In rain to Nawshawtuct.

May 3. 

P. M. -- In rain to Nawshawtuct.

The river rising still.

What I have called the small pewee on the willow by my boat, — quite small, uttering a short tchevet from time to time.

Some common cherries are quite forward in leafing; say next after the black.

The Pyrus arbutifolia, of plants I observed, would follow the cherry in leafing. It just begins to show minute glossy leaves.

The meadow-sweet begins to look fairly green, with its little tender green leaves, making thin wreaths of green against the bare stems of other plants (this and the gooseberry), - the next plant in this respect to the earliest gooseberry in the garden, which appears to be the same with that in the swamp.

I see wood turtles which appear to be full and hard with eggs.

Yesterday I counted half a dozen dead yellow-spotted turtles about Beck Stow's.

There is a small dark native willow in the meadows as early to leaf as the S. alba, with young catkins.

Anemone nemorosa near the ferns and the sassafras appeared yesterday.

The ferns invested with rusty wool (cinnamomea?) have pushed up eight or ten inches and show some of the green leaf.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 3, 1854

What I have called the small pewee on the willow by my boat, See May 3, 1855 ("Small pewee; tchevet, with a jerk of the head."); See also May 7, 1852 ("The first small pewee sings now che-vet, or rather chirrups chevet, tche-vet — a rather delicate bird with a large head and two white bars on wings. The first summer yellow- birds on the willow causeway. The birds I have lately mentioned come not singly, as the earliest, but all at once, i.e. many yellowbirds all over town. Now I remember the yellowbird comes when the willows begin to leave out. (And the small pewee on the willows also.)") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the “Small Pewee"

Some common cherries and Pyrus arbutifolia, etc. leafing. See geneally May 5, 1855 ("The trees and shrubs which I observe to make a show now with their green,. . .in the order of their intensity and generalness — gooseberry, both kinds . . . meadow-sweet . . . Choke-cherry shoots . . . Pyrus, probably arbutifolia, young black cherry,  . . . probably wild red cherry in some places, Salix alba with bracts, some small native willows, cultivated cherry") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Spring leaf-out.

The meadow-sweet begins to look fairly green. See April 24, 1860 ("The meadow-sweet and hardhack have begun to leaf."); May 4, 1852 ("The meadow-sweet begins to leave out")

There is a small dark native willow in the meadows as early to leaf as the S. alba, with young catkins. See May 2, 1855 ("That small native willow now in flower, or say yesterday, just before leaf.") See also April 24, 1855 ("The Salix alba begins to leaf. "); April 27, 1854 ("The Salix alba begins to leaf, and the catkins are three quarters of an inch long. "); April 29, 1855 ("For two or three days the Salix alba, with its catkins (not yet open) and its young leaves, or bracts (?), has made quite a show, before any other tree, —a pyramid of tender yellowish green in the russet landscape."); April 30, 1859 (Salix alba leafing, or stipules a quarter of an inch wide; probably began a day or two.")

I see wood turtles which appear to be full and hard with eggs. See June 10, 1858 ("Apparently the E. insculpta are in the very midst of their laying now."); June 20, 1853 ("I see wood tortoises in the path; one feels full of eggs.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wood Turtlw (Emys insculpta)

Yesterday I counted half a dozen dead yellow-spotted turtles about Beck Stow's. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow-Spotted Turtle (Emys guttata)

The chickadee / Hops near to me.

November 8

A warm, cloudy, rain-threatening morning. 

About 10 A.M. a long flock of geese are going over from northeast to southwest, or parallel with the general direction of the coast and great mountain-ranges. The sonorous, quavering sounds of the geese are the voice of this cloudy air, – a sound that comes from directly between us and the sky, an aerial sound, and yet so distinct, heavy, and sonorous, a clanking chain drawn through the heavy air. 

I saw through my window some children looking up and pointing their tiny bows into the heavens, and I knew at once that the geese were in the air. It is always an exciting event. The children, instinctively aware of its importance, rushed into the house to tell their parents. 

These travellers are revealed to you by the upward-turned gaze of men. And though these undulating lines are melting into the southwestern sky, the sound comes clear and distinct to you as the clank of a chain in a neighboring stithy. 

So they migrate, not flitting from hedge to hedge, but from latitude to latitude, from State to State, steering boldly out into the ocean of the air. It is remarkable how these large objects, so plain when your vision is rightly directed, may be lost in the sky if you look away for a moment, - as hard to hit as a star with a telescope. 

It is a sort of encouraging or soothing sound to assuage their painful fears when they go over a town, as a man moans to deaden a physical pain. The direction of their flight each spring and autumn reminds us inlanders how the coast trends. 

In the afternoon I met Flood, who had just endeavored to draw my attention to a flock of geese in the mizzling air, but encountering me he lost sight of them, while I, at length, looking that way, discerned them, though he could not. 

This was the third flock to-day. Now if ever, then, we may expect a change in the weather. 

P. M. – To the swamp in front of the C. Miles house.

The great white pines on the hill south of it were cut, apparently last winter. I count on two stumps about one hundred and twenty-five rings, and the sap averages in each case about three inches thick. 

In a thick white pine wood, as in that swamp at the east end, where the ground is level, the ground now (and for some time) is completely covered with a carpet of pale-brown leaves, completely concealing the green mosses and even some lycopodiums. The effect is exactly as[if a uniform pale-brown matting had been spread over the green and russet floor. It is even soothing to walk over this soft and springy bed.

How silently and unobserved by most do these changes take place! This additional warm matting is tucked about their roots to defend them from the frost. It is interesting to see the green of mosses peeping out here and there. You hear only the soft crisped sound of sinking needles under your feet.

I find in the swamp there by the larches the Kalmia glauca, good specimens. 

I have no doubt that a good farmer, who, of course, loves his work, takes exactly the same kind of pleasure in draining a swamp, seeing the water flow out in his newly cut ditch, that a child does in its mud dikes and water-wheels. Both alike love to play with the natural forces. 

There is quite a ravine by which the water of this swamp flows out eastward, and at the bottom of it many prinos berries are conspicuous, now apparently in their prime. These are appointed to be an ornament of this bare season between leaves and snow. 

The swamp-pink's large yellowish buds, too, are conspicuous now. 

I see also the swamp pyrus buds, expanded sometimes into small leaves. This, then, is a regular phenomenon. It is the only shrub or tree that I know which so decidedly springs again in the fall, in the Indian summer. It might be called the Indian-summer shrub. 

The clethra buds, too, are decidedly expanded there, showing leafets, but very small. 

Some of the new pyrus leaves are nearly full-grown. Would not this be a pretty device on some hale and cheery old man's shield, – the swamp pyrus unfolding its leaves again in the fall? Every plant enjoys some preéminence, and this is its. The most forward to respond to the warmer season. How much spring there is in it! Its sap is most easily liquefied. It takes the least sun and mildness to thaw it and develop it. It makes this annual sacrifice of its very first leaves to its love for the sun. While all other shrubs are reserved, this is open and confiding. 

I see it not without emotion. I too have my spring thoughts even in November. This I see in pleasant October and November days, when rills and birds begin to tinkle in winter fashion through the more open aisles of the swamps. 

I do not know exactly what that sweet word is which the chickadee says when it hops near to me now in those ravines.

The chickadee 

Hops near to me. 

When the air is thick and the sky overcast, we need not walk so far. We give our attention to nearer objects, being less distracted from them. I take occasion to explore some near wood which my walks commonly overshoot. 

What a difference it makes between two ravines in other respects exactly similar that in the one there is a stream which drains it, while the other is dry! 

I see nowadays in various places the scattered feathers of robins, etc., where some hawk or beast of prey has torn them to pieces. 

I step over the slip-noose snares which some woodling has just set. How long since men set snares for partridges and rabbits? 

Ah, my friends, I know you better than you think, and love you better, too. The day after never, we will have an explanation.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 8, 1857

The great white pines on the hill south of it were cut, apparently last winter. I count on two stumps about one hundred and twenty-five rings, , and the sap averages in each case about three inches thick. See July 8, 1857 ("Counted the rings of a white pine stump, sawed off last winter at Laurel Glen. It was three and a half feet in diameter and has one hundred and twenty-six rings."); March 24, 1853 ("The white pine wood, freshly cut, piled by the side of the Charles Miles road, is agreeable to walk beside. I like the smell of it,. . .and the purple color of the sap at the ends of the quarters, from which distill perfectly clear and crystalline tears, colorless and brilliant as diamonds, tears shed for the loss of a forest in which is a world of light and purity, its life oozing out.

How silently and unobserved by most do these changes take place!. See November 3, 1861 ("All this is perfectly distinct to an observant eye, and yet could easily pass unnoticed by most.");

I see also the swamp pyrus buds, expanded sometimes into small leaves. See December 11, 1855 ("I thread the tangle of the spruce swamp, admiring the leafets of the swamp pyrus which had put forth again, now frost bitten")

What that sweet word is which the chickadee says when it hops near to me now. See October 15, 1856 ("The chickadees are hopping near on the hemlock above. They resume their winter ways before the winter comes."); October 17, 1856 ("They day-day 'd and lisp their faint notes alternately, and then, as if to make me think they had some other errand than to peer at me, they peck the dead twigs with their bills — the little top-heavy, black-crowned, volatile fellows.");  November 4, 1855 ("The note of the dee de de sounds now more distinct, prophetic of winter, as I go amid the wild apples on Nawshawtuct."); November 7, 1858 ("But just then I heard a chickadee on a hemlock, and was inexpressibly cheered to find that an old acquaintance was yet stirring about the premises, and was, I was assured, to be there all winter. All that is evergreen in me revived at once."); November 9, 1850 ("The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer and nearer inquisitively, from pine bough to pine bough, till within four or five feet, occasionally lisping a note."); December 1, 1853 (" I hear their faint, silvery, lisping notes, like tinkling glass, and occasionally a sprightly day-day-day, as they inquisitively hop nearer and nearer to me. They are our most honest and innocent little bird, drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances,")

When the air is thick and the sky overcast, we . . .give our attention to nearer objects. . . See  August 4, 1854 ("Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects")

Slip-noose snares. See November 28, 1857 ("I saw one that was sprung with nothing in it, another whose slip-noose was blown or fallen one side, and another with a partridge still warm in it.")

The third flock of geese – 

now if ever expect a 

change in the weather. 

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.”)

So the tree gets planted!

July 14

P. M. — To Muhlenbergii Brook. 

Anthony Wright found a lark's nest with fresh eggs on the 12th in E. Hubbard's meadow by ash tree, — two nests, probably one a second brood. 

Nasturtium hispidum (?), apparently three or four days. 

See and hear martins twittering on the elms by riverside. 

Bass out about two days at Island. 

There is a pyrus twenty feet high with small fruit at Assabet Spring. 

Noli-me-tangere already springs at Muhlenbergii Brook, some days. 

Saw apparently my little ruby(?)-crested wren(?) on the weeds there. 

Senecio long gone to seed and dispersed. 

Canada thistle some time on Huckleberry Pasture-side beyond. 

Ceratophyllum with a dense whorl of twelve little oval red-dotted apparent flower-buds (?) in an axil. 

While drinking at Assabet Spring in woods, noticed a cherry-stone on the bottom. A bird that came to drink must have brought it half a mile. So the tree gets planted!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 14, 1856

A lark's nest with fresh eggs on the 12th. See July 11, 1857 ("And now the lark must look out for the mowers."); July 16, 1851 ("The lark sings in the meadow; the very essence of the afternoon is in his strain. This is a New England sound") July 26, 1856 ("I see young larks fly pretty well before me.")

Bass out about two days at Island. See July 17, 1856 ("Hear at distance the hum of bees from the bass with its drooping flowers at the Island, a few minutes only before sunset. It sounds like the rumbling of a distant train of cars"); July 18, 1854 ("We have very few bass trees in Concord, but walk near them at this season and they will be betrayed, though several rods off, by the wonderful susurrus of the bees, etc., which their flowers attract.") Compare July 3, 1853 ("There are no flowers on bass trees commonly this year."); June 3, 1857 ("The bass at the Island will not bloom this year. ") See also Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood

Noli-me-tangere already springs at Muhlenbergii Brook. See August 15, 1851 ("Impatiens, noli-me-tangere, or touch-me-not, with its dangling yellow pitchers or horns of plenty, which I have seen for a month by damp causeway thickets")

Saw apparently my little ruby-crested wren on the weeds there. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: the ruby-crowned or crested wren.

Senecio long gone to seed and dispersed. See  June 12, 1852 ("The meadows are yellow with golden senecio."); See also A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, The Golden Senecio

Canada thistle some time on Huckleberry Pasture-side beyond. See  July 15, 1859 ("To Ledum Swamp. First notice Canada thistle."); July 19, 1851 ("Here is the Canada thistle in bloom, visited by butterflies and bees.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Thistle and Thistle-down

Ceratophyllum [hornwort] with a dense whorl of twelve little oval red-dotted apparent flower-buds (?) in an axil. See July 27, 1856 ("Ceratophyllum is now apparently in bloom commonly, with its crimson-dotted involucre."); .July 30, 1856 ("The water is suddenly clear,. . . It assists me very much as I go looking for the ceratophyllum, potamogetons, etc. All the secrets of the river bottom are revealed. ")

While drinking at Assabet Spring. See May 2, 1855 ("Open the Assabet spring."); July 12, 1857 ("I drink at every cooler spring in my walk these afternoons."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, At Assabet Spring

A bird that came to drink must have brought it half a mile. See September 1, 1860 ("How artfully the seed of a cherry is placed in order that a bird may be compelled to transport it . . . The bird is bribed with the pericarp to take the stone with it and do this little service for Nature. Thus a bird's wing is added to the cherry-stone which was wingless, and it does not wait for winds to transport it."); also September 21, 1860 ("I suspect that . . . those [seeds] the wind takes are less generally the food of birds and quadrupeds than the heavier and wingless seeds") and  August 19, 1852 ("The small fruits of most plants are now generally ripe or ripening, and this is coincident with the flying in flocks of such young birds now grown as feed on them.").

July 14.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, July 14

A bird come to drink

must have brought this cherry-stone –

the tree gets planted.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, So the tree gets planted!

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-560714

At the railroad meadow this side the Brooks Crossing.

July 5. 

A. M. — To Loring’s Pond. 

July 5. 

Pink-colored yarrow.

Epilobium coloratum, a day or more. 

Young partridges (with the old bird), as big as robins, make haste into the woods from off the railroad. 

Plucked some large luscious purple pyrus berries. Lactuca some days out. 

Borrowed Witherell’s boat and paddled over Loring’s Pond. A kingbird’s nest in fork of a buttonbush five feet high on shore (not saddled on); three young just hatched and one egg. 

Much of this pond is now very shallow and muddy and crowded with pads, etc. I can hardly push through them. Yet I can see no more white lily pads shaped as that appears to have been which I found here a few weeks since. 

Many pickerel dart away from amidst the pads, and in one place I see one or two great snap-turtles. 

I notice two varieties (?), perhaps, of Asclepias Cornuti now out, one on the railroad meadow this side the Brooks Crossing, the other beyond the first mile-post above. The last has broader leaves and blunter and more decidedly mucronate, and pedicels and peduncles quite downy, the former little more than twice the length of the petals. The other has narrower and more pointed leaves, peduncles and pedicels but little downy comparatively, the latter more than three times the length of the petals and not so numerous as in the other. Vide their pods, if spiny, by and by. 

The Spergularia rubra was not open in the morning when I passed up, at 8 or 9 A. M., but was opened when I returned at noon, but closed again at 5 P. M.

The notes of barn swallows, perhaps with their young, are particularly loud now and almost metallic, like that of a mackerel gull. 

The large evening-primrose below the foot of our garden does not open till some time between 6.30 and 8 P. M. or sundown. It was not open when I went to bathe, but freshly out in the cool of the evening at sun down, as if enjoying the serenity of the hour.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 5, 1856


Young partridges (with the old bird), as big as robins, make haste . . . See July 5, 1857 ("Partridges big as quails."); June 26, 1857( See a pack of partridges as big as robins at least.); July 1, 1860 (I see young partridges not bigger than robins . . .”) and note to August 24, 1855 ("Scare up a pack of grouse."). Also  A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge.

A kingbird’s nest in fork of a buttonbush five feet high. See July 9, 1859 ("See young kingbirds which have lately flown perched in a family on the willows, — the airy bird, lively, twittering"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Kingbird

Pink-colored yarrow. See August 27, 1859 ("I often see yarrow with a delicate pink tint, very distinct from the common pure-white ones. ")

The Telegraph says it Snowed in Bangor To-day.

May 31

P. M. — To Clintonia Swamp (Hubbard’s) Grove. 

A ground-bird’s nest (melodia or graminea), with six of those oblong narrow gray eggs speckled with much brown at end. When I looked again half an hour after, one egg was hatched. The bird would steal out through the grass when I came within a rod, and then, after running a rod or two, take to wing. 

May 31, 2016

Tied a string about a low pyrus a rod or so to right of entrance to Hubbard’s Pyrus Swamp and two feet west of a pitch pine stump, and pressed a twig of it.

Clintonia. 

Nuphar advena first noticed; may have been out some time in some places, but just out in river. 

Pink, common wild, maybe two or three days.

Sundown—To Hill and Island. 

Have noticed within a week, from time to time, the water-line on the bushes along the shore — the water going down — unusually distinct, for while the exposed parts have leaved out, the lower are quite bare and black. 

Hemlock and creeping juniper, where had not bloomed the 22d, are now entirely out of bloom on the hill. How short their flower lasts! 

Ranunculus Purshii, probably earlier in some places, but water high. 

That little cerastium on the rock at the Island, noticed the 22d, which probably opened about  that time, is now out of bloom. It is about three inches high and has long pods, more than twice the length of the calyx, which turn upward. I have seen no petals. It seems to be the C. nutans (?), from size, erectness, and form of pods and leaves. It has viscid hairs or with glands at end. 

The red oak is so forward, compared with the rest, that it is more difficult to get a sprig in flower small enough (its leaves) to press. 

As I return in the dusk, many nighthawks, with their great spotted wings, are circling low over the river, as the swallows were when I went out. They skim within a rod of me. After dusk these greater swallows come forth, and circle and play about over the water like those lesser ones, or perhaps making a larger circuit, also uttering a louder note. It would not be safe for such great birds to fly so near and familiarly by day. 

It has been very cold for two or three days, and to-night a frost is feared. The telegraph says it snowed in Bangor to-day. 

The hickory leaves are blackened by blowing in the cold wind.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 31, 1856

A ground-bird’s nest (melodia or graminea.), with six of those oblong narrow gray eggs speckled with much brown at end. See May 18, 1855 ("A bay-wing sparrow’s nest, four eggs (young half hatched) -- some black-spotted, others not”); May 27, 1856 ("Fringilla melodia’s nest in midst of swamp, with four eggs . . . with very dark blotches."); June 4, 1857 (“I scare up a bay-wing. She runs several rods close to the ground through the thin grass, and then lurks behind tussocks, etc. The nest has four eggs, dull pinkish-white with brown spots; nest low in ground, of stubble lined with white horse hair. ”). See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bay-Wing [Vesper] Sparrow (Fringilla graminea)

Clintonia. See June 2, 1853 ("Clintonia borealis, a day or two. This is perhaps the most interesting and neatest of what I may call the liliaceous (?) plants we have. Its beauty at present consists chiefly in its commonly three very handsome, rich, clear dark-green leaves . . . arching over from a centre at the ground, sometimes very symmetrically disposed in a triangular fashion; and from their midst rises the scape [ a ] foot high, with one or more umbels of “green bell-shaped flowers,” yellowish- green, nodding or bent downward")

Nuphar advena first noticed . . . just out in river. See May 30, 1858 ("I saw the Nuphar advena above water and yellow in Shrewsbury the 23d.")

Pink, common wild, maybe two or three days. See May 29, 1852 (" Barberry in bloom, wild pinks, and blue-eyed grass."); June 5, 1850 ("The first of June, when the lady’s-slipper and the wild pink have come out in sunny places on the hillsides, then the summer is begun according to the clock of the seasons.”);  June 19, 1852 ("Is not this the carnival of the year, when the swamp rose and wild pink are in bloom,  the last stage before blueberries come?")

Ranunculus Purshii, probably earlier in some places, but water high. See May 26, 1855 ("The Ranunculus Purshii in that large pool in the Holden Swamp Woods makes quite a show at a little distance now."); May 28, 1858 ("The Ranunculus Purshii is now abundant and conspicuous in river."): June 6, 1857 ('The Ranunculus Purshii is in some places abundantly out now and quite showy. It must be our largest ranunculus (flower).”)

That little cerastium on the rock at the Island, noticed the 22d . . . seems to be the C. nutans [nodding chickweed]. See  May 6, 1856 ("Cerastium out there under the bank"); May 22, 1856 ("A little clammy hairy cerastium (?) (like a Cerastium viscosum, slender and erect), about three inches high, will open in a day or two on the rock near the bass."); June 5, 1856 ("I must call that cerastium of May 22d C. nutans (?), at least for the present, though . . .Thompson’s “History of Vermont,” says it is not found in New England out of that State.") See also  May 31, 1853 (" The fact that a rare and beautiful flower which we never saw, perhaps never heard of, for which therefore there was no place in our thoughts, may at length be found in our immediate neighborhood, is very suggestive.  The boundaries of the actual are no more fixed and rigid than the elasticity of our imaginations.")

[Thoreau's herbarium includes a physical specimen from "Island Rock” with the label “Cerastium nutans'’ in his own handwriting. See Richard J. Eaton,  A Flora of Concord, 114  ("Very rare. The only known specimen to have been collected in New England east of the Connecticut River except in Connecticut.")]

The red oak is so forward . . .it is more difficult to get a sprig in flower small enough (its leaves) to press. See May 18, 1851 ("The oak leaves of all colors are just expanding, and are more beautiful than most flowers");  May 20, 1852 ("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 23, 1860 ("The quarter-grown red oak leaves between you and the sun, how yellow-green!")

As I return in the dusk, many nighthawks, with their great spotted wings, are circling low over the river, as the swallows were when I went out. See   June 5, 1854 ("Now, just before sundown, a nighthawk is circling, imp-like, with undulating, irregular flight over the sprout-land on the Cliff Hill, with an occasional squeak and showing the spots on his wings. He does not circle away from this place, and I associate him with two gray eggs somewhere on the ground beneath and a mate there sitting.") June 21, 1856 ("Nighthawks numerously squeak at 5 P. M. and boom  Saw them fly low and touch the water like swallows over Walden. ")

The telegraph says it snowed in Bangor to-day. See August 26, 1854 ("Hear by telegraph that it rains in Portland and New York."); See also November 13, 1851 ("The cattle-train came down last night from Vermont with snow nearly a foot thick upon it. It is as if, in the fall of the year, a swift traveller should come out of the north with snow upon his coat.")  

The hickory leaves are blackened by blowing in the cold wind. See May 31, 1858 ("There were severe frosts on the nights of the 28th and 29th, and now I see the hickories turned quite black")

May 31. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, May 31

Six narrow gray eggs speckled with brown at the end in a ground-bird’s nest.

That cerastium

on the rock at the Island . . .

another rare plant.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The Telegraph says it Snowed in Bangor 

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-560531

Kalmia in prime.

May 27. 

May 27, 2016 

I stop at Bristol pond take a picture 

then hear a Baltimore oriole confirmed

 when I see it high in a tree singing. 

~ zphx 

To Kalmia Swamp with Sanborn. 

Fringilla melodia’s nest in midst of swamp, with four eggs, made partly of usnea; two stories, i.e. upon an old nest, elevated one foot above the water; eggs with very dark blotches. 

Kalmia in prime, and rhodora. Apparently the oldest-blossomed kalmia the palest. 

Saw probably a deer mouse jumping off by the side of the swamp; short leaps of apparently ten inches.

The pyrus (smooth-leaved) out apparently a day or two. 

See men fishing, one or two, and often perceived the meadow fragrance. 

My three kinds of birch sap have now become more acid, especially the white and canoe birch. The black birch is milder and more agreeable. With sugar it is an agreeable drink. I prefer it to cream-o’-tartar water. This is the real birch wine.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 27, 1856

Fringilla melodia’s nest in midst of swamp, with four eggs, made partly of usnea; . . . eggs with very dark blotches. . . .See June 14, 1855 ("A song sparrow’s nest in ditch bank under Clamshell, of coarse grass lined with fine, and five eggs nearly hatched and a peculiar dark end to them."); June 9, 1855 ("A song sparrow’s nest low in Wheeler’s meadow, with five eggs, made of grass lined with hair. ")  See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)

Kalmia in prime, and rhodora. . . . See May 26, 1855 ("To my surprise the Kalmia glauca almost all out; perhaps began with rhodora. A very fine flower, the more interesting for being early."); January 9, 1855 ("Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp, I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots . . . the Kalmia glauca var.rosmarinifolia.").   Note: the Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia is known as rosemary-leaf laurel or alpine bog laurel (Andromeda Polifolia) H. Peter Loewer, Thoreau's Garden: Native Plants for the American Landscape 32-33

Saw probably a deer mouse jumping off by the side of the swamp. See  November 15, 1857 ("I saw, sitting nearly erect at the bottom in one corner, a little Mus leucopus, panting with fear and with its large black eyes upon me.")  January 15, 1857 ("So it was so many thousands of years before Gutenberg invented printing with his types, and so it will be so many thousands of years after his types are forgotten, perchance.  The deer mouse will be printing on the snow of Well Meadow to be read by a new race of men. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse (" The common name of "deer mouse" (coined in 1833) is a reference to its  agility. Unlike meadow voles,  deer mice have long legs that allow them to bound like deer.")

Often perceived the meadow fragrance. . . . See May 27, 1855 ("The meadow fragrance to-day.”); May 15,1856 ("Perceive some of that delicious meadow fragrance coming over the railroad causeway.”)

May 27. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, May 27

A deer mouse jumping 

off by the side of the swamp –

short leaps ten inches.

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

To Fair Haven Pond with Blake and Brown.

May 25. 
10 A. M.—To Fair Haven Pond with Blake and Brown.

I found five arrowheads at Clamshell Hill. 

Saw, just before, on the flat meadow on the right, feeding on the edge of the meadow just left bare, along with the peetweets, a bird a size larger with an apparently light-brown back, a ring or crescent of black on its breast and side of neck, and a black patch including the eye. Can it be the Charadrius semipalmatus? or else Wilsonius? It looks like the latter in Wilson’s larger plates. It reminded me of the piping plover, but was not so white; and of the killdeer, but was not so large. 

Pyrus on side of Fair Haven Hill, yesterday at least.

Huckleberry there, yesterday also at least. 

On the Cliffs, orobanche; Veronica arvensis, the little one on the rocks there, well out. Also low blackberry on the rocks a day or two. 

Blackburnian warbler and rose-breasted grosbeak. 

Lupines, apparently yesterday. 

Young phoebes in the Baker house. The bird flitted out as we entered. I reached to an old shelf and felt the warm but callow young. 

Azalea nudiflora in garden. 

Polygala, fringed, by path beyond Hubbard Grove; how long?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 25, 1856

Rose-breasted grosbeak. See May 25, 1854 ("a handsome bird with a loud and very rich song, in character between that of a robin and a red-eye.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak

Azalea nudiflora in garden. See June 2, 1855 ("The Azalea nudiflora now in its prime.”); May 29, 1855 ("Azalea nudiflora in garden") and May 31, 1853 ("I am going in search of the Azalea nudiflora.")

A strange warbler in Moore's Swamp

June 

June 15.
To Moore’s Swamp. 






Robin’s nest in apple tree, twelve feet high — young nearly grown.

Hair-bird’s nest on main limb of an apple tree, horizontal, ten feet high. 

Many pollywogs an inch long.

In the swamp a catbird’s nest in the darkest and thickest part, in a high blueberry, five feet from ground, two eggs; bird comes within three feet while I am looking. 

Viburnum nudum, how long? Not long. 

Wool(?)-grass. 

I see a strange warbler still in this swamp. A chestnut and gray backed bird, five or six inches long, with a black throat and yellow crown; note, chit chit chill le le, or chut chut a wutter chut a wut, che che. 

Crimson frosting on maple leaves. 

The swamp pyrus twigs are in some places curving over and swollen, and curling up at ends, forming bunches of leaves.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 15, 1855

Robin’s nest in apple tree, twelve feet high — young nearly grown. See June 15, 1852 ("Young robins, dark-speckled,")

Viburnum nudum, how long? See June 10, 1854 ("The Viburnum lentago is just out of bloom now that the V. nudum is fairly begun.)

Wool-grass. See June 15, 1858 ("That coarse grass in the Island meadow which grows in full circles . . . is wool-grass. . . The peculiarly circular form of the patches, sometimes their projecting edges being the arcs of circles, is very obvious now that the lower and different grass around is under water”)

Hair-bird’s [chipping sparrow’s] nest on main limb of an apple tree, horizontal, ten feet high. See June 20, 1855 (“Two hair-birds’ nests fifteen feet high on apple trees at R.W.E.’s (one with two eggs).”)

Many pollywogs an inch long. See June 15, 1851 ("The pollywogs in the pond are now fulltailed")

A chestnut and gray backed bird, five or six inches long, with a black throat and yellow crown. See note to June 15, 1854 (“Saw there also, probably, a chestnut-sided warbler. A yellow crown, chestnut stripe on sides, white beneath, and two yellowish bars on wings.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chestnut-sided Warbler