A pleasant day.
I think I heard the last lesser redpolls near the beginning of this month; say about 7th.
The top of a white maple swamp had a reddish tinge at a distance day before yesterday. Was it owing to any expansion of the buds?
2 P. M. — Thermometer 4 [sic]. To Second Division Brook.
Though there is very considerable greenness on the warmest southerly banks, there is no change perceptible in the aspect of the earth's surface generally, or at a little distance. It is as bare and dead a brown as ever.
When the sun comes out of a cold slate-colored cloud, these windy days, the bleached and withered pastures reflect its light so brightly that they are almost white. They are a pale tawny, or say fawn-color, without any redness.
The brown season extends from about the 6th of March ordinarily into April.
The first part of it, when the frost is rapidly coming out and transient snows are melting, the surface of the earth is saturated with moisture. The latter part is dry, the whitish-tawny pastures being parded with brown and green mosses (that commonest one) and pale-brown lecheas, which mottle it very pleasingly. This dry whitish-tawny or drab color of the fields — withered grass lit by the sun — is the color of a teamster’s coat.
It is one of the most interesting effects of light now, when the sun, coming out of clouds, shines brightly on it. It is the fore-glow of the year.
There is certainly a singular propriety in that color for the coat of a farmer or teamster or shepherd or hunter, who is required to be much abroad in our landscape at this season. It is in harmony with nature, and you are less conspicuous in the fields and can get nearer to wild animals for it. For this reason I am the better satisfied with the color of my hat, a drab, than with that of my companion, which is black, though his coat is of the exact tint and better than mine; but again my dusty boots harmonize better with the landscape than his black and glossy india-rubbers.
I had a suit once in which, methinks, I could glide across the fields unperceived half a mile in front of a farmer's windows. It was such a skillful mixture of browns, dark and light properly proportioned, with even some threads of green in it by chance. It was of loose texture and about the color of a pasture with patches of withered sweet-fern and lechea. I trusted a good deal to my invisibility in it when going across lots, and many a time I was aware that to it I owed the near approach of wild animals.
No doubt my dusty and tawny cowhides surprise the street walkers who wear patent-leather or Congress shoes, but they do not consider how absurd such shoes would be in my vocation, to thread the woods and swamps in. Why should I wear Congress who walk alone, and not where there is any congress of my kind?
C. was saying, properly enough, the other day, as we were making our way through a dense patch of shrub oak:
“I suppose that those villagers think that we wear these old and worn hats with holes all along the corners for oddity, but Coombs, the musquash hunter and partridge and rabbit snarer, knows better. He understands us. He knows that a new and square-cornered hat would be spoiled in one excursion through the shrub oaks.”
The walker and naturalist does not wear a hat, or a shoe, or a coat, to be looked at, but for other uses. When a citizen comes to take a walk with me I commonly find that he is lame, — disabled by his shoeing. He is sure to wet his feet, tear his coat, and jam his hat, and the superior qualities of my boots, coat, and hat appear.
I once went into the woods with a party for a fortnight. I wore my old and common clothes, which were of Vermont gray. They wore, no doubt, the best they had for such an occasion, of a fashionable color and quality. I thought that they were a little ashamed of me while we were in the towns. They all tore their clothes badly but myself, and I, who, it chanced, was the only one provided with needles and thread, enabled them to mend them. When we came out of the woods I was the best dressed of any of them.
One of the most interesting sights this afternoon is the color of the yellow sand in the sun at the bottom of Nut Meadow and Second Division Brooks. The yellow sands of a lonely brook seen through the rippling water, with the shadows of the ripples like films passing over it.
By degrees you pass from heaven to earth up the trunk of the white pine. See the flash of its boughs reflecting the sun, each light or sunny above and shaded beneath, even like the clouds with their dark bases, a sort of mackerel sky of pine boughs.
The woodchoppers are still in the woods in some places, splitting and piling at least.
I hear that mayflowers brought from Fitchburg last Thursday (22d) have blossomed here. They are evidently much earlier than any of ours. Ours at Second Division (first lot) are under the icy snow.
The rare juncus there is five and six inches high and red (from the cold ?) on the bare meadow, — much the most growth of anything of the kind hereabouts. Very little water; only at the cowslip. The equisetum has risen above water at first Nut Meadow crossing.
The earliest willows are now in the gray, too advanced to be silvery, — mouse or maltese-cat color.
The Second Division Spring is all covered with a brown floating gelatinous substance of the consistency of frog-spawn, but with nothing like spawn visible in it. It is of irregular longish, or rather ropy, form, and is of the consistency of frog-spawn without the ova. I think it must be done with. It quite covers the surface. I also find near by a green zigzag, wormy, spawn-like substance in strings under the water, in which I feel a sort of granule, spawn-like. Can this be the excrement of any creature? Can it turn and swell to that brown and floating jelly? Are these the productions of lizards or the Rana fontinalis?
Tried by various tests, this season fluctuates more or less.
For example, we may have absolutely no sleighing during the year. There was none in the winter months of ’58 (only from March 4 to 14). '52 –’53 was an open winter. Or it may continue uninterrupted from the beginning of winter to the 3d of April, as in ’56, and the dependent phenomena be equally late.
The river may be either only transiently closed, as in ’52 – 53 and '57 – 58, or it may not be open entirely (up to pond) till April 4th.
As for cold, some years we may have as cold days in March as in any winter month. March 4, 1858, it was -14, and on the 29th, 1854, the pump froze so as to require thawing.
The river may be quite high in March or at summer level.
Fair Haven Pond may be open by the 20th of March, as this year, or not till April 13 as in ’56, or twenty-three days later.
Tried by the skunk-cabbage, this may flower March 2 (‘60) or April 6 or 8 (as in ’55 and ’54), or some five weeks later, — say thirty-six days.
The bluebird may be seen February 24, as in ’50, ‘57, and ’60, or not till March 24, as in ’56, — say twenty eight days.
The yellow-spotted tortoise may be seen February 23, as in ’57, or not till March 28, as in’ 55, — thirty-three days.
The wood frog may be heard March 15, as this year, or not till April 13, as in ’56, — twenty-nine days.
That is, tried by the last four phenomena, there may be about a month’s fluctuation, so that March may be said to have receded half-way into February or advanced half-way into April, i. e., it borrows half of February or half of April.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 26, 1860
I think I heard the last lesser redpolls near the beginning of this month. See
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,
The Lesser Redpoll
The top of a white maple swamp had a reddish tinge at a distance day before yesterday. Was it owing to any expansion of the buds? See March 23, 1853 (“The white maple may perhaps be said to begin to blossom to-day, — the male, — for the stamens, both anthers and filament, are conspicuous on some buds. It has opened unexpectedly, and a rich sight it is, looking up through the expanded buds to the sky.”); March 24, 1855 (“The white maple buds, too, show some further expansion methinks.”);
March 25, 1854 ("White maple buds bursting, making trees look like some fruit trees with blossom-buds. "); March 27, 1857 ("The white maple is well out with its pale [?] stamens on the southward boughs, and probably began about the 24th.”)See also
A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau,
White Maple Buds and Flowers
See the flash of its boughs reflecting the sun, each light or sunny above and shaded beneath, even like the clouds with their dark bases, a sort of mackerel sky of pine boughs. See
February 16, 1859 (" I look back through the sun, this soft afternoon, to some white pine tops near Jenny Dugan’s. Their flattish boughs rest stratum above stratum like a cloud, a green mackerel sky")
I wore my old and common clothes, which were of Vermont gray. See
October 16, 1859 ("As nature generally, on the advent of frost, puts on a russet and tawny dress, so is not man clad more in harmony with nature in the fall in a tawny suit or the different hues of Vermont gray?")
The skunk-cabbage may flower March 2 (‘60) or April 6 or 8 (as in ’55 and’54). See
February 18, 1851 (" See the skunk-cabbage in flower.”);
March 2, 1860 ("It was fairly in bloom, and probably yesterday too.. . . No doubt it may have bloomed in some places in this neighborhood in the last day or two of February this year.");
March 18, 1860 (“ Skunk-cabbage, now generally and abundantly in bloom all along under Clamshell.”)
March 21, 1858 (“The skunk-cabbage at Clamshell is well out, shedding pollen. The date of its flowering is very fluctuating.”);
March 26, 1857 (“At Well Meadow Head, am surprised to find the skunk-cabbage in flower, . . .The first croaking frogs, the hyla, the white maple blossoms, the skunk-cabbage, and the alder’s catkins are observed about the same time.”);
April 7, 1855 ("The skunk-cabbage open yesterday, — the earliest flower this season.")
The bluebird may be seen February 24, as in ’50, ‘57, and ’60, or not till March 24, as in ’56. See February 24, 1857 ("As I cross from the causeway to the hill, thinking of the bluebird, I that instant hear one's note from deep in the softened air. It is already 40°, and by noon is between 50° and 60°. As the day advances I hear more bluebirds and see their azure flakes settling on the fence-posts. Their short, rich, crispy warble curls through the air.");
March 24 1856 (" Spend the forenoon on the river at the white maples. I hear a bluebird’s warble and a song sparrow’s chirp. So much partly for being out the whole forenoon. Bluebirds seen in all parts of the town to-day for first time, as I hear.") See also
A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, The Bluebird in Spring.
The yellow-spotted tortoise may be seen February 23, as in '57, or not till March 28, as in ’55. See
February 23, 1857 (“See two yellow-spotted tortoises in the ditch south of Trillium Wood. . . .I have seen signs of the spring.”);
March 10, 1853 ("I find a yellow-spotted tortoise (Emys guttata) in the brook.”);
March 18, 1854 (" C. has already seen a yellow-spotted tortoise in a ditch.”); ;
March 28, 1852 (“ a yellow-spotted tortoise by the causeway side in the meadow near Hubbard's Bridge.”);
March 23, 1858 (“Something stirring amid the dead leaves in the water at the bottom of a ditch., in two or three places, and presently see the back of a yellow-spotted turtle. ”);
March 28, 1855 (“A yellow-spotted tortoise in a still ditch, which has a little ice also. It at first glance reminds me of a bright freckled leaf, skunk-cabbage scape, perhaps. They are generally quite still at this season, or only slowly put their heads out (of their shells).”) See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,
The Yellow-Spotted Turtle
The wood frog may be heard March 15, as this year, or not till April 13, as in ’56. See
March 15, 1860 ("Am surprised to hear, from the pool behind Lee's Cliff, the croaking of the wood frog. It is all alive with them, and I see them spread out on the surface. . . . How suddenly they awake! yesterday, as it were, asleep and dormant, to-day as lively as ever they are. The awakening of the leafy woodland pools");
March 26, 1857 ("The notes of the croaking frog and the hylodes are not only contemporary with, but analogous to, the blossoms of the skunk-cabbage and white maple. ");
April 13, 1856 ("As I go by the Andromeda Ponds, I hear the tut tut of a few croaking frogs.")
The yellow sands of a lonely brook seen through the rippling water, with the shadows of the ripples like films passing over it. See
March 10, 1853 ("At Nut Meadow Brook . . . gazing into the eddying stream. The ripple-marks on the sandy bottom [and].the shadows of the invisible dimples reflecting prismatic colors on the bottom,")
October 18, 1857 ("The shadows of these bugs on the bottom, half a dozen times as big as themselves, are very distinct and interesting, with a narrow and well-defined halo about them. , , , I also see plainly the shadows of ripples they make, which are scarcely perceptible on the surface.");
August 13, 1858 ("Such endless and varied play of light and shadow is on the river bottom!")
