They peep at intervals.

May 2.

6 A. M. — Is not the chipping sparrow the commonest heard in the village streets in the mornings now, sitting on an elm or apple tree?

Was it the black and white warbler that I saw this morning? It did not stop to creep round the trunks; was very shy.

Or was it the myrtle-bird? 

Might it have been the log-cock woodpecker that I saw yesterday morning?

Reptiles must not be omitted, especially frogs; their croaking is the most earthy sound now, a rustling of the scurf of the earth, not to be overlooked in the awakening of the year. It is such an earth-sound.

The flowers of Cheney's elm are not only much earlier and larger than others, but the peduncles are in separate bundles proceeding from a common short peduncle. There appears to be such a difference, the tree is made of a different form and appearance.\ I can easily break off a twig from its branches, which hang very low. Vide the rough -- barked elm in the swamp, --if it is not the corky elm.

The balm-of-Gilead begins to show its male (?) catkins.

The commonplaces of one age or nation make the poetry of another.

I think that my seringo-bird has not the marks of the Savannah sparrow. Looks like a chip-bird; or did I see a spot on its breast?

That white maple, methinks, has a smoother bark tħan the red ones.

P. M. - To Conantum.

The handsome blood-red lacquered marks on the edge and under the edge of the painted tortoise's shell, like the marks on a waiter, concentric, few colors like it in nature. This tortoise, too, like the guttata, painted on these parts of its shell and on legs and tail in this style, but throat bright yellow stripes, sternum dull yellowish or buff.
It hisses like the spotted.

Tortoises everywhere coupling.

Is the male the large and flatter, with depressed sternum? It so seems? There is some regularity in the guttata's spots, — generally a straight row on back. Some of the spots are orange sometimes on the head.

Brought home two little frogs which I have described in the Report (q. v.) but cannot make out. Are they young?

The andromeda is ready to bloom.

The yellow lily is budded.

The little frogs peep more or less during the day, but chiefly at evening twilight, rarely in the morning. They peep at intervals. One begins, then all join in over the whole pond, and they suddenly stop all together.

If you would obtain insight, avoid anatomy.

I am pretty sure that is the myrtle-bird I see and hear on the Corner road, picking the blossoms of the maple, with the yellow crown and black throat or cheeks. It sings pe-te-te-te-ter twe ', emphasizing the last and repeating the second, third, and fourth fast.

The little frogs I kept three days in the house peeped at evening twilight, though they had been silent all day; never failed; swelled up their little bagpipes, transparent, and as big as a small cherry or a large pea.

Saw a bird on the willows, very shy, which may be the indigo-bird, but I am not sure.

The Equisetum arvense is now in bloom (the male flowers) all over the railroad embankment, coloring it yellowish (?).


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 2, 1852

Summer yellowbird on the opening Salix alba.

May 2. 

Summer yellowbird on the opening Salix alba. 

Chimney swallows and the bank or else cliff ditto. 

Small pewee? 

Our earliest gooseberry in garden has bloomed. 

What is that pondweed-like plant floating in a pool near Breed's, with a slender stem and linear leaves and a small whorl of minute leaves on the surface, and nutlets in the axils of the leaves, along the stem, as if now out of bloom? [Callitriche verna.] 

Missouri currant.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 2, 1853

Summer yellowbird on the opening Salix alba. See May 2, 1860 ("Salix alba apparently yesterday.")  See also   May 7, 1852 ("The first summer yellowbirds on the willow causeway. The birds come not singly, as the earliest, but all at once, i. e. many yellowbirds all over town. Now I remember the yellowbird comes when the willows begin to leave out. "); May 10, 1858 (" For some days the Salix alba have shown their yellow wreaths here and there, suggesting the coming of the yellowbird, and now they are alive with them."); May 10, 1853 ("At this season the traveller passes through a golden gate on causeways where these willows are planted, as if he were approaching the entrance to Fairyland; and there will surely be found the yellowbird, and already from a distance is heard his note, a tche tche tche tcha tchar tcha, — ah, willow, willow.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Summer Yellowbird also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Willows on the Causeway

Small pewee? See May 2, 1859 ("Small pewee and young lackey caterpillars.") See also  May 3, 1854 ("What I have called the small pewee on the willow by my boat, — quite small, uttering a short tchevet from time to time.") and note to May 3, 1855 ("Small pewee; tchevet, with a jerk of the head."); May 7, 1852 ("And the small pewee on the willows also.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the "Small Pewee"

Our earliest gooseberry in garden has bloomed. See April 1, 1860 ("Our gooseberry begins to show a little green, but not our currant"); April 3, 1853 ("The Missouri currant is perhaps more advanced than the early gooseberry in our garden."); April 30, 1852  ("At Saw Mill Run the swamp gooseberry is partly leaved out. This, . . .methinks is the earliest shrub or tree that shows leaves. [The Missouri currant in gardens is equally forward; the cultivated gooseberry nearly so.]") May 4, 1860 ("Currant out a day or two at least, and our first gooseberry a day later.")


Missouri currant. See May 4, 1858 ("The Missouri currant, probably to-day."); May 5, 1855 ("Missouri currant look as if they would bloom to-morrow.”);

A good deal of coolness in the wind, so that I can scarcely find a comfortable seat.

May 2

River three and five sixteenths below summer level. 

I observed on the 29th that the clams had not only been moving much, furrowing the sandy bottom near the shore, but generally, or almost invariably, had moved toward the middle of the river. Perhaps it had something to do with the low stage of the water. 

I saw one making his way — or perhaps it had rested since morning-over that sawdust bar just below Turtle Bar, toward the river, the surface of the bar being an inch or two higher than the water. Probably the water, falling, left it thus on dry (moist) land.

I notice this forenoon (11. 30 A. M. ) remarkably round-topped white clouds just like round-topped hills, on all sides of the sky, often a range of such, such as I do not remember to have seen before. There was considerable wind on the surface, from the northeast, and the above clouds were moving west and southwest, -- a generally distributed cumulus.    

What added to the remarkableness of the sight was a very fine, fleecy cirrhus, like smoke, narrow but of indefinite length, driving swiftly eastward beneath the former, proving that there were three currents of air, one above the other.  (The same form of cloud prevailed to some extent the next day.) 

Salix alba apparently yesterday.  

The early potentillas are now quite abundant.

P. M.    – To stone heaps and stone bridge. 

Since (perhaps) the middle of April we have had much easterly (northeast chiefly) wind, and yet no rain, though this wind rarely fails to bring rain in March.  (The same is true till 9th of May at least; i. e., in spite of east winds there is no rain.)

I find no stone heaps made yet, the water being very low. (But since — May 8th-I notice them, and perhaps I overlooked them before.) 

I notice on the east bank by the stone-heaps, amid the bushes, what I supposed to be two woodchucks' holes, with a well-worn path from one to the other, and the young trees close about them, aspen and black cherry, had been gnawed for a foot or more upward for a year or two.  There were some fresh wounds, and also old and extensive scars of last year partially healed. 

The naked viburnum is leafing.

The sedge apparently Carex Pennsylvanica has now been out on low ground a day or two.   

A crowd of men seem to generate vermin even of the human kind.  In great towns there is degradation undreamed of elsewhere, — gamblers, dog-killers, rag pickers.  Some live by robbery or by luck.  There was the Concord muster (of last September).  I see still a well dressed man carefully and methodically searching for money on the muster-fields, far off across the river.  I turn my glass upon him and notice how he proceeds.  (I saw them searching there in the fall till the snow came.) He walks regularly and slowly back and forth over the ground where the soldiers had their tents, — still marked by the straw, — with his head prone, and poking in the straw with a stick, now and then turning back or aside to examine something more closely. He is dressed, methinks, better than an average man whom you meet in the streets. How can he pay for his board thus? He dreams of finding a few coppers, or perchance a half-dime, which have fallen from the soldiers' pockets, and no doubt he will find something of the kind, having dreamed of it, --having knocked, this door will be opened to him.  

Walking over the russet interval, I see the first red-winged grasshoppers. They rise from the still brown sod before me, and I see the redness of their wings as they fly. They are quite shy and hardly let me come within ten feet before they rise again, — often before I have seen them fairly on the ground.   

It was 63° at 2 P. M., and yet a good deal of coolness in the wind, so that I can scarcely find a comfortable seat. (Yet a week later, with thermometer at 60° and but little wind, it seems much warmer.) We have had cool nights of late.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 2, 1860

Salix alba apparently yesterday. See May 2, 1853 (" Summer yellowbird on the opening Salix alba.?"). See also  April 24, 1855 ("The Salix alba begins to leaf. "); April 29, 1855 ("For two or three days the Salix alba, with its catkins (not yet open) and its young leaves, or bracts (?), has made quite a show, before any other tree, —a pyramid of tender yellowish green in the russet landscape."); April 30, 1859 (Salix alba leafing, or stipules a quarter of an inch wide; probably began a day or two.");    May 10, 1858 (" For some days the Salix alba have shown their yellow wreaths here and there, suggesting the coming of the yellowbird, and now they are alive with them.")

The naked viburnum is leafing. See April 30, 1859 ("The viburnum buds are so large and long, like a spear-head, that they are conspicuous the moment their two leafets diverge and they are lit up by the sun.");  May 1, 1854 ("The viburnum (Lentago or nudum) leaves unexpectedly forward at the Cliff Brook and about Miles Swamp. ")

The early potentillas are now quite abundant. See May 1, 1854 (“At Lee's Cliff find the early cinquefoil”); May 8, 1860 ("The cinquefoil is closed in a cloudy day, and when the sun shines it is turned toward it."); May 17, 1853 ("The early cinquefoil is now in its prime and spots the banks and hillsides and dry meadows with its dazzling yellow. How lively! It is one of the most interesting yellow flowers. ")

I am surprised by the tender yellowish green of the aspen leaf just expanded suddenly,

May 2. 

May 2, 2019

Small pewee and young lackey caterpillars. 

I see on the Salix rostrata by railroad many honey bees laden with large and peculiarly orange-colored pellets of its pollen. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

Those swarms of small miller-like insects which fly low over the surface of the river, sometimes constantly falling to and touching the surface and then rising again. When at rest they are seen to be blackish-winged, but flying they look light-colored. They flutter low and continuously over the same place. Theirs is a sort of dance. 

A peetweet and its mate at Mantatuket Rock. The river seems really inhabited when the peetweet is back and those little light-winged millers (?). This bird does not return to our stream until the weather is decidedly pleasant and warm. He is perched on the accustomed rock. Its note peoples the river, like the prattle of children once more in the yard of a house that has stood empty. 

I am surprised by the tender yellowish green of the aspen leaf just expanded suddenly, even like a fire, seen in the sun, against the dark-brown twigs of the wood, though these leafets are yet but thinly dispersed. It is very enlivening. 

I heard yesterday, and perhaps for several days, the soft purring sound of what I take to be the Rana palustris, breeding, though I did not this time see the frog. 

I feel no desire to go to California or Pike's Peak, but I often think at night with inexpressible satisfaction and yearning of the arrowheadiferous sands of Concord. I have often spent whole afternoons, especially in the spring, pacing back and forth over a sandy field, looking for these relics of a race. This is the gold which our sands yield. 

The soil of that rocky spot on Simon Brown's land is quite ash-colored — now that the sod is turned up — by Indian fires, with numerous pieces of coal in it. There is a great deal of this ash-colored soil in the country. We do literally plow up the hearths of a people and plant in their ashes. The ashes of their fires color much of our soil.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 2, 1859

Small pewee. See April 30, 1856 (“I hear the small pewee’s tche-vet’ repeatedly.”);  May 3, 1854 (“What I have called the small pewee on the willow by my boat, — quite small, uttering a short tchevet from time to time); May 3, 1855 “Small pewee; tchevet, with a jerk of the head.”); May 5, 1858 ("Saw and heard the small pewee yesterday.”); May 7, 1852 (“he first small pewee sings now che-vet, or rather chirrups chevet, tche-vet — a rather delicate bird with a large head and two white bars on wings. . . . Now I remember the yellowbird comes when the willows begin to leave out. (And the small pewee on the willows also.) ”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Small Pewee

I see on the Salix rostrata by railroad many honey bees laden with large and peculiarly orange-colored pellets of its pollen. See  May 6, 1858 (“The Salix rostrata staminate flowers are of very peculiar yellow, — a bright, what you might call yellow yellow.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Willows on the Causeway

Swarms of small miller-like insects which fly low over the surface of the river. Compare May 1, 1854 ("The water is strewn with myriads of wrecked shad-flies, erect on the surface, with their wings up like so many schooners all headed one way. . . .”); May 1, 1858 (“Ephemerae quite common over the water.”); May 4, 1856 ("Shad-flies on the water, schooner-like.”)

The tender yellowish green of the aspen leaf just expanded suddenly. See May 2, 1855 ("The young aspens are the first of indigenous trees conspicuously leafed”); May 4, 1856 ("The aspen there [the Island]just begun to leaf."); May 5, 1858 ("The aspen leaves at Island to-day appear as big as a nine pence suddenly"); May 17, 1860 ("Standing in the meadow near the early aspen at the island, I hear the first fluttering of leaves, - a peculiar sound, at first unaccountable to me”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau the Aspens.

A peetweet and its mate at Mantatuket Rock. See May 2, 1858 (“Peetweet on a rock”); April 30, 1856 (“As I go along the Assabet, a peetweet skims away from the shore.”); May 4, 1856 (“See a peetweet on Dove Rock, which just peeps out. As soon as the rocks begin to be bare the peetweet comes and is seen teetering on them and skimming away from me.”)

I too have been looking for frogs. If I were to be a frog hawk for a month I should soon know some things.

May 2.

Hepatica, May 2, 2018

Sit without fire to-day and yesterday.

I compare the three Rana palustris caught yesterday with the male and female of April 23d. 

The males agree very well. What I have regarded as the groundwork varies from pale brown to dusky brown, even in the same specimen at different times. 

The present female is larger than that of April 23d, more than half an inch longer than her male, and she has the round dark spots on the orbits and one in front on head and also oblong-square spots on back. She is also dusky-brown like male. 

None of all have any green. 

I at last hear the note, for two are coupled in a firkin in my chamber, under my face. It is made by the male alone, and is, as I supposed, the sound of April 30th and May 1st, — the tut tut tut, more or less rapidly repeated, and a frequent querulous or inquisitive cr-r-rack, half a second long. 

It makes these sounds only when I excite it by putting others of its kind near it. Its pouches are distended laterally, apparently beneath and behind the eye, and not very conspicuous. Close by, it sounds like a dry belching sound, the bursting of little bubbles more or less rapidly, and the querulous note may be the same very rapidly repeated. 

I doubt if I have heard any sound from a bullfrog in river yet. 

P. M. — Down river. 

The Salix Babylonica (fertile) behind Dodd's is more forward than the alba by my boat. Put it just before it. See stake-driver. 

At mouth of the Mill Brook, I hear, I should say, the true R. halecina croak, i. e. with the faint bullfrog-like er-er-er intermixed. Are they still breeding? 

Peetweet on a rock. 

See and hear the red-wings in flocks yet, making a great noise. 

If I were to be a frog hawk for a month I should soon know some things about the frogs. How patiently they skim the meadows, occasionally alighting, and fluttering as if it were difficult ever to stand still on the ground. I have seen more of them than usual since I too have been looking for frogs. 

Hear a tree-toad.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 2, 1858

Sit without fire to-day and yesterday. See May 3, 1857 (“”To-day we sit without fire")
I compare the three Rana palustris caught yesterday with the male and female of April 23d. See April 24, 1858 ("I go at 8 A.M. to catch frogs to compare with the R. palustris and bull frog which I have, but I find it too cold for them")

At mouth of the Mill Brook, I hear, I should say, the true R. halecina croak, i. e. with the faint bullfrog-like er-er-er intermixed. See note to  April 3, 1858 ("Their note is a hard dry tut tut tut tut, . . .  and from time to time one makes that faint somewhat bullfrog-like er er er. Both these sounds, then, are made by one frog, ")


If I were to be a frog hawk for a month I should soon know some things about the frogs. See 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 29, 1854 (See two marsh hawks, white on rump."); March 30, 1856 ("May have been a marsh hawk or harrier.");  April 5, 1854  ("These days . . . bring out the butterflies and the frogs, and the marsh hawks which prey on the last. Just so simple is every year.”); April 8, 1856 ("Marsh hawks circling low shows that frogs must be out."); April 19, 1858 ("He skims along exactly over the edge of the water, on the meadowy side, not more than three or four feet from the ground and winding with the shore, looking for frogs.."); April 22, 1856 (“A marsh hawk, in the midst of the rain, is skimming along the shore of the meadow, close to the ground, . . . It is looking for frogs.”); May 2, 1855 ("Was that a harrier seen at first skimming low then seating and circling, with a broad whiteness on the wings beneath?” ~~ What HDT calls the "frog/marsh hawk/hen harrier" is the northern harrier.

Building a fence between us and Mrs. Richardson.

May 2.

Saturday. Building a fence between us and Mrs. Richardson. 

In digging the holes I find the roots of small apple trees, seven or eight feet distant and four or more inches in diameter, two feet underground, and as big as my little finger. This is two or three feet beyond any branches. They reach at least twice as far as the branches. The branches get trimmed, the roots do not.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 2, 1857

A Book of the Seasons: May 2 (march hawks, peepers and pickerel frogs, aspens leafing, sedge and willow in flower, yellowbird and honey bees, peetweet on a rock)

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

May 2

One frog begins then

the whole pond joins in until

all stop together.

May 2, 1852 

May 2, 2019

Sit without fire to-day and yesterday. May 2, 1858

6 A. M. — Is not the chipping sparrow the commonest heard in the village streets in the mornings now, sitting on an elm or apple tree? May 2, 1852

The handsome blood-red lacquered marks on the edge and under the edge of the painted tortoise's shell . . . few colors like it in nature. This tortoise, too, like the guttata, painted on these parts of its shell and on legs and tail in this style, but throat bright yellow stripes, sternum dull yellowish or buff.  May 2, 1852

I heard yesterday, and perhaps for several days, the soft purring sound of what I take to be the Rana palustris, breeding, though I did not this time see the frog. May 2, 185

I compare the three Rana palustris caught yesterday with the male and female of April 23d. May 2, 1858

At mouth of the Mill Brook, I hear, I should say, the true R. halecina croak, i. e. with the faint bullfrog-like er-er-er intermixed. Are they still breeding? May 2, 1858

Hear a tree-toad.  May 2, 1858

The little frogs peep more or less during the day, but chiefly at evening twilight, rarely in the morning. They peep at intervals. One begins, then all join in over the whole pond, and they suddenly stop all together. May 2, 1852

The little frogs I kept three days in the house peeped at evening twilight, though they had been silent all day; never failed; swelled up their little bagpipes, transparent, and as big as a small cherry or a large pea. May 2, 1852

Their croaking is the most earthy sound now, a rustling of the scurf of the earth, not to be overlooked in the awakening of the year. It is such an earth-sound. May 2, 1852

Was that a harrier seen at first skimming low then seating and circling, with a broad whiteness on the wings beneath? May 2, 1855

If I were to be a frog hawk for a month I should soon know some things about the frogs. . . . I have seen more of them than usual since I too have been looking for frogs. May 2, 1858

Saw many crow blackbirds day before yesterday.May 2, 1859

See and hear the red-wings in flocks yet, making a great noise. May 2, 1858

Aspen leaves of young trees an inch long suddenly. The leafing is apparently comparatively earlier this year than the flowering. The young aspens are the first of indigenous trees conspicuously leafed. May 2, 1855

I am surprised by the tender yellowish green of the aspen leaf just expanded suddenly, even like a fire, seen in the sun, against the dark-brown twigs of the wood, though these leafets are yet but thinly dispersed. It is very enlivening. May 2, 1859

That small native willow now in flower, or say yesterday, just before leaf. May 2, 1855

Salix alba apparently yesterday. May 2, 1860

I see on the Salix rostrata by railroad many honey bees laden with large and peculiarly orange-colored pellets of its pollen. May 2, 1859

Summer yellowbird on the opening Salix alba. May 2, 1853

Chimney swallows and the bank or else cliff ditto. May 2, 1853

Small pewee? May 2, 1853

Small pewee and young lackey caterpillars. May 2, 1859

The naked viburnum is leafing. May 2, 1860

Amelanchier Botryapium yesterday leafed.  May 2, 1855

Vigorous look the little spots of triangular sedge (?) springing up on the river-banks, five or six inches high, yellowish below, glaucous and hoary atop, straight and rigid. May 2, 1855

The sedge apparently Carex Pennsylvanica has now been out on low ground a day or two. May 2, 1860

Our earliest gooseberry in garden has bloomed. May 2, 1853

Missouri currant. May 2, 1853

The early potentillas are now quite abundant. May 2, 1860

Those swarms of small miller-like insects which fly low over the surface of the river. May 2, 1859

I am pretty sure that is the myrtle-bird I see and hear on the Corner road, picking the blossoms of the maple, with the yellow crown and black throat or cheeks. It sings pe-te-te-te-ter twe', emphasizing the last and repeating the second, third, and fourth fast. May 2, 1852

The tea lee of the yellow-rump warbler in the street, at the end of a cool, rainy day. May 2, 1856

See stake-driver. May 2, 1858

Peetweet on a rock. May 2, 1858

A peetweet and its mate at Mantatuket Rock. The river seems really inhabited when the peetweet is back. May 2, 1859

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle (Emys picta)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Pickerel frog (Rana palustris)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Rana Halecina in Spring

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Insect Hatches in Spring

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Bees

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  the Earliest Flower

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Viburnum lentago

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

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Willows on the Causeway

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Service-berry (Amelanchie)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Red-wing in Spring

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Myrtle-bird

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Summer Yellowbird

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,the Chipping Sparrow

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the “Small Pewee"

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Marsh Hawk

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The American Bittern (the Stake-Diver)

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 29, 1854 (See two marsh hawks, white on rump.")

March 30, 1856 ("May have been a marsh hawk or harrier.")

April 1, 1860 ("Our gooseberry begins to show a little green, but not our currant")

April 3, 1853 ("The Missouri currant is perhaps more advanced than the early gooseberry in our garden.")

April 3, 1858 ("Their note is a hard dry tut tut tut tut, . . . and from time to time one makes that faint somewhat bullfrog-like er er er. Both these sounds, then, are made by one frog.")

April 5, 1854 ("These days . . . bring out the butterflies and the frogs, and the marsh hawks which prey on the last. Just so simple is every year.”)

April 8, 1856 ("Marsh hawks circling low shows that frogs must be out.");

April 19, 1858 ("He skims along exactly over the edge of the water, on the meadowy side, not more than three or four feet from the ground and winding with the shore, looking for frogs.")

April 22, 1856 (“A marsh hawk, in the midst of the rain, is skimming along the shore of the meadow, close to the ground, . . . It is looking for frogs.”)

April 24, 1855 ("The  Saliz alba begins to leaf. ")

April 24, 1858 ("I go at 8 A.M. to catch frogs to compare with the R. palustris and bull frog which I have, but I find it too cold for them")

April 26, 1854 ("The woods are full of myrtle-birds this afternoon, more common and commonly heard than any, especially along the edge of woods on oaks, etc., — their note an oft-repeated fine jingle, a tea le, tea le, tea le.")

April 29, 1855 ("For two or three days the Salix alba, with its catkins (not yet open) and its young leaves, or bracts (?), has made quite a show, before any other tree, —a pyramid of tender yellowish green in the russet landscape.")

April 30, 1852 ("At Saw Mill Run the swamp gooseberry is partly leaved out. This, . . .methinks is the earliest shrub or tree that shows leaves. [The Missouri currant in gardens is equally forward; the cultivated gooseberry nearly so.]")

April 30, 1855 ("Red-wing blackbirds now fly in large flocks, covering the tops of trees—willows, maples, apples, or oaks—like a black fruit , and keep up an incessant gurgling and whistling.")

April 30, 1855 ("The early willow by Hubbard’s Bridge has not begun to leaf. This would make it a different species from that by railroad, which has.")

April 30, 1856 (“I hear the small pewee’s tche-vet’ repeatedly.”)

April 30, 1856 (“As I go along the Assabet, a peetweet skims away from the shore.”)

April 30, 1858 ("It is somewhat more softly purring, with frequently a low quivering, chuckling, or inquisitive croak, . . . I suspect it is the R. palustris, now breeding.")

April 30, 1859 (Salix alba leafing, or stipules a quarter of an inch wide; probably began a day or two.")

April 30, 1859 ("The viburnum buds are so large and long, like a spear-head, that they are conspicuous the moment their two leafets diverge and they are lit up by the sun.")

May 1, 1854 ("The viburnum (Lentago or nudum) leaves unexpectedly forward at the Cliff Brook and about Miles Swamp.")

May 1, 1854 ("The water is strewn with myriads of wrecked shad-flies, erect on the surface, with their wings up like so many schooners all headed one way.”)

May 1, 1854 (“At Lee's Cliff find the early cinquefoil”)

 May 1, 1855 ("The myrtle-bird is one of the commonest and tamest birds now. It catches insects like a pewee, darting off from its perch and returning to it, and sings something like a-chill chill, chill chill, chill chill, a-twear, twill twill twee,")

May 1, 1858 ("I also hear the myrtle-birds on the Island woods. Their common note is somewhat like the chill-lill or jingle of the F. hyemalis.")

May 1, 1858 (“Ephemerae quite common over the water.”)

May 1, 1858 ("I do not see a single R. halecina. What has become of the thousands with which the meadows swarmed a month ago? They have given place to the R. palustris.")

May 1, 1859 ("Looking from Clamshell over Hosmer's meadow, about half covered with water, see hundreds of turtles, chiefly picta, now first lying out in numbers . . .All up and down our river meadows their backs are shining in the sun to-day. It is a turtle day.")

May 3, 1857 ("I hear the soft, purring, stertorous croak of frogs on the meadow.")

May 3, 1854 ("What I have called the small pewee on the willow by my boat, — quite small, uttering a short tchevet from time to time.") 

May 3, 1855 ("Small pewee; tchevet, with a jerk of the head.")

May 3, 1857 (“”To-day we sit without fire")

 May 3, 1854 (“What I have called the small pewee on the willow by my boat, — quite small, uttering a short tchevet from time to time)

May 3, 1855 “Small pewee; tchevet, with a jerk of the head.”)

May 4, 1855 (" Myrtle-birds numerous, and sing their tea lee, tea lee in morning")

May 4, 1856 ("Shad-flies on the water, schooner-like.”)

May 4, 1856 (“See a peetweet on Dove Rock, which just peeps out. As soon as the rocks begin to be bare the peetweet comes and is seen teetering on them and skimming away from me.”)

May 4, 1856 ("The aspen there [the Island]just begun to leaf.")

May 4, 1858 ("I find hopping in the meadow a Rana halecina, much brighter than any I have seen this year. There is not only a vivid green halo about each spot, but the back is vivid light-green between the spots. I think this was not the case with any of the hundreds I saw a month ago!! Why??")

May 4, 1860 ("Currant out a day or two at least, and our first gooseberry a day later.")

May 5, 1858 ("The aspen leaves at Island to-day appear as big as a nine pence suddenly")

May 5, 1858 ("Saw and heard the small pewee yesterday.”)

May 6, 1858 (“The Salix rostrata staminate flowers are of very peculiar yellow, — a bright, what you might call yellow yellow.”)

May 7, 1852 ("The first summer yellow-birds on the willow causeway. The birds I have lately mentioned come not singly, as the earliest, but all at once, i. e. many yellowbirds all over town. Now I remember the yellowbird comes when the willows begin to leave out. (And the small pewee on the willows also.) ")

May 7, 1852 (“The first small pewee sings now che-vet, or rather chirrups chevet, tche-vet — a rather delicate bird with a large head and two white bars on wings. . . . Now I remember the yellowbird comes when the willows begin to leave out. (And the small pewee on the willows also.) ”)

May 7, 1853 ("As I advance up the Assabet, the lively note of the yellowbird is borne from the willows.")

May 8, 1860 ("The cinquefoil is closed in a cloudy day, and when the sun shines it is turned toward it.")

May 10, 1853 ("At this season the traveller passes through a golden gate on causeways where these willows are planted, as if he were approaching the entrance to Fairyland; and there will surely be found the yellowbird, and already from a distance is heard his note, a tche tche tche tcha tchar tcha, — ah, willow, willow.") 

May 10, 1858 ("For some days the Salix alba have shown their yellow wreaths here and there, suggesting the coming of the yellowbird, and now they are alive with them.")

May 17, 1853 ("The early cinquefoil is now in its prime and spots the banks and hillsides and dry meadows with its dazzling yellow. How lively! It is one of the most interesting yellow flowers. ")

May 17, 1860 ("Standing in the meadow near the early aspen at the island, I hear the first fluttering of leaves, - a peculiar sound, at first unaccountable to me”) 

May 2, 2014

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 

 

May 1  < <<<<< May 2  >>>>> May 3

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, May 2

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2023 

https://tinyurl.com/HDT2May