A Book of Seasons, the Cowslip in Early Spring

 

I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures

 completes the world.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

It takes several years' faithful search

to learn where to look

for the earliest flowers. 

February 28, 1857

An arctic voyage 

was this in which I find two 

cowslips in full bloom.

April 8, 1856

March 5.  The cowslip there [Well Meadow] is very prominently flower-budded, lifting its yellow flower-buds above water in one place. The leaves are quite inconspicuous when they first come up, being rolled up tightly. March 5, 1859

March 14.  The cowslip in pitcher has fairly blossomed to-day. March 14, 1859 

March 24.  It is too cold to think of those signs of spring which I find recorded under this date last year. The earliest signs of spring in vegetation noticed thus far are the maple sap, the willow catkins, grass on south banks, and perhaps cowslip in sheltered places. March 24, 1855 

March 26.  The buds of the cowslip are very yellow, and the plant is not observed a rod off, it lies so low and close to the surface of the water in the meadow. It may bloom and wither there several times before villagers discover or suspect it. March 26, 1857 

March 27.  Am surprised to see the cowslip so forward, showing so much green, in E. Hubbard’s Swamp, in the brook, where it is sheltered from the winds. The already expanded leaves rise above the water. If this is a spring growth, it is the most forward herb I have seen.  March 27, 1855 

April 2.  In the warm recess at the head of Well Meadow, which makes up on the northeast side of Fair Haven, I find many evidences of spring . . . The cowslip appears to be coming next to it [the skunk cabbage]. Its buds are quite yellowish and half an inch, almost, in diameter. April 2, 1856

April 3.  The white maple buds on the south side of some trees have slightly opened, so that I can peep into their cavities and detect the stamens. They will probably come next to the skunk-cabbage this year, if the cowslip does not. April 3, 1856

April 8.  There, in that slow, muddy brook near the head of Well Meadow, within a few rods of its source, where it winds amid the alders, which shelter the plants some what, while they are open enough now to admit the sun, I find two cowslips in full bloom, shedding pollen; and they may have opened two or three days ago; for I saw many conspicuous buds here on the 2d which now I do not see. Have they not been eaten off? Do we not often lose the earliest flowers thus? A little more, or if the river had risen as high as frequently, they would have been submerged. What an arctic voyage was this in which I find cowslips, the pond and river still frozen over for the most part as far down as Cardinal Shore! April 8, 1856

April 9.  The cowslips are well out, – the first conspicuous herbaceous flower, for the cabbage is concealed in its spathe. April 9, 1853

April 11.  I might have said on the 8th: Behold that little  hemisphere of green in the black and sluggish brook, amid the open alders, sheltered under a russet tussock. It is the cowslips’ forward green. Look narrowly, explore the warmest nooks; here are buds larger yet, showing more yellow, and yonder see two full-blown yellow disks, close to the water’s edge. Methinks they dip into it when the frosty nights come. Have not these been mistaken for dandelions? April 11, 1856

April 12.   Cowslip will apparently open in two days at Hubbard’s Close. April 12, 1855

April 13.  Many cowslip buds show a little yellow, but they will not open there [Second Division] for two or three days. The road is paved with solid ice there.  April 13, 1855

April 13.  Still no cowslips nor saxifrage. April 13, 1856 

April 29.  At the Second Division Brook the cowslip is in blossom. April 29, 1852

May 4. The cowslip's is a vigorous growth and makes at present the most show of any flower. Leaf, stem, bud, and flower are all very handsome in their place and season. It has no scent, but speaks wholly to the eye. The petals are covered at base with a transparent, dewy (dew-like), apparently golden nectar. Better for yellows than for greens. May 4, 1852

See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Earliest Flower 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Cowslip in Early Spring

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

A Book of the Seasons, Signs of the Spring: The Woodchuck Ventures Out

No mortal is alert enough 

to be present at the first dawn of the spring. 

Henry Thoreau, March 17, 1857

I am on the alert for the first signs of spring, 

to hear the chance note of some arriving bird, 

or the striped squirrel’s chirp . . .

or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters.

  Walden

Man comes out of his

winter quarters this month as

lean as a woodchuck.

March 30, 1855

February 12. In winter not only some creatures, but the very earth is partially dormant; vegetation ceases, and rivers, to some extent, cease to flow. Therefore, when I see the water exposed in midwinter, it is as if I saw a skunk or even a striped squirrel out. It is as if the woodchuck unrolled himself and snuffed the air to see if it were warm enough to be trusted. February 12, 1860

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

February 28. Passed a very little boy in the street to-day, who had on a home-made cap of a woodchuck-skin, which his father or elder brother had killed and cured, and his mother or elder sister had fashioned into a nice warm cap. I was interested by the sight of it, it suggested so much of family history, adventure with the chuck, story told about [it], not without exaggeration, the human parents' care of their young these hard times. Johnny was promised many times, and now the work has been completed, — a perfect little idyl, as they say. The cap was large and round, big enough, you would say, for the boy's father, and had some kind of cloth visor stitched to it. The top of the cap was evidently the back of the woodchuck, as it were expanded in breadth, contracted in length, and it was as fresh and handsome as if the woodchuck wore it himself. The great gray-tipped wind hairs were all preserved, and stood out above the brown only a little more loosely than in life. As if he put his head into the belly of a woodchuck, having cut off his tail and legs and substituted a visor for the head. The little fellow wore it innocently enough, not knowing what he had on, forsooth, going about his small business pit-a-pat; and his black eyes sparkled beneath it when I remarked on its warmth , even as the woodchuck's might have done. Such should be the history of every piece of clothing that we wear. February 28, 1860

March 5. See the tracks of a woodchuck in the sand-heap about the mouth of his hole, where he has cleared out his entry. March 5, 1857

March 11. See and talk with Rice . . . He combines several qualities and talents rarely combined. Though he owns houses in the city, whose repair he attends to, finds tenants for them, and collects the rent, he also has his Sudbury farm and bean-fiolds. Though he lived in a city, he would still be natural and related to primitive nature around him. Though he owned all Beacon Street, you might find that his mittens were made of the skin of a woodchuck that had ravaged his bean-field, which he had cured. I noticed a woodchuck’s skin tacked up to the inside of his shop. He said it had fatted on his beans, and William had killed and expected to get another to make a pair of mittens of, one not being quite large enough. It was excellent for mittens. You could hardly wear it out. March 11, 185

March 11. I see a woodchuck out on the calm side of Lee's Hill (Nawshawtuct). March 11, 1860

March 13.  I look into many woodchucks’ holes, but as yet they are choked with leaves and there is no sign of their having come abroad. March 13, 1855

March 14. Repairing my boat. High winds, growing colder and colder, ground stiffening again. My ears have not been colder the past winter. Lowell Fay tells me that he overtook with a boat and killed last July a woodchuck which was crossing the river at Hollowell Place . . . March is rightly famous for its winds. March 14, 1853

March 15. I see to-day in two places, in mud and in snow, what I have no doubt is the track of the woodchuck that has lately been out, with peculiarly spread toes like a little hand. March 15, 1860

March 16. Cloudy in the forenoon. Sun comes out and it is rather pleasant in the afternoon. P. M. — To Conantum End. At the woodchuck’s hole just beyond the cockspur thorn, I see several diverging and converging trails of undoubtedly a woodchuck, or several, which must have come out at least as early as the 13th. The track is about one and three quarters inches wide by two long, the five toes very distinct and much spread, and is somewhat hand-like. They had come out and run about directly from hole to hole, six in all, within a dozen rods or more. This appeared to have been all their travelling, as if they had run round a-visiting and waked each other up the first thing. None have travelled beyond these holes, except that one track leads into the swamp. But here are the tracks of foxes bound on longer journeys. March 16, 1855

March 22. The phenomena of an average March . . . Skunks are active and frolic; woodchucks and ground squirrels come forth. March 22, 1860

March 25. To speak of the general phenomena of March: When March arrives, a tolerably calm, clear, sunny, spring like day, the snow is so far gone that . . . The boy's sled gets put away in the barn or shed or garret, and there lies dormant all summer, like a wood chuck in the winter. It goes into its burrow just before woodchucks come out, so that you may say a wood chuck never sees a sled, nor a sled a woodchuck, — unless it were a prematurely risen woodchuck or a belated and unseasonable sled . Before the woodchuck comes out the sled goes in . They dwell at the antipodes of each other. Before sleds rise woodchucks have set. The ground squirrel too shares the privileges and misfortunes of the woodchuck. The sun now passes from the constellation of the sled into that of the woodchuck. March 25, 1860

March 29. Looking at the mouth of a woodchuck-hole and at low places, as on the moss, in the meadows, [I see] that those places are sprinkled with little pellets or sometimes salt-shaped masses of frost some inches apart, apparently like snow. This is one kind of frost . . . Dugan tells me . . . he saw a woodchuck yesterday. March 29, 1853

March 30. A very warm and pleasant day (at 2 P.M., 63° and rising) . . . The inhabitants come forth from their burrows such an after-noon as this, as the woodchuck and ground squirrels have, as the toads do.  March 30, 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
• I begin to think that my wood will last.
• Insects and Worms Come Forth and are Active
• Listening for the Bluebird
• March is famous for its Winds
• Mosses Bright Green
• My Greatcoat on my Arm
• Perla-like Insects Appear
• Red Maple Sap Flows
• Ripples made by Fishes
• Skunks Active
• The Anxious Peep of the Early Robin
• The Crowing of Cocks, the Cawing of crows
• The Days have grown Sensibly Longer
• The Eaves Begin to Run
• The Gobbling of Turkeys
• The Grackle Arrives
• The Hawks of March
• The New Warmth of the Sun
• The Note of the Dark-eyed Junco Going Northward
• The Red-Wing Arrives
• The Skunk Cabbage Blooms
• The Softened Air of these Warm February Days
• The Song Sparrow Sings
• The Spring Note of the Chickadee
• The Spring Note of the Nuthatch
• The Striped Squirrel Comes Out
• The Water Bug (Gyrinus)
• The Woodchuck Ventures Out
• Walking without Gloves
• Woodpeckers Tapping

 <<<<< Signs of Spring                                                          Early Spring >>>>>

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring;

The Woodchuck Ventures Out

 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

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

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2024

A Book of the Seasons, Signs of the Spring: the Spring Note of the Nuthatch.

No mortal is alert enough 

to be present at the first dawn of the spring. 

Henry Thoreau, March 17, 1857

Is what I have heard

as the earliest spring note that of the nuthatch?

March 5, 1859

The notes of the white-breasted nuthatch

are remarkable on account of their nasal sound.

Ordinarily they resemble the monosyllables

hank, hank, kank, kank;

but now and then in the spring,

they emit a sweeter kind of chirp,

whenever the sexes meet,

or when they are feeding their young.

J. J. Audubon

March 5.  Going down-town this forenoon, I heard a white-bellied nuthatch on an elm within twenty feet, uttering peculiar notes and more like a song than I remember to have heard from it. There was a chickadee close by, to which it may have been addressed. 

It was something like to-what what what what what, rapidly repeated, and not the usual gnah gnah; and this instant it occurs to me that this may be that earliest spring note which I hear, and have referred to a woodpecker! (This is before I have chanced to see a bluebird, blackbird, or robin in Concord this year.)

It is the spring note of the nuthatch. 

It paused in its progress about the trunk or branch and uttered this lively but peculiarly inarticulate song, an awkward attempt to warble almost in the face of the chickadee, as if it were one of its kind. It was thus giving vent to the spring within it. 

If I am not mistaken, it is what I have heard in former springs or winters long ago, fabulously early in the season, when we men had but just begun to anticipate the spring, — for it would seem that we, in our anticipations and sympathies, include in succession the moods and expressions of all creatures. 

When only the snow had begun to melt and no rill of song had broken loose, a note so dry and fettered still, so inarticulate and half thawed out, that you might (and would commonly) mistake for the tapping of a woodpecker.

As if the young nuthatch in its hole had listened only to the tapping of woodpeckers and learned that music, and now, when it would sing and give vent to its spring ecstasy and it can modulate only some notes like that, that is its theme still. That is its ruling idea of song and music, — only a little clangor and liquidity added to the tapping of the woodpecker. 

It was the handle by which my thoughts took firmly hold on spring. This herald of spring is commonly unseen, it sits so close to the bark. 

March 5, 1859

*****

February 17. Hear this morning, at the new stone bridge, from the hill, that singular springlike note of a bird which I heard once before one year about this time (under Fair Haven Hill) . . . Can it be a jay? or a pigeon woodpecker? Is it not the earliest springward note of a bird? February 17, 1855

February 18. When I step out into the yard I hear that earliest spring note from some bird, perhaps a pigeon woodpecker (or can it be a nuthatch, whose ordinary note I hear?), the rapid whar whar, whar whar, whar whar, which I have so often heard before any other note. February 18, 1857

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

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

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

March 13.  Excepting a few blue birds and larks, no spring birds have come, apparently . . . But what was that familiar spring sound from the pine wood across the river, a sharp vetter vetter vetter vetter, like some woodpecker, or possibly nuthatch? March 13, 1853

March 17.  It is only some very early still, warm, and pleasant morning in February or March that  I notice that woodpecker-like whar-whar-whar-whar-whar-whar, earliest spring sound. March 17, 1857

March 18. I hear the faint fine notes of apparent nuthatches coursing up the pitch pines, a pair of them, one answering to the other, as it were like a vibrating watch-spring. Then, at a distance, that whar-whar whar-whar-whar-whar, which after all I suspect may be the note of the nuthatch and not a woodpecker. March 18, 1857

March 20.  I hear now, at 7 A. M., from the hill across the water, probably the note of a woodpecker, I know not what species; not that very early gnah gnah, which I have not heard this year. March 20, 1858

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

March 25.  P. M.— To Clamshell. I heard the what what what what of the nuthatch this forenoon. Do I ever hear it in the afternoon ? It is much like the cackle of the pigeon woodpecker and suggests a relation to that bird. March 25, 1859

April 25. I hear still the what what what of a nuthatch, and, directly after, its ordinary winter note of gnah gnah, quite distinct. I think the former is its spring note or breeding-note. April 25, 1859 

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

  <<<<< Signs of Spring                                                                               Early Spring >>>>>

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring,  

The Spring Note of the Nuthatch

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

tinyurl.com/HDTnuthatch

A Book of the Seasons: March 5. (And for the first time I see the water looking blue on the meadows.)

The year is but a succession of days,

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

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

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

March 5

"And for the first time

I see the water looking

blue on the meadows."

March 5, 1854

March 5, 2020

This and the last four or five days very gusty. Most of the warmth of the fire is carried off by the draught, which consumes the wood very fast, faster than a much colder but still day in winter. My kindlings spend very fast now, for I do not commonly keep fire at night.  March 5, 1857

The meadows skim over at night. March 5, 1860

It is a clear morning with some wind beginning to rise, and for the first time I see the water looking blue on the meadows. March 5, 1854

A misty afternoon, but warm, threatening rain. March 5, 1852

A strong but warm southwesterly wind has produced a remarkable haze. As I go along by Sleepy Hollow, this strong, warm wind, rustling the leaves on the hillsides, this blue haze, and the russet earth seen through it, remind me that a new season has come. March 5, 1855

Will not rain follow this much thicker haze? March 5, 1855

Ways fairly settled generally.  March 5, 1860

Snowed an inch or two in the night. March 5, 1856

The snow in the wood-lot which I measured was about two feet on a level.  March 5, 1856

It is very hard turning out, there is so much snow in the road. Your horse springs and flounders in it. March 5, 1856

The snow melts and sinks very rapidly. This spring snow is peculiarly white and blinding. The inequalities of the surface are peculiar and interesting when it has sunk thus rapidly. March 5, 1859

The patches of bare ground grow larger and larger, of snow less and less; even after a night you see a difference. March 5, 1854. 

Yesterday I got my grape cuttings. March 5, 1853

The day before went to the Corner Spring to look at the tufts of green grass.  March 5, 1853  

In the dry pasture under the Cliff Hill, the radical leaves of the johnswort are now revealed everywhere in pretty radiating wreaths flat on the ground, with leaves recurved, reddish above, green beneath, and covered with dewy drops. March 4, 1854

Was pleased with the sight of the yellow osiers of the golden willow, and the red of the cornel, now colors are so rare. March 5, 1853

Saw the green fine-threaded conferva in a ditch, commonly called frog-spittle. Brought it home in my pocket, and it expanded again in a tumbler. It appeared quite a fresh growth, with what looked like filmy air-bubbles, as big as large shot, in its midst.  March 5, 1853

Those skunk-cabbage buds which are most advanced have cast off their outmost and often frost-bitten sheaths, and the spathe is broader and slightly opened (some three quarters of an inch or more already) and has acquired brighter and more variegated colors. The outside of the spathe shows some ripeness in its colors and markings, like a melon-rind, before the spadix begins to bloom. March 5, 1859

I find that many of the most forward spathes, etc., have been destroyed since I was here three days ago. Some animal has nibbled away a part of the spathes (or sometimes only a hole in it) — and I see the fragments scattered about — and then eaten out the whole of the spadix. Indeed, but few forward ones are left . . . The spadix is evidently a favorite titbit to some creature. March 5, 1859

That more entire-leaved plant amid the early skunk-cabbage which I called a cress on the 3d has the bitter taste of cress. The common cress has in one place grown considerably, and is fresh and clean and very good to eat. I wonder that I do not see where some creatures have eaten it. March 5, 1859

The sweet-gale brush seen in a mass at a little distance is considerably darker than the alders above it.  March 5, 1859

The cowslip there is very prominently flower-budded, lifting its yellow flower-buds above water in one place. The leaves are quite inconspicuous when they first come up, being rolled up tightly. March 5, 1859

The red maple buds are already much expanded, foretelling summer, though our eyes see only winter as yet. March 5, 1852

As I sit under their boughs, looking into the sky, I suddenly see the myriad black dots of the expanded buds against the sky. Their sap is flowing. March 5, 1852

The sap of the buttonwood flows; how long? March 5, 1857

Got some of the very common leptogium (??). Is it one of the Collemaceæ? March 5, 1853

I find myself inspecting little granules, as it were, on the bark of trees, little shields or apothecia springing from a thallus. Such is the mood of my mind, and I call it studying lichens. The habit of looking at things microscopically, as the lichens on the trees and rocks, really prevents my seeing aught else in a walk. March 5, 1852

To the lichenist is not the shield (or rather the apothecium) of a lichen disproportionately large compared with the universe? The minute apothecium of the pertusaria, which the woodchopper never detected, occupies so large a space in my eye at present as to shut out a great part of the world. Surely I might take wider views. March 5, 1852

White pine cones half fallen. March 5, 1860

Chickweed and shepherd's-purse in bloom in C.'s garden, and probably all winter, or each month. March 5, 1860

Our spiræas have been considerably unfolded for several days.  March 5, 1860

The lilac buds cannot have swollen any since the 25th of February, on account of the cold. On examining, they look as if they had felt the influence of the previous heat a little. There are narrow light-green spaces laid bare along the edges of the brown scales, as if they had expanded so much. March 5, 1857

We see one or two little gnats or mosquitoes in the air. March 5, 1859

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

See a small blackish caterpillar on the snow. Where do they come from?   March 5, 1854. 

I see crows walking about on the ice half covered with snow in the middle of the meadows, where there is no grass, apparently to pick up the worms and other insects left there since the midwinter freshet. March 5, 1859

And crows, as I think, migrating northeasterly. They come in loose, straggling flocks, about twenty to each, commonly silent, a quarter to a half a mile apart, till four flocks have passed, perhaps more. Methinks I see them going southwest in the fall.

March 5, 1854. 

I see a crow going north or northeast, high over Fair Haven Hill, and, two or three minutes after, two more, and so many more at intervals of a few minutes. This is apparently their spring movement. March 5, 1859

The red ground under a large pitch pine is strewn with scales of the ashy-brown bark over a diameter of ten or twelve feet, where some woodpecker has searched and hammered about the stem. March 5, 1857

Going down-town this forenoon, I heard a white-bellied nuthatch on an elm within twenty feet, uttering peculiar notes and more like a song than I remember to have heard from it. March 5, 1859

There was a chickadee close by, to which it may have been addressed. It was something like to-what what what what what, rapidly repeated, and not the usual gnah gnah; and this instant it occurs to me that this may be that earliest spring note which I hear, and have referred to a woodpecker! (This is before I have chanced to see a bluebird, blackbird, or robin in Concord this year.) It is the spring note of the nuthatch. March 5, 1859

It paused in its progress about the trunk or branch and uttered this lively but peculiarly inarticulate song, an awkward attempt to warble almost in the face of the chickadee, as if it were one of its kind. It was thus giving vent to the spring within it.  March 5, 1859

If I am not mistaken, it is what I have heard in former springs or winters long ago, fabulously early in the season, when we men had but just begun to anticipate the spring, — for it would seem that we, in our anticipations and sympathies, include in succession the moods and expressions of all creatures.  When only the snow had begun to melt and no rill of song had broken loose, a note so dry and fettered still, so inarticulate and half thawed out, that you might (and would commonly) mistake for the tapping of a woodpecker. As if the young nuthatch in its hole had listened only to the tapping of woodpeckers and learned that music, and now, when it would sing and give vent to its spring ecstasy and it can modulate only some notes like that, that is its theme still. That is its ruling idea of song and music, — only a little clangor and liquidity added to the tapping of the woodpecker.   March 5, 1859

It was the handle by which my thoughts took firmly hold on spring. This herald of spring is commonly unseen, it sits so close to the bark. March 5, 1859

The song sparrows begin to sing hereabouts. March 5, 1860

Turkeys gobble in some distant farmyard. March 5, 1859

See a large light-colored hawk circling a long time over Fair Haven Hill, and another, probably its mate, starts away from Holden Wood and circles toward it. The last being nearest, I distinguished that its wings were black tipped . . . What can they be? I think that I have seen the same in previous springs. March 5, 1859

They are too light-colored for hen-hawks, and for a pair of marsh hawks, — being apparently alike. Then the fish hawk is said by the books not to get here nearly so early, and, beside, they would not circle about so much over the hill. March 5, 1859

The goshawk, which I next think of, has no black tip to wings that I can learn. May it not be the winter hawk of Wilson? for he says its primaries are black at the tips, and that [it] is lighter than the red-shouldered, of same species. March 5, 1859

I scare up six male sheldrakes, with their black heads, in the Assabet,—the first ducks I have seen. Methought I heard a slight frog-like croak from them before. March 5, 1857

I see some tame ducks in the river, six of them. It is amusing to see how exactly perpendicular they will stand, with their heads on the bottom and their tails up, plucking some food there, three or four at once. Perhaps the grass, etc., is a little further advanced there for them. March 5, 1860

F. Brown showed me to-day some lesser redpolls which he shot yesterday. They turn out to be my falsely-called chestnut-frontleted bird of the winter. They have a sharp bill, black legs and claws, and a bright-crimson crown or frontlet, in the male reaching to the base of the bill, with, in his case, a delicate rose or carmine on the breast and rump. Though this is described by Nuttall as an occasional visitor in the winter, it has been the prevailing bird here this winter. March 5, 1853

I saw yesterday a musquash sitting on thin ice on the Assabet, by a hole which it had kept open, gnawing a white root. Now and then it would dive and bring up more. I waited for it to dive again, that I might run nearer to it meanwhile, but it sat ten minutes all wet in the freezing wind while my feet and ears grew numb, so tough it is; but at last I got quite near. When I frightened it, it dove with a sudden slap of its tail. I feel pretty sure that this is an involuntary movement, the tail by the sudden turn of the body being brought down on the water or ice like a whip-lash. March 5, 1858

George Buttrick thinks that forty musquash have been killed this spring between Hunt's and Flint's Bridge. The best time to hunt them is early morning and evening. His father goes out at daybreak, and can kill more in one hour after that than from that time to near sunset. He says that he has found eleven young in one musquash, and that Joel Barrett observed that one pair near his house bred five times in one year. Thought it would hardly pay to shoot them for their fur alone, but would if you owned river-meadow banks, they undermine them so.  March 5, 1860 

See the tracks of a woodchuck in the sand-heap about the mouth of his hole, where he has cleared out his entry. March 5, 1857

Every half-mile, as you go up the river, you come to the tracks of one or two dogs which have recently crossed it without any man. March 5, 1859

At length the sun is seen to have come out and to be shining on the oak leaves on the south side of Bear Garden Hill, and its light appears to be exactly limited to them. March 5, 1859

Would it not be noble to study the shield of the sun on the thallus of the sky, cerulean, which scatters its infinite sporules of light through the universe? March 5, 1852

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  the Osier in Winter and early Spring

A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Cowslip in Early Spring

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ)

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

A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Goosander, Merganser)

See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

 Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,The Nuthatch 

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

Bright Blue Water

Ducks Afar, Sailing on the Meadow

Greening Grasses and Sedges

I begin to think that my wood will last

insects and worms come forth and are active

The Gobbling of Turkeys

 Red Maple Sap Flows

March is famous for its Winds

Mosses Bright Green

The Hawks of March

The Skunk Cabbage Blooms

The Song Sparrow Sings

The Spring Note of the Nuthatch

The Water Bug (Gyrinus)

The Woodchuck Ventures Out

J. J. Audubon:

"The notes of the White-breasted Nuthatch

are remarkable on account of their nasal sound.

Ordinarily they resemble the monosyllables

hank, hank, kank, kank;

but now and then in the spring,

they emit a sweeter kind of chirp,

whenever the sexes meet,

or when they are feeding their young.”

*****

October 6, 1860 (The crow . . . hovers and circles about in flocks in an irregular and straggling manner, filling the air over your head and sporting in it as if at home here. They often burst up above the woods where they were perching, like the black fragments of a powder-mill just exploded.”)

October 20, 1859 ("I see a large and very straggling flock of crows fly southwest from over the hill behind Bull's and contending with the strong and cold northwest wind. This is the annual phenomenon. They are on their migrations.")

November 1, 1853 ("As I return, I notice crows flying southwesterly in a very long straggling flock, of which I see probably neither end.”) 

December 11, 1855 (“There is no question about the existence of these delicate creatures, their adaptedness to their circumstances.”) 

January 5, 1859 ("I hear a fine busy twitter, and, looking up, see a nuthatch hopping along . . . and then it utters a distinct gnah, as if to attract a companion. Indeed, that other, finer twitter seemed designed to keep some companion in tow, or else it was like a very busy man talking to himself. The companion was a single chickadee, which lisped six or eight feet off . . . And when the nuthatch flitted to another tree two rods off, the chickadee unfailingly followed.")

January 29, 1858 ("In the ditches on Holbrook's meadow near Copan, I see a Rana palustris swimming, and much conferva greening all the water. Even this green is exhilarating, like a spring in winter. I am affected by the sight even of a mass of conferva in a ditch")

February 2, 1853 ("The Stellaria media is full of frost-bitten blossoms, containing stamens, etc., still and half-grown buds. Apparently it never rests.")

February 3, 1856 ("It is a cold and windy Sunday . . . Such a day makes a great hole in the wood-pile.”)

February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day”)

February 12, 1856 ("forty three days of uninterrupted cold weather . . . twenty-five days the snow was sixteen inches deep in open land!!”)

February 17, 1855 (" Hear this morning, at the new stone bridge, from the hill, that singular springlike note of a bird which I heard once before one year about this time (under Fair Haven Hill). . . Can it be a jay? or a pigeon woodpecker? Is it not the earliest springward note of a bird?”)

February 18, 1857 ("When I step out into the yard I hear that earliest spring note from some bird, perhaps a pigeon woodpecker (or can it be a nuthatch, whose ordinary note I hear?), the rapid whar whar, whar whar, whar whar, which I have so often heard before any other note.”)

February 19, 1856 ("the snow has been deeper since the 17th than before this winter. I think if the drifts could be fairly measured it might be found to be seventeen or eighteen inches deep on a level.”)

February 21, 1857 ("Am surprised to see this afternoon a boy collecting red maple sap from some trees behind George Hubbard's. It runs freely. The earliest sap I made to flow last year was March 14th.”)

February 21, 1855 (“What is the peculiarity in the air that both the invalid in the chamber and the traveller on the highway say these are perfect March days? The wind is rapidly drying up earth . . . How much light there is in the sky and on the surface of the russet earth!”)

February 24, 1857 ("I am surprised to hear the strain of a song sparrow from the riverside.")

February 24, 1860 ("The river risen and quite over the meadows yesterday and to-day, and musquash begun to be killed.")

March 2, 1860 (“The great phenomenon these days is the sparkling blue water, — a richer blue than the sky ever is. ”)

March 2, 1860 (“See thirty or more crows come flying in the usual irregular zigzag manner in the strong wind, from over M. Miles’s, going northeast, — the first migration of them, — without cawing”)

March 2, 1860 ("Looking up a narrow ditch in a meadow, I see a modest brown bird flit along it furtively, — the first song sparrow, -- and then alight far off on a rock. Ed. Hoar says he heard one February 27th.")

March 2, 1860 ("Men shooting musquash these days.")

March 2, 1854 ("What produces the peculiar softness of the air yesterday and to-day, as if it were the air of the south suddenly pillowed amid our wintry hills? . . .”)

March 3, 1860 (" The first song sparrows are very inconspicuous and shy on the brown earth. You hear some weeds rustle, or think you see a mouse run amid the stubble, and then the sparrow flits low away.")

March 5, 1854 ("Has not the johnswort two lives, in winter sending out radical shoots which creep flat on the ground under the snow, in the summer shooting upward and blossoming?")

Blue haze. Strong warm wind

rustling leaves on the hillsides.

A new season comes.

March 5 1855

March 6, 1860 ("The linarias have been the most numerous birds the past winter")

 March 6, 1854 ("The bare water here and there on the meadow begins to look smooth, and I look to see it rippled by a muskrat.")

March 7, 1855 (" Picked up a very handsome white pine cone some six and a half inches long by two and three eighths near base and two near apex, perfectly blossomed. It is a very rich and wholesome brown color, of various shades as you turn it in your hand, —a light ashy or gray brown, somewhat like unpainted wood. as you look down on it, or as if the lighter brown were covered with a gray lichen, seeing only those parts of the scales always exposed, —with a few darker streaks or marks and a drop of pitch at the point of each scale. Within, the scales are a dark brown above (i.e. as it hangs) and a light brown beneath, Very distinctly being marked beneath by the same darker brown, down the centre and near the apex somewhat anchor wise. ")

 March 7, 1855 ("Did I not see crows flying northeasterly yesterday toward night? ")

March 8, 1855 ("I see of late more than before of the fuzzy caterpillars, both black and reddish—brown.”)

March 11, 1854 ("On Tuesday, the 7th, I heard the first song sparrow chirp, and saw it flit silently from alder to alder. This pleasant morning after three days' rain and mist, they generally forthburst into sprayey song from the low trees along the river. The developing of their song is gradual but sure, like the expanding of a flower. This is the first song I have heard.”)

March 12, 1854 (“ . . . that peculiar scenery of March . . . is like, yet unlike, November; you have the same barren russet, but now, instead of a dry, hard, cold wind, a peculiarly soft, moist air, or else a raw wind.”)

March 13, 1853 ("Excepting a few blue birds and larks, no spring birds have come, apparently. . . But what was that familiar spring sound from the pine wood across the river, a sharp vetter vetter vetter vetter, like some woodpecker, or possibly nuthatch?")

March 14, 1856 (“[A]bove Pinxter Swamp, one red maple limb was moistened by sap trickling along the bark. Tapping this, I was surprised to find it flow freely")

 March 14, 1859 ("The cowslip in pitcher has fairly blossomed to-day. ") 

March 15, 1856 ("Put a spout in the red maple of yesterday, and hang a pail beneath to catch the sap")

March 17, 1857 (" I notice that woodpecker-like whar-whar-whar-whar-whar-whar, earliest spring sound."); March 18, 1857 ("I hear the faint fine notes of apparent nuthatches coursing up the pitch pines, a pair of them, one answering to the other, as it were like a vibrating watch-spring.Then, at a distance, that whar-whar whar-whar-whar-whar, which after all I suspect may be the note of the nuthatch and not a woodpecker.")

March 20, 1858 ("I hear now, at 7 A. M., from the hill across the water, probably the note of a woodpecker, I know not what species; not that very early gnah gnah, which I have not heard this year.")

March 25, 1859 ("P. M.— To Clamshell. I heard the what what what what of the nuthatch this forenoon. Do I ever hear it in the afternoon ? It is much like the cackle of the pigeon woodpecker and suggests a relation to that bird. “)

March 27, 1855 (“See my frog hawk . . . It is the hen-barrier, i.e. marsh hawk, male. Slate-colored; beating the bush; black tips to wings and white rump.")

March 27, 1856 ("People do not remember when there was so much old snow on the ground at this date.”)

March 30, 1856 ("For twenty-five rods the Corner road is impassable to horses, because of their slumping in the old snow; and a new path has been dug, which a fence shuts off the old.”)

March 30, 1856 ("See probably a hen-hawk (?) (black tips to wings), sailing low over the low cliff next the river, looking probably for birds. [May have been a marsh hawk or harrier.]")

April 5, 1856 ("The first sight of the blue water in the spring is exhilarating.")

April 9, 1856 ("The water on the meadows now, looking with the sun, is a far deeper and more exciting blue than the heavens.") 

April 25, 1859 ("I hear still the what what what of a nuthatch, and, directly after, its ordinary winter note of gnah gnah, quite distinct. I think the former is its spring note or breeding-note.”) 

May 14, 1857 ("See a pair of marsh hawks, the smaller and lighter-colored male, with black tips to wings, and the large brown female, sailing low over J. Hosmer's sprout-land”);

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

March 4<<<<< March 5 >>>>> March 6

Myriad buds seen
expanded against the sky –
the sap is flowing.
March 5, 1852

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 5

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