Early spring on the Assabet. A low morning mist curls over the smooth water now in the sunlight.

April 8

— Up Assabet. A fine clear morning. The ground white with frost, and all the meadows also, and a low mist curling over the smooth water now in the sunlight, which gives the water a silver-plated look.

The frost covers the willows and alders and other trees on the sides of the river fifteen or twenty feet high. Quite a wintry sight.

                               April 8, 2022

At first I can hardly distinguish white maple stamens from the frost spiculae. I find some anthers effete and dark, and others still mealy with pollen. There are many in this condition. The crimson female stigmas also peeping forth. It evidently began to shed pollen yesterday.

I find also at length a single catkin of the Alnus incana, with a few stamens near the peduncle discolored and shedding a little dust when shaken; so this must have begun yesterday, I think, but it is not so forward as the maple. Though I have looked widely, I have not found the alder out before.

I see some long cobweb lines covered with frost, hanging from tree to tree, six feet in one case, like the ropes which extend from mast to mast of a vessel. Very thin dark ice-crystals over shallowest water, showing the flat pyramids.

Hear and see a pigeon woodpecker, something like week-up week-up. The robins now sing in full blast.

Also song sparrows and tree sparrows and F. hyemalis are heard in the yard. The fox-colored sparrow is also there. The tree sparrows have been very musical for several mornings, somewhat canary-like.

As to which are the earliest flowers, it depends on the character of the season, and ground bare or not, meadows wet or dry, etc., etc., also on the variety of soils and localities within your reach. The columbine leaves in the clefts of Cliffs are one of the very earliest obvious growths. I noticed it the first of April.

The radical leaves of the buttercup now at Lee’s Cliff --a small flat dense circle -- are a very different color from those evergreen leaves seen when the snow first goes off. They are emphatically a green green, as if a sort of green fire were kindled under them in the sod.

The buds not only of lilacs, but white birches, etc., look swollen.

When taking the brain out of my duck yesterday, I perceived that the brain was the marrow of the head, and it is probably only a less sentient brain that runs down the backbone, -- the spinal marrow.

Abiel Wheeler tried to plow in sandy soil yesterday, but could not go beyond a certain depth because of frost.

P. M. — Up Assabet to G. Barrett’s meadow.

This forenoon it was still and the water smooth. Now there is a strong cool wind from the east.

Am surprised to see a sound clam close to the shore at mouth of Dakin’s Brook, in one foot of water. A school of small minnows. Already a turtle’s track on sand close to water.

The great buff-edged butterfly flutters across the river. Afterward I see a small red one over the shore.

Though the river -- excepting Fair Haven Pond before the 6th -- has for a week been completely free of ice, and only a little thin crystalwise forms in the night in the shallowest parts, that thick ice of the winter (February) on the meadows, covered by pieces of meadow-crust, is in many places still nearly as thick as ever, now that ice is a rather rare sight and plowing is beginning. It is remarkable how long this frozen meadow-crust lying on it has preserved it. Where the piece of meadow is only three or four feet in diameter, its edges now project over the ice, so that the whole looks like a student’s four-cornered cap, -- or that which the President of Harvard wears. All that mass on B.’s meadow appears to have been taken from the upper part of the meadow near the road, about thirty rods off from where it now lies.

In the ditches near which it was taken up I see the coarse yellow, reddened, and sometimes already green-tipped pads of the yellow lily, partly unrolled at the bottom of the warm water, the most of a spring growth, perhaps, in the water; also two or three good-sized buds of a healthy green.

Hear at a distance in the sprout-lands the croaks of frogs from some shallow pool.

See six muskrats’ bodies, just skinned, on the bank, ~ two large yellowish, fatty-looking masses of (I suppose) musk on each side the lower part of the abdomen. Every part of the animal now emits a very strong scent of musk. A foot which I brought home (together with a head) scented me all over. The fore feet are small and white on the palm, while the hind ones are black. All the skin being stripped off except on the nose and feet, the fore feet look like hands clothed in gauntlets of fur.

This evening, about 9 P.M., I hear geese go over, now there in the south, now southeast, now east, now northeast, low over the village, but not seen. The first I have heard.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 8, 1855

At first I can hardly distinguish white maple stamens from the frost spiculae. The crimson female stigmas also peeping forth. It evidently began to shed pollen yesterday. See April 9, 1856 ("White maples also, the sunny sides of clusters and sunny sides of trees in favorable localities, shed pollen to-day. “)See also note to April 6, 1855 ("A very few white maple stamens stand out already loosely enough to blow in the wind.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, White maple buds and flowers

As to which are the earliest flowers, it depends on the character of the season. See April 2, 1856 (“It will take you half a lifetime to find out where to look for the earliest flover . . . It is evident that it depends on the character of the season whether this flower or that is the most forward”); .February 28, 1857 ("It takes several years' faithful search to learn where to look for the earliest flowers.");    ("At six this morn to Clamshell. The skunk-cabbage open yesterday, — the earliest flower this season.");  April 10, 1855 ("These few earliest flowers . . . are remote and unobserved and often surrounded with snow, and most have not begun to think of flowers yet.");April 17, 1855 ("So quickly and surely does a bee find the earliest flower, as if he had slumbered all winter at the root of the plant. No matter what pains you take, probably —undoubtedly—an insect will have found the first flower before you.”) See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The Earliest Flower

The great buff-edged butterfly flutters across the river. See April 9, 1853 ("You see the buff-edged . . . in warm, sunny southern exposures on the edge of woods or sides of rocky hills and cliffs, above dry leaves and twigs, where the wood has been lately cut and there are many dry leaves and twigs about.”); April 9, 1856 ("The great butterflies, black with buff-edged wings, are fluttering about”) See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Buff-edged Butterfly

I hear geese go over, now there in the south, now southeast, now east, now northeast, low over the village, but not seen. The first I have heard. April 9, 1855 ("Several flocks of geese went over this morning also. Now, then, the main body are moving. Now first are they generally seen and heard."); April 16, 1855 ("After dark, the sound of geese honking all together very low over the houses and apparently about to settle on the Lee meadow. "); April 17, 1855 (" Geese go over at noon, when warm and sunny. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring, Geese Overhead

The columbine leaves in the clefts of Cliffs are one of the very earliest obvious growths. I noticed it the first of April. See April 1, 1855 ("At the first Conantum Cliff I am surprised to see how much the columbine leaves have grown in a sheltered cleft;") See also March 18, 1853 ("At Conantum Cliff the columbines have started and the saxifrage even, the former as conspicuously as any plant . . . Both these grow there in high and dry chinks in the face of tire cliff, where no soil appears, and the sunnier the exposure the more advanced. Even if a fallen fragment of the rock is so placed as to reflect the heat upon it, it has the start of its neighbors. These plants waste not a day, not a moment, suitable to their development. "); April 7, 1855 ("At Lee's Cliff I find the radical leaves of the early saxifrage , columbine , and the tower mustard , etc. , much eaten apparently by partridges and perhaps rabbits."); April 8, 1854 ("The columbine shows the most spring growth of any plant."); and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Earliest Flower

April 8. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, April 8

A low morning mist

curls over the smooth water

now in the sunlight.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A low morning mist 

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-18550408

Wishing that I could find a dead duck floating on the water

April 6.

It clears up at 8 P. M. warm and pleasant, leaving flitting clouds and a little wind, and I go up the Assabet in my boat. 

The blackbirds have now begun to frequent the water’s edge in the meadow, the ice being sufficiently out. 

The April waters, smooth and commonly high, before many flowers (none yet) or any leafing, while the landscape is still russet and frogs are just awakening, is peculiar. 

April 6, 2020

It began yesterday. A very few white maple stamens stand out already loosely enough to blow in the wind, and some alder catkins look almost ready to shed pollen. On the hillsides I smell the dried leaves and hear a few flies buzzing over them. 

The banks of the river are alive with song sparrows and tree sparrows. They now sing in advance of vegetation, as the flowers will blossom, —those slight tinkling, twittering sounds called the singing of birds; they have come to enliven the bare twigs before the buds show any signs of starting. 

I see a large wood tortoise just crawled out upon the bank, with three oval, low, bug-like leeches on its sternum. 

You can hear all day, from time to time, in any part of the village, the sound of a gun fired at ducks. Yesterday I was wishing that I could find a dead duck floating on the water, as I had found muskrats and a hare, and now I see something bright and reflecting the light from the edge of the alders five or six rods off. Can it be a duck? 

I can hardly believe my eyes. I am near enough to see its green head and neck. I am delighted to find a perfect specimen of the Mergus merganser, or goosander, undoubtedly shot yesterday by the Fast-Day sportsmen, and I take a small flattened shot from its wing, — flattened against the wing—bone, apparently. The wing is broken, and it is shot through the head. 

(The chief wound was in a wing, which was broken. I afterward took three small shot from it, which were flattened against the bill’s base and perhaps (?) the quills’ shafts.)

It is a perfectly fresh and very beautiful bird, and as I raise it, I get sight of its long, slender vermilion bill (color of red sealing wax) and its clean, bright-orange legs and feet, and then of its perfectly smooth and spotlessly pure white breast and belly, tinged with a faint salmon (or tinged with a delicate buff inclining to salmon). 

This, according to Wilson, is one of the mergansers, or fisher ducks, of which there are nine or ten species and we have four in America. It is the largest of these four; feeds almost entirely on fin and shell fish; called water pheasant, sheldrake, fisherman diver, dun diver, sparkling fowl, harle, etc., as well as goosander. Go in April, return in November. 

Jardine has found seven trout in one female. Nuttall says they breed in the Russian Empire and are seen in Mississippi and Missouri in winter. He found a young brood in Pennsylvania. Yarrell says they are called also saw-bill and jack-saw; are sometimes sold in London market. 

Nest, according to Selby, on ground; according to others, in a hollow tree also. Found on the continent of Europe, northern Asia, and even in Japan. Some breed in the Orkneys and thereabouts.

My bird is 25 7/8 inches long and 35 in alar extent; from point of wing to end of primaries, 11 inches. 

It is a great diver and does not mind the cold. It appears admirably fitted for diving and swimming. Its body is flat, and its tail short, flat, compact, and wedge-shaped; its eyes peer out a slight slit or semicircle in the skin of the head; and its legs are flat and thin in one direction, and the toes shut up compactly so as to create the least friction when drawing them forward, but their broad webs spread them three and a half inches when they take a stroke. The web is extended three eighths of an inch beyond the inner toe of each foot. There are very conspicuous black teeth-like serrations along the edges of its bill, and this also is roughened so that it may hold its prey securely. 

The breast appeared quite dry when I raised it from the water. 

The head and neck are, as Wilson says, black, glossed with green, but the lower part of the neck pure white, and these colors bound on each other so abruptly that one appears to be sewed on to the other. It is a perfect wedge from the middle of its body to the end of its tail, and it is only three and a quarter - inches deep from back to breast at the thickest part, while the greatest breadth horizontally (at the root of the legs) is five and a half inches. In these respects it reminds me of an otter, which however I have never seen. - I suspect that I have seen near a hundred of these birds this spring, but I never got so near one before. 

In Yarrell’s plate the depth of the male goosander is to its length (i. e. from tip of tail to most forward part of breast) as thirty-seven to one hundred and three, or the depth is more than one third. This length in Yarrell’s bird, calling the distance from the point of the wing to the end of the primaries eleven inches, is about fourteen and a half inches, of which my three and a quarter is not one fourth. In Nuttall’s plate the proportion is thirty-two to ninety-one, also more than one third. I think they have not represented the bird flat enough.  

Yarrell says it is the largest of the British mergansers; is a winter visitor, though a few breed in the north of Britain; are rare in the southern counties. But, according to Yarrell, a Mr. Low in his Natural History of Orkney says they breed there, and, after breeding, the sexes separate; and Y. quotes Selby as saying that their nest is near the edge of the water, of grass, roots, etc., lined with down, sometimes among stones, in long grass, under bushes, or in a stump or hollow tree. 

Y. continues, egg “a uniform buff white,” two and a half inches long. Sometimes carry their young  on their backs in the water. It is common in Sweden and, according to the traveller Acerbi, in Lapland they give it a hollow tree to build in and then steal its eggs. The mother, he adds, carries her young to the water in her bill. 

Y. says it is well known in Russia and is found in Germany, Holland, France, Switzerland, Provence, and Italy. Has been seen near the Caucasus (and is found in Japan, according to one authority). Also in North America, Hudson’s Bay, Greenland, and Iceland.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 6, 1855

They now sing in advance of vegetation, as the flowers will blossom, . . .they have come to enliven the bare twigs before the buds show any signs of starting. See April 28, 1852 ("The spring flowers wait not to perfect their leaves before they expand their blossoms.)

White maple stamens stand out already loosely enough to blow in the wind. See April 6, 1853 ("Notice a white maple with almost all the staminate flowers above or on the top, most of the stamens now withered, before the red maple has blossomed. Another maple, all or nearly all female. The staminiferous flowers look light yellowish, the female dark crimson”); April 6, 1854 ("I am surprised to find so much of the white maples already out”); see also April 7, 1861 (" The white maple at the bridge not quite out.”); April 9, 1852 ("The maple by the bridge in bloom”); April 8, 1855 (I find some anthers effete and dark, and others still mealy with pollen. There are many in this condition. The crimson female stigmas also peeping forth. It evidently began to shed pollen yesterday.”).  Also see A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, White maple buds and flowers.

The banks of the river are alive with song sparrows . See April 6, 1856 ("The hedges resound with the song of the song sparrow."). See also Henry Thoreau, A Book of the Seasons: the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)

A perfect specimen of the Mergus merganser, or goosander, undoubtedly shot yesterday by the Fast-Day sportsmen.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Goosander, Merganser)

I see a large wood tortoise just crawled out upon the bank, with three oval, low, bug-like leeches on its sternum. See April 17, 1858 (" I take up a wood turtle on the shore, whose sternum is covered with small ants") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Wood Turtle (Emys insculpta)

White maple stamens 

already stand out enough

to blow in the wind.

it reminds me of 

an otter, which however 

i have never seen.

 

The crimson stigmas of the white maple

April 10.

April rain. How sure a rain is to bring the tree sparrows into the yard, to sing sweetly, canary-like! 

I bought me a spy-glass some weeks since. I buy but few things, and those not till long after I begin to want them, so that when I do get them I am prepared to make a perfect use of them and extract their whole sweet. 

P. M. — To Great Meadows by boat, and sail back. There are many snipes now feeding in the meadows, which you come close upon, and then they go off with hoarse cr-r-r-ack cr-r-r-ack. They dive down suddenly from a considerable height sometimes when they alight. 

A great many red-wings along the water's edge in the meadow. Some of these blackbirds quite black, and some apparently larger than the rest. Are they all red-wings? 

The crimson stigmas, like the hazel, of the white maple, generally by themselves, make handsome show.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 10, 1854

How sure a rain is to bring the tree sparrows into the yard, to sing sweetly. See April 1, 1854 ("The tree sparrows, hyemalis, and song sparrows are particularly lively and musical in the yard this rainy and truly April day. The air rings with them."); April 23, 1854 ("A rain is sure to bring the tree sparrow and hyemalis to the gardens.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow

I bought me a spy-glass some weeks since. See October 20, 1852 ("Many a man, when I tell him that I have been on to a mountain, asks if I took a glass with me. No doubt, I could have . . . counted more meeting-houses; but this has nothing to do with the peculiar beauty and grandeur of the view which an elevated position affords."); March 29, 1853 ("Would it not be well to carry a spy-glass in order to watch these shy birds such as ducks and hawks? In some respects, methinks it would be better than a gun. The latter brings them nearer dead, but the former alive. You can identify the species better by killing the bird, because it was a dead specimen that was so minutely described, but you can study the habits and appearance best in the living specimen"); March 13, 1854 ("Bought a telescope to-day for eight dollars. Best military spy glass with six slides, which shuts up to about same size, fifteen dollars, and very powerful."); March 16, 1854 ("I see ducks afar, sailing on the meadow, leaving a long furrow in the water behind them. Watch them at leisure without scaring them, with my glass; observe their free and undisturbed motions. "); April 8, 1854 (“ 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 . . . undoubtedly a white-headed eagle”); April 23, 1854 ("I think I have got the worth of my glass now that it has revealed to me the white-headed eagle").

There are many snipes now feeding in the meadows. See April 18, 1854 ("Scared up snipes on the meadow's edge, which go off with their strange zigzag, crazy flight and a distressed sound, — craik craik or cr-r-ack cr-r-rack. One booms now at 3 p. m. They circle round and round, and zig zag high over the meadow, and finally alight again, descending abruptly from that height.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: the Snipe

The crimson stigmas of the white maple make handsome show. See March 29, 1853 ("The female flowers of the white maple, crimson stigmas from the same rounded masses of buds with the male, are now quite abundant. . . . The two sorts of flowers are not only on the same tree and the same twig and sometimes in the same bud, but also sometimes in the same little cup."); April 6, 1854 ("I am surprised to find so much of the white maples already out. "); April 8, 1855 ("The crimson female stigmas also peeping forth"); April 10, 1855 ("Early on the morning of the 8th I paddled up the' Assabet looking for the first flowers of the white maple and alder. I held on to the low curving twigs of the maple where the stream ran swiftly, the round clusters of its bursting flower-buds spotting the sky above me, and on a close inspection found a few which (as I have said) must have blossomed the day before. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, White Maple Buds and Flowers

The crimson stigmas

of the white maple, themselves,

make a handsome show.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The crimson stigmas of the white maple

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-540410

A reverie

April 6.

April 6, 2019

A still warmer day than yesterday — a warm, moist rain-smelling west wind. 

Up Assabet. 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, heard a dozen rods off, and you see thousands of them about the flowers against the sky. They know where to look for the white maple and when. 

This susurrus carries me forward some months toward summer -- to those still warm summer noons when the breams' nests are left dry, and the fishes retreat from the shallows into the cooler depths, and the cows stand up to their bellies in the river. The reminiscence comes over me like a summer's dream.

Hear the snipe over the meadows this evening.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 6, 1854

They resound with the hum of honey-bees. See April 6, 1853 ("The air resounds with the hum of honey-bees, attracted by the flower of the skunk cabbage.") See also  April 1, 1852 ('' Saw the first bee of the season on the railroad causeway,"); April 1, 1858 ("The white maples are abundantly out to-day. . . .surprised to hear the resounding hum of honey-bees, which are busy about them,"); April 1, 1860 ("Hear the hum of bees on the maples.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bees

They know where to look for the white maple and when. See September 30, 1852 ("How well they know the woods and fields and the haunt of every flower! If there are any sweet flowers still lingering on the hillside, it is known to the bees both of the forest and the village."); March 18, 1860 ("There is but one flower in bloom in the town, and this insect knows where to find it."); April 6, 1853 ("Notice a white maple with almost all the staminate flowers above or on the top, most of the stamens now withered, before the red maple has blossomed.): April 6, 1855 ( "A very few white maple stamens stand out already loosely enough to blow in the wind.").  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, White maple buds and flowers

This susurrus carries me forward some months toward summer. See April 3, 1858 ("There is no pause to the hum of the bees all this warm day. It is a very simple but pleasing and soothing sound, this susurrus, thus early in the spring.");  April 17, 1859 ("In the lee of this bush, and your charmed ears may hear this faint susurrus weaving the web of summer."); July 16, 1852 ("The tree resounds with the hum of bees . . . a perfect susurrus, a sound unlike any other in nature, not like the wind, as that is like the sea.")

Hear the snipe over the meadows this evening. See April 9, 1858 (" I hear the booming of snipe this evening, and Sophia says she heard them on the 6th. The meadows having been bare so long, they may have begun yet earlier. Persons walking up or down our village street in still evenings at this season hear this singular winnowing sound in the sky over the meadows and know not what it is") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Snipe.

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

A still warmer day

than yesterday — a warm, moist

rain-smelling west wind

white maples resound 

with the hum of honey-bees 

like a summer dream.

they know where

to look for the white maple

and when.

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/hdt54-0406

Observe the Alnus incana,

April 9.

Observe the Alnus incana, which is distinguished from the common by the whole branchlet hanging down, so that the sterile aments not only are but appear terminal, and by the brilliant polished reddish green of the bark, and by the leaves.

The snow now disappearing, I observe the Mill Brook suddenly inclosed between two lines of green. Some kind of grass rises above the surface in deep water. like two faint lines of green drawn with a brush, betraying the sun's chemistry. Perhaps three days ago it was not.  Answering to the dotted lines. 

The maple by the bridge in bloom.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 9, 1852

Observe the Alnus incana. . . See April 9, 1856 ("The Alnus incana, especially by the railroad opposite the oaks, sheds pollen.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Alders

The maple by the bridge in bloom.  See April 9, 1856 ("White maples also, the sunny sides of clusters and sunny sides of trees in favorable localities, shed pollen to-day.") See also April 7, 1861 ("The white maple at the bridge not quite out.") and note to April 6, 1855 ("White maple stamens stand out already loosely enough to blow in the wind.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, White Maple Buds and Flowers

A walk round the two-mile square.

April 7.

Round the two-mile square. I see where the common great tufted sedge (Carex stricta) has started under the water on the meadows, now fast falling.

The white maple at the bridge not quite out.

See a water-bug and a frog. Hylas are heard to-day.

I see where the meadow flood has gone down in a bay on the southeast side of the meadow, whither the foam had been driven. A delicate scum now left an inch high on the grass  It is a dirty white, yet silvery, and as thin as the thinnest foil, often unbroken and apparently air-tight for two or three inches across and al most as light as gossamer. What is the material? It is a kind of paper, but far more delicate than man makes. 

Saw in a roadside gutter at Simon Brown's barn a bird like the solitary tattler, with a long bill, which at length flew off to the river. But it may have been a small species of snipe.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 7, 1861

Hylas are heard to-day. See March 23, 1859 ("We hear the peep of one hylodes somewhere in this sheltered recess in the woods."); April 1, 1860 (" I hear the first hylodes by chance, but no doubt they have been heard some 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."); April 6, 1858 (" I hear hylas in full blast 2.30 P. M."); April 8, 1852 ("To-day I hear the croak of frogs in small pond-holes in the woods, "); April 8, 1853 ("The hylas have fairly begun now.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The first frogs to begin calling

The white maple at the bridge not quite out.  See April 7, 1853 ("he staminiferous flowers look light yellowish, the female dark crimson. These white maples flower branches droop quite low, striking the head of the rower, and curve gracefully upward at the ends. ") See also April 9, 1852 ("The maple by the bridge in bloom”) and note to April 6, 1855 ("White maple stamens stand out already loosely enough to blow in the wind.")  and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, White Maple Buds and Flowers

A bird like the solitary tattler, with a long bill, but it may have been a small species of snipe. [Probably Solitary Sandpiper (Tringa solitaria)] See September 23, 1858 (''In this marsh, saw what I thought the solitary tattler, quite tame. . . Met a gunner from Lynn on the beach, who had . . . what he called a sandpiper, very white with a long bill. Was this Tringa arenaria? [and] what I took to be a solitary tattler, but possibly it was the pectoral sandpiper, which I have seen since."); September 29, 1858 ("See what must be a solitary tattler feeding by the water’s edge, and it has tracked the mud all about. It cannot be the Tringa pectoralis, for it has no conspicuous white chin, nor black dashes on the throat, nor brown on the back and wings, and I think I see the round white spots on its wings. It has not the white on wing of the peetweet, yet utters the peetweet note!— short and faint, not protracted, and not the “sharp whistle” that Wilson speaks of. ") See also September 24, 1855 (" suppose it was the solitary sandpiper (Totanus solitarius) which I saw feeding at the water’s edge on Cardinal Shore, like a snipe. It was very tame; we did not scare it even by shouting. . . . It was about as large as a snipe; had a bluish dusky bill about an inch and a quarter long, apparently straight, which it kept thrusting into the shallow water with a nibbling motion, a perfectly white belly, dusky-green legs; bright brown and black above, with duskier wings. When it flew, its wings, which were uniformly dark, hung down much, and I noticed no white above, and heard no note."); September 25, 1858 ("In the evening Mr. Warren brings me a snipe and a pectoral sandpiper. This last, which is a little less than the snipe but with a longer wing, must be much like T. solitarius, and I may have confounded them. The shaft of the first primary is conspicuously white above.")

*****

Note per All About Birds: The the pectoral sandpiper (Calidris melanotos) has  distinctively stippled breast that ends neatly at a white belly. the solitary sandpiper (Tringa solitaria) has a black-and-white tail, bold eyering, a back marked with small white spots and blackish underwings in flight. 

The genus Tringa was introduced in 1758 by Carl Linnaeus iThe genus  nowcontains 13 species.^[7]

• Green sandpiper, Tringa ochropus
• Solitary sandpiper, Tringa solitaria
• Grey-tailed tattler, Tringa brevipes – formerly Heteroscelus brevipes
• Wandering tattler, Tringa incana – formerly Heteroscelus incanus
• Spotted redshank, Tringa erythropus
• Greater yellowlegs, Tringa melanoleuca
• Common greenshank, Tringa nebularia
• Willet, Tringa semipalmata – formerly Catoptrophorus semipalmatus
• Lesser yellowlegs, Tringa flavipes
• Nordmann's greenshank, Tringa guttifer
• Marsh sandpiper, Tringa stagnatilis
• Common redshank, Tringa totanus
• Wood sandpiper, Tringa glareola

The genus Calidris was introduced in 1804 by  Blasius Merrem with the red knot as the type species.  The genus contain 24 species: including Pectoral sandpiper, Calidris melanotos

Thoreau's Peetweet  is the Spotted Sandpiper  (Actitis macularia). His Upland Plover is the Upland Sandpiper (Bartramia longicauda).  He also obserfve the Lesser Golden-Plover (Pluvialis dominica ) and Piping Plover (Charadrius melodus) See Thoreau's Birds