The maple-tops begin to look red now with the growing keys

May 6. 

May 6 2017

P. M. – To Nut Meadow Brook and Corner Spring.

Choice plum in gardens.

The Salix alba is conspicuous and interesting in the landscape now, some bright yellow, truly golden (staminate?), some greenish, filling the air of causeways with a sweet scent.

The whole landscape is many shades greener for the rain, almost a blue green.

The leafing of the trees has commenced, and the forms of some, accordingly, begin to be defined.

Some, however, like the large maples, elms, etc., look heavy and are defined by their samaræ and not yet by their leaves, which are not comparatively forward.

I perceive the strong odor of horse-mint, rising dark above the brooks.

Hear the loud echoing note of the peet-weet-weet-weet-weet.

Viola cucullata at John Hosmer's ditch by Clamshell Hill.

Four large robin's eggs in an apple tree.

A ground-bird's nest with eggs.

Equisetum sylvaticum in front of Hosmer's Gorge.

I have seen no ducks since I returned from Haverhill on the 29th April.

There are pretty large leaves on the young red maples (which have no flowers), disposed crosswise, as well as on the sugar maple, but not so with larger flowering maples.

The maple-tops begin to look red now with the growing keys, at a distance, — crescents of red.

Uvularia sessilifolia just begun.

Common knawel, apparently for some time, though Bigelow says July (?).

Those long spear-shaped buds of the viburnum have expanded into dark but handsome leaves rather early; probably Viburnum nudum.

As I walk through the village at evening, when the air is still damp after the rainy morning, I perceive and am exhilarated by the sweet scent of expanding leaves.

The woods are beginning to be in the gray now; leaves and flower- buds generally expanding, covered with a mealy or downy web (which now reminds me of those plants like gnaphalium, swathed in cotton), a clean dirt, which whitens the coat of the walker.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 6, 1853

There are pretty large leaves on the young red maples.The maple-tops begin to look red now with the growing keys. See May 9, 1855 ("A large red maple just begun to leaf - its keys an inch and a half long.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Maple

Those long spear-shaped buds of the viburnum have expanded into dark but handsome leaves rather early. See April 30, 1859 ("The viburnum buds are so large and long, like a spear-head, that they are conspicuous the moment their two leafets diverge and they are lit up by the sun. They unfold their wings like insects and arriving warblers.")

Four large robin's eggs in an apple tree. See May 6. 1855 (''A robin’s nest with two eggs, betrayed by peeping.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in
Spring

I perceive and am exhilarated by the sweet scent of expanding leaves. See May 16, 1854 ("A sweet scent fills the air from the expanding leafets. The earth is all fragrant as one flower."); May 18, 1851 ("There is a peculiar freshness about the landscape; you scent the fragrance of new leaves,")

The seringo note

May 5.

Hear the seringo note.

Fringilla savanna

"Although this little Finch cannot be said to have a song,

 it is yet continually pouring out its notes.

 You see it perched on a fence rail, 

the top of a stone, or a tall grass or bush,

 mimicking as it were 

the sounds of the common cricket."

 ~ J.J. Audubon

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 5, 1861

Seringo note. See May 1, 1852 ("I hear the note of the shy Savannah sparrow (F. Savanna), that plump bird with a dark-streaked breast that runs and hides in the grass, whose note sounds so like a cricket's in the grass . . . The word seringo reminds me of its note , as if it were produced by some kind of fine metallic spring."); April 22, 1856 ("The seringo also sits on a post, with a very distinct yellow line over the eye,and the rhythm of its strain is ker chick | ker che | ker-char—r-r-r-r | chick, the last two bars being the part chiefly heard."); April 27, 1859 ("Hear and see the seringo in fields next the shore. No noticeable yellow shoulder, pure whitish beneath, dashed throat and a dark-brown line of dashes along the sides of the body."); June 26, 1856 ("[S]aw, apparently, the F. Savanna near their nests (my seringo note), restlessly flitting about me from rock to rock within a rod."); and notes to note to August 11, 1858 (" I heard there abouts the seringo note."); and December 7, 1858 ("Dr. Bryant calls my seringo (i. e. the faint-noted bird) Savannah sparrow.”) See also Guide to Thoreau’s Birds ("Thoreau frequently called the Savannah Sparrow Passerculus sandwichensis the seringo or seringo-bird, but he also applied the name to other small birds.")

The uses of the cyanometer .

May 4.

Cattle are going up country.

Hear the tull-lull of the chickadee (?) [white-throated sparrow].

The currant in bloom.

The Canada plum just ready, probably to-day.

8 A. M.-To Walden and Cliffs.

The sound of the oven-bird.

Caterpillar nests two or three inches in diameter on wild cherries; caterpillars one third of an inch long.

The Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum appeared yesterday.

The vacillans, resinosum ( ? ), and early high blueberry will bloom in a few days.

Vide Cerasus pumila by shanty path, and wild red ditto, as early.

The white birch leaves are beginning to expand and are shining with some sticky matter. I must attend to their fragrance.  In a warm place on the Cliffs one of their catkins shows its anthers, the golden pendant.

The woods and paths next them now ring with the silver jingle of the field sparrow, the medley of the brown thrasher, the honest qui vive of the chewink, or his jingle from the top of a low copse tree, while his mate scratches in the dry leaves beneath; the black and white creeper is hopping along the oak boughs, head downward, pausing from time to time to utter its note like a fine, delicate saw-sharpening; and ever and anon rises clear over all the smooth, rich melody of the wood thrush.

Could that have been a jay? I think it was some large, uncommon woodpecker that uttered that very loud, strange, cackling note.

The dry woods have the smell of fragrant everlasting.

I am surprised by the cool drops which now, at 10 o'clock, drop from the flowers of the amelanchier, while other plants are dry, as if these had attracted more moisture.

The white pines have started.

The indigo-bird and mate; dark throat and light beneath, and white spot on wings, which is not described; a hoarse note, and rapid the first two or three syllables,-twe twe twee, dwelling on the last, or twe twe twe twee-e, or as if an rin it, tre, etc., not musical.

The myrtle-bird, which makes me think the more that I saw the black and yellow warbler on Sunday.

I find apparently two varieties of the amelanchier, the first I noticed, with smooth reddish delicate leaves and somewhat linear petals and loose racemes, petals sometimes pinkish; the second to-day, perhaps a little later than the first, leaves light-colored and downy and petals broader and perhaps not quite so long as the first, racemes more crowded. I am not sure that this is the variety oblongifolium of Gray.[This appears to be the Pyrus ovalis or swamp pyrus of Bigelow and Willdeming.]

It is stated in the Life of Humboldt that he proved "that the expression, 'the ocean reflects the sky,' was a purely poetical, but not a scientifically correct one, as the sea is often blue when the sky is almost totally covered with light white clouds.” 

He used Saussure's cyanometer even to measure the color of the sea. This might probably be used to measure the intensity of the color of blue flowers like lupines at a distance.

Humboldt speaks of its having been proved that pine pollen falls from the atmosphere.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 4, 1853.

Cattle are going up country. See May 10, 1852 ("This Monday the streets are full of cattle being driven up-country, — cows and calves and colts."); May 8, 1854 ("I hear the voices of farmers driving their cows past to their up-country pastures now.");; May 6, 1855 ("Road full of cattle going up country.”); May 7, 1856 ("For a week the road has been full of cattle going up country ")

The sound of the oven-bird. See May 1, 1852 ("I think I heard an oven-bird just now, - wicher wicher whicher wich"): May 7, 1853 ("The woods now begin to ring with the woodland note of the oven-bird.")

The myrtle-bird, which makes me think the more that I saw the black and yellow warbler on Sunday. See May 1, 1853 ("Was it not the black and yellow or spotted warbler I saw by the Corner Spring? . . . I think it much too dark for the myrtle-bird."); May 10, 1853 (" Is it the redstart? I now see one of these. The first I have distinguished. And now I feel pretty certain that my black and yellow warbler of May 1st was this.")

I find apparently two varieties of the amelanchier, . . . ; the second to-day, perhaps a little later than the first. See May 4, 1855 ("The second amelanchier, , , begin to leaf to-day.") See also April 26, 1860 ("The Amelanchier Botryapium . . . will apparently bloom tomorrow or next day."); May 1, 1853 ("Is not the Botryapium our earliest variety of amelanchier?"); May 5, 1860 ("Amelanchier Botryapium flower in prime."); May 8, 1854 ("The early Amelanchier Botryapium overhangs the rocks and grows in the shelves, with its loose, open-flowered racemes, curving downward, of narrow-petalled white flowers, red on the back and innocently cherry-scented"); May 9, 1852 ("The first shad-bush, June- berry, or service-berry (Amelanchier Canadensis), in blossom."); May 13, 1852 ("The amelanchiers are now the prevailing flowers in the woods and swamps and sprout-lands, a very beautiful flower, with its purplish stipules and delicate drooping white blossoms. The shad-blossom days in the woods."); May 13, 1855 ("Saw an amelanchier with downy leaf (apparently oblongifolia) on the southeast edge of Yellow Birch Swamp, about eighteen feet high and five or six inches in diameter, —a clump of them about as big as an apple tree).May 21, 1857 ("It seems to be a common variety of the variety Botryapium and quite downy, though not so downy as those of the oblongifolia.")

The indigo-bird and mate; dark throat and light beneath, and white spot on wings. See June 9, 1857 ("In the sprout-land beyond the red huckleberry, an indigo-bird, which chips about me as if it had a nest there. This is a splendid and marked bird, high-colored as is the tanager, looking strange in this latitude. Glowing indigo."); July 21, 1851 ("a perfect embodiment of the darkest blue that ever fills the valleys at this season")

The black and white creeper is hopping along the oak boughs, head downward, pausing from time to time to utter its note. See May 11, 1856 ("The black and white creeper also is descending the oaks, etc., and uttering from time to time his seeser seeser seeser. "); May 12, 1855 ("Watch a black and white creeper from Bittern Cliff, a very neat and active bird, exploring the limbs on all sides and looking three or four ways almost at once for insects. Now and then it raises its head a little, opens its bill, and, without closing it, utters its faint seeser seeser seeser.");  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.") See alsoA Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, The Black and White Creeper

He used the instrument also to measure the colour of the sea, which is generally green, and here he also found changes which often turned the sea during fine weather from the deepest indigo blue to the darkest green, or slate grey, without any atmospheric change being perceptible. He proved also that the expression “the ocean reflects the sky", was a purely poetical, but not a scientifically correct one, as the sea is often blue when the sky is almost totally covered with light white clouds

Lives of the Brothers Humbold 46 (1852) See Atlas Obscura ("In 1802, Humboldt took the tool on an ascent of the Andean mountain Chimborazo, where he set a new record, at the 46th degree of blue, for the darkest sky ever measured.") See also James Jeans “Why the Sky is Blue” (1931)

Humboldt speaks of its having been proved that pine pollen falls from the atmosphere:

Organic life is active everywhere on the surface of the earth, in its precipices and its atmospheric altitudes; the great ocean contains minute microscopic life far into the polar circles of the arctic ocean. It has been proved by direct observation, that "in the eternal night of oceanic depths," as Humboldt expresses himself, more animal than vegetable life is developed, while on terra firma, the vegetable principle prevails; yet the bulk of the latter far exceeds that of the former, although there is less land than sea. Modern naturalists believe they have discovered infusoria in the air. Humboldt considers this discovery still doubtful, but not impossible; he thinks that just as well as it has been proved that pine pollen falls from the atmosphere, it is possible that little infusoria may be raised upwards in vapour, and be retained floating in the air for some time.* Ehrenberg has also discovered that the misty dust rain which clouds the atmosphere near the Cape Verd islands, 380 leagues from the African coast, consists of the remains of eighteen different silicious, polygastric infusoria ~Lives of the Brothers Humboldt, (1852)by Hermann Klencke, Gustav Schlesier

5 Bird specimens.

 May 4. 

H. Mann brings me two small pewees, but not yellowish about eye and bill, and bill is all black. 

Also a white-throat sparrow, Wilson's thrush, and myrtle bird.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 4, 1861

In rain to Nawshawtuct.

May 3. 

P. M. -- In rain to Nawshawtuct.

The river rising still.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anemone nemorosa near the ferns and the sassafras appeared yesterday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summer yellowbird on the opening Salix alba.

May 2. 

Summer yellowbird on the opening Salix alba. 

Chimney swallows and the bank or else cliff ditto. 

Small pewee? 

Our earliest gooseberry in garden has bloomed. 

What is that pondweed-like plant floating in a pool near Breed's, with a slender stem and linear leaves and a small whorl of minute leaves on the surface, and nutlets in the axils of the leaves, along the stem, as if now out of bloom? [Callitriche verna.] 

Missouri currant.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 2, 1853

Summer yellowbird on the opening Salix alba. See May 2, 1860 ("Salix alba apparently yesterday.")  See also   May 7, 1852 ("The first summer yellowbirds on the willow causeway. The birds come not singly, as the earliest, but all at once, i. e. many yellowbirds all over town. Now I remember the yellowbird comes when the willows begin to leave out. "); May 10, 1858 (" For some days the Salix alba have shown their yellow wreaths here and there, suggesting the coming of the yellowbird, and now they are alive with them."); May 10, 1853 ("At this season the traveller passes through a golden gate on causeways where these willows are planted, as if he were approaching the entrance to Fairyland; and there will surely be found the yellowbird, and already from a distance is heard his note, a tche tche tche tcha tchar tcha, — ah, willow, willow.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Summer Yellowbird also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Willows on the Causeway

Small pewee? See May 2, 1859 ("Small pewee and young lackey caterpillars.") See also  May 3, 1854 ("What I have called the small pewee on the willow by my boat, — quite small, uttering a short tchevet from time to time.") and note to May 3, 1855 ("Small pewee; tchevet, with a jerk of the head."); May 7, 1852 ("And the small pewee on the willows also.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the "Small Pewee"

Our earliest gooseberry in garden has bloomed. See April 1, 1860 ("Our gooseberry begins to show a little green, but not our currant"); April 3, 1853 ("The Missouri currant is perhaps more advanced than the early gooseberry in our garden."); April 30, 1852  ("At Saw Mill Run the swamp gooseberry is partly leaved out. This, . . .methinks is the earliest shrub or tree that shows leaves. [The Missouri currant in gardens is equally forward; the cultivated gooseberry nearly so.]") May 4, 1860 ("Currant out a day or two at least, and our first gooseberry a day later.")


Missouri currant. See May 4, 1858 ("The Missouri currant, probably to-day."); May 5, 1855 ("Missouri currant look as if they would bloom to-morrow.”);

Early flowers, leaves and birds.

 

May 1. 

May 1, 2021

 Sunday.

A cold northwest wind.

Now, on my return to Concord, I am struck by the increased greenness of the country, or landscape.

I find that since I left Concord, April 11th, there have blossomed here, probably nearly in the following order, these plants, including those I saw in Haverhill: 

• dandelion, 
• field horse-tail, 
• Antennaria plantaginifolia, 
• sweet-gale, 
• epigæa, 
• Populus grandidentata, 
• Salix tristis, 
• Viola ovata (Ellen Emerson found it April 20th), 
• Potentilla Canadensis, 
• comptonia, 
• Thalictrum anemonoides, 
• Anemone nemorosa, 
• V. blanda, 
• P. balsamifera, 
• Aquilegia Canadensis, 
• Hedyotiscærulea, 
• andromeda, 
• Fragaria Virginiana (?) (distinguished from the other species in fruit),
• Salix alba, 
• benzoin, 
• Amelanchier Canadensis var. Botryapium.

Peach, cultivated cherry, and the following apparently just begun: 

• Viola pedata, 
• Ostrya Virginica, 
• V. cucullata (Ellen Emerson says she saw it the 30th ult.; it is to be looked for at Depot Field Brook).

And Rumex Acetosella shows red and is eight inches high on Columbine Cliff.

The expanding leaves of the sugar maples now make small crosses against the sky.

Other conspicuous green leaves are 

• the gooseberry, 
• currant, 
• elder, 
• the willows just beginning,
•  and alder, 
• and apple trees 
• and high blackberry, 
• amelanchier, 
• meadow-sweet,
•  beside many herbaceous plants.

Drosera (round leaved) leaves now.

Sedge-grass (early sedge) very abundant still.

The Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum is just ready to bloom and also the vacillans nearly.

These things observed on way To Cliffs.

The oak leaves on the plain are fallen.

The colors are now: 

• light blue above (where is my cyanometer? Saussure invented one, and Humboldt used it in his travels); 
• landscape russet and greenish,
•  spotted with fawn-colored plowed lands, 
• with green pine and gray or reddish oak woods intermixed, and 
• dark-blue or slate-colored water here and there.

It is greenest in the meadows and where water has lately stood, and a strong, invigorating scent comes up from the fresh meadows.

It is like the greenness of an apple faintly or dimly appearing through the russet.

A phoebe's nest and one cream-colored white egg at the spring-house; nest of mud, lined with grass and edged with hypnum.

Channing has seen a robin's nest and eggs.

I hear a black and white creeper at the Cliffs, and a chewink.

The shrub oaks are well budded.

The young ivy leaves are red on Cliffs.

Oaks and hickory buds just ready to open.

How aromatic the balm-of-Gilead buds now! 

The large woolly ferns and others stand up a foot on banks.

The skunk-cabbage leaves green the warm, springy meads.

Was it not the black and yellow or spotted warbler I saw by the Corner Spring? [Vide May 10th.] Apparently black, brown striped, with a yellow rump and also yellow wing, shoulders, and sides of breast, with a large black spot on breast; size of phæbe nearly; note somewhat like yellowbird. Yet I think it much too dark for the myrtle-bird.

Columbine Cliff a place to look for early rue anemones and nemorosa and dandelions.

The columbines have been out some days.

How ornamental to these dark-colored perpendicular cliffs, nodding from the clefts and shelves! 

The barn swallow is about.

Have we the Viola lanceolata?  [Yes. Vide Hubbard's] 

Is not the Botryapium our earliest variety of amelanchier, and what difference in the fruit? 

Channing says he has heard the wood thrush, brown thrasher, and stake-driver (?), since I have been gone.

This and last page for birds which I find come in the interval.

Did I not see the oven-bird yesterday?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 1, 1853

I find that since I left Concord, April 11th, there have blossomed here.  See April 8, 1859 ("The earliest peculiarly woodland herbaceous flowers are epigaea, anemone, thalictrum, and — by the first of May — Viola pedata.")

Dandelion: See April 18, 1860 ("Melvin has seen a dandelion in bloom."); 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.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Dandelion in Spring

Sweet-gale.  See  April 22, 1855 ("The blossoms of the sweet-gale are now on fire over the brooks, contorted like caterpillars.")

Epigæa. See April 9, 1853 ("The epigæa will not be out for some days."); see also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Epigaea

Populus grandidentata. See April 8, 1853 ("The male Populus grandidentata appears to open very gradually, beginning sooner than I supposed. It shows some of its red anthers long before it opens. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Big-toothed Aspen

Early violets: Viola ovata (Ellen Emerson found it April 20th), V. cucullata (Ellen Emerson says she saw it the 30th ult.; it is to be looked for at Depot Field Brook). See  April 19, 1858 ("Viola ovata on bank above Lee's Cliff. Edith Emerson found them there yesterday.");. April 23, 1858 (" Saw a Viola blanda in a girl's hand");   May 5, 1859  ("V. blanda and cucullata are. . .rather rare; V. pedata and lanceolata rarer yet, or not seen");  May 9, 1852 ("The first Viola pedata ");  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."); May 19, 1858 (“There appears to be quite a variety in the colors of the Viola cucullata. Some dark-blue, if not lilac (?), some with a very dark blue centre and whitish circumference, others dark-blue within and dark without, others all very pale blue.”); May 16, 1852 (“I observe some very pale blue Viola cuculata in the meadows. ”); May 31, 1858 (“I saw . . . to-day a white V. cucullata. ”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

Saussure invented one, and Humboldt used it in his travels. See May 4, 1853 ("He used Saussure's cyanometer even to measure the color of the sea.")

A phoebe's nest and one cream-colored white egg. See June 20, 1856 (" A phoebe nest, second time, with four cream-white eggs. . . . The second brood in the same nest.")

Was it not the black and yellow or spotted warbler I saw by the Corner Spring? . . . I think it much too dark for the myrtle-bird. See May 4, 1853 ("The myrtle-bird, which makes me think the more that I saw the black and yellow warbler on Sunday."); May 10, 1853 ("I hear , and have for a week , in the woods , the note of one or more small birds somewhat like a yellow bird's . What is it ? Is it the redstart ? I now see one of these . The first I have distinguished . And now I feel pretty certain that my black and yellow warbler of May 1st was this."); May 29, 1855 ("females of the redstart, described by Wilson, — very different from the full-plumaged black males. ")

American Redstart

Did I not see the oven-bird yesterday? See May 1, 1852 ("I think I heard an oven-bird just now, - wicher wicher whicher wich. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Oven-bird