I saw how He fed his fish.

June 15.

I observe to-night, June 15th, the air over the river by the Leaning Hemlocks filled with myriads of newly fledged insects drifting and falling as it were like snow flakes from the maples, only not so white. Now they drift up the stream, now down, while the river below is dimpled with the fishes rising to swallow the innumerable insects which have fallen [into] it and are struggling with it. 

I saw how He fed his fish. 

They, swimming in the dark nether atmosphere of the river, rose lazily to its surface to swallow such swimmers of the light upper atmosphere as sank to its bottom.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 15, 1850

I saw how He fed his fish. See June 2, 1854 ("When we returned to our boat at 7 p. m., I noticed first, to my surprise, that the river was all alive with leaping fish, their heads seen continually darted above water, and they were large fish, too. Looking up I found that the whole atmosphere over the river was full of shad-flies. It was a great flight of ephemera"). June 9, 1854 ("The air is now full of shad-flies, and there is an incessant sound made by the fishes leaping for their evening meal, dimpling the river like large drops as far as I can see..”); June 8, 1856 (“My boat being by chance at the same place where it was in ’54, I noticed a great flight of ephemera”). June 9, 1856 ("Again, about seven, the ephemera came out, in numbers as many as last night, now many of them coupled, even tripled; and the fishes leap as before."); June 11, 1859 ("When I return, about 5 p. m., the shad-flies swarm over the river in considerable numbers, but there are very few at sundown.")

The peculiar flight of a hawk thus fetches the year about.

April 22. 

April 22, 2019

Row to Fair Haven. Thermometer 56° or 54º. 

See shad-flies. 

Scare up woodcock on the shore by my boat's place, — the first I had seen. It was feeding within a couple of rods, but I had not seen or thought of it. When I made a loud and sharp sound driving in my rowlocks, it suddenly flew up. It is evident that we very often come quite near woodcocks and snipe thus concealed on the ground, without starting them and so without suspecting that they are near. These marsh birds, like the bittern, have this habit of keeping still and trusting to their resemblance to the ground. 

See now hen-hawks, a pair, soaring high as for pleasure, circling ever further and further away, as if it were midsummer. The peculiar flight of a hawk thus fetches the year about. I do not see it soar in this serene and leisurely manner very early in the season, methinks. 

The early luzula is almost in bloom; makes a show, with its budded head and its purplish and downy, silky leaves, on the warm margin of Clamshell Bank.

Two or three dandelions in bloom spot the ground there. 

Land at Lee's Cliff. 

The cassandra (water-brush) is well out, — how long? — and in one place we disturb great clouds of the little fuzzy gnats that were resting on the bushes, as we push up the shallow ditch there. 

The Ranunculus fascicularis is now in prime, rather than before. 

The columbine is hardly yet out. 

I hear that the Viola ovata was found the 17th and the 20th, and the bloodroot in E. Emerson's garden the 20th. 

J. B. Moore gave me some mineral which he found being thrown out of [a] drain that was dug between Knight's factory and his house. It appears to me to be red lead and quartz, and the lead is quite pure and marks very well, or freely, but is pretty dark.

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

See shad-flies. See April 24, 1857 (“Sail to Ball's Hill. The water is at its height, higher than before this year. I see a few shad-flies on its surface.”); April 25, 1854  ("Many shad-flies in the air and alighting on my clothes."); April 28, 1859 ("See a shad-fly, one only, on water.,”); May 1, 1854 ("The water is strewn with myriads of wrecked shad-flies, erect on the surface, with their wings up like so many schooners all headed one way.”); May 1, 1858 (“Ephemerae quite common over the water.”); May 4, 1856 ("Shad-flies on the water, schooner-like.”); see also June 9, 1854 ("The air is now full of shad-flies, and there is an incessant sound made by the fishes leaping for their evening meal");June 8, 1856 (“my boat being by chance at the same place where it was in ’54, I noticed a great flight of ephemera”);  June 9, 1856 ("Again, about seven, the ephemera came out, in numbers as many as last night, now many of them coupled, even tripled; and the fishes leap as before.")

    

These marsh birds, like the bittern, have this habit of keeping still and trusting to their resemblance to the ground. See November 21, 1857 ("Just above the grape-hung birches, my attention was drawn to a singular-looking dry leaf or parcel of leaves on the shore about a rod off. Then I thought it might be the dry and yellowed skeleton of a bird with all its ribs; then the shell of a turtle, or possibly some large dry oak leaves peculiarly curved and cut; and then, all at once, I saw that it was a woodcock, perfectly still, with its head drawn in, standing on its great pink feet."); See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The American Woodcock

The peculiar flight of a hawk thus fetches the year about. See . April 22, 1852 ("See four hawks soaring high in the heavens over the Swamp Bridge Brook. At first saw three; said to myself there must be four, and found the fourth. Glad are they, no doubt, to be out after being confined by the storm"); February 16, 1859 ("The hen-hawk . . . loves to soar above the clouds. It has its own way and is beautiful.);  March 15, 1860 ("I get a very fair sight of it sailing overhead. What a perfectly regular and neat outline it presents! an easily recognized figure anywhere."); March 23, 1856 ("I spend a considerable portion of my time observing the habits of the wild animals, my brute neighbors. By their various movements and migrations they fetch the year about to me.")  See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Hen-Hawk

The early luzula is almost in bloom; makes a show, with its budded head and its purplish and downy, silky leaves. See April 30, 1859 ("Luzula campestris is almost out at Clamshell. Its now low purplish and silky-haired leaves are the blooming of moist ground and early meadow-edges.")

Two or three dandelions in bloom spot the ground there. See April 22, 1855 ("The grass is now become rapidly green by the sides of the road, promising dandelions and butter cups. "); April 29, 1857 ("I commonly meet with the earliest dandelion set in the midst of some liquid green patch. It seems a sudden and decided progress in the season.")

We disturb great clouds of the little fuzzy gnats that were resting on the bushes.  

See April 22, 1852 ("I see swarms of gnats in the air."); See also April 21, 1855 ("All the button-bushes, etc., etc., in and about the water are now swarming with those minute fuzzy gnats about an eighth of an inch long. The insect youth are on the wing. The whole shore resounds with their hum wherever we approach it, and they cover our boat and persons. They are in countless myriads the whole length of the river.") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ)

The Ranunculus fascicularis is now in prime, rather than before. See April 11, 1858 ("Crowfoot (Ranunculus fascicularis) at Lee's since the 6th, apparently a day or two before this.")

The columbine is hardly yet out. See April 18, 1856 (“Columbine, and already eaten by bees. Some with a hole in the side.”); April 30, 1855 (" Columbine just out; one anther sheds."); May 1, 1854 ("I think that the columbine cannot be said to have blossomed there [Lee's Cliff] before to-day, — the very earliest.”)

I hear that the Viola ovata was found the 17th and the 20th. See April 19, 1858 ("Viola ovata on bank above Lee's Cliff. Edith Emerson found them there yesterday.") See also May 20, 1852 ) ("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, slaty-blue, and darkly striated.”). and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Violets

The dark river, now that shades are increased, is like the dark eye of a maiden.

May 27. 

This moment each year

the setting sun reflecting

from both pond and lake.

May 27, 2019

May 27, 2015

Friday. P. M. — Up Assabet.

Now first I notice a linty dust on the surface of the dark river at the Hemlocks, evidently from the new and downy leaves. These expressions of the face of Nature are as constant and sure to recur as those of the eyes of maidens, from year to year, — sure to be repeated as long as time lasts. 

It is a new and peculiar season when this phenomenon is observed. Rivers flow already bearing the dust of summer on their bosoms. The dark river, now that shades are increased, is like the dark eye of a maiden. 

Azalea nudiflora blooms generally. 

Hear a black and white creeper sing, ah vee vee, vee vee, vitchet vitchet vitchet vitchet. 

A peculiarity of these days is the first hearing of the crickets' creak, suggesting philosophy and thought. No greater event transpires now. It is the most interesting piece of news to be communicated, yet it is not in any newspaper.

Melvin and Skinner tell me of three wild geese, to their surprise seen within a week down the river, — a gander and two geese, — which must be breeding here. Melvin got near them a fortnight ago. They are too much disturbed to rear a brood, I think. 

Melvin tells of seeing once in June dead shad-flies washed up on the North Branch in windrows, along the shore. 

Golden senecio, at least to-morrow. 

Went by Temple's. For rural interest, give me the houses of the poor, with simply a cool spring, a good deal of weather-stained wood, and a natural door-stone: a house standing somewhere in nature, and not merely in an atmosphere of art, on a measured lot; on a hillside, perchance, obviously not made by any gardener, amid rocks not placed there by a landscape gardener for effect; with nothing "pretty" about it, but life reduced to its lowest terms and yet found to be beautiful. 

This is a good foundation or board to spring from. All that the natives erect themselves above that will be a genuine growth.

Blue-eyed grass out.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 27, 1859

Now first I notice a linty dust on the surface of the dark river at the Hemlocks. See June 4, 1854 (“The surface of the still water nowadays looking like dust at a little distance. Is it the down of the leaves blown off?”) and  note to June 4, 1857 (“I observed yesterday, the first time this year, the lint on the smooth surface of the Assabet at the Hemlocks, giving the water a stagnant look. It is an agreeable phenomenon to me, as connected with the season and suggesting warm weather. I suppose it to be the down from the new leaves.”)

These expressions of the face of Nature are sure to be repeated as long as time lasts. April 18, 1852 ("For the first time I perceive this spring that the year is a circle.”); September 24, 1859 ("Young men have not learned the phases of Nature; they do not know what constitutes a year, or that one year is like another."); May 5, 1860 ("It takes us many years to find out that Nature repeats herself annually”)

The dark river, now that shades are increased, is like the dark eye of a maiden. See June 6, 1855 ("You see the dark eye and shade of June on the river as well as on land.”); June 9. 1856 ("It is a dark eyelash which suggests a flashing eye beneath .”); May 29, 1857 ("the sunniness contrasts with the shadows of the freshly expanded foliage, like the glances of an eye from under the dark eyelashes of June.”);May 29, 1857  ("It was like the first bright flashings of an eye from under dark eyelashes after shedding warm tears."); May 29, 1857 ("I sit on the top of Lee's Cliff, looking into the light and dark eye of the lake.")

Azalea nudiflora blooms generally. See note to May 31, 1853 ( It blossomed at the old election time, and he thought it 'the handsomest flower that grows.’”)

Hear a black and white creeper sing, ah vee vee, vee vee, vitchet vitchet vitchet vitchet. See May 30, 1857 ("In the midst of the shower, though it was not raining very hard, a black and white creeper came and inspected the limbs of a tree before my rock, in his usual zigzag, prying way, head downward often, and when it thundered loudest, heeded it not.”). Compare April 28, 1856 ("I hear to-day frequently the seezer seezer seezer of the black and white creeper, . . . suggesting still warmer weather, —that the season has revolved so much further."); May 11, 1856 ("The black and white creeper also is descending the oaks, etc., and uttering from time to time his seeser seeser seeser. What a rich, strong striped blue-black (?) and white bird”). See also A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, The Black and White Creeper

The first hearing of the crickets' creak, suggesting philosophy and thought. See May 18, 1860 ("The creak of the cricket has been common on all warm, dry hills, banks, etc., for a week, - inaugurating the summer."); May 22, 1854 (“The song suggests lateness, but only as we come to a knowledge of eternity after some acquaintance with time. . . . . Only in their saner moments do men hear the crickets. . . .A quire has begun which pauses not for any news, for it knows only the eternal.”); May 24, 1857 (“Hear the first cricket as I go through a warm hollow, bringing round the summer with his everlasting strain.”); May 26, 1852 ("To-night I hear many crickets. They have commenced their song. They bring in the summer.”); May 30, 1855 ("Is it not summer now when the creak of the crickets begins to be general?”); June 1, 1856 (“Was soothed and cheered by I knew not what at first, but soon detected the now more general creak of crickets”); June 4, 1857 ( “the creak of crickets, which affects our thoughts so favorably, imparting its own serenity. It is time now to bring our philosophy out of doors.”)

Golden senecio, at least to-morrow. See June 6, 1858 ("Golden senecio is not uncommon now")

Blue-eyed grass out. See May 29, 1852 ("Blue-eyed grass [in bloom]."); May 29, 1853 ("That exceedingly neat and interesting little flower blue-eyed grass now claims our attention"); May 29, 1856 (“Blue-eyed grass, probably to-morrow.”); May 31, 1854 (“Blue-eyed grass, apparently in pretty good season.”); June 6, 1855 (“Blue-eyed grass maybe several days in some places.”); June 15, 1851 (“The blue-eyed grass, well named, looks up to heaven.”); June 15, 1852 ("The fields are blued with blue-eyed grass, — a slaty blue. "); June 15, 1859 ("Blue-eyed grass at height."); June 19, 1853 ("I see large patches of blue-eyed grass in the meadow across the river from my window"); June 20, 1852 ("The blue-eyed grass is shut up. When does it open?"); June 20, 1852 ("The blue-eyed grass is shut up. When does it open?"); July 6, 1851("Blue-eyed grass is now rarely seen. “) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, blue-eyed grass

On the way up the dogs are let loose and they dutifully walk along the trail in front of us.  I veer off on the last steep and get up to my chair in time to take several pictures of a the sunset through open clouds in the west. A jet pass is over headed for Europe. The sun is setting so at the right moment is reflecting both from the lake and the pond  —and still has more north to go. At dusk we head back regular way and both can walk in the dark without lights as the path is illuminated by the phosphorus of paint. Every rock that is to be avoided as marked and the rest is a fairyland of of lights pulling us through the woods.

This moment each year

the setting sun reflecting

from both pond and lake.

~zphx 20190527

Large waves are not so easily formed on account of friction.

April 28.

April 28, 2019

8.30 a. m. — Row to Carlisle Bridge with Blake and Brown. 

See black ducks and sheldrakes still. 

The first myrtle-bird that I have noticed. 

A small hawk, perhaps pigeon hawk. 

A gull. 

Sit on Ball's Hill. The water partly over the Great Meadows. The wind is northeast, and at the western base of the hill we are quite sheltered; yet the waves run quite high there and still further up the river, — waves raised by the wind beyond the hill, — while there are very slight waves or ripples over the meadow south of the hill, which is much more exposed, evidently because the water is shallow there and large waves are not so easily formed on account of friction. 

S. Higginson brought me the arbutus in bloom on the 26th, one twig only out. 

See a shad-fly, one only, on water. 

A little snake, size of little brown snake, on pine hill, but uniformly grayish above as far as I could see. 

E. Emerson's Salamandra dorsalis has just lost its skin.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 28, 1859


The first myrtle-bird that I have noticed. See April 28, 1855 ( ("There are a great many myrtle-birds here, — they have been quite common for a week.");  April 28, 1858 (“I see the myrtle-bird in the same sunny place, south of the Island woods, as formerly.”)

Ball’s Hill. See March 16, 1859 (“As we look over the lively, tossing blue waves for a mile or more eastward and northward, our eyes fall on these shining russet hills, and Ball's Hill appears in this strong light at the verge of this undulating blue plain, like some glorious newly created island of the spring, just sprung up from the bottom in the midst of the blue waters. ”)

See a shad-fly, one only, on water. See April 24, 1857 (“Sail to Ball's Hill. The water is at its height, higher than before this year. I see a few shad-flies on its surface.”). Compare May 1, 1854 ("The water is strewn with myriads of wrecked shad-flies, erect on the surface, with their wings up like so many schooners all headed one way.”)

A little snake, size of little brown snake, on pine hill, but uniformly grayish above. See October 29, 1857  (“I see evidently what Storer calls the little brown snake (Coluber ordinatus). . . . Above it is pale-brown, with a still lighter brown stripe running down the middle of the back”)

E. Emerson's Salamandra dorsalis has just lost its skin. See April 18, 1859 (“Ed. Emerson shows me his aquarium.. . .Two salamanders, . . . One some four inches long, with a carinated and waved (crenated) edged tail as well as light-vermilion spots on the back, evidently the Salamandra dorsalis. (This I suspect is what I called S. symmetrica last fall.) (This is pale-brown above.)”); December 5, 1858 (“How singularly ornamented is that salamander! Its brightest side, its yellow belly, sprinkled with fine dark spots, is turned downward. Its back is indeed ornamented with two rows of bright vermilion spots, but these can only be detected on the very closest inspection.”); December 3, 1858 ("brown (not dark-brown) above and yellow with small dark spots beneath, and the same spots on the sides of the tail; a row of very minute vermilion spots, not detected but on a close examination, on each side of the back; the tail is waved on the edge (upper edge, at least); has a pretty, bright eye. Its tail, though narrower, reminds me of the pollywog.")

What ages between me and the tree whose shade I enjoy!

 June 5. 

P. M. — To Gowing's Swamp and Poplar Hill. 

The shad-flies were very abundant probably last evening about the house, for this morning they are seen filling and making black every cobweb on the side of the house, blinds, etc. All freshly painted surfaces are covered with them. The surface of pools and ditches also is remarkably thick with them. The living ones are on the bushes which I pluck, far from any water. 

I find one Vaccinium Oxycoccus open. The petals are not white like the common, but pink like the bud. 

That low reedy sedge about the edge of the central pool in the swamp is just out of bloom and shows the seeds.

I see a great many tortoises in that pool, showing their heads and backs above water and pursuing each other about the pool. It is evidently their copulating- season. Their shells are yellow-spotted, and their throats are of a reddish yellow (?). Are they the Emys guttata?  It is a wonder how they made their way to this water through so many twiggy bushes and over so many tussocks. How should they know of such a wild water? To this wild water, then, the tortoises which inhabit the swamps resort in their breeding-season, and are there undisturbed. You would think it almost the labor of a lifetime for a tortoise to make its way from the surrounding shrubbery to this water, and how do they know that there is water here? 

The larch cones are still very beautiful against the light, but some cones, I perceive, are merely green.

Some apparent beach plum (?) almost completely out of bloom, ten to twelve feet high, along the wall behind Adolphus Clark's. This is the largest I know of.

Lamb kill. 

The mocker-nuts on Mrs. Ripley's hill apparently a day or more. 

Some red maples are much more fertile than others. Their keys are now very conspicuous. But such trees have comparatively few leaves and have grown but little as yet. 

At evening, paddle up Assabet. There are many ephemerae in the air; but it is cool, and their great flight is not yet. 

Pincushion gall on oak. 

I am interested in each contemporary plant in my vicinity, and have attained to a certain acquaintance with the larger ones. They are cohabitants with me of this part of the planet, and they bear familiar names. Yet how essentially wild they are! as wild, really, as those strange fossil plants whose impressions I see on my coal. Yet I can imagine that some race gathered those too with as much admiration, and knew them as intimately as I do these, that even they served for a language of the sentiments. Stigmariae stood for a human sentiment in that race's flower language. Chickweed, or a pine tree, is but little less wild. I assume to be acquainted with these, but what ages between me and the tree whose shade I enjoy! It is as if it stood substantially in a remote geological period.

June 5,  2017

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  June 5, 1857



Some red maples are much more fertile than others. Their keys are now very conspicuous. See June 3, 1860 ("The roads now strewn with red maple seed. "); June 2, 1859 ("Red maple seed is partly blown off. Some of it is conspicuously whitish or light-colored on the trees.")

A New England landscape.

April 24. 

Sail to Ball's Hill. 

The water is at its height, higher than before this year. I see a few shad-flies on its surface. 

Scudding over the Great Meadows, I see the now red crescents of the red maples in their prime round about, above the gray stems. 

The willow osiers require to be seen endwise the rows, to get an intense color. 

The clouds are handsome this afternoon : on the north, some dark, windy clouds, with rain falling beneath

   





— but it is chiefly wind; 

southward, those summer clouds in numerous isles, light above and dark-barred beneath. 

Now the sun comes out and shines on the pine hill west of Ball's Hill, lighting up the light-green pitch pines and the sand and russet-brown lichen-clad hill. That is a very New England landscape. Buttrick's yellow farmhouse near by is in harmony with it. 

The little fuzzy gnats are about. I see a vertical circular cobweb, more than a foot in diameter, nearly filled with them, and this revealed the existence of the swarms that had filled the air on all sides. If it had been as many yards wide as it was inches, it would probably have been just as full. 

Saw on a small oak slanting over water in a swamp, in the midst of a mass of cat-briar, about ten feet from the ground, a very large nest, of that hypnum (?) moss, in the form of an inverted cone, one foot across above and about eight inches deep, with a hole in the side very thick and warm; probably a mouse-nest, for there were mouse droppings within.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 24, 1857

I see the now red crescents of the red maples in their prime . . . above the gray stems. See April 24, 1854 ("The first red maple blossoms — so very red over the water — are very interesting. ") See also April 26, 1855 ("The blossoms of the red maple (some a yellowish green) are now most generally conspicuous and handsome scarlet crescents over the swamps. "); April 26, 1860 ("I have noticed their handsome crescents over distant swamps commonly for some ten days. At height, then, say the 21st. "); April 28, 1855 (" The abundant wholesome gray of the trunks and stems beneath surmounted by the red or scarlet crescents.”) note to May 1, 1856 ("Looking over the swamps a quarter of a mile distant, you see dimly defined crescents of bright brick red above and amid a maze of ash-colored branches.”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Maple

That is a very New England landscape. Buttrick's yellow farmhouse near by is in harmony with it. See  February 9, 1858 (“A distant farmhouse on a hill, French’s or Buttrick's, perhaps.”); May 12, 1857 ("It reminded me of many a summer sunset, of many miles of gray rails, of many a rambling pasture, of the farmhouse far in the fields, its milk-pans and well-sweep, and the cows coming home from pasture.”). Compare August 26, 1856 ("What is a New England landscape this sunny August day? A weather-painted house and barn, with an orchard by its side, in midst of a sandy field surrounded by green woods, with a small blue lake on one side.”); June 15, 1859 (“A regular old-fashioned country house, long and low, one story unpainted, with a broad green field, half orchard, for all yard between it and the road, — a part of the hill side, — and much June-grass before it. This is where the men who save the country are born and bred.”)

The little fuzzy gnats are about. See April 21, 1855 ("All the button-bushes, etc., etc., in and about the water are now swarming with those minute fuzzy gnats about an eighth of an inch long. The insect youth are on the wing. The whole shore resounds with their hum wherever we approach it, and they cover our boat and persons. They are in countless myriads the whole length of the river. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ)

About ten feet from the ground . . . a mouse-nest. See November 15, 1857 ("A little Mus leucopus, panting with fear and with its large black eyes upon me . . . It will thus make its nest at least sixteen feet up a tree, improving some cleft or hollow, or probably bird's nest, for this purpose. These nests, I suppose, are made when the trees are losing their leaves") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

The yellow farmhouse

nearby the light-green pitch pines

lit up by the sun.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A New England landscape.

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt570424

Surrounded by whiteweed

June 24. 

June 24.

To Sassacowen Pond and to Long Pond. 

Common yellow thistle abundant about R’s; open a good while. 

Maryland yellow-throats very common in bushes behind his house; nest with young. 

American holly now in prime. 

The light-colored masses of mountain laurel were visible across Sassacowen. 

A kingbird’s nest just completed in an apple tree. 

Lunched by the spring on the Brady farm in Freetown, and there it occurred to me how to get clear water from a spring when the surface is covered with dust or insects. Thrust your dipper down deep in the middle of the spring and lift it up quickly straight and square. This will heap up the water in the middle so that the scum will run off. 

We were surrounded by whiteweed. The week before I had seen it equally abundant in Worcester (in many fields the flowers placed in one plane would more than cover the surface), and here as there each flower had a dark ring of small black insects on its disk. Think of the many dense white fields between here and there, aye and for a thousand miles around, and then calculate the amount of insect life of one obscure species! 

Went off to Nelson’s Island (now Briggs’s) in Long Pond by a long, very narrow bar (fifty rods as I paced it), in some places the water over shoes and the sand commonly only three or four feet wide. This is a noble island, maybe of eight or ten acres, some thirty feet high and just enough wooded, with grass ground and grassy hollows. 

There was a beech wood at the west end, where R.’s son Walton found an arrowhead when they were here before, and the hemlocks resounded with the note of the tweezer-bird (Sylvia Americana). 

There were many ephemerae half dead on the bushes. 

R. dreams of residing here.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 24, 1856

A kingbird’s nest just completed in an apple tree. See June 13, 1855 ("Two kingbirds’ nests with eggs in an apple and in a willow by riverside.") and note to June 8, 1858 ("A kingbird's nest with three eggs, lined with some hair, in a fork — or against upright part — of a willow, just above near stone bridge.")

Sassacowen Pond . . . See September 30, 1856 ("Rode with R. to Sassacowens Pond, in the north part of New Bedford on the Taunton road, called also Toby’s Pond . . .”)

The hemlocks resounded with the note of the tweezer-bird (Sylvia Americana). See June 30, 1856 ("The tweezer-birds were lively in the hemlocks")

Shad-flies on the water, schooner-like.

May 4

P. M. — To Cedar Swamp via Assabet. 

Among others, I see republican swallows flying over river at Island. Again I see, as on the 30th of April, swallows flying low over Hosmer’s meadow, over water. though comparatively few. 

About a foot above the water, about my boat, are many of those little fuzzy gnats, and I suspect that it is these they are attracted by. (On the 6th, our house being just painted, the paint is peppered with the myriads of the same insects which have stuck to it. They are of various sizes, though all small, and there are a few shad-flies also caught. They are particularly thick on the coping under the eaves, where they look as if they had been dusted on, and dense swarms of them are hovering within a foot. Paint a house now, and these are the insects you catch. I suspect it is these fuzzy gnats that the swallows of the 30th were catching.) 

The river is gone down so much — though checked by the rain of the 2d and 3d — that I now observe the tortoises on the bottom, a sternothaerus among them. 

Hear the something like  twe twe twe twé, ter té te twe twe of the myrtle-bird, and see the bird on the swamp white oaks by Island. 

The aspen there just begun to leaf; not quite the white maple. 

I observe that the river meadows, especially Hosmer’s, are divided by two or more ridges and valleys (the latter alone now covered with water and so revealed), parallel with the river. The same phenomenon, but less remarkable, on the Wheeler meadow. Are they the traces of old river-banks, or where, in freshets, the current of the river meets the meadow current, and the sediment is deposited? 

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

Having fastened my boat at the maple, met, on the bank just above, Luke Dodge, whom I met in a boat fishing up that way once or twice last summer and previous years. Was surprised to hear him say, “I am in my eighty-third year.” He still looks pretty strong and has a voice like a nutmeg-grater. Within two or three years at most, I have seen him walking, with that remarkable gait. It is encouraging to know that a man may fish and paddle in this river in his eighty-third year. 

He says he is older than Winn, though not the oldest man in the town. Mr. Tolman is in his eighty sixth year. 

Went up Dodge’s (an Englishman who once lived up it and no relation of the last-named) Brook and across Barrett’s dam. 

In the Cedar Swamp Andromeda calyculata abundantly out; how long? Viburnum nudum leafing. Smilacina trifolia recently up; will apparently open in ten or twelve days. 

At the dam, am amused with the various curves of jets of water which leak through at different heights. According to the pressure. For the most part a thin sheet was falling smoothly over the top and cutting short off some smaller jets from the first crack (or edge of the first plank), leaving them like white spikes seen through the water. The dam leaked in a hundred places between and under the planks, and there were as many jets of various size and curve. Reminds me of the tail-piece in Bewick, of landlord drawing beer(?) from two holes, and knowledge of artist shown. 

Shad-flies on the water, schooner-like. 

Hear and see a goldfinch, on the ground.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 4, 1856

I see republican swallows flying over river at Island. See April 30, 1856 ("I was surprised by the great number of swallows—white-bellied and barn swallows and perhaps republican — flying round and round, or skimming very low over the meadow, just laid bare, only a foot above the ground . . . There were a thousand or more of swallows, and I think that they had recently arrived together on their migration.");  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 29, 1859 (“The republican swallow at Hosmer's barn just begun to lay.”)

These fuzzy gnats that the swallows of the 30th were catching. See April 30, 1855 ("Those myriads of little fuzzy gnats mentioned on the 21st and 28th must afford an abundance of food to insectivorous birds . . .There were plenty of myrtle-birds and yellow redpolls where the gnats were.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ)

The river is gone down so much . . . that I now observe the tortoises on the bottom, a sternothaerus among them. See April 1, 1860  (" As we paddle up the Assabet we . . . see the sternothærus on the bottom."); April 14, 1855 ("The musk tortoise stirring on the bottom. "); Compare July 3, 1856 ("The tortoises improve every rock, and willow slanting over the water, and every floating board and rail. You will see one on the summit of a black willow stump several feet high, and two or more part way up. Some tumble from a height of five or six feet into the water before you.") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  the Musk Turtle (Sternothaerus odoratus)

Hear the something like twe twe twe twé, ter té te twe twe of the myrtle-bird, and see the bird on the swamp white oaks by Island. See   May 4, 1855 ("Myrtle-birds numerous, and sing their tea lee, tea lee in morning. White-throated sparrows here, and numerous."); See also April 11, 1853   ("At Natural History Rooms . . . The yellow-rump warbler (what is it in Nuttall?) is bluish-gray, with two white bars on wings, a bright yellow crown, side breasts, and rump. Female less distinct."); May 1, 1855 ("The myrtle-bird is one of the commonest and tamest birds now. It catches insects like a pewee, darting off from its perch and returning to it, and sings something like a -chill chill, chill chill, chill chill, a-twear, twill twill twee  or it may be all tw – not loud; a little like the F. hyemalis , or more like pine warbler  – rapid, and more and more intense as it advances."); May 1, 1858 ("I also hear the myrtle-birds on the Island woods. Their common note is somewhat like the chill-lill or jingle of the F. hyemalis.");May 6, 1855 ("Myrtle-birds very numerous just beyond Second Division . They sing like an instrument teee teee te, ttt, ttt, on very various keys, i. e. high or low, some times beginning like phe-be. As I sat by roadside one drew near  perched within ten feet, and dived once or twice with a curve to catch the little black flies about my head, coming once within three feet, not minding me much.")

The aspen there (the Island) just begun to leaf.  See   April 14, 1855 ("The Populus tremuloides by the Island shed pollen — a very few catkins — yesterday at least.");  May 2, 1855 ("The young aspens are the first of indigenous trees conspicuously leafed");  May 2, 1859 ("I am surprised by the tender yellowish green of the aspen leaf just expanded suddenly");May 5, 1858  ("The aspen leaves at Island to-day appear as big as a nine pence suddenly");  May 11, 1854 (" I am surprised to find the great poplar at the Island conspicuously in leaf, — leaves more than an inch broad, from top to bottom of the tree, and are already fluttering in the wind, — and others near it — conspicuously before any other native tree, as tenderly green, wet, and glossy as if this shower had opened them. . . . The earliest of our indigenous trees, then, to leaf conspicuously is the early tremble.");  May 17, 1860   ("Standing in the meadow near the early aspen at the island, I hear the first fluttering of leaves, - a peculiar sound, at first unaccountable to me"); 

Soft rippling sound

near aspen at the island,

first fluttering leaves.

May 17, 1860

The trembling aspens

offer me a new summer

fluttering my thoughts.

June 6, 1857

See also A Book of the Seasons, the Aspens. 

See a peetweet on Dove Rock. See  April 30, 1856 (“As I go along the Assabet, a peetweet skims away from the shore.”);  See also April 21, 1855 ("A peep, peetweet, on the shore."); May 2, 1858 (“Peetweet on a rock”);  May 2, 1859 (" The river seems really inhabited when the peetweet is back and those little light-winged millers (?)"); May 8, 1860 (" The simple peep peep of the peetweet, as it flies away from the shore") [Thoreau's Peetweet  is the Spotted Sandpiper  (Actitis macularia)]

Dove Rock. See January 24, 1856 ("There is much of the water milkweed on the little island just above Dove Rock."); April 23, 1856 ("Along the shore by Dove Rock I hear a faint tseep like a fox colored sparrow, and, looking sharp, detect upon a maple a white-throated sparrow . . . Returning, when near the Dove Rock saw a musquash crossing in front . . .  Hear the yellow redpoll sing on the maples below Dove Rock");  May 19, 1856 (“As I sail up the reach of the Assabet above Dove Rock with a fair wind, a traveller riding along the highway is watching my sail while he hums a tune . . . As he looked at my sail, I listened to his singing. Perchance they were equally poetic, and we repaid each other.”); November 18, 1857 ("There is the meadow behind Brooks Clark’s . . .The stream which drains this empties into the Assabet at Dove Rock");  ([Stedman Buttrick] once, in the fall, shot a mackerel gull on what I call Dove Rock."); August 13, 1858 ("Young white maples below Dove Rock are an inch and a half high, and red maples elsewhere about one inch high.")

Luke Dodge . . . in his eighty-third year . . . died in Concord on September 29, 1869, age 94 yrs. 11 mos. 13 days.

Went up Dodge’s Brook and across Barrett’s dam. See May 31, 1853 ("In the meanwhile, Farmer, who was hoeing, came up to the wall, and we fell into a talk about Dodge's Brook, which runs through his farm.")

Shad-flies on the water, schooner-like. See May 1, 1854 ("The water is strewn with myriads of wrecked shad-flies, erect on the surface, with their wings up like so many schooners all headed one way.”) ; May 9, 1854 ("[Harris ] says the shad-flies (with streamers and erect wings ) are ephemeræ.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Insect Hatches in Spring

Hear and see a goldfinch, on the ground. See May 4, 1855 (" No goldfinches for long time."); May 17, 1856 ("A goldfinch twitters over."); May 18, 1856 ("A female goldfinch on an oak . . . When I get over the fence, a flock of twenty or more, male and female, rise from amid the stubble, and, alighting on the oaks, sing pleasantly all together, in a lively manner."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Goldfinch

May 4. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 4.

Dove Rock just peeps out –

see a peetweet  teetering 

and skimming away. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Shad-flies on the water

 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-560504 

 

 

;