Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket.

November 11

November 11, 2017

7 Α . M. - To Hubbard Bathing-Place. 

A fine, calm, frosty morning, a resonant and clear air except a slight white vapor which escaped being frozen or perchance is the steam of the melting frost. 

Bracing cold, and exhilarating sunlight on russet and frosty fields. I wear mittens now. 

Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket. 

Aster puniceus left. 

A little feathery frost on the dead weeds and grasses, especially about water, - springs and brooks (though now slightly frozen), where was some vapor in the night. 

I notice also this little frostwork about the mouth of a woodchuck's hole, where, perhaps, was a warm, moist breath from the interior, perchance from the chuck! 

 А. M. - To Fair Haven Pond by boat. 

The morning is so calm and pleasant, winter-like, that I must spend the forenoon abroad.

The river is smooth as polished silver. 

A little ice has formed along the shore in shallow bays five or six rods wide. It is for the most part of crystals imperfectly united, shaped like birds' tracks, and breaks with a pleasant crisp sound when it feels the undulations produced by my boat. 

I hear a linaria-like mew from some birds that fly over. 

Some muskrat-houses have received a slight addition in the night. The one I opened day before yesterday has been covered again, though not yet raised so high as before. 

The hips of the late rose still show abundantly along the shore, and in one place nightshade berries. 

I hear a faint cricket (or locust?) still, even after the slight snow. 

I hear the cawing of crows toward the distant wood through the clear, echoing, resonant air, and the lowing of cattle. 

It is rare that the water is smooth in the forenoon. It is now as smooth as in a summer evening or a September or October afternoon.

There is frost on all the weeds that rise above the water or ice. 

The Polygonum Hydropiper is the most conspicuous, abundant, and enduring of those in the water. 

I see the spire of one white with frost-crystals, a perfect imitation at a little distance of its loose and narrow spike of white flowers, that have withered. 

I have noticed no turtles since October 31st, and no frogs for a still longer time. 

At the bathing-place I looked for clams, in summer almost as thick as paving-stones there, and found none. They have probably removed into deeper water and into the mud (?). When did they move? 

The jays are seen and heard more of late, their plumage apparently not dimmed at all. 

I counted nineteen muskrat-cabins between Hubbard Bathing-Place and Hubbard's further wood, this side the Hollowell place, from two to four feet high. They thus help materially to raise and form the river-bank. 

I opened one by the Hubbard Bridge. The floor of chamber was two feet or more beneath the top and one foot above the water. It was quite warm from the recent presence of the inhabitants. 

I heard the peculiar plunge of one close by.  The instant one has put his eyes noiselessly above water he plunges like a flash, showing tail, and with a very loud sound, the first notice you have of his proximity, –that he has been there, – as loud as if he had struck a solid substance. 

This had a sort of double bed, the whole about two feet long by one foot wide and seven or eight inches high, floored thinly with dry meadow-grass. 

There were in the water green butts and roots of the pontederia, which I think they eat. I find the roots gnawed off. Do they eat flagroot? A good deal of a small green hypnum-like river-weed forms the mouthfuls in their masonry. It makes a good sponge to mop the boat with! 

The wind has risen and sky overcast. 

I stop at Lee's Cliff, and there is a Veronica serpyllifolia out. Sail back. 

Scared up two small ducks, perhaps teal. I had not seen any of late. They have probably almost all gone south.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 11, 1853

I wear mittens now. See November 11, 1851 (”A bright, but cold day, finger-cold. One must next wear gloves, put his hands in winter quarters.”); See also February 12, 1854 ("I begin to dream of summer even. I take off my mittens.")

Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket. See November 11, 1850 ("Now is the time for wild apples. I pluck them as a wild fruit native to this quarter of the earth, fruit of old trees that have been dying ever since I was a boy and are not yet dead . . . Food for walkers. Sometimes apples red inside, perfused with a beautiful blush, faery food, too beautiful to eat, – apple of the evening sky, of the Hesperides.");  See also December 19, 1850 ("The wild apples are frozen as hard as stones, and rattle in my pockets, but I find that they soon thaw when I get to my chamber and yield a sweet cider.")

I hear the cawing of crows toward the distant wood. See November 1, 1853 ("I only hear some crows toward the woods."); January 12, 1855 ("I hear faintly the cawing of a crow far, far away, echoing from some unseen wood-side . . .I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

I hear a faint cricket (or locust?) still, even after the slight snow. See November 8, 1853 ("Perchance I heard the last cricket of the season yesterday. They chirp here and there at longer and longer intervals, till the snow quenches their song."); November 11, 1858 ("I hear here a faint creaking of two or three crickets or locustæ. . . They are quite silent long before sunset.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in November

The hips of the late rose still show abundantly along the shore. See July 23, 1860 ("The late rose is now in prime along the river, a pale rose-color but very delicate, keeping up the memory of roses."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose

November 11. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November 11

Toward the distant wood

I hear the cawing of crows –

I wear mittens now.

Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Apples are frozen on the trees 

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/hdt-531111

Two green-winged teal

 

August 29. 

Saw two green-winged teal, somewhat pigeon-like, on a flat low rock in the Assabet.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 29, 1855

  

Saw two green-winged teal. See September 20, 1851 ("I see ducks or teal flying silent, swift, and straight, the wild creatures.") September 22, 1852 ("Has been a great flight of blue-winged teal this season. "); September 20, 1856 ("Melvin says that there are many teal about the river now.")

Perambulating the imagination

September 20.

3 P. M. – To Cliffs via Bear Hill. 

September 20, 2020

As I go through the fields, endeavoring to recover my tone and sanity and to perceive things truly and simply again, after having been perambulating the bounds of the town all the week, and dealing with the most commonplace and worldly-minded men, and emphatically trivial things, I feel as if I had committed suicide in a sense.

I am again forcibly struck with the truth of the fable of Apollo serving King Admetus, its universal applicability.

A fatal coarseness is the result of mixing in the trivial affairs of men. Though I have been associating even with the select men of this and the surrounding towns, I feel inexpressibly begrimed.

My Pegasus has lost his wings; he has turned a reptile and gone on his belly.

Such things are compatible only with a cheap and superficial life.

The poet must keep himself unstained and aloof. Let him perambulate the bounds of Imagination's provinces, the realms of faery, and not the insignificant boundaries of towns. The excursions of the imagination are so boundless, the limits of towns are so petty.

I scare up the great bittern in meadow by the Heywood Brook near the ivy. He rises buoyantly as he flies against the wind, and sweeps south over the willow with outstretched neck, surveying.

The ivy here is reddened. The dogwood, or poison sumach, by Hubbard's meadow is also turned reddish.

Here are late buttercups and dwarf tree-primroses still.

Methinks there are not many goldenrods this year.

The river is remarkably low. There is a rod wide of bare shore beneath the Cliff Hill.

Last week was the warmest perhaps in the year.

On Monday of the present week water was frozen in a pail under the pump. Yet to-day I hear the locust sing as in August.

This week we have had most glorious autumnal weather, - cool and cloudless, bright days, filled with the fragrance of ripe grapes, preceded by frosty mornings. All tender herbs are flat in gardens and meadows. The cranberries, too, are touched.

To-day it is warmer and hazier, and there is, no doubt, some smoke in the air, from the burning of the turf and moss in low lands, where the smoke, seen at sunset, looks like a rising fog.

I fear that the autumnal tints will not be brilliant this season, the frosts have commenced so early.

Butter-and-eggs on Fair Haven.

The cleared plateau beneath the Cliff, now covered with sprouts, shows red, green, and yellow tints, like a rich rug.

I see ducks or teal flying silent, swift, and straight, the wild creatures.

White pines on Fair Haven Hill begin to look parti-colored with the falling leaves, but not at a distance.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 20, 1851

I scare up the great bittern in meadow by the Heywood Brook near the ivy. He rises buoyantly as he flies against the wind, and sweeps south over the willow with outstretched neck, surveying. See September 20, 1855 ("The great bittern, as it flies off from near the rail road bridge, filthily drops its dirt and utters a low hoarse kwa kwa; then runs and hides in the grass, and I land and search within ten feet of it before it rises.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, American Bittern (the Stake-Diver)

On Monday of the present week water was frozen in a pail under the pump. See September 15, 1851 ("Ice in the pail under the pump, and quite a frost.")

This week we have had most glorious autumnal weather, - cool and cloudless, bright days, filled with the fragrance of ripe grapes, preceded by frosty mornings. See August 19, 1853 ("It is a glorious and ever-memorable day. . . . The first bright day of the fall" ); September 3, 1860 ("Here is a beautiful, and perhaps first decidedly autumnal, day, -- a, cloudless sky, a clear air, with, maybe, veins of coolness”); September 18, 1860 ("This is a beautiful day, warm but not too warm, a harvest day . . . the first unquestionable and conspicuous autumnal day,"); September 22, 1851 ("It is a beautifully clear and bracing air, with just enough coolness, full of the memory of frosty mornings"); October 10, 1857 ("The most brilliant days in the year, ushered in, perhaps, by a frosty morning, as this.") October 11, 1857 ("This is the seventh day of glorious weather. Perhaps, these might be called Harvest Days"); December 9, 1853 ("The third (at least) glorious day, clear and not too cold . . .with peculiarly long and clear cloudless silvery twilights morn and eve")

White pines on Fair Haven Hill begin to look parti-colored. SeeAugust 24, 1854 ("The white pines are parti-colored there [Lee's Cliff]"); September 28, 1854 ("R. W. E.’s pines are parti-colored, preparing to fall, some of them.");. September 29, 1857 (". Pines have begun to be parti-colored with yellow leaves");. October 3, 1852 ("The pine fall, i.e. change, is commenced, and the trees are mottled green and yellowish"); October 3, 1856 ("The white pines are now getting to be pretty generally parti-colored, the lower yellowing needles ready to fall. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The October Pine Fall

The lover alone perceives and dwells in a certain human fragrance

September 22. 

Sophia has in her herbarium and has found in Concord these which I have not seen this summer :  

• Pogonia verticillata, Hubbard's Second Wood. Bigelow says July. 

• Trillium erythrocarpum, Bigelow says May and June. 

• Uvularia perfoliata, Bigelow says May.

September 22, 2017

P. M. — On river. 

The Polygonum amphibium var. terrestre is a late flower, and now more common and the spikes larger, quite handsome and conspicuous, and more like a prince's-feather than any. 

Large woolly aphides are now clustered close together on the alder stems. 

Some of those I see are probably the sharp-shinned hawk. 

When was it I heard the upland plover? 

Has been a great flight of blue-winged teal this season. 

The soapwort gentian the flower of the river-banks now. 

In love we impart, each to each, in subtlest immaterial form of thought or atmosphere, the best of ourselves, such as commonly vanishes or evaporates in aspirations, and mutually enrich each other. The lover alone perceives and dwells in a certain human fragrance. To him humanity is not only a flower, but an aroma and a flavor also.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 22, 1852

Sophia has in her herbarium and has found in Concord these which I have not seen this summer ...Uvularia perfoliata. See note to August 22, 1857 ("[Edward Hoar] says he found the Uvularia perfoliata on the Stow road, he thinks within Concord bounds.")

Probably the sharp-shinned hawk.  See   March 28, 1854 (“See a small slate-colored hawk, with wings transversely mottled beneath, — probably the sharp-shinned hawk.”); April 3, 1859 ("Near to the pond I see a small hawk, larger than a pigeon hawk, fly past, — a deep brown with a light spot on the side. I think it probable it was a sharp- shinned hawk."); April 7, 1853 ("  A hawk above Ball’s Hill which, though with a distinct white rump, I think was not the harrier but sharp-shinned, from its broadish, mothlike form, light and slightly spotted beneath, with head bent downward, watching for prey"); April 16, 1855 ( "What I call a pigeon hawk, probably sharp-shinned.”); May 4, 1855 (“Sitting in Abel Brooks’s Hollow, see a small hawk go over high in the air, with a long tail and distinct from wings. It advanced by a sort of limping flight yet rapidly, not circling nor tacking, but flapping briskly at intervals and then gliding straight ahead with rapidity, controlling itself with its tail. It seemed to be going a journey. Was it not the sharp-shinned, or Falco fuscus?  I think that what I have called the sparrow hawk falsely, and latterly pigeon hawk, is also the sharp-shinned.") A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sharp-shinned Hawk

When was it I heard the upland plover? See  September 19, 1854 ("An upland plover goes off from Conantum top (though with a white belly), uttering a sharp white, tu white. "); July 12, 1855 ("The upland plover begins with a quivering note somewhat like a tree-toad and ends with a long, clear, somewhat plaintive or melodious hawk-like scream.. . ."); June 16, 1857 ("From time to time, summer and winter and far inland, I call to mind that peculiar prolonged cry of the upland plover on the bare heaths of Truro in July, heard from sea to sea . . .")

Has been a great flight of blue-winged teal this season.   See September 20, 1856 ("Melvin says that there are many teal about the river now.")

The soapwort gentian the flower of the river-banks now. See  September 6, 1857 ("Soapwort gentian, out not long"); September 8, 1852 ("Gentiana saponaria out."); September 19, 1852 ("The soapwort gentian cheers and surprises, -- solid bulbs of blue from the shade, the stale grown purplish. It abounds along the river, after so much has been mown"); September 22, 1852 ("The soapwort gentian the flower of the river-banks now."); September 25, 1857 ("You notice now the dark-blue dome of the soapwort gentian in cool and shady places under the bank") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Soapwort Gentian (Gentiana saponaria)

To preserve the fruit of our experience

March 24.

P. M. — Paddle up Assabet. 

The water is fast going down. See a small water bug. It is pretty still and warm. 

As I round the Island rock, a striped squirrel that was out the steep polypody rock scampered up with a chuckle. 

On looking close, I see the crimson white maple stigmas here and there, and some early alder catkins are relaxed and extended and almost shed pollen. 

I see many of those narrow four-winged insects (perla?) of the ice now fluttering on the water like ephemerae. They have two pairs of wings indistinctly spotted dark and light. 

Humphrey Buttrick says he saw two or three fish hawks down the river by Carlisle Bridge yesterday; also shot three black ducks and two green-winged teal, — though the latter had no green on their wings, it was rather the color of his boat, but Wesson assured him that so they looked in the spring. 

Buttrick had a double barrelled gun with him, which he said he bought of a broker in Boston for five dollars! Thought it had cost eighteen dollars. He had read Frank Forester and believed him, and accordingly sent to New York and got one of Mullin’s guns for sixty dollars. It was the poorest gun he ever had. He sold it for forty. 

As for cheap or old-fashioned guns bursting, there was Melvin; he had used his long enough, and it had not burst yet. He had given thirty-five dollars for it, say thirty years ago. Had had but one, or no other since. Melvin’s —and Minott’s still more — is such a gun as Frank Forester says he would not fire for a hundred dollars, and yet Melvin has grown gray with using it; i. e., he thinks that it would not be safe to fire a two barrelled gun offered new for less than fifty dollars.

If you are describing any occurrence, or a man, make two or more distinct reports at different times. Though you may think you have said all, you will to-morrow remember a whole new class of facts which perhaps interested most of all at the time, but did not present themselves to be reported. If we have recently met and talked with a man, and would report our experience, we commonly make a very partial report at first, failing to seize the most significant, picturesque, and dramatic points; we describe only what we have had time to digest and dispose of in our minds, without being conscious that there were other things really more novel and interesting to us, which will not fail to recur to us and impress us suitably at last. 

How little that occurs to us in any way are we prepared at once to appreciate! We discriminate at first only a few features, and we need to reconsider our experience from many points of view and in various moods, to preserve the whole fruit of it. 

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

As I round the Island rock, a striped squirrel that was out the steep polypody rock scampered up with a chuckle. See. March 10,1852 (" I am pretty sure that I hear the chuckle of a ground squirrel among the warm and bare rocks of the Cliffs. "); . March 17, 1859 ("As I float by the Rock, I hear rustling amid the oak leaves above that new water-line, and, there being no wind, I know it to be a striped squirrel, and soon see its long-unseen striped sides . . . a type which I have not seen for a long time, or rather a punctuation-mark, the character to indicate where a new paragraph commences in the revolution of the seasons.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,Signs of the Spring, the striped squirrel comes out

I see many of those narrow four-winged insects (perla?) of the ice now fluttering on the water .See
May 9, 1854("That early narrow curved-winged insect on ice and river which I thought an ephemera [Harris ]says is a Sialis, or maybe rather a Perla.");  March 17, 1858 ("As usual, I have seen for some weeks on the ice these peculiar (perla?) insects with long wings and two tails."); March 22, 1856 (“On water standing above the ice under a white maple, are many of those Perla(?) insects, with four wings, drowned.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Insect Hatches in Spring;and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,Signs of the Spring: insects and worms come forth and are active

Frank Forester: Henry William Herbert (April 3, 1807 – May 17, 1858), pen name Frank Forester, was an English novelist, poet, historian, illustrator, journalist and writer on sport. See July 12, 1855 (quoting Forester’s  “Manual for Young Sportsmen,”)

[Forester] thinks that it would not be safe to fire a two barrelled gun offered new for less than fifty dollars. See Forester’s Manual at 58 ("I do not, of course, mean to say that every cheap gun must necessarily burst ; but I do say that, against each one, severally, the odds are heavy that it will . . .By the word low-priccd guns, I mean, as a general rule, in reference to buying a safe and serviceable piece, any thing like new, with two barrels and the smallest show of exterior ornament, cheaper than fifty dollars.”)

If you are describing any occurrence, or a man, make two or more distinct reports at different times. . . . How little that occurs to us in any way are we prepared at once to appreciate. See March 27, 1857 ("I would fain make two reports in my Journal, first the incidents and observations of to-day; and by tomorrow I review the same and record what was omitted before, which will often be the most significant and poetic part. I do not know at first what it is that charms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to lie fairer and truer in to-morrow’s memory."); October 1, 1856 (“I do not perceive the poetic and dramatic capabilities of an anecdote or story which is told me, its significance, till some time afterwards. . ."); April 20, 1854 ("I find some advantage in describing the experience of a day on the day following. At this distance it is more ideal, like the landscape seen with the head inverted, or reflections in water”); January 10, 1854 ("What you can recall of a walk on the second day will differ from what you remember on the first day, ... as any view changes to one who is journeying amid mountains when he has increased the distance.”); May 5, 1852 ("I succeed best when I recur to my experience not too late, but within a day or two; when there is some distance, but enough of freshness.”); July 23, 1851 ("Do not tread on the heels of your experience. Be impressed without making a minute of it. Put an interval between the impression and the expression, - wait till the seed germinates naturally.”)

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

We are not at once

conscious of the whole fruit of

our experience.

How little occurs

that we are prepared at once

to appreciate.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

To preserve the fruit of our experience.

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/hdt570324

Many teal about the river now.

September 20

Melvin says that there are many teal about the river now. 

Rain in afternoon. Rain again in the night, hard.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 20, 1856

Many teal about the river now. See September 20, 1851 ("I see ducks or teal flying silent, swift, and straight, the wild creatures."); See also September 22, 1852 ("Has been a great flight of blue-winged teal this season. "); August 29, 1855 ("Saw two green-winged teal, somewhat pigeon-like, on a flat low rock in the Assabet.")

Rain in afternoon. Rain again in the night, hard. See note to September 20, 1857 ("This is our first fall rain, and makes a dividing line between the summer and fall.")

A great gull standing far away on the top of a muskrat-cabin

March 18

Fair in the forenoon, but more or less cloudy and windy in the afternoon.

P. M. — Round by Hollowell place 'via Clamshell. 

I see with my glass as I go over the railroad bridge, sweeping the river, a great gull standing far away on the top of a muskrat-cabin which rises just above the water opposite the Hubbard Bath. When I get round within sixty rods of him, ten minutes later, he still stands on the same spot, constantly turning his head to every side, looking out for foes. 

Like a wooden image of a bird he stands there, heavy to look at; head, breast, beneath, and rump pure white; slate-colored wings tipped with black and extending beyond the tail,— the herring gull. I can see clear down to its webbed feet. But now I advance, and he rises easily, goes off northeastward over the river with a leisurely flight. 

At Clamshell Hill I sweep the river again, and see, standing midleg deep on the meadow where the water is very shallow with deeper around, another of these wooden images, which is harder to scare. I do not fairly distinguish black tips to its wings. It is ten or fifteen minutes before I get him to rise, and then he goes off in the same leisurely manner, stroking the air with his wings, and now making a great circle back on its course, so you cannot tell which way it is bound. 

By standing so long motionless in these places they may perchance accomplish two objects, i. e., catch passing fish  like a heron and escape the attention of man. 

Its utmost motion was to plume itself once and turn its head about. If it did not move its head, it would look like a decoy. 

Our river is quite low for the season, and yet it is here without freshet or easterly storm. It seems to take this course on its migrations without regard to the state of the waters. 

Meanwhile a small dark-colored duck, all neck and wings, a winged rolling-pin, went over,--perhaps a teal. 

For the last two or three days very wet and muddy walking, owing to the melting of the snow; which also has slightly swollen the small streams.

Notwithstanding the water on the surface, it is easier crossing meadows and swamps than it will be a month hence, on account of the frost in the ground.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 18, 1855

Like a wooden image of a bird See March 16, 1860 ("I also see two gulls nearly a mile off . . . Thus they will stand for an hour, at least . . . like great wooden images of birds, bluish-slate and white. But when they fly they are quite another creature.");   See also March 8, 1853 ("I must be on the lookout now for the gulls and the ducks."; March 16, 1859 ("We meet one great gull beating up the course of the river against the wind, at Flint's Bridge. (One says they were seen about a week ago, but there was very little water then.) Its is a very leisurely sort of limping flight, tacking its way along like a sailing vessel, yet the slow security with which it advances suggests a leisurely contemplativeness in the bird, as if it were working out some problem quite at its leisure. As often as its very narrow, long, and curved wings are lifted up against the light, I see a very narrow distinct light edging to the wing where it is thin. Its black- tipped wings. Afterwards, from Ball's Hill, looking north, I see two more circling about looking for food over the ice and water. "); March 18, 1859 ("Rice thinks that he has seen two gulls on the Sudbury meadows."); March 22, 1858 ("We see many gulls on the very opposite side of the meadow, near the woods. They look bright-white, like snow on the dark-blue water. It is surprising how far they can be seen, how much light they reflect, and how conspicuous they are."); March 23, 1859 ("I see come slowly flying from the southwest a great gull, of voracious form, which at length by a sudden and steep descent alights in Fair Haven Pond, scaring up a crow which was seeking its food on the edge of the ice."); March 24, 1860 ("There are half a dozen gulls on the water near. They are the large white birds of the meadow, the whitest we have. As they so commonly stand above water on a piece of meadow, they are so much the more conspicuous. They are very conspicuous to my naked eye a mile off, or as soon as I come in sight of the meadow . . .Three of the gulls stand together on a piece of meadow, and two or three more are standing solitary half immersed, and now and then one or two circle slowly about their companions."); March 27,1858 ("We hear a squeaking note, as if made by a pump, and presently see four or five great herring gulls wheeling about. Sometimes they make a sound like the scream of a hen-hawk. They are shaped somewhat like a very thick white rolling-pin, sharpened at both ends. "); March 27, 1859 ("I see a gull flying over Fair Haven Pond which appears to have a much duskier body beneath than the common near by, though about the same size. Can it be another species? "); March 28, 1858 (" I look toward Fair Haven Pond, now quite smooth. There is not a duck nor a gull to be seen on it. I can hardly believe that it was so alive with them yesterday. Apparently they improve this warm and pleasant day, with little or no wind, to continue their journey northward. . . . But when one kind of life goes, another comes. ");  March 29, 1854 ("A gull of pure white, - a wave of foam in the air. How simple and wave-like its outline, two curves, - all wing - like a birch scale."); April 4, 1855") ("A gull is circling round Fair Haven Pond, seen white against the woods and hillsides, looking as if it would dive for a fish every moment, and occasionally resting on the ice."); April 4, 1857 ("Am not sure what kind of large gulls I see there, some more white, some darker, methinks, than the herring gull."); April 7, 1853 ("A great gull, though it is so fair and the wind northwest, fishing over the flooded meadow. He slowly circles round and hovers with flapping wings in the air over particular spots, repeatedly returning there and sailing quite low over the water, with long, narrow, pointed wings, trembling throughout their length. "); April 13, 1859 ("Saw a great bird flying rather low and circling more or less over the Great Meadows, which I at first thought was a fish hawk, having a fair sight of it from Ball's Hill, but with my glass I saw that it was a gull, but, I should say, wholly slate-color and dark at that, — though there may have been small spots which made no impression of another color. It was at least as large, maybe larger than the herring gull. Was it the saddle back gull ? "); April 15, 1855 ("It is remarkable how much light those white gulls . . . absorb and reflect through that sombre atmosphere, — conspicuous almost as candles in the night."); See also Weisner X, 

9:06 AM · Mar 18, 2024

Meanwhile a small dark-colored duck, all neck and wings, a winged rolling-pin, went over,--perhaps a teal. See  March 24, 1857 ("Humphrey Buttrick . . . shot three black ducks and two green-winged teal, – though the latter had no green on their wings, it was rather the color of his boat, but Wesson assured him that so they looked in the spring. "); March 25, 1854 ("Is not the small duck or two I see one at a time and flying pretty high a teal?"); April 15, 1855 ("We scare up but few ducks — some apparently black, which quacked—and some small rolling-pins, probably teal.")

Very wet and muddy walking, owing to the melting of the snow. See March 16, 1858 ("I walk in muddy fields, hearing the tinkling of new born rills.”)

March 18. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, March 18

A great gull standing 

far away on the top of 

a muskrat-cabin. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau A great gull standing far away on the top of a muskrat-cabin 

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdy-550318

Cold and windy – osiers surprise me.

March 25

Cold and windy.

Down river in boat to Great Meadows. Freezes on oars. Too cold and windy almost for ducks. They are in the smoother open water (free from ice) under the lee of hills.

March 25, 2017

Got a boat-load of driftwood, — rails, bridge timber, planks, etc.

White maple buds bursting, making trees look like some fruit trees with blossom-buds.

Is not the small duck or two I see one at a time and flying pretty high a teal?

Willow osiers near Mill Brook mouth I am almost certain have acquired a fresher color; at least they surprise me at a distance by their green passing through yellowish to red at top.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 25, 1854

Too cold and windy almost for ducks. They are in the smoother open water (free from ice) under the lee of hills. See  March 21, 1854 ("At sunrise to Clamshell Hill . . .Think I should find ducks cornered up by the ice; they get behind this hill for shelter. Look with glass and find more than thirty black ducks asleep with their heads on their backs, motionless, and thin ice formed about them. ");March 22, 1854 ("Still very cold . . . Scare up my flock of black ducks and count forty together. ");.March 24, 1854 ("The same ducks under Clamshell Hill "); March 25, 1858 ("Cold northwest wind as yesterday and day before . . .There are so many sportsmen out that the ducks have no rest); and see March 28, 1858 ("Apparently they improve this warm and pleasant day, with little or no wind, to continue their journey northward.. . . It is a wildlife that is associated with stormy and blustering weather"); .March 29, 1858 ("I infer that waterfowl travel in pleasant weather") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Black Duck

White maple buds bursting, making trees look like some fruit trees with blossom-buds. See March 23, 1853 (“The white maple . . . has opened unexpectedly, and a rich sight it is, looking up through the expanded buds to the sky.”) See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, White Maple Buds and Flowers

Is not the small duck or two I see one at a time and flying pretty high a teal? See March 18, 1855 ("Meanwhile a small dark-colored duck, all neck and wings, a winged rolling-pin, went over,--perhaps a teal"); March 24, 1857 ("Humphrey Buttrick . . . shot three black ducks and two green-winged teal, – though the latter had no green on their wings, it was rather the color of his boat, but Wesson assured him that so they looked in the spring. "); April 15, 1855 ("We scare up but few ducks — some apparently black, which quacked—and some small rolling-pins, probably teal.")

I am almost certain osiers have acquired a fresher color. See February 24, 1855 ("You will often fancy that they look brighter before the spring has come, and when there has been no change in them"); March 2, 1860 ("This phenomenon, whether referable to a change in the condition of the twig or to the spring air and light, or even to our imaginations,is not the less a real phenomenon, affecting us annually at this season"); March 14, 1856 ("They certainly look brighter now and from this point than I have noticed them before this year,. . . Yet I think that on a close inspection I should find no change. Nevertheless, it is, on the whole, perhaps the most springlike sight I have seen."); March 16, 1856 ("There is, at any rate, such a phenomenon as the willows shining in the spring sun, however it is to be accounted for."); March 22, 1854("C. thinks some willow osiers decidedly more yellow."); March 24, 1855 ("I am not sure that the osiers are decidedly brighter yet"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Osier in Winter and early Spring

Willow osiers

surprise me at a distance –

green yellowish red!

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Willow Osiers Surprise Me

 "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/hdt-540325