concave of the air, 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. 

It is remarkable how large a mansion of the air you can explore with your ears in the still morning by the waterside. 

I can dig in the garden now, where the snow is gone, and even under six inches of snow and ice I make out to get through the frost with a spade. The frost will all be out about as soon as last year, for the melting of the snow has been taking it out. It is remarkable how rapidly the ground dries, for where the frost is out the water does not stand, but is soaked up.

There has been no skating the last winter, the snow having covered the ice immediately after it formed and not melting, and the river not rising till April, when it was too warm to freeze thick enough. 

As we sat yesterday under the warm, dry hillside, amid the F. hyemalis by Tarbell’s, I noticed the first bluish haze—a small patch of it—over the true Nut Meadow, seen against the further blue pine forest over the near low yellow one. This was of course the subtle vapor which the warmth of the day raised from Nut Meadow. This, while a large part of the landscape was covered with snow, an affecting announcement of the approach of summer. 

The one wood seemed but an underwood on the edge of the other, yet all Nut Meadow’s varied surface intervened, with its brook and its cranberries, its sweet gale, alder, and willow, and this was its blue feather! 

P. M. — To Hubbard’s second grove, by river. 

At Ivy Tree, hear the fine tseep of a sparrow, and detect the fox-colored sparrow on the lower twigs of the willows and from time to time scratching the ground beneath. It is quite tame,—a single one with its ashy head and mottled breast. 

It is a still and warm, overcast afternoon, and I am come to look for ducks on the smooth reflecting water which has suddenly surrounded the village, — water half covered with ice or icy snow. 

April 6, 2019

On the 2d it was a winter landscape, —a narrow river covered thick with ice for the most part, and only snow on the meadows. In three or four days the scene is changed to these vernal lakes, and the ground more than half bare. The reflecting water alternating with unreflecting ice. 

Apparently song sparrows may have the dark splash on each side of the throat but be more or less brown on the breast and head. Some are quite light, some quite dark. Here is one of the light—breasted on the top of an apple tree, sings unweariedly at regular intervals something like ichulp I chili chili, chili chili, (faster and faster) chili chili, chili chili I iuller ichay ier splay-ee. The last, or third, bar I am not sure about. It flew too soon for me. I only remember that the last part was sprinkled on the air like drops from a rill, as if its strain were moulded by the spray it sat upon.

Now see considerable flocks of robins hopping and running in the meadows; crows next the water-edge, on small isles in the meadow. 

As I am going along the Corner Road by the meadow mouse brook, hear and see, a quarter of a mile north west, on those conspicuous white oaks near the river in Hubbard’s second grove, the crows buffeting some intruder. The crows had betrayed to me some large bird of the hawk kind which they were buffeting. I suspected it before I looked carefully. I saw several crows on the oaks, and also what looked to my naked eye like a cluster of the palest and most withered oak  leaves with a black base about as big as a crow.

 Looking with my glass, I saw that it was a great bird.

The crows sat about a rod off, higher up, while another crow was occasionally diving at him, and all were cawing. The great bird was just starting. 

It was chiefly a dirty white with great broad wings with black tips and black on other parts, giving it the appearance of dirty white, barred with black.

I am not sure whether it was a white-headed eagle or a fish hawk.  There appeared much more white than belongs to either, and more blackthan the fish hawk has. 

It rose and wheeled, flapping several times, till it got under way; then, with its rear to me, presenting the least surface, it moved off steadily in its orbit over the woods northwest, with the slightest possible undulation of its wings, — a noble planetary motion, like Saturn with its ring seen edgewise. 

It is so rare that we see a large body self sustained in the air. While crows sat still and silent and confessed their lord. 

Through my glass I saw the outlines of this sphere against the sky, trembling with life and power as it skimmed the topmost twigs of the wood toward some more solitary oak amid the meadows. 

To my naked eye it showed only so much black as a crow in its talons might. Was it not the white-headed eagle in the state when it is called the sea eagle? Perhaps its neck-feathers were erected. 

I went to the oaks. Heard there a nuthatch’s faint vibrating tut-tut, somewhat even like croaking of frogs, as it made its way up the oak bark and turned head down to peck. Anon it answered its mate with a gnah gnah. 

Smelt a skunk on my return, at Hubbard’s blueberry swamp, which some dogs that had been barking there for half an hour had probably worried, for I did not smell it when I went along first. I smelt this all the way thence home, the wind being southwest, and it was quite as perceptible in our yard as at the swamp. The family had already noticed it, and you might have supposed that there was a skunk in the yard, yet it was three quarters of a mile off, at least.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 6, 1856

The hedges resound with the song of the song sparrow. See April 3, 1856 ("Hear the sprayey tinkle of the song sparrow along the hedges."); April 6, 1855 ("The banks of the river are alive with song sparrows . . . they have come to enliven the bare twigs before the buds show any signs of starting. ") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)

 Just beyond Wood’s Bridge, I hear the 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 April 1, 1859 ("At the Pokelogan up the Assabet, I see my first phoebe, the mild bird. It flirts its tail and sings pre vit, pre vit, pre vit, pre vit incessantly, as it sits over the water, and then at last, rising on the last syllable, says pre-VEE, as if insisting on that with peculiar emphasis"); April 7, 1856 ("At the Hubbard Bridge, we hear the incessant note of the phoebe,— pevet, pe-e-vet, pevee’, —its innocent, somewhat impatient call."). See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Phoebe and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Arrival of the Phoebe in Early Spring

There has been no skating the last winter, the snow having covered the ice immediately after it formed. See March 27, 1856 ("People do not remember when there was so much old snow on the ground at this date."); also Donald Sutherland, The Long, Hard Winter of 1855-56 ("The Winter of 1855-56 was the coldest winter of the 1850s."); Compare January 31, 1855 (“An unprecedented expanse of ice. At 10 A. M., skated up the river to explore further than I had been.”) and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Winter of Skating

I noticed the first bluish haze . . . an affecting announcement of the approach of summer . . . its blue feather! See March 5, 1855 ("This blue haze, and the russet earth seen through it, remind me that a new season has come.");  April 16, 1855 ("At sunset, the mountains, after this our warmest day as yet, had got a peculiar soft mantle of blue haze, pale blue as a blue heron, ushering in the long series of summer sunsets."); June 2, 1854 ("The air has now begun to be filled with a bluish haze.")

Hear the fine tseep of a sparrow, and detect the fox-colored sparrow . . .  with its ashy head and mottled breast. See  April 4, 1855  ("Their clear, fox colored backs are very handsome. I get quite near to them."); April 6, 1859 ("The sparrows love to flit along any thick hedge . . . Tree sparrows, F. hyemalis, and fox-colored sparrows in company.") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Fox-colored Sparrow.

Now see considerable flocks of robins hopping and running in the meadows. See March 28, 1853 ("I do not now think of a bird that hops so distinctly, rapidly, and commonly as the robin, with its head up. "); April 3, 1856 ("I see small flocks of robins running on the bared portions of the meadow.")

Looking with my glass, I saw that it was a great bird. See April 23, 1854 ("We who live this plodding life here below never know how many eagles fly over us”); April 3, 1855 ("Returning, when off the hill am attracted by the noise of crows, which betray to me a very large hawk, large enough for an eagle, sitting on a maple beneath them. Now and then they dive at him, and at last he sails away low round the hill, as if hunting. "); April 8, 1854 (“A perfectly white head and tail and broad or blackish wings. It sailed and circled along over the low cliff, and the crows dived at it in the field of my glass, and I saw it well, both above and beneath, as it turned, and then it passed off to hover over the Cliffs at a greater height. It was undoubtedly a white-headed eagle.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White-headed Eagle

Smelt a skunk on my return. See April 18, 1852 ("Why should just these sights and sounds accompany our life? Why should I hear the chattering of black-birds, why smell the skunk each year?") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Skunk

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

The first bluish haze,

subtle vapor, blue feather

of approaching summer.

A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, 

Reflecting water alternating with unreflecting 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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560406

The color of Walden ice.

January 27.

Cut this afternoon a cake of ice out of Walden and brought it home in a pail, another from the river, and got a third, a piece of last year's ice from Sam Barrett's Pond, at Brown's ice-house, and placed them side by side. These lumps are not large enough to show the color. 

Walden ice has a green tint close by, but is distinguished by its blueness at a distance. The river ice inclines to a more opaque white. 

Comparing the lumps, Walden ice was, you might say, more crystalline than the river, but both showed the effect of heat more than the Barrett ice of last year, the bubbles being very much elongated and advanced toward the honeycomb stage, while in the Barrett ice they were spherical and there were wide clear spaces.

I have some good friends who neither care what I think nor mind what I say. The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 27, 1854

Walden ice has a green tint close by, but is distinguished by its blueness at a distance. See January 9, 1852 ("Is, then, the blue water of Walden snow-water?)"; January 24, 1852 ("Walden and White Ponds are a vitreous greenish blue, like patches of the winter sky seen in the west before sundown"); February 29, 1852 ("The ice on Walden is of a dull white as I look directly down on it, but not half a dozen rods distant on every side it is a light-blue color)"; January 30, 1854 ("Sometimes one of those great cakes of green ice from Walden or Sam Barrett's Pond slips from the ice-man's sled in the street and lies there like a great emerald, an object of interest to all travellers"); December 19, 1856 ("[T]he ice is now from two and a half to three inches thick, a transparent green ice, through which I see the bottom where it is seven or eight feet deep.")

And Walden , The Pond in Winter ("Like the water, the Walden ice, seen near at hand, has a green tint, but at a distance is beautifully blue, and you can easily tell it from the white ice of the river, or the merely greenish ice of some ponds, a quarter of a mile off. Sometimes one of those great cakes slips from the ice-man's sled into the village street, and lies there for a week like a great emerald, an object of interest to all passers.")

A good friend. See October 23, 1852 ("My friend is one whom I meet, who takes me for what I am.")

January 27.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  January 27

\

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The color of Walden 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 © 2009-2025

Why is the pollen of flowers commonly yellow?

March 28.

My Aunt Maria asked me to read the life of Dr. Chalmers, which however I did not promise to do. Yesterday, Sunday, she was heard through the partition shouting to my Aunt Jane, who is deaf, "Think of it! He stood half an hour to-day to hear the frogs croak, and he wouldn't read the life of Chalmers." 

6 a.m.- To Cliffs. 

Too cold for the birds to sing much. There appears to be more snow on the mountains. Many of our spring rains are snow-storms there. 

The woods ring with the cheerful jingle of the F. hyemalis. This is a very trig and compact little bird, and appears to be in good condition. The straight edge of slate on their breasts contrasts remarkably with the white from beneath ; the short, light-colored bill is also very conspicuous amid the dark slate ; and when they fly from you, the two white feathers in their tails are very distinct at a good distance. They are very lively, pursuing each other from bush to bush.

Could that be the fox-colored sparrow I saw this morning, — that reddish-brown sparrow ? 

I do not now think of a bird that hops so distinctly, rapidly, and commonly as the robin, with its head up.

Why is the pollen of flowers commonly yellow?


I saw yesterday, on the warm pool by Hubbard's Wood, long, narrow blades of reddish grass, bent nearly at right angles and floating on the water, lighter-colored beneath (lake-colored?). The floating part was from six inches to ten or twelve in length. This is much the greatest growth of grass that I have seen, for it is scarcely anywhere yet visibly green. It is an agreeable surprise, flushing the cheek, this warm color on the surface of some warm pool. 

P. M. — To Assabet. Saw eleven black ducks near the bathing-place on the Assabet, flying up the stream. Came within three or four rods of me, then wheeled and went down. Their faint quack sounded much [like] the croak of the frogs occasionally heard now in the pools. As they wheeled and went off, made a very fine whistling sound, which yet I think was not made by their wings. 

Opened an ant-hill about two and a half feet wide and eight inches high, in open land. It was light and dry, and apparently made by the ants; free from stones or sticks for about a foot in depth. The ants, which were red with black abdomens and were about a third of an inch long, crawled about sluggishly on being ex posed. Their galleries, a quarter of an inch and more in diameter, with ants in them, extended to the depth of two feet in the yellow sand, and how much further I don't know. Opened another in the woods with black ants of the same size in the same condition. 

This is a raw, cloudy, and disagreeable day. Yet I think you are most likely to see wild fowl this weather.

I saw in Dodd's yard and flying thence to the alders by the river what I think must be the tree sparrow,— a ferruginous crowned, or headed, and partly winged bird, light beneath, with a few of the F . hyemalis in company. It sang sweetly, much like some notes of a canary. One pursued another. It was not large enough for the fox-colored sparrow. Perhaps I have seen it before within the month. 

As near as I can make out, the hawks or falcons I am likely to see here are 

• the American sparrow hawk,
•  the fish hawk,
•  the goshawk, 
• the short-winged buzzard (if this is the same with Brown's stuffed sharp-shinned or slate-colored hawk, — not slate in his specimen; is not this the common small hawk that soars ?), 
• the red- tailed hawk 
• (have we the red-shouldered hawk, about the same size and aspect with the last ?), 
• the hen-harrier. (I suppose it is the adult of this with the slate-color over meadows.)

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 28, 1853

He stood half an hour to-day to hear the frogs croak. See March 27, 1853 ("Tried to see the faint-croaking frogs at J. P. Brown's Pond in the woods. . . .. Stood perfectly still amid the bushes on the shore, before one showed himself; finally five or six, and all eyed me, gradually approached me within three feet to reconnoitre, and, though I waited about half an hour, would not utter a sound.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,The Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica)

Saw eleven black ducks near the bathing-place on the Assabet. Their faint quack sounded much [like] the croak of the frogs occasionally heard now in the pools. See.March 28, 1858 (“ I look toward Fair Haven Pond . . .There is not a duck nor a gull to be seen on it. I can hardly believe that it was so alive with them yesterday. Apparently they improve this warm and pleasant day, with little or no wind, to continue their journey northward . . . It is a wild life that is associated with stormy and blustering weather”); March 28, 1859 (“The meadows, which are still covered far and wide, are quite alive with black ducks”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Black Duck

The woods ring with the cheerful jingle of the F. hyemalis. See March 28, 1854 ("A flock of hyemalis drifting from a wood over a field incessantly for four or five minutes, — thousands of them, notwithstanding the cold"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis)

The hen-harrier with the slate-color over meadows. See March 27, 1855 ("See my frog hawk.  . . .It is the hen-harrier, i.e. marsh hawk, male. Slate-colored; beating the bush; black tips to wings and white rump."); March 29, 1853 ("I believe I saw the slate-colored marsh hawk to-day"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)

As near as I can make out, the hawks or falcons I am likely to see here. See September 14, 1859 ("I can learn nothing from Wilson and Nuttall. The latter thinks that neither the pigeon nor sparrow hawk is found here")  See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Hawk (Merlin) A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Sharp-shinned Hawk