It flies through the green foliage as if it would ignite the leaves.

May 20

The 18th and 19th a rather gentle and warm May storm, more rain, methinks, than we have had before this spring at one time.

Began with thunder-showers on the night of the 18th, the flashing van of the storm, followed by the long, dripping main body, with, at very long intervals, an occasional firing or skirmishing in the rear or on the flanks.

6 A. M. To Island by river.

Probably a red-wing blackbird's nest, of grass, hung between two button-bushes; whitish eggs with irregular black marks.

Sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis), probably two days.

White oak, swamp white, and chestnut oak probably will open by the 22d.

The white ashes are in full flower now, and how long ? 8 A. M.-To Flint's Pond.

Cornus Canadensis just out.

Probably the C. florida should be set down to-day, since it just begins to shed pollen and its involucre is more open.

It is a fair but cool and windy day, a strong northwest wind, and the grass, to which the rain has given such a start, conspicuously waves, showing its lighter under side, and the buttercups toss in the wind.

The pitch and white pines have grown from one to five inches.

On Pine Hill.

In this clear morning light and a strong wind from the northwest, the mountains in the horizon, seen against some low, thin clouds in the background, look darker and more like earth than usual; you distinguish forest and pasture on them. This in the clear, cool atmosphere in the morning after a rain-storm, with the wind northwest. They will grow more ethereal, melting into the sky, as the day advances.

The beech is already one of the most densely clothed trees, or rather makes a great show of verdure from the size of its fully expanded light-green leaves, though some are later. The fresh shoots on low branches are five or six inches long.

It is an interesting tree to me, with its neat, close, tight-looking bark, like the dress which athletes wear, its bare instep, and roots beginning to branch like bird's feet, showing how it is planted and holds by the ground. Not merely stuck in the ground like a stick.

It gives the beholder the same pleasure that it does to see the timbers of a house above and around.

Do they blossom here? I found nuts, but apparently not sound, at Haverhill the other day,-last year's.

There are some slender, perfectly horizontal limbs which go zigzagging, as it were creeping through the air, only two or three feet above the ground, over the side-hill, as if they corresponded to concealed rills in the ground beneath.

Plenty of arums now in bloom. Probably my earliest one was in bloom, for I did not look within it.

What is that pretty, transparent moss in the brooks, which holds the rain or dewdrops so beautifully on the undersides of the leafets, through which they sparkle crystallinely? 

Fresh checkerberry shoots now.

The cedars are full of yellowish cedar apples and minute berries just formed, the effete staminiferous blossom still on. When did they begin to bloom? 

I find none of the rare hedyotis yet on Bare Hill.

The peach bloom is now gone and the apple bloom come.

Heard the seringo note, like a rattling watch-spring, from a flock passing swiftly overhead.

The wind makes such a din in the woods that the notes of birds are lost, and added to this is the sound of the waves of Flint's Pond breaking on the shore, the fresh surf. The pond is spotted with whitecaps, five or six feet long by one foot, like a thin flock of sheep running toward the southeast shore. The smallest lakes can be lashed into a sort of fury by the wind, and are quite ocean-like then. These caps are a striving to dilute the water with air.

The barberry will probably blossom to-day.

Here, by the side of the pond, a fire has recently run through the young woods on the hillside. It is surprising how clean it has swept the ground; only the very lowest and dampest rotten leaves remaining, but uvularias and smilacinas have pushed up here and there conspicuously on the black ground, a foot high.

At first you do not observe the full effect of the fire, walking amid the bare dead or dying trees, which wear a perfect winter aspect, which, as trees generally are not yet fully leaved out and you are still used to this, you do not notice, till you look up and see the still green tops everywhere above the height of fifteen feet.

Yet the trees do not bear many marks of fire commonly; they are but little blackened except where the fire has run a few feet up a birch, or paused at a dry stump, or a young evergreen has been killed and reddened by it and is now dropping a shower of red leaves.

Hemlock will blossom to-morrow.

The geranium is just out, 

May 20, 2018

and the lady’s-slipper. 

Some with old seed vessels are still seen.

Hear again, what I have heard for a week or more sometimes, that rasping, springy note, a very hoarse chirp, ooh, twee twee twee, from a bluish bird as big as a bluebird, with some bright yellow about head, white beneath and lateral tail-feathers, and black cheeks (?).

This and that sort of brown-creeper-like bird of May 12 — and the chickadee-like bird (which may be the chickadee), and the ah te ter twee of deep pine woods (which also may be the chickadee), I have not identified.

Arbor-vitæ has been out some time and the butter nut some days.

Mountain-ash on the 18th.

Larch apparently ten days.

Nemopanthes several days.

The swamp blueberry abundantly out.

Saw a tanager in Sleepy Hollow. It most takes the eye of any bird. You here have the red-wing reversed,-the deepest scarlet of the red-wing spread over the whole body, not on the wing-coverts merely, while the wings are black. It flies through the green foliage as if it would ignite the leaves.

Of deciduous trees and shrubs, the latest to leaf out, as I find by observation to-day, must be the panicled andromeda, rhodora, and button-bush.

In some places, however, the first has perfectly formed leaves, the rhodora at most not half unfolded, the button-bush for the most part just bursting buds.

But I have not seen the prinos and perhaps one or two other shrubs.

I have no doubt that the button-bush may be called the latest of all.

Is that female ash by river at Lee's Hill a new kind? In bloom fully May 18th.

Even this remote forest, which stands so far away and innocent, has this terrible foe Fire to fear. Lightning may ignite a dead tree or the dry leaves, and in a few minutes a green forest be blackened and killed. This liability to accident from which no part of nature is exempt.

Plucked to-day a bunch of Viola pedata, consisting of four divisions or offshoots around a central or fifth root, all united and about one inch in diameter at the ground and four inches at top. [contained 49 Flowers, 22 Buds] And perhaps more buds would still make their appearance, and undoubtedly half a dozen more would have blown the next day. Forming a complex, close little testudo of violet scales above their leaves.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 20, 1853

Probably a red-wing blackbird's nest, of grass, hung between two button-bushes; whitish eggs with irregular black marks. See May 25, 1855 ("Red-wing’s nest with four eggs. . .curiously and neatly marked with brown-black spots and lines on the large end.”); June 1, 1857 ("A red-wing's nest, four eggs, . . the hieroglyphics on these eggs . . ..who determines the style of the marking?") See See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Red-wing in Spring

It flies through the green foliage as if it would ignite the leaves. See   May 20, 1858 ("See tanagers, male and female, in the top of a pine, one red, other yellow, from below. We have got to these high colors among birds.") See also  A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Scarlet Tanager

The lady’s-slipper just out. See May 20, 1852 ("A lady’s-slipper well budded and now white."); see also May 18, 1851 ("Lady's-slipper almost fully blossomed”).; May 19, 1860 (“At the Ministerial Swamp I see a white lady's-slipper almost out, fully grown, with red ones.”); May 30, 1858 ("Hear of lady's-slipper seen the 23d; how long?")

Abundant fine and light seed, buoyed up and wafted far through the atmosphere.

May 20. 

A strong, cold west wind. 60° at 2 P. M. 

To Walden. 

The Carex vulgaris is more glaucous than the stricta.

Mouse-ear down at last. 

Scirpus planifolius — how long? — apparently in prime in woods about the bottom of the long south bay of Walden, say two rods southwest. 

Judging from Hind's Report of his survey of the region between the Assiniboine and Saskatchewan Rivers, the prevailing trees — and they are small — are aspens and willows, which, if let alone, i. e., if the prairies were not burned by the Indians, might at last make a soil for nobler forests. 

No wonder that these small trees are so widely dispersed; their abundant fine and light seed, being buoyed up and wafted far through the atmosphere, speedily clothe the burnt tracts of British America. Heavy-seeded trees are slow to spread themselves, but both air and water combine to transport the seeds of these trees.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 20, 1860

The Carex vulgaris is more glaucous than the stricta. See May 10, 1860 ("A sedge darker than the stricta and not in tufts, quite short. Is it the C. vulgaris? Its leading spikes are effete. ")

Scirpus planifolius  apparently in prime. See May 11, 1859 ("Scirpus planifolius in bloom on Smith's wooded hill, side of Saw Mill Brook.")

Mouse-ear down at last. See May 26, 1855 ("Already the mouse-ear down begins to blow in the fields and whiten the grass.")

No wonder that these small trees are so widely dispersed, See  December 30, 1855 ("For a few days I have noticed the snow sprinkled with alder and birch scales. . . .The high wind is scattering them over the snow there."); February 14, 1856 ("I was struck to-day by the size and continuousness of the natural willow hedge on the east side of the rail road causeway, at the foot of the embankment, next to the fence. Some twelve years ago, when that causeway was built through the meadows, there were no willows there or near there, but now, just at the foot of the sand-bank, where it meets the meadow, and on the line of the fence, quite a dense willow hedge has planted itself. [T]he seeds have been blown hither from a distance, and lodged against the foot of the bank, just as the snow-drift accumulates there. "); March 2, 1856 ("How unwearied Nature is, spreading her seeds.");  May 26, 1857 ("Some of the earliest willows about warm edges of woods are gone to seed and downy"); July 9, 1857 ("I think I see how this [willow]tree is propagated by its seeds. Its countless minute brown seeds, just perceptible to the naked eye in the midst of their cotton, are wafted with the cotton to the water, — most abundantly about a fortnight ago, — and there they drift . . ."); October 16, 1860 (Looking from a hilltop, I observe that pines, white birches, red maples, alders, etc., often grow in more or less regular rounded or oval or conical patches, while oaks, chestnuts, hickories, etc., simply form woods of greater or less extent, whether by themselves or mixed, and do not naturally spring up in an oval form. This is a consequence of the different manner in which trees which have winged seeds and those which have not are planted")

A very wild sight.

May 20. 

P. M. – Up Assabet. 

A cloudy afternoon, with a cool east wind, producing a mist. 

May 20, 2018

Hundreds of swallows are now skimming close over the river, at its broadest part, where it is shallow and runs the swiftest, just below the Island, for a distance of twenty rods. There are bank, barn, cliff, and chimney swallows, all mingled together and continually scaling back and forth, – a very lively sight. 

They keep descending or stooping to within a few inches of the water on a curving wing, without quite touching it, and I suppose are attracted by some small insects which hover close over it. They also stoop low about me as I stand on the flat island there, but I do not perceive the insects. They rarely rise more than five feet above the surface, and a general twittering adds to the impression of sociability. 

The principal note is the low grating sound of the bank swallow, and I hear the vit vit of the barn swallow. The cliff swallow, then, is here. 

Are the insects in any measure confined to that part of the river? Or are they congregated for the sake of society? I have also in other years noticed them over another swift place, at Hubbard's Bath, and also, when they first come, in smaller numbers, over the still and smooth water under the lee of the Island wood. They are thick as the gnats which perhaps they catch. 

Swallows are more confident and fly nearer to man than most birds. It may be because they are more protected by the sentiment and superstitions of men. 

The season is more backward on account of the cloudy and rainy weather of the last four or five days and some preceding. 

The Polygonatum pubescens, not quite. 

The red oak is not out. 

Hear a quail whistle. 

I notice that the sugar maple opposite Barrett's does not bloom this year, nor does the canoe birch by the Hemlocks bear sterile catkins. Perhaps they more or less respect the alternate years. 

3.30 P. M. — To Brister's Hill. 

Going along the deep valley in the woods, just before entering the part called Laurel Glen, I heard a noise, and saw a fox running off along the shrubby side-hill. It looked like a rather small dirty-brown fox, and very clumsy, running much like a wood chuck. It had a dirty or dark brown tail, with very little white to the tip. A few steps further I came upon the remains of a woodchuck, yet warm, which it had been eating. Head, legs, and tail, all remained, united by the skin, but the bowels and a good part of the flesh were eaten. This was evidently a young fox, say three quarters grown, or perhaps less, and appeared as full as a tick. 

There was a fox-hole within three rods, with a very large sand-heap, several cartloads, before it, much trodden. Hearing a bird of which I was in search, I turned to examine it, when I heard a bark behind me, and, looking round, saw an old fox on the brow of the hill on the west side of the valley, amid the bushes, about ten rods off, looking down at me. 

At first it was a short, puppy-like bark, but afterward it began to bark on a higher key and more prolonged, very unlike a dog, a very ragged half-screaming bur ar-r-r. I proceeded along the valley half a dozen rods after a little delay (the fox being gone), and then looked round to see if it returned to the woodchuck. 

I then saw a full-grown fox, perhaps the same as the last, cross the valley through the thin low wood fifteen or twenty rods behind me, but from east to west, pausing and looking at me anxiously from time to time. It was rather light tawny (not fox-colored) with dusky-brown bars, and looked very large, wolf-like. The full-grown fox stood much higher on its legs and was longer, but the body was apparently not much heavier than that of the young. 

Going a little further, I came to another hole, and ten feet off was a space of a dozen square feet amid some little oaks, worn quite bare and smooth, apparently by the playing of the foxes, and the ground close around a large stump about a rod from the hole was worn bare and hard, and all the bark and much of the rotten wood was pawed or gnawed off lately. They had pawed a deep channel about one and in between the roots, perhaps for insects. There lay the remains of another woodchuck, now dry, the head, skin, and legs being left, and also part of the skin of a third, and the bones of another animal, and some partridge feathers. The old foxes had kept their larder well supplied. 

Within a rod was another hole, apparently a back door, having no heap of sand, and five or six rods off another in the side of the hill with a small sand-heap, and, as far down the valley, another with a large sand-heap and a back door with none. There was a well-beaten path from the one on the side hill five or six rods long to one in the valley, and there was much blackish dung about the holes and stump and the path. By the hole furthest down the valley was another stump, which had been gnawed (?) very much and trampled and pawed about like the other. I suppose the young foxes play there. 

There were half a dozen holes or more, and what with the skulls and feathers and skin and bones about, I was reminded of Golgotha. These holes were some of them very large and conspicuous, a foot wide vertically, by eight or ten inches, going into the side-hill with a curving stoop, and there was commonly a very large heap of sand before them, trodden smooth. It was a sprout-land valley, cut off but a year or two since. 

As I stood by the last hole, I heard the old fox bark, and saw her (?) near the brow of the hill on the north west, amid the bushes, restless and anxious, overlooking me a dozen or fourteen rods off. I was, on doubt, by the hole in which the young were. She uttered at very short intervals a prolonged, shrill, screeching kind of bark, beginning lower and rising to a very high key, lasting two seconds; a very broken and ragged sound, more like the scream of a large and angry bird than the bark of a dog, trilled like a piece of vibrating metal at the end. 

It moved restlessly back and forth, or approached nearer, and stood or sat on its haunches like a dog with its tail laid out in a curve on one side, and when it barked it laid its ears flat back and stretched its nose forward. Sometimes it uttered a short, puppy like, snappish bark. It was not fox-colored now, but a very light tawny or wolf-color, dark-brown or dusky beneath in a broad line from its throat; its legs the same, with a broad dusky perpendicular band on its haunches and similar ones on its tail, and a small whitish spot on each side of its mouth. There it sat like a chieftain on his hills, looking, methought, as big as a prairie wolf, and shaggy like it, anxious and even fierce, as I peered through my glass. 

I noticed, when it withdrew, – I too withdrawing in the opposite direction, — that as it had descended the hill a little way and wanted to go off over the pinnacle without my seeing which way it went, it ran one side about ten feet, till it was behind a small white pine, then turned at a right angle and ascended the hill directly, with the pine between us. The sight of it suggested that two or three might attack a man. The note was a shrill, vibrating scream or cry; could easily be heard a quarter of a mile. 

How many woodchucks, rabbits, partridges, etc., etc., they must kill, and yet how few of them are seen! A very wolfish color. It must have been a large fox, and, if it is true that the old are white on the sides of the face, an old one. They evidently used more than a half dozen holes within fifteen rods. I withdrew the sooner for fear by his barking he would be betrayed to some dog or gunner. 

It was a very wild sight to see the wolf-like parent circling about me in the thin wood, from time to time pausing to look and bark at me. 

This appears to be nearest to the cross fox of Audubon, and is considered a variety of the red by him and most others, not white beneath as the red fox of Harlan. Emmons says of the red fox, “In the spring the color appears to fade,” and that some are “pale yellow,” but does not describe minutely. This was probably a female, for Bell says of the English fox that the female “loses all her timidity and shyness when suckling her young;” also that they are a year and a half in attaining their full size.

[I find afterward three or four more fox-holes near by, and see where they have sat on a large upturned stump, which had heaved up earth with it. Many large pieces of woodchuck's skin about these holes. They leave the head and feet. A scent of carrion about the holes.]

Hear the pepe. 

See tanagers, male and female, in the top of a pine, one red, other yellow, from below. We have got to these high colors among birds. 

Saw in the street a young cat owl, one of two which Skinner killed in Walden Woods yesterday. It was almost ready to fly, at least two and a half feet in alar extent; tawny with many black bars, and darker on wings. Holmes, in Patent Office Report, says they “pair early in February.” 

So I visited the nest. It was in a large white pine close on the north side of the path, some ten rods west of the old Stratton cellar in the woods. This is the largest pine thereabouts, and the nest is some thirty-five feet high on two limbs close to the main stem, and, according to Skinner, was not much more than a foot across, made of small sticks, nearly flat, “without fine stuff!” There were but two young. This is a path which somebody travels every half-day, at least, and only a stone's throw from the great road. There were many white droppings about and large rejected pellets containing the vertebrae and hair of a skunk. 

As I stood there, I heard the crows making a great noise some thirty or forty rods off, and immediately suspected that they were pestering one of the old owls, which Skinner had not seen. It proved so, for, as I approached, the owl sailed away from amidst a white pine top, with the crows in full pursuit, and he looked very large, stately, and heavy, like a seventy-four among schooners. I soon knew by the loud cawing of the crows that he had alighted again some forty rods off, and there again I found him perched high on a white pine, the large tawny fellow with black dashes and large erect horns. Away he goes again, and the crows after him.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 20, 1858

Hundreds of swallows are now skimming close over the river. See note to May 16, 1857 (“An unusual number of swallows are flying low over [the meadows].”)

I heard the old fox bark, a prolonged, shrill, screeching kind of bark, beginning lower and rising to a very high key, lasting two seconds; a very broken and ragged sound. See January 23, 1858 ("What a smothered, ragged, feeble, and unmusical sound is the bark of the fox! ")

Hear the pepe. See May 18,  1857 ("Hear the pepe, how long?”) ; June 6, 1857 ("As I sit on Lee's Cliff, I see a pe-pe on the topmost dead branch of a hickory eight or ten rods off. . . . mouse-colored above and head (which is perhaps darker), white throat, and narrow white beneath, with no white on tail.”); June 10, 1855 ("Nest of the Muscicapa Cooperi, or pe pe, on a white spruce in the Holden Swamp . . .”)

Tanagers, male and female, in the top of a pine, one red, other yellow . . . these high colors among birds. See May 23, 1853 ("I hear and see a tanager. How he enhances the wildness and wealth of the woods! That contrast of a red bird with the green pines and the blue sky! ...”); May 24, 1860 ("You can hardly believe that a living creature can wear such colors.”); May 28, 1855 (" I see a tanager, the most brilliant and tropical-looking bird we have, bright-scarlet with black wings, the scarlet appearing on the rump again between wing-tips. . . .A remarkable contrast with the green pines.”)

It was a very wild sight. See November 27, 1857 (“Returning, I see a fox run across the road in the twilight . . . I feel a certain respect for him, . . ., he still maintains himself free and wild in our midst.”)  and note to January 21, 1857 (“It is remarkable how many tracks of foxes you will see . . . yet a regular walker will not glimpse one oftener than once in eight or ten years.”)

This appears to be nearest to the cross fox of Audubon; Emmons says of the red fox that some are “pale yellow.” See January 30, 1855 ("Minott to-day enumerates the red, gray, black, and what he calls the Sampson fox.”) and Z. Thompson, Natural History of Vermont 35 (“A blackish stripe passing from the neck down the back and another crossing it alright angles over the shoulders . . . Instead of considering the Cross Fox a distinct species, I have concluded to adopt the opinion of Dr. Richardson, who regards it merely as a variety of the common fox.”)

Postpone your journey till the May storm is over.

May 20. 

Began to rain the latter part of yesterday, and rains all day against all desire and expectation, raising the river and, in low land, rotting the seed. Gardeners wish that their land had not been planted nor plowed. Postpone your journey till the May storm is over.

Starflower
May 20, 2017

It has been confidently asserted and believed that if the cold in the winter exceeded a certain degree it surely killed the peach blossoms. Last winter we had greater cold than has ever been generally observed here, and yet it is a remarkable spring for peach blossoms; thus once for all disproving that assertion. 

Everything in the shape of a peach tree blossoms this season, even a mutilated shrub on the railroad causeway, sprung from a stone which some passenger cast out. Nevertheless the lowest limbs, which were covered by the drifts, have blossomed much the earliest and fullest, as usual, and this after-blow is quite unexpected. Peach trees are revealed along fences where they were quite unobserved before. 

The expression in Sophocles' (Edipus at Colonos, "White Colonos," said to refer to the silvery soil, reminded me at first of the tracts now whitened by the pyrus blossoms, which may be mistaken for hoary rocks. Vide this description of Colonos. 

Have all the Canada plums that striking pink color at the base of the blossoms at last? 

I find that the corydalis sprig which I brought home five days ago keeps fresh and blossoms remarkably well in water, — its delicate bright flesh-colored or pink flowers and glaucous leaves! 

How suddenly, after all, pines seem to shoot up and fill the pastures! 

I wonder that the farmers do not earlier encourage their growth. To-day, perchance, as I go through some run-out pasture, I observe many young white pines dotting the field, where last year I had noticed only blackberry vines; but I see that many are already destroyed or injured by the cows which have dived into them to scratch their heads or for sport (such is their habit; they break off the leading shoot and bend down the others of different evergreens), or perchance where the farmer has been mowing them down, and I think the owner would rather have a pasture here than a wood-lot. A year or two later, as I pass through the same field, I am surprised to find myself in a flourishing young wood-lot, from which the cows are now carefully fenced out, though there are many open spaces, and I perceive how much further advanced it would have been if the farmer had been more provident and had begun to abet nature a few years earlier. 

It is surprising by what leaps — two or three feet in a season — the pines stretch toward the sky, affording shelter also to various hardwoods which plant themselves in their midst. 

I do not know a white pine in the town which has been set out twenty-five years.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 20, 1857

Postpone your journey till the May storm is over. See May 17, 1853 ("Does not summer begin after the May storm?”); compare May 13, 1852 (" They who do not walk in the woods in the rain never behold them in their freshest, most radiant and blooming beauty.”)

Have all the Canada plums that striking pink color at the base of the blossoms at last? See note to May 10, 1856 (“Mr. Prichard’s Canada plum will open as soon as it is fair weather.”)

White pines. See April 29, 1857 (“I am surprised to see how some blackberry pastures and other fields are filling up with pines, trees which I thought the cows had almost killed two or three years ago; so that what was then a pasture is now a young wood-lot.”); May 18, 1857 ("Many are now setting out pines and other evergreens, transplanting some wildness into the neighborhood of their houses. I do not know of a white pine that has been set out twenty-five years in the town. It is a new fashion.”); May 19, 1854 ("The white pine shoots are now two or three inches long generally, — upright light marks on the body of dark green.”); July 4, 1860 ("The white pine shoot which on the 19th of June had grown sixteen and a quarter inches and on the 27th twenty and three quarters is now twenty-three and an eighth inches long.”)

A Book of the Seasons: May 20.

May 20.

Now is the time for

bright and breezy days blowing

off apple blossoms.

May 20, 1854

May 20, 2018

It is a fair but cool and windy day, a strong northwest wind, and the grass, to which the rain has given such a start, conspicuously waves, showing its lighter under side, and the buttercups toss in the wind.  May 20, 1853

In this clear morning light and a strong wind from the northwest, the mountains in the horizon, seen against some low, thin clouds in the background, look darker and more like earth than usual. . . This in the clear, cool atmosphere in the morning after a rain-storm, with the wind northwest. They will grow more ethereal, melting into the sky, as the day advances. May 20, 1853

See the lightning, but can not hear the thunder. May 20, 1854 

Rains a little. May 20, 1855

Was awaked and put into sounder sleep than ever early this morning by the distant crashing of thunder, and now , , , I hear it in mid-afternoon, muttering, crashing in the muggy air. . . and get a few sprinkles in the sun. May 20, 1856

Nature has found her hoarse summer voice again,. . . Even as the birds sing tumultuously and glance by with fresh and brilliant plumage, so now is Nature’s grandest voice heard, and her sharpest flashes seen. The air has resumed its voice, and the lightning, like a yellow spring flower, illumines the dark banks of the clouds.  May 20, 1856. . . . 

Began to rain the latter part of yesterday, and rains all day against all desire and expectation. May 20, 1857

A cloudy afternoon, with a cool east wind, producing a mist. May 20, 1858

The season is more backward on account of the cloudy and rainy weather of the last four or five days and some preceding. May 20, 1858

A strong, cold west wind. 60° at 2 P. M. May 20, 1860

Last winter we had greater cold than has ever been generally observed here, and yet it is a remarkable spring for peach blossoms;. .the lowest limbs, which were covered by the drifts, have blossomed much the earliest and fullest, as usual, and this after-blow is quite unexpected. Peach trees are revealed along fences where they were quite unobserved before. May 20, 1857

Some apple trees in blossom; most are just ready to burst forth, the leaves being half formed. May 20, 1852

The peach bloom is now gone and the apple bloom come. May 20, 1853

Methinks we always have at this time those washing winds as now, when the choke-berry is in bloom, — bright and breezy days blowing off some apple blossoms. May 20, 1854

A lady’s-slipper well budded and now white. May 20, 1852 

The geranium is just out, and the lady’s-slipper. May 20, 1853

The Viola ovata is of a deep purple blue, is darkest and has most of the red in it; the V. pedata is smooth and pale-blue, delicately tinged with purple reflections; the cucullata-is more decidedly blue, slatyblue, and darkly striated. May 20, 1852

The white violets by the spring are rather scarce now. May 20, 1852

Plucked to-day a bunch of Viola pedata, May 20, 1853

The Carex vulgaris is more glaucous than the stricta.  May 20, 1860

Mouse-ear down at last.  May 20, 1860

Scirpus planifolius — how long? — apparently in prime in woods about the bottom of the long south bay of Walden, say two rods southwest.  May 20, 1860

The white ashes are in full flower now, and how long ? May 20, 1853

Is that female ash by river at Lee's Hill a new kind? In bloom fully May 18th. May 20, 1853

White oak, swamp white, and chestnut oak probably will open by the 22d. May 20, 1853

The red oak is not out. May 20, 1858

The red oak leaves are very pretty and finely cut, about an inch and three quarters long. Like most young leaves, they are turned  back around the twig, parasol-like. May 20, 1852

The pitch and white pines have grown from one to five inches. May 20, 1853

It is surprising by what leaps — two or three feet in a season — the pines stretch toward the sky, affording shelter also to various hardwoods which plant themselves in their midst.  May 20, 1857

Hear the pepe. May 20, 1858

I now see distinctly the chestnut-sided warbler. May 20, 1856

I see, on a locust in the burying-ground, the Sylvia striata, or black-poll warbler, busily picking about the locust buds and twigs. May 20, 1856

A barn swallow accompanied me across the Depot Field. . .wheeling and tacking incessantly on all sides and repeatedly dashing within a rod of me.  It is an agreeable sight to watch one. Nothing lives in the air but is in rapid motion. May 20, 1852

Bank swallows are very lively about the low sand—bank just beyond, in which are fifty holes. May 20, 1856

Hundreds of swallows are now skimming close over the river . . . There are bank, barn, cliff, and chimney swallows, all mingled together and continually scaling back and forth, – a very lively sight . . . Swallows are more confident and fly nearer to man than most birds. May 20, 1858

Probably a red-wing blackbird's nest, of grass, hung between two button-bushes; whitish eggs with irregular black marks.  May 20, 1853

Saw a tanager in Sleepy Hollow. It most takes the eye of any bird. You here have the red-wing reversed,-the deepest scarlet of the red-wing spread over the whole body, not on the wing-coverts merely, while the wings are black. It flies through the green foliage as if it would ignite the leaves.  May 20, 1853

See tanagers, male and female, in the top of a pine, one red, other yellow, from below. We have got to these high colors among birds. May 20, 1858

How suddenly, after all, pines seem to shoot up and fill the pastures! May 20, 1857

No wonder that these small trees [aspens and willows] are so widely dispersed; their abundant fine and light seed, being buoyed up and wafted far through the atmosphere. May 20, 1860

What is that pretty, transparent moss in the brooks, which holds the rain or dewdrops so beautifully on the undersides of the leafets, through which they sparkle crystallinely? May 20, 1853

I see in the northwest first rise, in the rose-tinted horizon sky, a dark, narrow, craggy cloud, narrow and projecting as no cloud on earth, seen against the rose-tinged sky, — the crest of a thunder-storm, beautiful and grand. May 20, 1854

Postpone your journey till the May storm is over. May 20, 1857

Now is the season of the leafing of the trees . . . Perchance the beginning of summer may be dated from the fully formed leaves, when dense shade begins. I will see. May 20, 1852

All flowers are beautiful. May 20, 1852

*****

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

  A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Scarlet Tanager

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lady Slipper

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Mouse-ear

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Apple Blossom Time

*****

 February 14, 1856 ("I was struck to-day by the size and continuousness of the natural willow hedge on the east side of the rail road causeway, at the foot of the embankment, next to the fence. Some twelve years ago, when that causeway was built through the meadows, there were no willows there or near there, but now, just at the foot of the sand-bank, where it meets the meadow, and on the line of the fence, quite a dense willow hedge has planted itself. [T]he seeds have been blown hither from a distance, and lodged against the foot of the bank, just as the snow-drift accumulates there.")

 March 2, 1856 ("How unwearied Nature is, spreading her seeds.")

 April 29, 1857 (“I am surprised to see how some blackberry pastures and other fields are filling up with pines, trees which I thought the cows had almost killed two or three years ago; so that what was then a pasture is now a young wood-lot.”)

 May 7, 1854 ("As the twilight approaches, the mountains assume a deeper blue.") 

May 10, 1860 ("A sedge darker than the stricta and not in tufts, quite short. Is it the C. vulgaris? Its leading spikes are effete.")

May 11, 1859 ("Scirpus planifolius in bloom on Smith's wooded hill, side of Saw Mill Brook.")

May 13, 1852 (" They who do not walk in the woods in the rain never behold them in their freshest, most radiant and blooming beauty.”) 

May 16, 1854 ("Look into several red-wing blackbirds' nests which are now being built, but no eggs yet. They are generally hung between two twigs, say of button-bush.")

May 17, 1853 ("Does not summer begin after the May storm?”)

. May 17, 1860 ("Early aspen down has just begun (before mouse ear)")

May 18,  1857 ("Hear the pepe, how long?”)

May 18, 1851 ("Lady's-slipper almost fully blossomed”) 

 May 18, 1851 ("The scarlet tanagers are come.")

. May 18, 1857  ("Pratt has found perfectly white Viola pedata behind Easterbrook place, and cultivated them, but now lost them")

May 19, 1856 ("The tanager is now heard plainly and frequently. ")

May 19, 1860 (“At the Ministerial Swamp I see a white lady's-slipper almost out, fully grown, with red ones.”)

May 19, 1854 ("The white pine shoots are now two or three inches long generally, — upright light marks on the body of dark green.”)

 May 19, 1860 ("The grass, especially the meadow-grasses, are seen to wave distinctly, and the shadows of the bright fair-weather cumuli are sweeping over them.")

May 21, 1852 ("Viola pedata along the woodland paths, in high land. ")

May 21, 1854 ("A tanager, — the surprising red bird, — against the darkening green leaves.")

May 23, 1853 ("I hear and see a tanager. How he enhances the wildness and wealth of the woods! That contrast of a red bird with the green pines and the blue sky! ...”)

 May 24, 1854 ("As I return down the hill, my eyes are cast toward the very dark mountains in the northwest horizon.")

 May 24, 1854 ("The mouse-ear down begins to blow in fields.")

May 24, 1860 ("You can hardly believe that a living creature can wear such colors.”)

May 25, 1855 ("Red-wing’s nest with four eggs. . .curiously and neatly marked with brown-black spots and lines on the large end.”)

May 26, 1855 ("Already the mouse-ear down begins to blow in the fields and whiten the grass.")

May 26, 1857 ("Some of the earliest willows about warm edges of woods are gone to seed and downy")

May 28, 1855 (" I see a tanager, the most brilliant and tropical-looking bird we have, bright-scarlet with black wings, the scarlet appearing on the rump again between wing-tips. . . .A remarkable contrast with the green pines.”)

May 30, 1858 ("Hear of lady's-slipper seen the 23d; how long?")

June 1, 1857 ("A red-wing's nest, four eggs, . . the hieroglyphics on these eggs . . ..who determines the style of the marking?") 

June 6, 1857 ("As I sit on Lee's Cliff, I see a pe-pe on the topmost dead branch of a hickory eight or ten rods off. . . . mouse-colored above and head (which is perhaps darker), white throat, and narrow white beneath, with no white on tail.”)

June 10, 1855 ("Nest of the Muscicapa Cooperi, or pe pe, on a white spruce in the Holden Swamp”)

July 4, 1860 ("The white pine shoot which on the 19th of June had grown sixteen and a quarter inches and on the 27th twenty and three quarters is now twenty-three and an eighth inches long.”)

July 9, 1857 ("I think I see how this [willow]tree is propagated by its seeds. Its countless minute brown seeds, just perceptible to the naked eye in the midst of their cotton, are wafted with the cotton to the water, — most abundantly about a fortnight ago, — and there they drift")

 October 16, 1860 (Looking from a hilltop, I observe that pines, white birches, red maples, alders, etc., often grow in more or less regular rounded or oval or conical patches, while oaks, chestnuts, hickories, etc., simply form woods of greater or less extent, whether by themselves or mixed, and do not naturally spring up in an oval form. This is a consequence of the different manner in which trees which have winged seeds and those which have not are planted")

 December 30, 1855 ("For a few days I have noticed the snow sprinkled with alder and birch scales. . . .The high wind is scattering them over the snow there.")

May 20.

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 © 2009-2021

The distant crashing of thunder.

May 20

Fir-balsam (ours in grove) apparently two or three days, for it [is] almost entirely effete; cones white, one inch long nearly. 

Was awaked and put into sounder sleep than ever early this morning by the distant crashing of thunder, and now, — P. M. (to Beck Stow’s),— I hear it in mid-afternoon, muttering, crashing in the muggy air in mid-heaven, a little south of the village as I go through it, like the tumbling down of piles of boards, and get a few sprinkles in the sun. 

Nature has found her hoarse summer voice again, like the lowing of a cow let out to pasture. It is Nature’s rutting season. Even as the birds sing tumultuously and glance by with fresh and brilliant plumage, so now is Nature’s grandest voice heard, and her sharpest flashes seen. The air has resumed its voice, and the lightning, like a yellow spring flower, illumines the dark banks of the clouds. All the pregnant earth is bursting into life like a mildew, accompanied with noise and fire and tumult. Some oestrus stings her that she dashes headlong against the steeples and bellows hollowly, making the earth tremble. She comes dropping rain like a cow with overflowing udder. The winds drive her; the dry fields milk her. 

It is the familiar note of another warbler, just arrived, echoing amid the roofs. I see, on a locust in the burying-ground, the Sylvia striata, or black-poll warbler, busily picking about the locust buds and twigs. Black head and above, with olive (green) wings and two white bars; white all beneath, with a very distinct black line from throat to shoulders; flesh-colored legs; bill, dark above, light beneath. Hear no note. Saw it well. 

At Moore’s Swamp on Bedford road, myriads of pollywogs half an inch long darken or blacken the shore, chiefly head as yet. 

Bank swallows are very lively about the low sand-bank just beyond, in which are fifty holes.

I now see distinctly the chestnut-sided warbler (of the 18th and 17th), by Beck Stow’s. It is very lively on the maples, birches, etc., over the edge of the swamp. Sings eech eech eech | wichy wichy | tchea or itch itch itch | witty witty |  tchea. Yet this note I represented on the 18th by tche tche tche | tchut tchutter we. 

The andromeda has apparently been out several days, but no buck-bean there yet, nor will for a day or two. 

See and hear a stake-driver in the swamp. It took one short pull at its pump and stopped. 

Two marsh hawks, male and female, flew about me a long time, screaming, the female largest, with ragged wings, as I stood on the neck of the peninsula. This induced me to climb four pines, but I tore my clothes, got pitched all over, and found only squirrel; yet they have, no doubt, a nest thereabouts. 

Haynes the carpenter calls that large glaucous puff that grows on the Andromeda paniculata, swamp-apple; says he has eaten as much as three bushels (!) of them when he was a boy, and likes them. That is what he was raised on. 

After I got him home, I observed a large leech on the upper shell of my great turtle. He stoutly resisted being turned over, by sinking his claws into the ground; was aware that that was his weak side, and, when turned, would instantly run out his head and turn himself back. No wonder the Orientals rested the world on such a broad back. 

Such broad health and strength underlies Nature.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  May 20, 1856

I hear it in mid-afternoon, muttering, crashing in the muggy air in mid-heaven. . . .Nature has found her hoarse summer voice again. Compare May 20, 1854 ("See the lightning, but can not hear the thunder.”);  May 17, 1853 ("Does not summer begin after the May storm?”)

At Moore’s Swamp on Bedford road, myriads of pollywogs. See note to May 19, 1857 ("See myriads of minute pollywogs, recently hatched, in the water of Moore's Swamp.”)

I see, on a locust in the burying-ground, the Sylvia striata, or black-poll warbler, busily picking about the locust buds and twigs. See  May 27, 1860 ("The Sylvia striata are the commonest bird in the street, as I go to the post-office, for several days past. I see six (four males, two females) on one of our little fir trees; are apparently as many more on another close by."); June 4,1860 ("The black-poll warblers (Sylvia striata) appear to have left, and some other warblers, if not generally, with this first clear and bright and warm, peculiarly June weather, immediately after the May rain. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Black-poll Warbler

 Bank swallows are very lively about the low sand-bank just beyond, in which are fifty holes. See May 7, 1856 (“A hundred or more bank swallows at 2 P. M. (I suspect I have seen them for some time)”); May 11, 1856 ("There are many swallows circling low over the river behind Monroe’s, — bank swallows, barn, republican, chimney, and white-bellied. These are all circling together a foot or two over the water, passing within ten or twelve feet of me in my boat."); May 12, 1856 ("I see, in the road beyond Luther Hosmer’s, in different places, two bank swallows which were undoubtedly killed by the four days’ northeast rain we have just had."); May 13, 1856 ("In the swallows’ holes behind Dennis’s, I find two more dead bank swallows, and one on the sand beneath, and the feathers of two more which some creature has eaten. This makes at least seven dead bank swallows in consequence of the long, cold northeast rain.")

I now see distinctly the chestnut-sided warbler (of the 18th and 17th), by Beck Stow’s. See May 17, 1860 ("A chestnut - sided warbler , — the handsome bird , — with a bright-yellow crown and yellow and black striped back and bright-chestnut sides, not shy, busily picking about the expanding leaves of a white birch \"); May 18, 1856 (" Also another clear pure white beneath, and vent, and side-head; black above, finely marked with yellow; yellow bars on wings; and golden crown; black bill and legs; with a clear  sweet warble like tche tche tche , tchut tchutter we.  Can this be a chestnut-sided warbler, and I not see the chestnut? [It is. Vide 20th. Saw it also the 17th here.]") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chestnut-sided Warbler

The andromeda has apparently been out several days. See May 24, 1854 ("Wade into Beck Stow's. . . . Surprised to find the Andromeda Polifolia in bloom and apparently past its prime at least a week or more.")

See and hear a stake-driver in the swamp. It took one short pull at its pump and stopped. See  April 24, 1854("I hear the loud and distinct pump-a-gor of a stake-driver. Thus he announces himself."); April, 25 1858 ("Goodwin says he heard a stake-driver several days ago."); May 9, 1853 ("At sundown paddled up the river. The pump-like note of a stake-driver from the fenny place across the Lee meadow."); May 9, 1857 (" Hear stake-driver."); June 15, 1851 ("The sound of the stake-driver at a distance, — like that made by a man pumping in a neighboring farmyard, watering his cattle, or like chopping wood before his door on a frosty morning, and I can imagine like driving a stake in a meadow. The pumper. . . .before I was further off than I thought, so now I was nearer than I thought"); October 26, 1858 ("[Minott] says that some call the stake-driver “'belcher squelcher,” and some, “wollerkertoot.” I used to call them “pump-er-gor’. ” Some say “slug-toot.”See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, American Bittern (the Stake-Diver)

Two marsh hawks, male and female, flew about me a long time, screaming . . . they have, no doubt, a nest thereabouts. See 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 and screaming, apparently looking for frogs or the like. Or have they not a nest near? They hover very near me.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  the Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)

My great turtle . . . stoutly resisted being turned over, by sinking his claws into the ground. See May 18, 1856 ("He looked like an antediluvian under that green , shaggy shell , tougher than the rock you mistake it for . . . He was fourteen and one half inches long by twelve at the broadest places, and weighed twenty-five pounds and three ounces. The claws were an inch and a quarter long beyond the skin , and very stout. You had to exert yourself to turn him over on a plane surface, he held down so firmly with his claws, as if grown to it.")

No wonder the Orientals rested the world on such a broad back. See May 4, 1852 ("Hindoos made the world rest on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and had nothing to put under the tortoise.")

Such broad health and strength underlies Nature. See October 16, 1859 ("The snapping turtle, too, must find a place among the constellations, though . . . if there is no place for him overhead, he can serve us bravely underneath, supporting the earth.") ; See also  August 23, 1853 ("All Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end"); December 16, 1853 ("Would you be well, see that you are attuned to each mood of nature"); Walden ("Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength")

So now is Nature’s 

grandest voice heard, and her 

sharpest flashes seen.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The distant crashing of thunder

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560520