I saw bluets whitening the fields,

May 7.

May 7, 2020
Saxifrage
See .May 5, 1860 ("She has just woven in, or laid on the edge, a fresh sprig of saxifrage in flower. . . . Think how many pewees must have built under the eaves of this cliff since pewees were created and this cliff itself built!!”)

River one eighth of an inch lower than yesterday. 

Chimney swallow. 

Catbird sings. 

Hear the white throat sparrow’s peabody note in gardens. 

Canada plum in full bloom, or say in prime. Also common plum in full bloom? 

It is very hazy, as yesterday, and I smell smoke. 

P. M. – To Assabet stone bridge. 

Find in the road beyond the Wheeler cottages a little round, evidently last year’s, painted turtle. Has no yellow spots, but already little red spots on the edges of the sides. The sternum a sort of orange or pinkish red. 

This warm weather, I see many new beetles and other insects. 

Ribes florida by bridge (flower). 

Cultivated cherry flowered yesterday at least, not yet ours. 

Myrtle-bird. 

Met old Mr. Conant with his eye and half the side of his face black and blue, looking very badly. He said he had been jerked down on to the barn-floor by a calf some three weeks old which he was trying to lead. The strength of calves is remarkable. I saw one who had some difficulty in pulling along a calf not a week old. With their four feet they have a good hold on the earth. The last one was sucking a cow that had sore teats, and every time it bunted, the cow kicked energetically, raking the calf’s head and legs, but he stood close against the cow’s belly and never budged in spite of all her kicks, though a man would have jumped out of the way. Who taught the calf to bunt? 

I saw bluets whitening the fields yesterday a quarter of a mile off. They are to the sere brown grass what the shad-bush is now to the brown and bare sprout lands or young woods. 

When planting potatoes the other day, I found small ones that had been left in the ground, perfectly sound!

H. D. Thoreau. Journal, May 7, 1860

Hear the white throat sparrow’s peabody note in gardens. See May 7, 1854 ("A white-throated sparrow still (in woods).").;   May 7, 1860 ("Hear the white throat sparrow’s peabody note in gardens."); See also and compare  April 19,1855 ("Hear the tull-lull of the white-throated sparrow in street”); May 3, 1859 (" Hear the te-e-e of a white-throat sparrow. "); May 4, 1855 ("See more white-throated sparrows than any other bird to-day in various parts of our walk, generally feeding in numbers on the ground in open dry fields and meadows next to woods, then flitting through the woods. Hear only that sharp, lisping chip from them."); May 6, 1859 ("Hear the tea-lee of the white-throat sparrow.")and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the White-throated Sparrow.. Note also  June 21, 1858 ("What I call the myrtle-bird’s is the white-throat sparrow’s note") and see May 5, 1857 ('Hear the tull-lull of a myrtle-bird (very commonly heard for three or four days after");  May 6, 1858 ("I heard a myrtle-bird's tull-lull yesterday, and that somebody else heard it four or five days ago.")

Canada plum in full bloom. Also common plum in full bloom? See May 5, 1855 ("Canada plum and cultivated cherry and Missouri currant look as if they would bloom to-morrow.”);  May 10, 1855 ("Canada plum opens petals to-day and leafs. Domestic plum only leafs.”).

It is very hazy, as yesterday, and I smell smoke. See May 7, 1856 ("To-day and yesterday the sunlight is peculiarly yellow, on account of the smoky haze. I notice its peculiar yellowness, almost orange, even when, coming through a knot-hole in a dark room, it falls on the opposite wall. ")
Find in the road a little round painted turtle. Has no yellow spots, but already little red spots on the edges of the sides. The sternum a sort of orange or pinkish red. See June 15, 1854 ("A young painted tortoise on the surface of the water, as big as a quarter of a dollar, with a reddish or orange sternum . . . was red beneath."). See also  May 7, 1858 ("The male yellow spotted and also wood turtle have very distinctly depressed sternums, but not so the male Emys picta that I have noticed.").

I saw bluets whitening the fields yesterday a quarter of a mile off. See May 21, 1855 ("Bluets whiten the fields, and violets are now perhaps in prime.")

What the shad-bush is now. See May 7, 1853 ("The delicate cherry-like leaf, transparent red, of the shad-bush is now interesting, especially in the sun. ) See also May 6, 1860 ("The Amelanchier Botryapium in flower now spots the brown sprout-land hillside on the southeast side, across the pond, very interestingly. . . .They are the more interesting for coming thus between the fall of the oak leaves and the expanding of other shrubs and trees. Some of the larger, near at hand, are very light and elegant masses of white bloom. The white-fingered flower of the sprout-lands."). May 15, 1858("The shad-bush in bloom is now conspicuous, its white flags on all sides. Is it not the most massy and conspicuous of any wild plant now in bloom?")

Tracking Melvin

February 5

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

2 p. m., 40°. 

I see where crows have pecked the tufts of cladonia lichens which peep out of the snow, pulling them to pieces, no doubt looking for worms. Also have eaten the frozen-thawed apples under the trees, tracking all the ground over there. 

February 1st, though so cold and the snow so dry, as it blowed pretty hard, was a day of drift behind northerly walls, and when those shell-like drifts were formed, as well as the wild drifts of Hubbard's meadow described on the 3d. 

I see at the Assabet stone bridge where, apparently, one or two otters travelled about on the ice last night in the thin snow. The river is open eight or ten rods there, and I noticed their tracks all about the river and close to the edge of the ice, thin as it was, for a dozen rods above and below the bridge. At first, being at a distance, I thought them dog-tracks, but I might have known that no dogs would ever have run about so there, on that thin ice and so near the edge of it. 

They were generally each four being from fifteen to twenty-four inches apart. Occasionally the track was somewhat like a rabbit's. I saw where one had apparently dragged himself along the ice. They had entered the water in many places, also travelled along under the slanting ice next the bank long  distances. They were evidently attracted by that open water. There was no distinct sliding place. 

Coming home last night in the twilight, I recognized a neighbor a dozen rods off by his walk or carriage, though it was so dark that I could not see a single feature of his person. Indeed, his person was all covered up excepting his face and hands, and I could not possibly have distinguished these at this distance from another man's. Nor was it owing to any peculiarity in his dress, for I should have known him though he had had on a perfectly new suit. It was because the man within the clothes moved them in a peculiar manner that I knew him thus at once at a distance and in the twilight. He made a certain figure in any clothes he might wear, and moved in it in a peculiar manner. Indeed, we have a very intimate knowledge of one another; we see through thick and thin; spirit meets spirit. 

A man hangs out innumerable signs by which we may know him. So, last summer, I knew another neighbor half a mile off up the river, though I did not see him, by the manner in which the breath from his lungs and mouth, i. e. his voice, made the air strike my ear. In that manner he communicated himself to all his acquaintance within a diameter of one mile (if it were all up and down the river). 

So I remember to have been sure once in a very dark night who was preceding me on the sidewalk, — though I could not see him, — by the sound of his tread. I was surprised to find that I knew it.

And to-day, seeing a peculiar very long track of a man in the snow, who has been along up the river this morning, I guessed that it was George Melvin, because it was accompanied by a hound's track. There was a thin snow on the ice, and I observed that he not only furrowed the snow for a foot before he completed his step, but that the (toe) of his track was always indefinite, as if his boot had been worn out and prolonged at the toe. I noticed that I and my companion made a clear and distinct track at the toe, but when I experimented, and tried to make a track like this by not lifting my feet but gliding and partly scuffing along, I found myself walking just like Melvin, and that perfectly convinced me that it was he. 

We have no occasion to wonder at the instinct of a dog. In these last two instances I surpassed the instinct of the dog. 

It may always be a question how much or how little of a man goes to any particular act. It is not merely by taking time and by a conscious effort that he betrays himself. A man is revealed, and a man is concealed, in a myriad unexpected ways; e.g., I can hardly think of a more effectual way of disguising neighbors to one another than by stripping them naked.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February, 5, 1860

I see at the Assabet stone bridge where, apparently, one or two otters travelled about on the ice last night in the thin snow. See February 4, 1855 ("See this afternoon a very distinct otter-track by the Rock, at the junction of the two rivers. The separate foot-tracks are quite round, more than two inches in diameter, showing the five toes distinctly in the snow, which is about half an inch deep.”)February 8, 1857 ("The otter must roam about a great deal, for I rarely see fresh tracks in the same neighborhood a second time the same winter, though the old tracks may be apparent all the winter through. I should not wonder if one went up and down the whole length of the river. "); February 20, 1855 (among the quadrupeds of Concord, the otter is "very rare.”); February 20, 1856 ("Up Assabet. See a broad and distinct otter-trail, made last night or yesterday."); February 22, 1856 ("Just below this bridge begins an otter track, several days old yet very distinct, which I trace half a mile down the river."). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Otter

Seeing a peculiar very long track of a man in the snow, who has been along up the river this morning, I guessed that it was George Melvin, because it was accompanied by a hound's track. See December 2, 1856 ("Saw Melvin's lank bluish-white black-spotted hound, and Melvin with his gun near, going home at eve. . . . I trust the Lord will provide us with another Melvin when he is gone. How good in him to follow his own bent . . . Awkward, gawky, loose-hung, dragging his legs after him."); December 3, 1856 ("I see Melvin all alone filling his sphere, in russet suit, which no other could fill or suggest. He takes up as much room in nature as the most famous.”)

A man is revealed

and a man is concealed in 

unexpected ways.

Again see what the snow reveals.

January 4. 

January 4, 2020

P. M. — To second stone bridge and down river. 

It is frozen directly under the stone bridge, but a few feet below the bridge it is open for four rods, and over that exceedingly deep hole, and again at that very swift and shallow narrow place some dozen rods lower. 

These are the only places open between this bridge and the mouth of the Assabet, except here and there a crack or space a foot wide at the springy bank just below the Pokelogan. 

It is remarkable that the deepest place in either of the rivers that I have sounded should be open, simply on account of the great agitation of the water there. This proves that it is the swiftness and not warmth that makes the shallow places to be open longest. 

In Hosmer's pitch pine wood just north of the bridge, I find myself on the track of a fox — as I take it — that has run about a great deal. Next I come to the tracks of rabbits, see where they have travelled back and forth, making a well-trodden path in the snow; and soon after I see where one has been killed and apparently devoured. There are to be seen only the tracks of what I take to be the fox. The snow is much trampled, or rather flattened by the body of the rabbit. It is somewhat bloody and is covered with flocks of slate-colored and brown fur, but only the rabbit's tail, a little ball of fur, an inch and a half long and about as wide, white beneath, and the contents of its paunch or of its entrails are left, — nothing more. 

Half a dozen rods further, I see where the rabbit has been dropped on the snow again, and some fur is left, and there are the tracks of the fox to the spot and about it. There, or within a rod or two, I notice a considerable furrow in the snow, three or four inches wide and some two rods long, as if one had drawn a stick along, but there is no other mark or track whatever; so I conclude that a partridge, perhaps scared by the fox, had dashed swiftly along so low as to plow the snow. 

But two or three rods further on one side I see more sign, and lo ! there is the remainder of the rabbit, — the whole, indeed, but the tail and the inward or soft parts, — all frozen stiff; but here there is no distinct track of any creature, only a few scratches and marks where some great bird of prey — a hawk or owl — has struck the snow with its primaries on each side, and one or two holes where it has stood. 

Now I understand how that long furrow was made, the bird with the rabbit in its talons flying low there, and now I remember that at the first bloody spot I saw some of these quill-marks; and therefore it is certain that the bird had it there, and probably he killed it, and he, perhaps disturbed by the fox, carried it to the second place, and it is certain that he (probably disturbed by the fox again) carried it to the last place, making a furrow on the way. 

If it had not been for the snow on the ground I probably should not have noticed any signs that a rabbit had been killed. Or, if I had chanced to see the scattered fur, I should not have known what creature did it, or how recently. 

But now it is partly certain, partly probable, — or, supposing that the bird could not have taken it from the fox, it is almost all certain, — that an owl or hawk killed a rabbit here last night (the fox-tracks are so fresh), and, when eating it on the snow, was disturbed by a fox, and so flew off with it half a dozen rods, but, being disturbed again by the fox, it flew with it again about as much further, trailing it in the snow for a couple of rods as it flew, and there it finished its meal without being approached. A fox would probably have torn and eaten some of the skin. 

When I turned off from the road my expectation was to see some tracks of wild animals in the snow, and, before going a dozen rods, I crossed the track of what I had no doubt was a fox, made apparently the last night, — which had travelled extensively in this pitch pine wood, searching for game. Then I came to rabbit-tracks, and saw where they had travelled back and forth in the snow in the woods, making a perfectly trodden path, and within a rod of that was a hollow in the snow a foot and a half across, where a rabbit had been killed. There were many tracks of the fox about that place, and I had no doubt then that he had killed that rabbit, and I supposed that some scratches which I saw might have been made by his frisking some part of the rabbit back and forth, shaking it in his mouth. I thought, Perhaps he has carried off to his young, or buried, the rest. 

But as it turned out, though the circumstantial evidence against the fox was very strong, I was mistaken. I had made him kill the rabbit, and shake and tear the carcass, and eat it all up but the tail (almost); but it seems that he didn't do it at [all], and apparently never got a mouthful of the rabbit.

 Something, surely, must have disturbed the bird, else why did it twice fly along with the heavy carcass? The tracks of the bird at the last place were two little round holes side by side, the dry snow having fallen in and concealed the track of its feet. It was most likely an owl, because it was most likely that the fox would be abroad by night. 

The sweet-gale has a few leaves on it yet in some places, partly concealing the pretty catkins. 

Again see what the snow reveals. Opposite Dodge's Brook I see on the snow and ice some fragments of frozen-thawed apples under an oak. How came they there? There are apple trees thirty rods off by the road. 

On the snow under the oak I see two or three tracks of a crow, and the droppings of several that were perched on the tree, and here and there is a perfectly round hole in the snow under the tree. I put down my hand and draw up an apple [out] of each, from beneath the snow. (There are no tracks of squirrels about the oak.) 

Crows carried these frozen-thawed apples from the apple trees to the oak, and there ate them, — what they did not let fall into the snow or on to the ice. 

See that long meandering track where a deer mouse hopped over the soft snow last night, scarcely making any impression. What if you could witness with owls' eyes the revelry of the wood mice some night, frisking about the wood like so many little kangaroos? Here is a palpable evidence that the woods are nightly thronged with little creatures which most have never seen, — such populousness as commonly only the imagination dreams of. 

The circumstantial evidence against that fox was very strong, for the deed was done since the snow fell and I saw no other tracks but his at the first places. Any jury would have convicted him, and he would have been hung, if he could have been caught.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 4, 1860

A few feet below the bridge it is open for four rods, and over that exceedingly deep hole, and again at that very swift and shallow narrow place some dozen rods lower. These are the only places open between this bridge and the mouth of the Assabet See January 27, 1856 ("Walk on the river from the old stone to Derby’s Bridge. It is open a couple of rods under the stone bridge, but not a rod below it, and also for forty rods below the mouth of Loring’s Brook, along the west side, probably because this is a mill-stream. "); February 27, 1856 (Am surprised to see how the ice lasts on the river. . . . It has been tight . on North Branch except at Loring’s Brook and under stone bridge) since January 25th…That is, we may say that the river has been frozen solidly for seven weeks.);


It is remarkable that the deepest place in either of the rivers that I have sounded should be open, simply on account of the great agitation of the water there. See January 22, 1855 ("(What a tumult at the stone bridge, where cakes of ice a rod in diameter and a foot thick are carried round and round by the eddy in circles eight or ten rods in diameter, and rarely get a chance to go down-stream, while others are seen coming up edgewise from below in the midst of the torrent! "); July16,1859 ("By building this narrow bridge here, twenty-five feet in width, or contracting the stream to about one fourth its average width, the current has been so increased as to wash away about a quarter of an acre of land and dig a hole six times the average depth of the stream, twenty-two and a half feet deep, . . deeper than any place in the main stream ...Yet the depth under the bridge is only two and a half feet plus. It falls in four rods from two and a half to twenty-two and a half....This is much the swiftest place on the stream thus far and deeper than any for twenty-five miles of [the] other stream, and consequently there is a great eddy, where I see cakes of ice go round and round in the spring,")

The woods are nightly thronged with little creatures which most have never seen. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

The circumstantial evidence against that fox was very strong. See November 11, 1850 ("Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.” ) See also January 2, 1856 (“As for the fox and rabbit race described yesterday, I find that the rabbit was going the other way, and possibly the fox was a rabbit.”)

Mosses at low water.

August 5. 

See many yellowed peach leaves and butternut leaves, which have fallen in the wind yesterday and the rain to-day.

The lowest dark-colored rocks near the water at the stone bridge (i. e. part of the bridge) are prettily marked with (apparently) mosses, which have adhered to them at higher water and now withered and bleached on, — in fact are transferred, — and by their whitish color are seen very distinctly on the dark stone and have a very pretty effect. They are quite like sea mosses in their delicacy, though not equally fine with many. These are very permanently and closely fastened to the rock. This is a phenomenon of low water. Also see them transferred to wood, as pieces of bridges.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 5, 1859

August 5. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 5

 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021

The eddy and wearing away of the bank at the stone bridge.

July 20. 

The little Holbrook boy showed me an egg which I unhesitatingly pronounced a peetweet's, given him by Joe Smith. The latter, to my surprise, declares it a meadow-hen's; saw the bird and young, and says the latter were quite black and had hen bills. Can it be so? 

Humphrey Buttrick says he finds snipes' nests in our meadows oftener than woodcocks'. 

P. M. — To Eddy Bridge. 

Abel Hosmer says that the Turnpike Company did not fulfill their engagement to build a new bridge over the Assabet in 1807; that the present stone bridge was not built till about the time the Orthodox meeting-house was built. (That was in 1826.) Benjamin says it was built soon after the meeting-house, or perhaps 1827, and was placed some fifty feet higher up-stream than the old wooden one. 

Hosmer says that the eddy and wearing away of the bank has been occasioned wholly by the bridge; that there was only the regular bend there before. He had thought that it was in consequence of the bridge being set askew or diagonally with the stream, so that the abutments turned the water and gave it a slant into the banks. I think that this did not create, only increased, the evil. 

The bank which it has worn away rises some sixteen feet above low water, and, considering the depth of the water, you may say that it has removed the sand to a depth of twenty-five feet over an area of a quarter of an acre, or say to the depth of three feet or a yard over two acres, or 9680 cubic yards or cartloads, which, at twenty-five cents per load, it would have cost $2420 to move in the ordinary manner, or enough to fill the present river for a quarter of a mile, calling it six rods wide and twelve feet deep. 

Beside creating some small islands and bars close by, this sand and gravel has, of course, been distributed along in the river and on the adjacent meadows below. 

Hosmer complains that his interval has accordingly been very much injured by the sand washed on to it below, — "hundreds of dollars" damage done to him. All this within some thirty-five years. 

It may well be asked what has become of all this sand? Of course it has contributed to form sand-bars below, possibly a great way below. 

Jacob Farmer tells me that he remembers that when about twenty-one years old he and Hildreth were bathing in the Assabet at the mouth of the brook above Winn's, and Hildreth swam or waded across to a sand bar (now the island there), but the water was so deep on that bar that he became frightened, and would have been drowned if he had not been dragged out and resuscitated by others. This was directly over where that island is now, and was then only a bar beginning under water. That island, as he said, had been formed within thirty-five years, or since the Eddy Bridge was built; and I suggest that it may have been built mainly of the ruins of that bank. 

It is the only island in the Assabet for two and a half miles. 

There is a perfect standstill in the eddy at Eddy Bridge now, and there is a large raft of grass, weeds, and lumber perfectly at rest there, against Hosmer's bank. The coarser materials — stones as big as a hen's egg — are dropped close by, but the sand must have been carried far down-stream. 

Hosmer says that when he digs down in his millet- field, twenty rods or more from the river, in his interval, at three or four feet depth he comes to coarse stones which look like an old bed of the river. I see them at each of the small wooden bridges, and very likely they underlie the whole of that interval, covered with sand. 

Such is the character of a river-bottom, — the stones from a hen's egg to the size of your head dropped down to one level, the sand being washed away, and now found in one stratum. 

So completely emasculated and demoralized is our river that it is even made to observe the Christian Sabbath, and Hosmer tells me that at this season on a Sunday morning (for then the river runs lowest, owing to the factory and mill gates being shut above) little gravelly islands begin to peep out in the channel below. Not only the operatives make the Sunday a day of rest, but the river too, to some extent, so that the very fishes feel the influence (or want of influence) of man's religion. 

The very rivers run with fuller streams on Monday morning. All nature begins to work with new impetuosity on Monday. 

I see where turtles' eggs are still being dug up!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 20, 1859

The coarser materials — stones as big as a hen's egg — are dropped close by, but the sand must have been carried far down-stream. See July 16, 1859 ("It is remarkable how the stones are separated from the sand at the Eddy Bridge and deposited in a bar or islands by themselves a few rods lower down.")

A Maryland yellow-throat's nest, a painted turtle digging in the road

June 10. 

June 10, 2018

Smilacina racemosa well out, how long? 

Sophia has received the whorled arethusa from Northampton to-day. 

P.M.–To Assabet Bath and return by stone bridge. 

A Maryland yellow-throat's nest near apple tree by the low path beyond the pear tree. Saw a bird flit away low and stealthily through the birches, and was soon invisible. Did not discover the nest till after a long search. Perfectly concealed under the loose withered grass at the base of a clump of birches, with no apparent entrance. The usual small deep nest (but not raised up) of dry leaves, fine grass stubble, and lined with a little hair. Four eggs, white, with brown spots, chiefly at larger end, and some small black specks or scratches. The bird flits out very low and swiftly and does not show herself, so that it is hard to find the nest or to identify the bird. 

See a painted turtle digging her nest in the road at 5.45 P. M. 

At the west bank, by the bathing-place, I see that several turtles’ holes have already been opened and the eggs destroyed by the skunk or other animal. Some of them — I judge by the size of the egg — are Emys insculpta's eggs. (I saw several of them digging here on the 6th.) 

Among the shells at one hole I find one minute egg left unbroken. It is not only very small, but broad in proportion to length. Vide collection. 

One E. insculpta is digging there about 7 P. M. Another great place for the last-named turtle to lay her eggs is that rye-field of Abel Hosmer's just north of the stone bridge, and also the neighboring pitch pine wood. I saw them here on the 6th, and also I do this afternoon, in various parts of the field and in the rye, and two or three crawling up the very steep sand-bank there, some eighteen feet high, steeper than sand will lie, — for this keeps caving. They must often roll to the bottom again. 

Apparently the E. insculpta are in the very midst of their laying now. 

As we entered the north end of this rye field, I saw what I took to be a hawk fly up from the south end, though it may have been a crow. It was soon pursued by small birds. When I got there I found an E. insculpta on its back with its head and feet drawn in and motionless, and what looked like the track of a crow on the sand. Undoubtedly the bird which I saw had been pecking at it, and perhaps they get many of the eggs. [Vide June 11th, 1860.]

Common blue flag, how long?

June 10, 2018

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 10, 1858

Smilacina racemosa well out, how long? See June 18, 1857 [Cape Cod] ("The Smilacina racemosa was just out of bloom on the bank. They call it the " wood lily " there. Uncle Sam called it "snake-corn," and said it looked like corn when it first came up"); June 23, 1860 ( Smilacina racemosa, how long?");  September 1, 1856 ("The very dense clusters of the smilacina berries, finely purple-dotted on a pearly ground");  September 18, 1856 ("Smilacina berries of both kinds now commonly ripe"); October 10, 1857 ("I see in the woods some Smilacina racemosa leaves . . . The whole plant gracefully bent almost horizontally with the weight of its dense raceme of bright cherry-red berries at the end.”);See also note to June 19, 1856 ("Looked at a collection of the rarer plants made by Higginson and placed at the Natural History Rooms.) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, False Solomon's Seal

P.M.–To Assabet Bath and return by stone bridge. See May 14, 1857 (“To Assabet Bath and stone bridge. ”)

The usual small deep nest of dry leaves, fine grass stubble, and lined with a little hair. Four eggs, white, with brown spots, chiefly at larger end, and some small black specks or scratches.  See September 8, 1858 ("Looking for my Maryland yellow-throat’s nest, I find that apparently a snake has made it the portico to his dwelling, there being a hole descending into the earth through it!") See also June 7, 1857 (“A nest well made outside of leaves, then grass, lined with fine grass, very deep and narrow, with thick sides, with four small somewhat cream-colored eggs with small brown and some black spots chiefly toward larger end.”); June 8, 1855 ("What was that little nest on the ridge near by, made of fine grass lined with a few hairs and containing five small eggs ... nearly as broad as long, yet pointed, white with fine dull-brown spots especially on the large end—nearly hatched? The nest in the dry grass under a shrub, remarkably concealed. . . .—It is a Maryland yellow-throat.”); June 12, 1859 ("Maryland yellow-throat four eggs, fresh, in sphagnum in the interior omphalos.")

A painted turtle digging her nest in the road at 5.45 P. M. See June 10, 1856 (“A painted tortoise laying her eggs ten feet from the wheel-track on the Marlborough road. She paused at first, but I sat down within two feet, and she soon resumed her work. ”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Painted Turtle (Emys Picta)

Common blue flag, how long? See June 12, 1852 ("The blue flag (Iris versicolor). Its buds are a dark indigo-blue tip beyond the green calyx. It is rich but hardly delicate and simple enough; a very handsome sword-shaped leaf . . .The blue flag, notwithstanding its rich furniture, its fringed recurved parasols over its anthers, and its variously streaked and colored petals, is loose and coarse in its habit.");  June 14, 1851 ("Saw a blue flag blossom in the meadow while waiting for the stake-driver."); June 14, 1853 ("The blue flag (Iris versicolor) grows in this pure water, rising from the stony bottom all around the shores, and is very beautiful, — not too high-colored, — especially its reflections in the water."); June 15, 1859 ("Blue flag abundant."); June 30,1851 ("The blue flag (Iris versicolor) enlivens the meadow.”); June 30, 1852 ("Is not this period more than any distinguished for flowers, when roses, swamp-pinks, morning-glories, arethusas, pogonias, orchises, blue flags, epilobiums, mountain laurel, and white lilies are all in blossom at once?")

June 10. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 10

a painted turtle

digging her nest in the road

at 5:45

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, a painted turtle digging  in the road

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 picture through the arch of the stone bridge.

May 22. 

After two or three days more of rainy weather, it is fair and warm at last. Thermometer seventy-odd degrees above zero. 

When the May storm is over, then the summer is fairly begun. 

9 a. m. — I go up the Assabet in boat to stone bridge.

Is it not summer when we do not go seeking sunny and sheltered places, but also love the wind and shade? 

As I stand on the sand-bank below the Assabet stone bridge and look up through the arch, the river makes a pretty picture. 

It is perfectly smooth above the bridge and appears two or three feet higher (it is probably half as much) than below and rushes to its fall very regularly, the bridge partially damming the stream: the smoothness extends part way under the bridge in the middle, the turbulent water rushing down each side.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 22, 1857

When the May storm is over, then the summer is fairly begun. See May 22, 1858 ("Something like this annually occurs. After this May storm the sun bursts forth . . . and we seem to have taken a long stride into summer.") Also  May 17, 1853 ("Does not summer begin after the May storm?”); May 11, 1854 (" I suspect that summer weather may be always ushered in in a similar manner, — thunder-shower, rainbow, smooth water, and warm night.").

Is it not summer when we do not go seeking sunny and sheltered places, but also love the wind and shade?  See April 26, 1857 ("By and by we shall seek the shadiest and coolest place. “); May 10, 1857 ("But now at last I do not go seeking the warm, sunny, and sheltered coves; the strong wind is enlivening and agreeable.”) Compare May 22, 1854 (“I rest in the orchard, doubtful whether to sit in shade or sun.”)

Thirteen wood tortoises on the grass, at 4 P. M. this cloudy afternoon.

Foamflower
May 14, 2017

May 14. 

P. M. — To Assabet Bath and stone bridge. 

I hear two thrashers plainly singing in emulation of each other. 

At the temporary brush fence pond, now going down, amid the sprout-land and birches, I see, within a dozen rods along its shore, one to three rods from edge, thirteen wood tortoises on the grass, at 4 P. M. this cloudy afternoon. 

This is apparently a favorite resort for them, — a shallow open pool of half an acre, which dries up entirely a few weeks later, in dryish, mossy ground in an open birch wood, etc., etc. They take refuge in the water and crawl out over the mossy ground. They lie about in various positions, very conspicuous there, at every rod or two. 

They are of various forms and colors: some almost regularly oval or elliptical, even pointed behind, others very broad behind, more or less flaring and turned up on the edge; some a dull lead-color and almost smooth, others brown with dull-yellowish marks. 

I see one with a large dent three eighths of an inch deep and nearly two inches long in the middle of its back, where it was once partially crushed. Hardly one has a perfect shell. 

The males (?), with concave sternums; the females, even or convex. They have their reddish-orange legs stretched out often, listlessly, when you approach, draw in their heads with a hiss when you take them up, commonly taking a bit of stubble with them.

See a pair of marsh hawks, the smaller and lighter-colored male, with black tips to wings, and the large brown female, sailing low over J. Hosmer's sprout-land and screaming, apparently looking for frogs or the like. 

Or have they not a nest near? They hover very near me. 

The female, now so near, sails very grandly, with the outer wing turned or tilted up when it circles, and the bars on its tail when it turns, etc., reminding me of a great brown moth. 

Sometimes alone; and when it approaches its mate it utters a low, grating note like cur-r-r. 

Suddenly the female holds straight toward me, descending gradually. Steadily she comes on, without swerving, until only two rods off, then wheels. 

I find an old bog-hoe left amid the birches in the low ground, the handle nearly rotted off. 

In the low birch land north of the pear tree the old corn-hills are very plain still, and now each hill is a dry moss-bed, of various species of cladonia. What a complete change from a dusty corn-hill! 

Abel Hosmer tells me that he has collected and sown white pine seed, and that he has found them in the crop of pigeons. (?) 

Salix lucida at bridge; maybe staminate earlier. 

Herb-of-St.-Barbara, how long?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 14, 1857


I hear two thrashers plainly singing in emulation of each other. See May 13, 1855 ("Now, about two hours before sunset, the brown thrashers are particularly musical. One seems to be contending in song with another.")
 
At the temporary brush fence pond . . . thirteen wood tortoises on the grass . . . See May 14, 1856 ("Yesterday and to-day I see half a dqzen tortoises on a rail, — their first appearance in numbers.”); May 4, 1855 ("Yesterday a great many spotted and wood tortoises in the Sam Wheeler birch-fence meadow pool, which dries up.. . .”)

See a pair of marsh hawks, the smaller and lighter- colored male, with black tips to wings, and the large brown female, sailing low . . .  and screaming . . . have they not a nest near?  See May 14,1855 (“See a male hen-harrier skimming low along the side of the river, often within a foot of the muddy shore, looking for frogs”). See also  March 27, 1855 (“[M]arsh hawk, male. Slate-colored; beating the bush; black tips to wings and white rump.”); March 29, 1854 ("See two marsh hawks, white on rump. “); April 8, 1856 ("See two marsh hawks this afternoon, circling low over the meadows along the water’s edge. This shows that frogs must be out.”);  April 23, 1855 (" I have seen also for some weeks occasionally a brown hawk with white rump, flying low, which I have thought the frog hawk in a different stage of plumage; but can it be at this season? and is it not the marsh hawk? Yet it is not so heavy nearly as the hen-hawk -- probably female hen-harrier [i. e. marsh hawk]”);   May 2, 1855 ("Was that a harrier seen at first skimming low then seating and circling, with a broad whiteness on the wings beneath?”);  May 20, 1856 (“Two marsh hawks, male and female, flew about me a long time, screaming, the female largest, with ragged wing ,. . . they have, no doubt, a nest thereabouts. ”); May 30, 1858 ("The hawk rises when we approach and circles about over the wood, uttering a note singularly like the common one of the flicker.");     And see A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)

Salix lucida at bridge . . . See September 2, 1856 (“[A]t the stone bridge, am surprised to see the Salix lucida, a small tree with very marked and handsome leaves, on the sand, water's edge, at the great eddy. . . .”); May 12, 1858 (“The Salix lucida above Assabet Spring will not open for several days.”)

A sudden shower with some thunder and lightning; the first.

May 10

Cultivated cherry out. 

P. M. — Up river. 

Salix Babylonica behind Dodd's, how long? Say with S. alba. 

I observe that the fertile flowers of many plants are more late than the barren ones, as the sweet-gale (whose fertile are now in prime), the sweet-fern, etc. 

See twenty or thirty tortoises on one stump by stone bridge and more still within a rod along the bank of E. Wood's ditch. Now the Emys picta lie out in great numbers, this suddenly warm weather, and when you go along the road within a few rods they tumble in. The banks of some ditches look almost as if paved with them. 

I went looking for snapping turtles over the meadow south of railroad. Now I see one large head like a brown stake projecting three or four inches above the water four rods off, but it is slowly withdrawn, and I paddle up and catch the fellow lying still in the dead grass there. Soon after I paddle within ten feet of one whose eyes like knobs appear on the side of the stake, and touch him with my paddle. 

This side Clamshell, strawberries and cinquefoil are abundant. Equisetum sylvaticum. 

There is a strong wind, against which I push and paddle. But now at last I do not go seeking the warm, sunny, and sheltered coves; the strong wind is enlivening and agreeable. 

It is a washing day. I love the wind at last. 

Before night a sudden shower with some thunder and lightning; the first.

 H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 10, 1857

See twenty or thirty tortoises on one stump . . . Compare  May 14, 1856 ("Yesterday and to-day I see half a dqzen tortoises on a rail, — their first appearance in numbers.")

But now at last I do not go seeking the warm, sunny, and sheltered coves. See April 26, 1857 ("By and by we shall seek the shadiest and coolest place. ")

It is a washing day. I love the wind at last. May 12, 1856 ("It is suddenly very warm. A washing day, with a slight haze accompanying the strong, warm wind. ")

A sudden shower with some thunder and lightning. See May 13, 1860 ("The third sultry evening in my chamber. A faint lightning is seen in the north horizon.")

May 10.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 10

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2021

The full moon rises.

May 8, 2017

May 8.

A third fine day. 

The sugar maple at Barrett's is now in full bloom. 

I finish the arbor to-night. This has been the third of these remarkably warm and beautiful. I have worked all the while in my shirt-sleeves. 

Summer has suddenly come upon us, and the birds all together. Some boys have bathed in the river. 

Walk to first stone bridge at sunset. Salix alba, possibly the 6th. 

It is a glorious evening. 

I scent the expanding willow leaves (for there are very few blossoms yet) fifteen rods off. Already hear the cheerful, sprightly note of the yellowbird amid them. It is perfectly warm and still, and the green grass reminds me of June. The air is full of the fragrance of willow leaves. The high water stretches smooth around. 

I hear the sound of Barrett's sawmill with singular distinctness. The ring of toads, the note of the yellowbird, the rich warble of the red-wing, the thrasher on the hillside, the robin's evening song, the woodpecker tapping some dead tree across the water; and I see countless little fuzzy gnats in the air, and dust over the road, between me and the departed sun. 

Perhaps the evenings of the 6th and 7th were as pleasant. But such an evening makes a crisis in the year. I must make haste home and go out on the water. 

I paddle to the Wheeler meadow east of hill after sundown. From amid the alders, etc., I hear the mew of the catbird and the yorrick of Wilson's thrush. One bullfrog's faint er-er-roonk from a distance. (Perhaps the Amphibia, better than any creatures, celebrate the changes of temperature.) One dump note. 

It grows dark around. 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). I get within a few feet of them as they sit along the edge of the river and meadow, but cannot see them. Their croak is very fine or rapid, and has a soft, purring sound at a little distance. I see them paddling in the water like toads. 

Within a week I have had made a pair of corduroy pants, which cost when done $1.60. They are of that peculiar clay-color, reflecting the light from portions of their surface. They have this advantage, that, beside being very strong, they will look about as well three months hence as now, — or as ill, some would say. Most of my friends are disturbed by my wearing them. I can get four or five pairs for what one ordinary pair would cost in Boston, and each of the former will last two or three times as long under the same circumstances. The tailor said that the stuff was not made in this country; that it was worn by the Irish at home, and now they would not look at it, but others would not wear it, durable and cheap as it is, because it is worn by the Irish. 

Moreover, I like the color on other accounts. Anything but black clothes. I was pleased the other day to see a son of Concord return after an absence of eight years, not in a shining suit of black, with polished boots and a beaver or silk hat, as if on a furlough from human duties generally, — a mere clothes-horse, — but clad in an honest clay-colored suit and a snug every-day cap. It showed unusual manhood. Most returning sons come home dressed for the occasion. 

The birds and beasts are not afraid of me now. A mink came within twenty feet of me the other day as soon as my companion had left me, and if I had had my gray sack on as well as my corduroys, it would perhaps have come quite up to me. 

Even farmers' boys, returning to their native town, though not unfamiliar with homely and dirty clothes, make their appearance on this new stage in a go-to-meeting suit.

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

A third fine day. See May 6, 1857 ("A beautiful and warm day."); May 7, 1857 ("A second fine day."); May 9, 1857; ("Another fine day.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now.

Summer has suddenly come upon us, and the birds all together. See May 6, 1852  ("Hear the first warbling vireo this morning on the elms. This almost makes a summer."); May 7, 1852 ("One or more little warblers in the woods this morning are new to the season, . . .The first wave of summer from the south") ; May 7, 1852 ("The birds I have lately mentioned come not singly, as the earliest, but all at once,"); May 10, 1858 ("It is remarkable how many new birds have come all at once to-day."); May 12, 1856 ("How suddenly the birds arrive after the storm, — even yesterday before it was fairly over, —as if they had foreseen its end!") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. Summer and The Birds of May

It is a glorious evening . . . I must make haste home and go out on the water. See August 31, 1852 ("This is the most glorious part of this day,. . . and the most suggestive.. . . Evening is pensive. The serenity is far more remarkable to those who are on the water.”)

Already hear the cheerful, sprightly note of the yellowbird amid them. See May 8, 1854 (“Hear a yellowbird in the direction of the willows. Its note coarsely represented by che-che-che-char-char- char."); May 8 1859 ("Summer yellowbird.”) and note to May 11, 1856 ("At a distance I hear the first yellow-bird . . . All these willows blossom.”).

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). See April 11, 1854 ("Hear a slight snoring of frogs on the bared meadows. Is it not the R. palustris? This the first moon to walk by.”); May 3, 1852 ("The moon is full. The air is filled with a certain luminous, liquid, white light. You can see the moonlight, as it were, reflected from the atmosphere."); . May 6, 1858 ("In the mornings now, I hear no R. palustris and no hylodes, but a few toads still, but now, at night, all ring together, the toads ringing through the day, the hylodes beginning in earnest toward night and the palustris at evening. I think that the different epochs in the revolution of the seasons may perhaps be best marked by the notes of [frogs]"); May 9, 1853 ("That slumbrous snoring croak far less ringing and musical than the toad' s (which is occasionally heard) now comes up from the meadows edge."); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, May Moonlight and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The  Pickerel frog  (Rana palustris)

Such an evening makes a crisis in the year.  Compare July 18, 1854 (“The atmosphere now imparts a bluish or glaucous tinge to the distant trees. A certain debauched look. This a crisis in the season.”); August 20, 1854 (“When the red-eye ceases generally, then I think is a crisis, — the woodland quire is dissolved.”)

May 8. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  May 8

Suddenly summer 

has come upon us, and the 

birds all together.

It grows dark around.

The full moon rises, and I

paddle by its light. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The full moon rises

                                     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

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