Chickadees and jays are heard from the shore as in winter.

October 18.

Up river to Bittern Cliff.

October 18, 2020

 (avesong)

A mild still but cloudy or rather misty afternoon,

The water is at present perfectly smooth and calm but covered with a kind of smoky or hazy film.

Nevertheless the reflections of distant woods though less distinct are softer seen through this smoky and darkened atmosphere.

I speak only of the reflections as seen in the broader bays and longer reaches of the river as at the Willow End.

The general impression made by the river landscape now is that of bareness and bleakness the black willow not yet the golden and the button bush having lost almost all their leaves the latter perhaps all and the last is covered with the fuzzy mikania blossoms gone to seed a dirty white.

There are a very few polygonums hydropiperaides and perhaps the unknown rose tinted one but most have withered before the frosts.

The vegetation of the immediate shore and the water is for the most part black and withered.

A few muskrat houses are going up abrupt and precipitous on one side sloped on the other I distinguish the dark moist layer of weeds deposited last night on what had dried in the sun,

The tall bulrush and the wool grass are dry and yellow except a few in deep water but the rainbow rush Juncus militaris is still green.

The autumnal tints though less brilliant and striking are perhaps quite as agreeable now that the frosts have somewhat dulled and softened them.

Now that the forest is universally imbrowned they make a more harmonious impression.

Wooded hillsides reflected in the water are particularly agreeable.

The undulation which the boat creates gives them the appearance of being terraced.

Chickadees and jays are heard from the shore as in winter.

Saw two or three ducks which fly up before and alight far behind.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 18, 1852

Chickadees and jays are heard from the shore as in winter. See  October 14, 1852 ("Jays and chickadees are oftener heard in the fall than in summer."); October 20, 1856 (" Thus, of late, when the season is declining, many birds have departed, and our thoughts are turned towards winter . . .we hear the jay again more frequently, and the chickadees are more numerous and lively and familiar and utter their phebe note, and the nuthatch is heard again, and the small woodpecker seen amid the bare twigs.");  November 3, 1858 ("The jay is the bird of October. I have seen it repeatedly flitting amid the bright leaves, of a different color from them all and equally bright, and taking its flight from grove to grove. It, too, with its bright color, stands for some ripeness in the bird harvest. And its scream! it is as if it blowed on the edge of an October leaf. It is never more in its element and at home than when flitting amid these brilliant colors.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter; A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The Blue Jay

To paddle now at evening when the water is smooth and the air begins to be warm.

May 9. 

May 9, 2020

Since I returned from Haverhill not only I find the ducks are gone but I no longer hear the chill lill of the blue snowbird or the sweet strains of the fox-colored sparrow and the tree sparrow. The robin's strain is less remarkable. 

I have devoted most of my day to Mr. Alcott. He is broad and genial but indefinite; some would say feeble; forever feeling about vainly in his speech and touching nothing. But this is a very negative account of him for he thus suggests far more than the sharp and definite practical mind. The feelers of his thought diverge — such is the breadth of their grasp — not converge; and in his society almost alone I can express at my leisure with more or less success my vaguest but most cherished fancy or thought. There are never any obstacles in the way of our meeting. He has no creed. He is not pledged to any institution. The sanest man I ever knew; the fewest crotchets after all has he? 

It has occurred to me while I am thinking with pleasure of our day's intercourse, “Why should I not think aloud to you?” Having each some shingles of thought well dried we walk and whittle them trying our knives and admiring the clear yellowish grain of the pumpkin pine. We wade so gently and reverently or we pull together so smoothly that the fishes of thought are not scared from the stream but come and go grandly like yonder clouds that float peacefully through the western sky. When we walk it seems as if the heavens — whose mother-oʻ-pearl and rainbow tints come and go form and dissolve — and the earth had met together and righteousness and peace had kissed each other. I have an ally against the arch-enemy. A blue robed man dwells under the blue concave. The blue sky is a distant reflection of the azure serenity that looks out from under a human brow. We walk together like the most innocent children going after wild pinks with case-knives. Most with whom I endeavor to talk soon fetch up against some institution or particular way of viewing things theirs not being a universal view. They will continually bring their own roofs or — what is not much better — their own narrow skylights between us and the sky when it is the unobstructed heavens I would view. Get out of the way with your old Jewish cobwebs. Wash your windows. 

Saw on Mr. Emerson's firs several parti-colored warblers or finch creepers (Sylvia Americana) a small blue and yellow bird somewhat like but smaller than the indigo-bird; quite tame about the buds of the firs now showing red; often head downward. Heard no note. He says it has been here a day or two. 

At sundown paddled up the river. The pump-like note of a stake-driver from the fenny place across the Lee meadow. 

The greenest and rankest grass as yet is that in the water along the sides of the river. The hylodes are peeping. 

I love to paddle now at evening when the water is smooth and the air begins to be warm. 

The rich warble of blackbirds about retiring is loud and incessant not to mention the notes of numerous other birds. The black willow has started but not yet the button-bush. Again I think I heard the night-warbler. 

Now at starlight that same nighthawk or snipe squeak is heard but no hovering. 

The first bat goes suddenly zigzag overhead through the dusky air; comes out of the dusk and disappears into it. 

That slumbrous snoring croak far less ringing and musical than the toad' s (which is occasionally heard) now comes up from the meadows edge. 

I save a floating plank which exhales and imparts to my hands the rank scent of the muskrats which have squatted on it. I often see their fresh green excrement on rocks and wood. 

Already men are fishing for pouts. 

This has been almost the first warm day; none yet quite so warm. Walking to the Cliffs this afternoon I noticed on Fair Haven Hill a season stillness as I looked over the distant budding forest and heard the buzzing of a fly.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 9, 1853

I no longer hear the chill lill of the blue snowbird or the sweet strains of the fox-colored sparrow and the tree sparrow. See April 17, 1855 ("The fox-colored sparrows seem to be gone, and I suspect that most of the tree sparrows and F. hyemalis, at least, went yesterday.")

I have devoted most of my day to Mr. Alcott. See July 4, 1855 ("So we have to spend the day in Boston, —at Athenaeum gallery, Alcott’s, and at the regatta. Lodge at Alcott’s, who is about moving to Walpole."); September 11, 1856  ("Walked over what Alcott calls Farm Hill, east of his house."); January 17, 1860 ("Alcott said well the other day that this was his definition of heaven, 'A place where you can have a little conversation.'")

Several parti-colored warblers or finch creepers (Sylvia Americana) a small blue and yellow bird quite tame about the buds of the firs now showing red; often head downward. Heard no note. See May 9, 1858  ("The parti-colored warbler . . .— my tweezer-bird, – making the screep screep screep note. It is an almost incessant singer . . . utters its humble notes, like ah twze twze twze, or ah twze twze twze twze."). See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the parti-colored warbler (Sylvia Americana)

 The pump-like note of a stake-driver from the fenny place across the Lee meadow. See  May 9, 1857 ("Hear stake-driver"), See also  April 24, 1854 (" As I stand still listening . . . I hear the loud and distinct pump-a-gor of a stake-driver. Thus he announces himself.”)..

That slumbrous snoring croak far less ringing and musical than the toad's now comes up from the meadows edge. See May 8. 1857 ("The full moon rises, and I paddle by its light, It is an evening for the soft-snoring, purring frogs (which I suspect to be Rana palustris).. . . Their croak is very fine or rapid, and has a soft, purring sound at a little distance")

I hear the first hylodes by chance, but no doubt they have been heard some time.

April 1. 

Sunday. Warm, with the thick haze still concealing the sun. 

Worm-piles abundant this morning. 

Our gooseberry begins to show a little green, but not our currant. 

3 P. M. — Up Assabet in boat. 

There is another fire in the woods this afternoon. It is yet more hazy than before, — about as thick as a fog, and apparently clouds behind it. 

Still warmer than yesterday, — 71 at 3 P. M. 

The river was lowest for March yesterday, viz. just three feet below Hoar's wall. It is so low that the mouths of the musquash-burrows in the banks are exposed with the piles of shells before them. 

Willows about the stump on S. Brown's land are very well out. Are they discolor? 

The red maple buds are considerably expanded, and no doubt make a greater impression of redness. 

A kingfisher seen and heard. 

As we paddle up the Assabet we hear the wood turtles -- the first I have noticed — and painted turtles rustling down the bank into the water, and see where they have travelled over the sand and the mud. This and the previous two days have brought them out in numbers. Also see the sternothærus on the bottom.

The river being so low, we see lines of sawdust perfectly level and parallel to one another on the side of the steep dark bank at the Hemlocks, for thirty rods or more visible at once, reminding you of a coarse chalk line made by snapping a string, not more than half an inch wide much of it, but more true than that would be. The sawdust adheres to the perfectly upright bank and probably marks the standstill or highest water for the time. This level line drawn by Nature is agreeable to behold. 

The large Rana fontinalis sits enjoying the warmth on the muddy shore. I hear the first hylodes by chance, but no doubt they have been heard some time. 

Hear the hum of bees on the maples. 

Rye-fields look green. 

Pickerel dart, and probably have some time. 

The sweet-gale is almost in bloom; say next pleasant day. [It sheds its pollen the same night in my chamber, — from the old mill-site, north side.]

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 1, 1860

The red maple buds are considerably expanded, and no doubt make a greater impression of redness. See April 10, 1853 ( "The male red maple buds now show eight or ten (ten counting everything) scales, alternately crosswise, and the pairs successively brighter red or scarlet, which will account for the gradual reddening of their tops. They are about ready to open.")

As we paddle up the Assabet we hear the wood turtles and painted turtles rustling down the bank into the water, This and the previous two days have brought them out in numbers. See  April 1, 1858 ("See wood turtles coupled on their edges at the bottom, where the stream has turned them up.") See also  March 31, 1858 ("The painted and wood turtles have seemed to be out in surprising abundance at an unusually early date this year, but I think I can account for it. The river is remarkably low," ) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Painted Turtle (Emys picta); A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wood Turtle (Emys insculpta)

I hear the first hylodes by chance, but no doubt they have been heard some time. See March 23, 1859 ("While reconnoitring there, we hear the peep of one hylodes somewhere in this sheltered recess in the woods."); March 31, 1855 (“I go listening for the croak of the first frog, or peep of a hylodes."); March 31, 1857 (“How gradually and imperceptibly the peep of the hylodes mingles with and swells the volume of sound which makes the voice of awakening nature! If you do not listen carefully for its first note, you probably will not hear it, and, not having heard that, your ears become used to the sound, so that you will hardly notice it at last, however loud and universal."); April 2, 1852 ("I hear a solitary hyla for the first time.")

The river being so low, we see lines of sawdust perfectly level and parallel to one another on the side of the steep dark bank at the Hemlocks. . . .reminding you of a coarse chalk line made by snapping a string, not more than half an inch wide much of it, but more true than that would be. See April 1, 1858 ("The river is at summer level. . . . It is remarkable that the river seems rarely to rise or fall gradually, but rather by fits and starts, and hence the water-lines, as indicated now by the sawdust, are very distinct parallel lines four or five or more inches apart.”) See also November 23, 1853 ("What an engineer this water is! It comes with its unerring level . . . an obvious piece of geometry in nature.") and alao A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, at the Leaning Hemlocks.

The large Rana fontinalis sits enjoying the warmth on the muddy shore. See March 22. 1860 ("The yellow-spot turtle and wood turtle, Rana fontinalis, and painted tortoise come forth."); March 24, 1859 ("There sits also on the bank of the ditch a Rana fontinalis, and it is altogether likely they were this species that leaped into a ditch on the 10th. This one is mainly a bronze brown, with a very dark greenish snout, etc., with the raised line down the side of the back. This, methinks, is about the only frog which the marsh hawk could have found hitherto."); April 5, 1858 ("What I call the young bullfrog, about two and a half inches long, — though it has no yellow on throat. It has a bright-golden ring outside of the iris as far as I can see round it. Is this the case with the bullfrog? May it not be a young Rana fontinalis? No yellow to throat.."); See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Identifying the Green Frog in Spring.

Hear the hum of bees on the maples. See April 1, 1858 ("The white maples are abundantly out to-day. . . .We hold the boat beneath one, surprised to hear the resounding hum of honey-bees, which are busy about them,"); April 1, 1852 ('' Saw the first bee of the season on the railroad causeway,") See also A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, White Maple Buds and Flowers

The sweet-gale is almost in bloom; say next pleasant day. See April 22, 1855 ("The blossoms of the sweet-gale are now on fire over the brooks, contorted like caterpillars")

Fair and springlike, Pleasant in sun.

March 6. 

3 P. M. 44º. Fair and springlike, i.e. rather still for March, with some raw wind. Pleasant in sun. 

Going by Messer's, I hear the well-known note and see a flock of F. hyemalis flitting in a lively manner about trees, weeds, walls, and ground, by the roadside, showing their two white tail-feathers. They are more fearless than the song sparrow. These attract notice by their numbers and incessant twittering in a social manner. 

The linarias have been the most numerous birds the past winter. 

Mr. Stacy tells me that the flies buzzed about him as he was splitting wood in his yard to-day. 

I can scarcely see a heel of a snow-drift from my window. 

Jonas Melvin says he saw hundreds of “speckled” turtles out on the banks to-day in a voyage to Billerica for musquash. Also saw gulls. 

Sheldrakes and black ducks are the only ones he has seen this year.

They are fishing on Flint’s Pond to-day, but find it hard to get on and off. 

C. hears the nuthatch. 

Jonas Melvin says that he shot a sheldrake in the river late last December.

A still and mild moonlight night and people walking about the streets.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 6, 1860


I hear the well-known note and see a flock of F. hyemalis flitting in a lively manner showing their two white tail-feathers  See February 16, 1854 ("I have not seen F . hyemalis since last fall"); March 7, 1853 ("The only birds I see to-day are the lesser redpolls. I have not seen a fox-colored sparrow or a Fringilla hyemalis"); March 14, 1858 (" I see a Fringilla hyemalis, the first bird, perchance, — unless one hawk, – which is an evidence of spring,. . .They are now getting back earlier than our permanent summer residents. It flits past with a rattling or grating chip, showing its two white tail-feathers"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: the note of the dark-eyed junco going northward

The linarias have been the most numerous birds the past winter.. See January 8, 1860 (" When I heard their note, I looked to find them on a birch, and lo, it was a black birch! [Were they not linarias? Vide Jan. 24, 27, 29.] "); February 12, 1860 ("On the east side of the pond, under the steep bank, I see a single lesser redpoll picking the seeds out of the alder catkins, and uttering a faint mewing note from time to time on account of me, only ten feet off. It has a crimson or purple front and breast."); February 20, 1860 ("on the only piece of bare ground I see hereabouts, a large flock of lesser redpolls feeding."); February 28, 1860 ("I suppose they are linarias which I still see flying about") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

The flies buzzed about.  See March 17, 1858 ("Even the shade is agreeable to-day. You hear the buzzing of a fly from time to time, and see the black speck zigzag by.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Buzzing Flies

Sheldrakes and black ducks are the only ones he has seen this year. See February 27, 1860 ("This is the first bird of the spring that I have seen or heard of."); March 5, 1857 ("I scare up six male sheldrakes, with their black heads, in the Assabet,—the first ducks I have seen”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Ducks Afar, Sailing on the Meadow

C. hears the nuthatch. See March 5, 1859 ("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 . . .  It is the spring note of the nuthatch.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: The Spring Note of the Nuthatch

The song sparrows begin to sing hereabouts.

March 5.

March 5, 2020

The meadows skim over at night. 

White pine cones half fallen. 

The old naturalists were so sensitive and sympathetic to nature that they could be surprised by the ordinary events of life. It was an incessant miracle to them, and therefore gorgons and flying dragons were not incredible to them. The greatest and saddest defect is not credulity, but our habitual forgetfulness that our science is ignorance. 

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

The song sparrows begin to sing hereabouts. 

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. 

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. 

So far as the natural history is concerned, you often have your choice between uninteresting truth and interesting falsehood. 

As the ancients talked about ”hot and cold, moist and dry,” so the moderns talk about ”electric” qualities. 

As we sat under Lupine Promontory the other day, watching the ripples that swept over the flooded meadow and thinking what an eligible site that would be for a cottage, C. declared that we did not live in the country as long as we lived on that village street and only took walks into the fields, any more than if we lived in Boston or New York. We enjoyed none of the immortal quiet of the country as we might here, for instance, but per chance the first sound that we hear in the morning, instead of the tinkling of a bird, is your neighbor hawking and spitting.

Our spiræas have been considerably unfolded for several days. 

Ways fairly settled generally.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 5, 1860

White pine cones half fallen. See February 25, 1860 (“ The white pine cones have been blowing off more or less in every high wind ever since the winter began, and yet perhaps they have not more than half fallen yet.”); 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. “) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines

Gorgons and flying dragons. See February 18, 1860 ("The old writers have left a more lively and lifelike account of the gorgon than modern writers give us of real animals.")

Chickweed in bloom in C.'s garden, and probably all winter. See February 2, 1853 ("The Stellaria media is full of frost-bitten blossoms, containing stamens, etc., still and half-grown buds. Apparently it never rests.")

The song sparrows begin to sing hereabouts. See 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 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 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 11, 1859 ("By riverside I hear the song of many song sparrows, the most of a song of any yet. . . .The birds anticipate the spring; they come to melt the ice with their songs.") See also note to February 24, 1857 ("I am surprised to hear the strain of a song sparrow from the riverside.") and A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)

George Buttrick thinks that forty musquash have been killed this spring between Hunt's and Flint's Bridge.  See February 24, 1860 ("The river risen and quite over the meadows yesterday and to-day, and musquash begun to be killed."); March 2, 1860 ("Men shooting musquash these days.")

A very spring-like day, so much sparkling light in the air.

February 24

2 P.M. - Thermometer 42. 

A very spring-like day, so much sparkling light in the air. 

February 24, 2024

The clouds reflecting a dazzling brightness from their edges, and though it is rather warm (the wind raw) there are many, finely divided, in a stream southwest to northeast all the afternoon, and some most brilliant mother-o'-pearl. I never saw the green in it more distinct. This on the thin white edges of clouds as if it were a small piece of a rainbow. 

Some of the finest imaginable rippling, and some fine strings of clouds, narrow anteater skeletons, stretching from southwest to northeast, with the wind, looking like a little cotton caught on a crooked telegraph-wire, the spine is so distinct. 

A great part of the very finely divided cloud, one stratum above another, had the appearance of a woven web, the fibres crossing each other in a remarkable manner right overhead. 

The river risen and quite over the meadows yesterday and to-day, and musquash begun to be killed. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 24, 1860

Thermometer 42. A very spring-like day, so much sparkling light in the air. See February 24, 1852 ("I am reminded of spring by the quality of the air."); February 24, 1857 ("A fine spring morning. . . It seems to be one of those early springs of which we have heard but have never experienced") See also January 8, 1860 (“After December all weather that is not wintry is springlike.”); February 8, 1860 ("February may be called earine (springlike)."); February 12, 1856 ("The thermometer at 8.30 A. M., 42°. . . .How different the sunlight over thawing snow . . .I experience a springlike melting in my thoughts. "); February 14, 1857 ("It is a fine, somewhat springlike day. . .the thermometer in the shade north of house standing 42°."); February 18, 1857 ("The snow is nearly all gone, and it is so warm and springlike that I walk over to the hill, listening for spring birds."); February 22, 1855 ("Remarkably warm and pleasant weather, perfect spring."); . February 25, 1857 ("The thermometer is at 65° at noon") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February Belongs to Spring

Most brilliant mother-o'-pearl. See note to January 22, 1854 ("Once or twice of late I have seen the mother-o'-pearl tints and rainbow flocks in the western sky. The usual time is when the air is clear and pretty cool, about an hour before sundown.")

The river risen and musquash begun to be killed. See March 5, 1860 ("George Buttrick thinks that forty musquash have been killed this spring between Hunt's and Flint's Bridge.") See also October 29, 1857 ("Tthe river is very high for the season and all over the meadow in front of the house, and still rising. Many are out (as yesterday) shooting musquash."); January 29, 1859 ("Many are out in boats, steering outside the ice of the river over the newly flooded meadows, shooting musquash."); February 17, 1857 ("Thermometer at 1 p.m., 60°. The river is fairly breaking up, and men are out with guns after muskrats."); March 17, 1859 ("River risen still higher. . . . A great many musquash have been killed within a week. ") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

February 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 24

Such a spring-like day,

the sparkling light in the air,

clouds dazzling brightness.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  A very spring-like day.

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 Wintry Scene

February 16.a

2 P. M. — To Walden. 

A snow-storm, which began in the night, - and is now three or four inches deep. The ground, which was more than half bare before, is thus suddenly concealed, and the snow lodges on the trees and fences and sides of houses, and we have a perfect wintry scene again. 

We hear that it stormed at Philadelphia yesterday morning. 

As I [look] toward the woods beyond the poorhouse, I see how the trees, especially apple trees, are suddenly brought out relieved against the snow, black on white, every twig as distinct as if it were a pen-and-ink drawing the size of nature. The snow being spread for a background, while the storm still raging confines your view to near objects, each apple tree is distinctly outlined against it. 

Suddenly, too, where of late all was tawny-brown in pastures I see a soft snowy field with the pale-brown lecheas just peeping out of it.

It is a moist and starry snow, lodging on trees, —leaf, bough, and trunk. The pines are well laden with it. How handsome, though wintry, the side of a high pine wood, well grayed with the snow that has lodged on it, and the smaller pitch pines converted into marble or alabaster with their lowered plumes like rams' heads! 

The character of the wood-paths is wholly changed by the new-fallen snow. Not only all tracks are concealed, but, the pines drooping over it and half concealing or filling it, it is merely a long chink or winding open space between the trees. 

This snow, as I have often noticed before, is composed of stars and other crystals with a very fine cotton intermixed. It lodges and rests softly on the horizontal limbs of oaks and pines. 

On the fruit and dry leafets (?) of the alders that slant over the pond it is in the form of little cones two inches high, making them snowball plants. So many little crystalline wheels packed in cotton. 

When we descend on to Goose Pond we find that the snow rests more thickly on the numerous zigzag and horizontal branches of the high blueberries that bend over it than on any deciduous shrub or tree, producing a very handsome snowy maze, and can thus distinguish this shrub, by the manner in which the snow lies on it, quite across the pond. 

It is remarkable also how very distinct and white every plane surface, as the rocks which lie here and there amid the blueberries or higher on the bank, — a place where no twig or weed rises to interrupt the pure white impression. 

In fact, this crystalline snow lies up so light and downy that it evidently admits more light than usual, and the surface is more white and glowing for it. It is semitransparent. This is especially the case with the snow lying upon rocks or musquash-houses, which is elevated and brought between you and the light. It is partially transparent, like alabaster. 

Also all the birds' nests in the blueberry bushes are revealed, by the great snow-balls they hold.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 16, 1860

I see how the trees, especially apple trees, are suddenly brought out relieved against the snow, black on white, every twig as distinct as if it were a pen-and-ink drawing the size of nature. The snow being spread for a background, while the storm still raging confines your view to near objects, each apple tree is distinctly outlined against it  See August 4, 1854 ("Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects.");  January 11, 1855 ("The air so thick with snowflakes . . .Single pines stand out distinctly against it in the near horizon"); November 7, 1855 ("The view is contracted by the misty rain . . . I am compelled to look at near objects."); December 16, 1855 ("The mist makes the near trees dark and noticeable, like pictures. . .The old apple trees are very important to this landscape, they have so much body and are so dark."); February 15, 1859 ("Against the thickening air, trees are more and more distinct. The apple trees, so moist, are blacker than ever.")

When we descend on to Goose Pond we find that the snow rests more thickly on the numerous zigzag and horizontal branches of the high blueberries that bend over it than on any deciduous shrub or tree, producing a very handsome snowy maze, and can thus distinguish this shrub, by the manner in which the snow lies on it, See February 8, 1858 ("I walked about Goose Pond, looking for the large blueberry bushes. I see many which have thirty rings of annual growth. These grow quite on the edge, where they have escaped being cut with the wood, and have all the appearance of age, gray and covered with lichens, commonly crooked, zigzag, and intertwisted with their neighbors,— so that when you have cut one off it is hard to extract it, —and bending over nearly to the ice,")

All the birds' nests in the blueberry bushes are revealed, by the great snow-balls they hold. See   December 24, 1851 (Now and long since the birds' nests have been full of snow.“); December 29, 1855 (“I find in the andromeda bushes in the Andromeda Ponds a great many nests apparently of the red-wing suspended after their fashion amid the twigs of the andromeda, each now filled with ice.”); December 30, 1855 (“He who would study birds’ nests must look for them in November and in winter as well as in midsummer, for then the trees are bare and he can see them, and the swamps and streams are frozen and he can approach new kinds”);  January 7, 1856 ("I go along the edge of the Hubbard Meadow woods, the north side, where the snow is gathered, light and up to my middle, shaking down birds’ nests"); January 24, 1856 (“The snow is so deep along the sides of the river that I can now look into nests which I could hardly reach in the summer. . . .They have only an ice egg in them now.”); February 16, 1860 ("Also all the birds' nests in the blueberry bushes are revealed, by the great snow-balls they hold.")

 February 15, 1860   <<<<<                                                                     >>>>> February 17, 1860     

This crystalline snow

lies up so light and downy –

semitransparent.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A Wintry Scene

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau 

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

                                                                                             

Birds are commonly very rare in the winter

January 22. 

P. M. — Up river to Fair Haven Pond; return via Andromeda Ponds and railroad. 

Overcast, but some clear sky in southwest horizon; mild weather still. 

Where the sedge grows rankly and is uncut, as along the edge of the river and meadows, what fine coverts are made for mice, etc., at this season! It is arched over, and the snow rests chiefly on its ends, while the middle part is elevated from six inches to a foot and forms a thick thatch, as it were, even when all is covered with snow, under which the mice and so forth can run freely, out of the way of the wind and of foxes. 

After a pretty deep snow has just partially melted, you are surprised to find, as you walk through such a meadow, how high and lightly the sedge lies up, as if there had been no pressure upon it. It grows, perhaps, in dense tufts or tussocks, and when it falls over, it forms a thickly thatched roof. Nature provides shelter for her creatures in various ways. 

If the musquash, etc., has no longer extensive fields of weed and grass to crawl in, what an extensive range it has under the ice of the meadows and river sides! for, the water settling directly after freezing, an icy roof of indefinite extent is thus provided for it, and it passes almost its whole winter under shelter, out of the wind and invisible to men. 

The ice is so much rotted that I observe in many places those lunar-shaped holes, and dark places in the ice, convex up-stream, some times double-lunar. 

I perceive that the open places in the river do not preserve the same relative importance that they had December 29th. Then the largest four or five stood in this order: (1) below boat's place, (2) below junction, (3) Barrett's Bar, (4) Clamshell or else Hubbard's large as Hubbard's Bath. Which of the others is largest I am not quite sure. 

In other words, below junction and Hubbard's Bath (if not also Clamshell, not seen) retain about their former size, while below boat's place and Barrett's Bar have been diminished, especially below boat's place. 

Birds are commonly very rare in the winter. They are much more common at some times than at others. I see more tree sparrows in the beginning of the winter (especially when snow is falling) than in the course of it. I think that by observation I could tell in what kind of weather afterward these were most to be seen. 

Crows come about houses and streets in very cold weather and deep snows, and they are heard cawing in pleasant, thawing winter weather, and their note is then a pulse by which you feel the quality of the air, i. e., when cocks crow. 

For the most part, lesser redpolls and pine grosbeaks do not appear at all. 

Snow buntings are very wandering. They were quite numerous a month ago, and now seem to have quit the town. They seem to ramble about the country at will. 

C. says that he followed the track of a fox all yesterday afternoon, though with some difficulty, and then lost it at twilight. I suggested that he should begin next day where he had left off, and that following it up thus for many days he might catch him at last. 

"By the way," I asked, "did you go the same way the fox did, or did you take the back track?" 

"Oh," said he, "I took the back track. It would be of no use to go the other way, you know." 

Minott says that a hound which pursues a fox by scent cannot tell which way he is going; that the fox is very cunning and will often return on its track over which the dog had already run. It will ascend a high rock and then leap off very far to one side; so throw the dogs off the scent for a while and gain a breathing-spell. 

I see, in one of those pieces of drifted meadow (of last spring) in A. Wheeler's cranberry meadow, a black willow thus transplanted more than ten feet high and five inches in diameter. It is quite alive. 

The snow-fleas are thickest along the edge of the wood here, but I find that they extend quite across the river, though there are comparatively few over the middle. There are generally fewer and fewer the further you are from the shore. Nay, I find that they extend quite across Fair Haven Pond. There are two or three inches of snow on the ice, and thus they are revealed. There are a dozen or twenty to a square rod on the very middle of the pond. When I approach one, it commonly hops away, and if it gets a good spring it hops a foot or more, so that it is at first lost to me. Though they are scarcely the twentieth of an inch long they make these surprising bounds, or else conceal themselves by entering the snow. We have now had many days of this thawing weather, and I believe that these fleas have been gradually hopping further and further out from the shore. 

To-day, perchance, it is water, a day or two later ice, and no fleas are seen on it. Then snow comes and covers the ice, and if there is no thaw for a month, you see no fleas for so long. But, at least soon after a thaw, they are to be seen on the centre of ponds at least half a mile across. Though this is my opinion, it is by no means certain that they come here thus, for I am prepared to believe that the water in the middle may have had as many floating on it, and that these were afterward on the surface of the ice, though unseen, and hence under the snow when it fell, and ready to come up through it when the thaw came. 

But what do they find to eat in apparently pure snow so far from any land? Has their food come down from the sky with the snow? They must themselves be food for many creatures. This must be as peculiarly a winter animal as any. It may truly be said to live in snow. 

I see some insects, of about this form on the snow: 

I scare a partridge that was eating the buds and ends of twigs of the Vaccinium vacillans on a hillside. 

At the west or nesaea end of the largest Andromeda Pond, I see that there has been much red ice, more than I ever saw, but now spoiled by the thaw and snow. 

The leaves of the water andromeda are evidently more appressed to the twigs, and showing the gray under sides, than in summer.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 22, 1860

See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Winter Birds

The water settling directly after freezing, an icy roof of indefinite extent is thus provided for it, and it passes almost its whole winter under shelter, out of the wind and invisible to men.   Compare January 22, 1859 (".Many are out in boats, steering outside the ice of the river over the newly flooded meadows, shooting musquash."); January 22, 1855 ("The muskrats driven out of their holes by the water are exceedingly numerous . . .We saw fifteen or twenty, at least, between Derby's Bridge and the Tarbell Spring, either swimming with surprising swiftness up or down or across the stream to avoid us, or sitting at the water's edge, or resting on the edge of the ice.") See also January 3, 1860 ("Melvin thinks that the musquash eat more clams now than ever, and that they leave the shells in heaps under the ice. As the river falls it leaves them space enough under the ice along the meadow's edge and bushes. I think he is right. He speaks of the mark of the tail, which is dragged behind them, in the snow."); January 24, 1856 ("I have not been able to find any tracks of muskrats this winter. I suspect that they very rarely venture out in winter with their wet coats "); January 27, 1860 (" I occasionally hear a musquash plunge under the ice next the shore.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

Snow buntings are very wandering. They were quite numerous a month ago, and now seem to have quit the town.  See December 23, 1859 ("Then here they come, with a stiff rip of their wings as they suddenly wheel, and those peculiar rippling notes, flying low quite across the meadow, . . . Indeed, the flock, flying about as high as my head, divides, and half passes on each side of me. Thus they sport over these broad meadows of ice this pleasant winter day. ")

Crows are heard cawing in pleasant, thawing winter weather, and their note is then a pulse by which you feel the quality of the air, i. e., when cocks crow. See January 12, 1855 ("Perhaps what most moves us in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer. . . .It is in the cawing of the crow, the crowing of the cock, the warmth of the sun on our backs. I hear faintly the cawing of a crow far, far away, echoing from some unseen wood-side. What a delicious sound! It is not merely crow calling to crow, for it speaks to me too. I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls."); . March 16, 1858 ("The crowing of cocks and the cawing of crows tell the same story. The ice is soggy and dangerous to be walked on.")

"By the way," I asked, "did you go the same way the fox did, or did you take the back track?" See February 5, 1854 ("I followed on this trail so long that my thoughts grew foxy; though I was on the back track, I drew nearer and nearer to the fox each step.")

Minott says the fox is very cunning and will often return on its track over which the dog had already run. It will ascend a high rock and then leap off very far to one side; so throw the dogs off the scent. See January 30, 1855 (" Minott . . .told how Jake Lakin lost a dog, a very valuable one, by a fox leading him on to the ice on the Great Meadows and drowning him.")

At the west end of the largest Andromeda Pond, I see that there has been much red ice, more than I ever saw. See January 24, 1855 ("I was surprised to find the ice in the middle of the last [Andromeda] pond a beautiful delicate rose-color for two or three rods, deeper in spots. . . .This beautiful blushing ice! What are we coming to?"); January 25, 1855 ("I have come with basket and hatchet to get a specimen of the rose-colored ice.. . . The redness is all about an inch below the surface, the little bubbles in the ice there for half an inch vertically being coated interruptedly within or without with what looks like a minute red dust when seen through a microscope. . ."); March 4, 1855 ("Returning by the Andromeda Ponds, I am surprised to see the red ice visible still . . .It is melted down to the red bubbles, and I can tinge my finger with it there by rubbing it in the rotted ice.")