Up the hill beyond the brook I sit on a rock below the old trough.

April 21.

P. M. — To Saw Mill Brook. 

April 21, 2018

How silent and deserted the woods are! I do not fairly see a chickadee even. Snow with its tracks would make it seem more inhabited. 

As I go up the hill beyond the brook, while the hylodes are heard behind, I perceive the faintest possible flower-like scent as from the earth, reminding me of anemonies and houstonias. Can it be the budded mouse-ears under my feet? Downy-swaddled, they lie along flat to the earth like a child on its mother's bosom.

 I sit on a rock awhile just below the old trough. 

These are those early times when the rich golden-brown tassels of the alders tremble over the brooks — and not a leaf on their twigs.

***

The song of the purple finch on the elms (he also frequents firs and spruce) is rich and continuous, like, but fainter and more rapid than, that of a robin, some of the cherruwit in it and a little of the warble of the martin. A martin was found dead the 18th after the snows, and many bluebirds in Brookfield . 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 21, 1854

How silent and deserted the woods are! Compare March 29, 1857 ("How empty and silent the woods now, before leaves have put forth or thrushes and warblers are come! Deserted halls, floored with dry leaves, where scarcely an insect stirs as yet.”)

I go up the hill beyond the brook, while the hylodes are heard behind. See March 31, 1857 ("As I rise the east side of the Hill, I hear the distant faint peep of hylodes and the tut tut tut of croaking frogs from the west of the Hill. How gradually and imperceptibly the peep of the hylodes mingles with and swells the volume of sound which makes the voice of awakening nature! If you do not listen carefully for its first note, you probably will not hear it, and, not having heard that, your ears become used to the sound, so that you will hardly notice it at last, however loud and universal. ") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The first frogs to begin calling

I perceive the faintest possible flower-like scent as from the earth. See April 17, 1852 ("That early yellow smell. The odor of spring, of life developing amid buds, of the earth's epithalamium."); See also note to May 6, 1855 ("Near Jenny Dugan’s, perceive that unaccountable fugacious fragrance, as of all flowers, bursting forth in air . . . It is the general fragrance of the year.”)

Can it be the budded mouse-ears under my feet? See April 29, 1854("The mouse-ear is now fairly in blossom in many places. It never looks so pretty as now in an April rain, covered with pearly drops. Its corymbs of five heads with one in the centre (all tinged red) look like a breast-pin set with pearls. "); May 6, 1859 ("I perceive a peculiar fragrance in the air . . . like that of vernal flowers or of expanding buds. The ground is covered with the mouse-ear in full bloom.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Mouse-ear

The rich golden-brown tassels of the alders tremble over the brooks. See March 20, 1853 (“Those alder catkins on the west side of Walden tremble and undulate in the wind, they are so relaxed and ready to bloom, — the most forward blossom-buds.”); April 16, 1852 (“It is pleasant to walk the windy causeways where the tassels of the alders are dangling and swinging now.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau the Alders

Up the hill beyond

the brook I sit on a rock

below the old trough.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Up the hill beyond the brook 

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-540421

Yesterday is like a refllection

April 20.

yesterday

A willow coming out fairly, with honey-bees humming on it, in a warm nook. And now different kinds of bees and flies about them. What a sunny sight and summer sound! 

A striped snake on a warm, sunny bank. 

The painted tortoises are fairly out sunning to-day. 

A very pleasant and warm afternoon; the earth seems to be waking up. 

Frogs croak in the clear pools on the hillside where rocks have been taken out, and there is frog-spawn there, and little tadpoles are very lively in the sunny water. 

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.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 20, 1854

A willow coming out fairly, with honey-bees humming on it, in a warm nook. See April 17, 1852 ("We hear but little music in the world which charms us more than this sound produced by the vibration of an insect's wing and in some still and sunny nook in spring"); April 17, 1855 ("The second sallow catkin (or any willow) I have seen in blossom —there are three or four catkins on the twig partly open —I am about to clutch, but find already a bee curved close on each half-opened catkin, intoxicated with its early sweet."); April 18, 1852 (" The most interesting fact, perhaps, at present is these few tender yellow blossoms, these half-expanded sterile aments of the willow, seen through the rain and cold, — signs of the advancing year, pledges of the sun's return.") 

Quickly and surely

the bee finds the first flower

before the poet.

April 17, 1855

See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bees

A striped snake on a warm, sunny bank. See April 25, 1859 ("One saw a striped snake the 3d of April on a warm railroad sand-bank, — a similar place to the others I heard of.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Striped Snake

The painted tortoises are fairly out sunning to-day. See March 29, 1858 ("They seem to come out into the sun about the time the phoebe is heard over the water"); May 1, 1859 ("All up and down our river meadows their backs are shining in the sun to-day. It is a turtle day. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Painted Turtle (Emys picta)

Describing the experience of the day. See July 23, 1851 ("Put an interval between the impression and the expression, - wait till the seed germinates naturally.”); 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."); 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.");  March 27, 1857 ("The men and things of to-day are wont to lie fairer and truer in to-morrow’s memory."); March 28, 1857 ("Often I can give the truest and most interesting account of any adventure I have had after years have elapsed, for then I am not confused, only the most significant facts surviving in my memory. Indeed, all that continues to interest me after such a lapse of time is sure to be pertinent, and I may safely record all that I remember.")

More ideal, like the landscape seen with the head inverted, or reflections in water. See 1850 ("You have only to stand on your head a moment to be enchanted with the beauty of the landscape "); January 9, 1853 ("I see to-day the reflected sunset sky in the river, but the colors in the reflection are different from those in the sky.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Inverted Head experiment.

April 20. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 20

Yesterday is like

a reflection in water.

 Inverted, ideal.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Yesterday is like a refletion

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-540420

We reach the lower view just before sunset. The woods have that late afternoon glow. At the view the sun is down. A clear blue sky and saffron horizon. The pond bright. Later walking home the long way the stars are out, shining through the trees like a winters night, the big dipper upside down.

On the long way home

stars shine like a winter night

dipper upside down.

April 20, 2014

Zphx

Snowy April

April 19.

April 19, 2014

Yesterday, as I was returning down the Assabet, paddling leisurely in the stern, the sun came out after two days of storm or louring weather and shone on the banks covered with snow. The water, which had been perfectly smooth all the afternoon, looked smoother yet, and I think that I never beheld so pure and refulgent a white as the upright snowy banks presented. Snow never looks so white in winter. 

I had chosen to come to the river that afternoon, for there, the air being warm though the earth was covered with snow, there was least change. The few sparrows and warblers along the water's edge and on the twigs over the water seemed to forget the wintry prospect. 

I was surprised to find the river so full of sawdust from the pail-factory and Barrett's mill that I could not easily distinguish if the stone-heaps had been repaired. There was not a square three inches clear. And I saw the sawdust deposited by an eddy in one place on the bottom like a sand-bank a foot or more deep half a mile below the mill.

A man was plowing in snow this morning.

This is the fifth day that the ground has been covered with snow. There first fell about four inches on the morning of the 15th. This had two thirds melted on the evening of the 16th. Then as much more fell on the 17th, with which to-night (evening of 19th) the ground is still more than half covered. There has been sleighing. I do not remember the like.

Within a few days the warblers have begun to come. They are of every hue. Nature made them to show her colors with. There are as many as there are colors and shades.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 19, 1854

I was surprised to find the river so full of sawdust from the pail-factory and Barrett's mill See  April 1, 1854 ("The lines of sawdust from Barrett's mill at different heights on the steep, wet bank under the hemlocks rather enhance the impression of freshness and wild-ness, as if it were a new country.”); April 12, 1852 (" The lines of sawdust left at different levels on the shore is just hint enough of a sawmill on the stream above."); October 20, 1856 ("Land at Hemlocks, in the eddy there, where the white bits of sawdust keep boiling up and down and whirling round as in a pot.") July 7, 1859 ("Bathing at Barrett's Bay, I find it to be composed in good part of sawdust, mixed with sand.”) 

A man was plowing in snow this morning. See April 2, 1853 (“Observed some plowing yesterday”); April 18, 1855 (“The frost is out enough for plowing probably in most open ground”); April 16, 1856 (“Plowing and planting are now going on commonly. . . . Frost appears to be out of most soil”)

This is the fifth day that the ground has been covered with snow. See note to April 2, 1861 ("A drifting snow-storm, perhaps a foot deep on an average.")

Within a few days the warblers have begun to come. See April 30, 1859 ("This first off-coat warmth just preceding the advent of the swamp warblers (parti-colored, red start, etc.) brings them out. I come here to listen for warblers, but hear or see only the black and white creeper and the chickadee."); May 18, 1856 ("The swamp is all alive with warblers about the hoary expanding buds of oaks, maples, etc., and amid the pine and spruce."); May 23, 1857 ("This is the time and place to hear the new-arriving warblers, the first fine days after the May storm. When the leaves generally are just fairly expanding,. . . then, about the edges of the swamps in the woods, these birds are flitting about in the tree-tops like gnats, catching the insects about the expanding leaf-buds"); June 4, 1860 ("Now there is a . . . departure of the warblers, on the expansion of the leaves and advent of yet warmer weather. Their season with us, i. e. those that go further, is when the buds are bursting, till the leaves are about expanded; and probably they follow these phenomena north ward till they get to their breeding-places, flying from tree to tree, i. e. to the next tree which contains their insect prey.")

Warblers – every hue.

There are as many as there

are colors and shades.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snowy April

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-18540419

Snipes' crazy flight

April 18.

P. M. — To stone-heaps by boat. 

Scared up snipes on the meadow's edge, which go off with their strange zigzag, crazy flight and a distressed sound, — craik craik or cr-r-ack cr-r-rack. One booms now at 3 p. m. They circle round and round, and zig zag high over the meadow, and finally alight again, descending abruptly from that height.

Was surprised to see a wagtail thrush, the golden-crowned, at the Assabet Spring, which inquisitively followed me along the shore over the snow, hopping quite near. I should say this was the golden-crowned thrush without doubt, though I saw none of the gold, if this and several more which I saw had not kept close to the water. May possibly be the aquaticus. Have a jerk of the forked tail.

Saw another warbler about the same size, in the same localities, somewhat creeper-like, very restless, more like the Tennessee warbler than any, methinks. Light-slate or bluish-slate head and shoulders, yellowish backward, all white beneath, and a distinct white spot on the wing; a harsh grating note[?]. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 18, 1854

One booms now at 3 p. m. See April 18, 1856 ("This evening I hear the snipes generally and peeping of hylas from the door. "); April 18, 1860 ("Melvin says he has heard snipe some days, but thinks them scarce."). See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Snipe

Was surprised to see a wagtail thrush. See April 25, 1854 ("Saw my thrush of the 18th by the pond."); April 24, 1856 ("See a brown bird flit, and behold my hermit thrush, with one companion, flitting silently through the birches. I saw the fox-color on his tail-coverts, as well as the brown streaks on the breast. Both kept up a constant jerking of the tail as they sat on their perches. ")

How remarkable that the American mind runs to statistics.

April 17.

April 27, 2022

It is remarkable how the American mind runs to statistics. Consider the number of meteorological observers and other annual phenomena. The Smithsonian Institution is a truly national institution. 

Every shopkeeper makes a record of the arrival of the first martin or bluebird to his box. Dod, the broker, told me last spring that he knew when the first blue bird came to his boxes, he made a memorandum of it: John Brown, merchant, tells me this morning that the martins first came to his box on the 13th, he "made a minute of it." Beside so many entries in their day-books and ledgers, they record these things. 

I look up, these snowy days, and see purple finches silently feeding on the elms, when I have heard no sound. 

Did not see a linaria the past winter, though they were the prevailing bird the winter before. 

There are but few F. hyemalis about now; they appear to have gone north mostly on the advent of warmer weather about the 5th of April. 

The tree sparrow is still the prevailing bird.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 17, 1854

John Brown, merchant, tells me this morning that the martins first came to his box on the 13th,  See April 17, 1860 ("J. Brown says that he saw martins on his box on the 13th and 14th, and that his son saw one the 8th").

I look up, these snowy days, and see purple finches silently feeding on the elms. See April 3, 1858  ("I am surprised by the rich strain of the purple finch from the elms"); April 11, 1853 ("I hear the clear, loud whistle of a purple finch, somewhat like and nearly as loud as the robin, from the elm by Whiting's.”); April 12, 1855 ("I hear a purple finch . . . on an elm, steadily warbling and uttering a sharp chip from time to time"); April 15, 1856 ("The purple finch is singing on the elms . . . ") April 15, 1854 ("The arrival of the purple finches appears to be coincident with the blossoming of the elm, on whose blossom it feeds.") Also see A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Elms and the Purple Finch

Did not see a linaria the past winter. See March 5, 1853 ("Though this is described by Nuttall as an occasional visitor in the winter, it has been the prevailing bird here this winter. "); March 6, 1860 ("The linarias have been the most numerous birds the past winter.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

There are but few F. hyemalis about now; they appear to have gone north mostly on the advent of warmer weather about the 5th of April. See April 8, 1854 (" Perchance after the warmer days, which bring out the frogs and butterflies, the alders and maples, the greater part of them leave for the north and give place to newcomers."); See also April 17, 1855 (" I believe I see a tree sparrow still, but I do not remember an F. hyemalis for two days."); April 24, 1855 (" Have not seen the F. hyemalis for a week") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis)

The tree sparrow is still the prevailing bird. Compare April 17, 1855 ("I suspect that most of the tree sparrows and F. hyemalis, at least, went yesterday. So the pleasanter weather seems not an unmixed benefit.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow

How remarkable 

that the American mind 

runs to statistics.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Statistics

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-540417

April snow melts

April 16, 2014

April 16. 

A cold, disagreeable day, — sun not fairly out, — yet the snow of yesterday melts apace; you can almost see it melt. Each time I look out I see more of russet or green. At first the bare ground shows itself in the middle of the road and rapidly widens, giving the birds wider pasture; then the grass in the fields begins to peep through and the landscape to acquire a russet hue again. The green blades under the south side of the houses and hills appear to have grown wonderfully since the snow fell, and to be several shades darker green. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 16, 1854

The snow of yesterday melts apace; each time I look out I see more of russet or green. See April 28, 1854 ("During the last half of April the earth acquires a distinct tinge of green, which finally prevails over the russet") and note to April 11, 1860 ("The hills are now decidedly greened")

April snow improves the birding

April 15.

Morning. — Snow and snowing; four inches deep.

Yesterday was very cold. Now, I trust, it will come down and out of the air. Many birds must be hard put to it. Some tree sparrows and song sparrows have got close up to the sill of the house on the south side, where there is a line of grass visible, for shelter. When Father came down this morning he found a sparrow squatting in a chair in the kitchen.

 P. M. — This cold, moist, snowy day it is easier to see the birds and get near them. They are driven to the first bare ground that shows itself in the road, and the weather, etc., makes them more indifferent to your approach. The yellow redpoll hops along the limbs within four or five feet of me. The tree sparrows look much stouter and more chubby than usual, their feathers being puffed up and darker also, perhaps with wet. Also the robins and bluebirds are puffed up. 

The Purple Finch

I see the white under sides of many purple finches, busily and silently feeding on the elm blossoms within a few feet of me, and now and then their bloody heads and breasts. They utter a faint, clear chip. Their feathers are much ruffled. The arrival of the purple finches appears to be coincident with the blossoming of the elm, on whose blossom it feeds. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 15, 1854

Snow and snowing; four inches deep. See note to April 2, 1861 ("A drifting snow-storm, perhaps a foot deep on an average.")

The yellow redpoll hops along the limbs within four or five feet of me. See April 15, 1856 ("I hear a bird sing, a-chitter chitter chitter chitter chitter chitter, che che che che, with increasing intensity and rapidity, and the yellow redpoll hops in sight.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow Redpoll ( Palm) Warbler

The arrival of the purple finches appears to be coincident with the blossoming of the elm. See April 15, 1856 ("The purple finch is singing on the elms "); April 15, 1852 ("The broad flat brown buds on Mr. Cheney's elm, containing twenty or thirty yellowish-green threads, surmounted with little brownish-mulberry cups, which contain the stamens and the two styles, -- these are just expanding or blossoming now. "). See also April 3, 1858 ("I am surprised by the rich strain of the purple finch from the elms"); April 11, 1853 ("I hear the clear, loud whistle of a purple finch, somewhat like and nearly as loud as the robin, from the elm by Whiting's.”). April 12, 1855 ("I hear a purple finch . . . on an elm, steadily warbling and uttering a sharp chip from time to time"). Also see A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Elms and the Purple Finch