A Book of the Seasons: The Scarlet Tanager in May

 

I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.

Observe all kinds of coincidences,

as what kinds of birds come with what flowers.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

Surprising red bird – 

a tanager against the 

darkening green leaves.

May 21, 1854

It appears as if 

he loved to contrast himself 

with the green forest. 

May 29, 1853

May 13.  Methinks I hear and see the tanager now. May 13, 1853

May 14.  C. sees the chestnut-sided warbler and the tanager to-day, and heard a whip-poor-will last night.  May 14, 1860

May 15.  As I sat by the Riordan crossing, thought it was the tanager I heard? . . . it must have been a tanager, which I hear frequently the 19th.   May 15, 1856

May 16.  Hear a tanager to-day, and one was seen yesterday.  May 16, 1859 

May 18. The scarlet tanagers are come. May 18, 1851

May 19. The tanager is now heard plainly and frequently. May 19, 1856

May 20.  Saw a tanager in Sleepy Hollow. It most takes the eye of any bird. You here have the red-wing reversed, – the deepest scarlet of the red-wing spread over the whole body, not on the wing-coverts merely, while the wings are black. It flies through the green foliage as if it would ignite the leaves.  May 20, 1853

May 20.  See tanagers, male and female, in the top of a pine, one red, other yellow, from below. We have got to these high colors among birds. May 20, 1858

May 21.  A tanager, – the surprising red bird, – against the darkening green leaves. May 21, 1854

May 22.  Hear the hoarse note of the tanager and the sweet pe-a-wai. May 22, 1853

May 23. At Loring's Wood I hear and see a tanager. How he enhances the wildness and wealth of the woods! That contrast of a red bird with the green pines and the blue sky! Even when I have heard his note and look for him and find the fellow sitting on a dead twig of a pine, I am always startled. (They seem to love the darkest and thickest pines.) That incredible red, with the green and blue. I am transported; these are not the woods I ordinarily walk in. May 23, 1853

May 24. As I sit just above the northwest end of the Cliff, I see a tanager perched on one of the topmost twigs of a hickory, evidently come to spy after me, peeping behind a leafet. He is between me and the sun, and his plumage is incredibly brilliant, all aglow. It a deep scarlet (with a yellower reflection when the sun strikes him), in the midst of which his pure-black wings look high-colored also. You can hardly believe that a living creature can wear such colors. A hickory, too, is the fittest perch for him. May 24, 1860

May 28.  I see a tanager, the most brilliant and tropical-looking bird we have, bright-scarlet with black wings, the scarlet appearing on the rump again between wing-tips. He brings heat, or heat him. A remarkable contrast with the green pines. At this distance he has the aspect and manners of a parrot, with a fullness about the head and throat and beak, indolently inspecting the limbs and twigs —leaning over to it — and sitting still a long time. The female, too, is a neat and handsome bird, with the same indolent ways, but very differently colored from the male; all yellow below with merely dusky wings, and a sort of clay(?)-color on back. May 28, 1855

May 29. At A. Hosmer's hill on the Union Turnpike I see the tanager hoarsely warbling in the shade; the surprising red bird, a small morsel of Brazil, advanced picket of that Brazilian army. But no more shall we see; it is only an affair of out-posts.  It appears as if he loved to contrast himself with the green of the forest. May 29, 1853

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Scarlet Tanager in May

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

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

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-tanager

A Book of the Seasons: the Black and White Creeper

  

I would make a chart of our life,

 know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852 

I hear first to-day 

the seezer seezer of the 

black and white creeper.

 The seezer seezer seezer

of the black and white creeper,

suggesting still warmer weather,

—that the season has revolved so much further. 

 April 28, 1856  

 

The Black-and-white Creeper . . . has a few notes, consisting of a series of rapidly enunciated tweets, the last greatly prolonged. It climbs and creeps along the trunks, the branches, and even the twigs of the trees, without intermission, and so seldom perches, that I do not remember ever having seen it in such a position.  ~ J. J. Audubon

April 27.  I hear the black and white creeper's note, — seeser seeser seeser se . . . Hear a faint sort of oven-bird's note.  April 27, 1854 

April 27.  The black and white creepers running over the trunks or main limbs of red maples and uttering their fainter oven-bird—like notes. April 27, 1855

 

April 28. I hear to-day frequently the seezer seezer seezer of the black and white creeper, or what I have referred to that, from J. P. Brown’s wood bounding on Dugan. It is not a note, nor a bird, to attract attention; only suggesting still warmer weather, —that the season has revolved so much further.  April 28, 1856   

 

April 29. See and hear a black and white creeper. April 29, 1859

May 1.  I hear a black and white creeper at the Cliffs, and a chewink. May 1, 1853

 

May 3. That oven-birdish note which I heard here on May 1st I now find to have been uttered by the black and white warbler or creeper. He has a habit of looking under the branches. May 3, 1852

 

May 3. Probably I heard the black and white creeper April 25th. I hear it and see it well to-day.  May 3, 1858

May 4.  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. May 4, 1853

 

May 4. I hear the weese wese wese of the creeper continually from the swamp. It is the prevailing note there.  May 4, 1858

May 6.  A creeper (black and white) yesterday. May 6, 1860

May 7.  I hear the evergreen-forest note close by; and hear and see many myrtle-birds, at the same time that I hear what I have called the black and white creeper’s note. Have I ever confounded them? May 7, 1856

 

May 9. Black and white creeper's fine note. May 9, 1857

 

May 11. The black and white creeper also is descending the oaks, etc., and uttering from time to time his seeser seeser seeser. What a rich, strong striped blue-black (?) and white bird, much like the myrtle-bird at a little distance, when the yellow of the latter is not seen.  May 11, 1856 

May 12. 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 12, 1855

May 12. We sit about half an hour, and it is surprising what various distinct sounds we hear there deep in the wood, as if the aisles of the wood were so many ear trumpets,-- the cawing of crows, the peeping of hylas in the swamp and perhaps the croaking of a tree-toad, the oven-bird, the yorrick of Wilson’s thrush, a distant stake-driver, the night-warbler and black and white creeper, the lowing of cows, the late supper horn, the voices of boys, the singing of girls, -- not all together but separately, distinctly, and musically, from where the partridge and the red-tailed hawk and the screech owl sit on their nests. May 12, 1855 

May 13. The black and white creeper is musical nowadays. May 13, 1854

 

May 15. Watch a pine warbler on a pitch pine, slowly and faithfully searching it creeper-like. It encounters a black and white creeper on the same tree; they fly at each other, and the latter leaves, apparently driven off by the first.  May 15, 1855

May 27. Hear a black and white creeper sing, ah vee vee, vee vee, vitchet vitchet vitchet vitchet. May 27, 1859

 

May 30.  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. Birds appear to be but little incommoded by the rain. Yet they do not often sing in it. May 30, 1857  

 

June 4.  See a warbler much like the black and white creeper, but perched warbler-like on trees; streaked slate, white, and black, with a large white and black mark on wing, crown divided by a white line and then chestnut (?) or slate or dark, and then white above and below eye, breast and throat streaked downward with dark, rest beneath white. Can it be the common black and white creeper? Its note hardly reminds me of that. It is somewhat like pse pse pse pse, psa psa, weese weese weese, or longer. It did not occur to me that it was the same till I could not find any other like this in the book. June 4, 1855

June 15.  At the Assabet Spring I must have been near a black and white creeper's nest. It kept up a constant chipping. June 15, 1854

 

August 18. See black and white creeper. August 18, 1856

 A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, The Black and White Creeper

 A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau

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

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

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2026

 https://tinyurl.com/hdt-bandw

A Book of the Seasons: The Cedar Swamps

 I think I could write a poem

to be called Concord.

For argument I should have

the River, the Woods,

the Ponds, the Hills, the Fields,

the Swamps and Meadows . . .

Henry Thoreau,  

September 4, 1841

The white cedar swamp –

reddish staminate flowers

ready to open.

April 23, 1856

Go to new trees

like cedars and firs 

and you hear new birds.

April 24, 1854 

April 23. P.M. — To Cedar Swamp via Assabet. Warm and pretty still. Even the riversides are quiet at this hour (3 P.M.) as in summer; the birds are neither seen nor heard. The anthers of the larch are conspicuous, but I see no pollen. White cedar to-morrow. April 23, 1855 

April 23, 2025

April 23. P. M. — Up Assabet to white cedars . . . The white cedar swamp consists of hummocks, now surrounded by water, where you go jumping from one to another. The fans are now dotted with the minute reddish staminate flowers, ready to open. The skunk cabbage leaf has expanded in one open place there; so it is at least as early as the hellebore of yesterday. April 23, 1856

April 24. P. M. — Up Assabet, and thence to Cedar Swamp. . .The white cedar female blossoms are open. Hear amid the white cedars the fine, clear singing warbler of yesterday, whose harsh note I may have heard the 18th,very clear and fast. Go to new trees, like cedars and firs, and you hear new birds.  I have also observed that the early birds are about the early trees, like maples, alders, willows, elms, etc.  New plant (Racemed andromeda)  flower-budded at Cedar Swamp amid the high blueberry, panicled andromeda, clethra, etc. – upright dense racemes of reddish flower-buds on reddish terminal shoots. April 24, 1854 

April 24. P. M. — To Flint’s Pond . . . I can find no red cedar in bloom, but it will undoubtedly shed pollen to-morrow. It is on the point of it. I am not sure that the white cedar is any earlier. The sprigs of red cedar, now full of the buff-colored staminate flowers, like fruit, are very rich. The next day they shed an abundance of pollen in the house. It is a clear buff color, while that of the white cedar is very different, being a faint salmon. It would be very pleasant to make a collection of these powders, – like dry ground paints. They would be the right kind of chemicals to have.  April 24, 1855 

April 25. The red cedar has fairly begun to-day; maybe the first yesterday. Put the red yesterday and the white to-day. April 25, 1854

April 26. The white cedar gathered the 23d does not shed pollen in house till to-day, and I doubt if it will in swamp before to-morrow.

April 26, 1856 

April 26. P. M. — Up Assabet to White Cedar Swamp . . .The white cedar is apparently just out. The higher up the tree, the earlier. April 26, 1857 

April 29. P. M. — To Cedar Swamp . . . The white cedar now sheds pollen abundantly. Many flowers are effete, though many are not open. Probably it began as much as three days ago. I strike a twig, and its peculiar pinkish pollen fills the air. Sat on the knoll in the swamp, now laid bare. How pretty a red maple in bloom (they are now in prime), seen in the sun against a pine wood, like these little ones in the swamp against the neighboring wood, they are so light and ethereal, not a heavy mass of color impeding the passage of the light, and they are of so cheerful and lively a color . . . A pigeon woodpecker alights on a dead cedar top near me. Its cackle, thus near, sounds like eh eh eh eh eh, etc., rapidly and emphatically repeated. Some birch sprouts in the swamp are leafed as much as any shrub or tree.  April 29, 1856

May 1. Hear a golden-crested* wren at Cedar Swamp. May 1, 1854

May 4. P. M. — To Cedar Swamp via Assabet. In the Cedar Swamp Andromeda calyculata abundantly out; how long? Viburnum nudum leafing. Smilacina trifolia recently up; will apparently open in ten or twelve days. May 4, 1856

May 29. P. M. — To Cedar Swamp by Assabet. The white maple keys have begun to fall and float down the stream like the wings of great insects. May 29, 1854

June 3.  P. M. — To White Cedar Swamp . . .The racemed andromeda (Leucothoe) has been partly killed, — the extremities of the twigs, — so that its racemes are imperfect, the lower parts only green. It is not quite out; probably is later for this injury. The ground of the cedar swamp, where it has been burnt over and sprouts, etc., have sprung up again, is covered with the Marchantia polymorpha. Now shows its starlike or umbrella-shaped fertile flowers and its shield-shaped sterile ones. It is a very rank and wild- looking vegetation, forming the cuticle of the swamp's foundation. June 3, 1857

June 8.  P. M. -— To Cedar Swamp . . . I find no Andromeda racemosa in flower. It is dead at top and slightly leafed below. Was it the severe winter, or cutting off the protecting evergreens?. . . At Cedar Swamp, saw the pe-pe catching flies like a wood pewee, darting from its perch on a dead cedar twig from time to time and returning to it. It appeared to have a black crown with some crest, yellowish (?) bill, gray-brown back, black tail, two faint whitish bars on wings, a dirty cream-white throat, and a gray or ash white breast and beneath, whitest in middle. June 8, 1856

June 10. We continued on, round the head of “Cedar Swamp,” and may say that we drank at the source of it or of Saw Mill Brook, where a spring is conducted through a hollow log to a tub for cattle. . . .What shall this great wild tract over which we strolled be called? Many farmers have pastures there, and wood-lots, and orchards. It consists mainly of rocky pastures. It contains what I call the Boulder Field, the Yellow Birch Swamp, the Black Birch Hill, the Laurel Pasture, the Hog-Pasture, the White Pine Grove, the Easterbrooks Place, the Old Lime-Kiln, the Lime Quarries, Spruce Swamp, the Ermine Weasel Woods; also the Oak Meadows, the Cedar Swamp, the Kibbe Place, and the old place northwest of Brooks Clark‘s. Ponkawtasset bounds it on the south. There are a few frog-ponds and an old mill-pond within it, and Bateman‘s Pond on its edge. What shall the whole be called? June 10, 1853

November 3.  P. M. — To Annursnack . . . Returning, I see at the very northwest end of the White Cedar Swamp a little elder, still quite leafy and green, near the path on the edge of the swamp. Its leafets are commonly nine, and the lower two or more are commonly divided. This seemed peculiarly downy beneath, even “sub-pubescent,” as Bigelow describes the Sambucus pubens to be. Compare it with the common. Also by it is Viburnum nudum, still quite fresh and green, the slender shoots from starting plants very erect and straight. The lower leaves of the water andromeda are now red, and the lambkill leaves are drooping (is it more than before?) and purplish from the effect of frost in low swamps like this.   November 3, 1858

November 14. Went through the white cedar swamp. There are white cedars, larch (now bare), spruce, etc.; cedars two feet through, the only ones I know in Concord. It was here were cut the cedar posts which Alcott put into Emerson's summer-house. They could not be spared even for that. It is a stout tree here, tapering with singular abruptness. Its small flattish leaves, dispersed crosswise and at other or different angles with each other, give it a peculiarly light, fantastic look. Myriads of little ones are springing in the more open parts of the swamp. They are turned a reddish green now. The large trees have a very rough bark, regularly furrowed perpendicularly, and a bright-yellow resin between the furrows. I find that the inner bark makes a good lye. Is this used by the Indians? Methinks these are flower-buds which are formed at the ends of the leafets and will open early in the spring. This swamp must be visited in midsummer. You see great shelf-shaped fungi, handsomely buttressed and perfectly horizontal , on the under side of slanting dead trees, at different stages one above another. November 14, 1853

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cedar Swamps

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2026

 

According to Thoreau Place Names "Cedar Swamp" is a large swampt hat straddles the notrhern boundary between Concord and Carlisle, with the southern portion in what Thoreau called "Easterbrook Country.  See June 10, 1853. A distinct "White Cedar Swamp" likely was a swampy area now a pond about 400 meters due north of the former residence of George M. Barrett on Mill Road right where College Road starts. "Gleason misplaces Cedar Swamp somewhat on his map placing it in a wetland about 500 meters northeast of the pond/ex-swamp.

 Note. Thoreau  misidentified the  the ruby-crowned as the golden-crowned wren  He was put in doubt when  he saw a red crest on what he had been calling the golden-crested wren, and did not truly identify a golden-crested wren until  Christmas  1859. See note to December 25, 1859

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-cedar

A Book of the Seasons: Elms and the Purple Finch

I would make a chart of our life,

know  why just this circle of creatures completes the world.

Observe all kinds of coincidences,

as what kinds of birds come with what flowers.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

I hear the clear loud

whistle of a purple finch

from the Whiting's elm.

April 11, 1853

Splendid purple finch –

its glowing redness revealed

when it lifts its wings.

April 12, 1856

The arrival of the purple finches

appears to be coincident with

the blossoming of the elm,

on whose blossom it feeds.

 April 15, 1854 

The Purple Finch

 

April 3.  Going down-town this morning, I am surprised by the rich strain of the purple finch from the elms. Three or four have arrived and lodged against the elms of our street, which runs east and west across their course, and they are now mingling their loud and rich strains with that of the tree sparrows, robins, bluebirds, etc. The hearing of this note implies some improvement in the acoustics of the air. It reminds me of that genial state of the air when the elms are in bloom.  They sit still over the street and make a business of warbling. They advertise me surely of some additional warmth and serenity. How their note rings over the roofs of the village! You wonder that even the sleepers are not awakened by it to inquire who is there, and yet probably not another than myself in all the town observes their coming, and not half a dozen ever distinguished them in their lives. April 3, 1858 

April 4.  Methinks I heard the purple finch. The birds are eager to sing, as the flowers to bloom, after raw weather has held them in check. April 4, 1860

April 6.  The Ulmus Americana is apparently just out here, or possibly yesterday. The U. fulva not yet, of course. The large rusty blossom-buds of the last have been extensively eaten and mutilated, probably by birds, leaving on the branches which I examine mostly mere shells.  April 6, 1858

April 7.  The Cheney elm looks as if it would shed pollen to-morrow.  April 7, 1859 

April 7.  The purple finch, — if not before.  April 7, 1860

April 9.  Elm blossoms now in prime. Their tops heavier against the sky, a rich brown; their outlines further seen. April 9 1853

April 10.  Cheney elm, many anthers shed pollen, probably 7th.  April 10, 1860

April 10.  Purple Finch.  April 10, 1861 

April 11.  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 11, 1853

April 12.   Still falls a little snow and rain this morning, though the ground is not whitened. I hear a purple finch, nevertheless, on an elm, steadily warbling and uttering a sharp chip from time to time. April 12, 1855 

April 12.   There suddenly flits before me . . . a splendid purple finch. Its glowing redness is revealed when it lifts its wings.  April 12, 1856 

April 12.   Elm bud-scales have begun to strew the ground, and the trees look richly in flower.  April 12. 1860

April 13.  Snowed all day, till the ground was covered eight inches deep . . . The elm buds begin to show their blossoms.   April 13, 1852

April 13.  Heard a purple finch on an elm, like a faint robin. April 13, 1854

April 13.  The streets are strewn with the bud-scales of the elm, which they, opening, have lost off, and their tops present a rich brown already. I hear a purple finch on one.  April 13, 1859 

 April 15. 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. April 15, 1852 

April 15.  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.   April 15, 1854 

April 15.  The purple finch is singing on the elms about the house, together with the robins, whose strain its resembles, ending with a loud, shrill, ringing chili chilt chilt chilt.  April 15, 1856 

April 16.  Cheney’s elm shows stamens on the warm side pretty numerously.  April 16, 1856 

April 17.  I look up, these snowy days, and see purple finches silently feeding on the elms, when I have heard no sound.  April 17, 1854

April 17.  The flowers of the common elm at Lee’s are now loose and dangling, apparently well out a day or two in advance of Cheney’s, but I see no pollen.  April 17, 1855 

April 21.  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.  April 21, 1854

April 21. The puddles have dried off along the road and left thick deposits or water-lines of the dark-purple anthers of the elm, coloring the ground like sawdust. You could collect great quantities of them. April 21, 1858 

April 24.  The elms are now fairly in blossom.  April 24, 1852

May 13.   I suspect the purple finches are all gone within a few days. May 13, 1854

May 24. Hear a purple finch sing more than one minute without pause, loud and rich, on an elm over the street. May 24, 1855

July 7. The purple finch still sings over the street.  July 7, 1856

October 10.  There are many small birds in flocks on the elms in Cheney's field, faintly warbling, – robins and purple finches and especially large flocks of small sparrows. October 10, 1853

 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Elms and the Purple Finch

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

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

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-purplefinch