Saturday, April 25, 2015

The bushes ringing with the evening song of song sparrows and robins, and the evening sky reflected from the surface of the rippled water

April 25

A moist April morning. 

A small native willow leafing  and showing catkins to-day; also the black cherry in some places. 

The common wild rose to-morrow. Balm-of-Gilead will not shed pollen apparently for a day or more. Shepherd’s-purse will bloom to-day,—the first I have noticed which has sprung from the ground this season, or of an age. 

Say lilac begins to leaf with common currant. 

April 25, 2023

P. M. — To Beck Stow’s. 

Hear a faint cheep and at length detect the white throated sparrow, the handsome and well-marked bird, the largest of the sparrows, with a yellow spot on each side of the front, hopping along under the rubbish left by the woodchopper. I afterward hear a faint cheep very rapidly repeated, making a faint sharp jingle,—no doubt by the same. Many sparrows have a similar faint metallic cheep, —the tree sparrow and field sparrow, for instance. I first saw the white-throated sparrow at this date last year. 

Hear the peculiar squeaking notes of a pigeon woodpecker. 

Two black ducks circle around me three or four times, wishing to alight in the swamp, but finally go to the river meadows. I hear the whistling of their wings. Their bills point downward in flying. 

The Andromeda calyculata is out in water, in the little swamp east of Beck Stow’s, some perhaps yesterday; and C. says he saw many bluets yesterday, and also that he saw two F. hyemalis yesterday. 

I have noticed three or four upper jaws of muskrats on the meadow lately, which, added to the dead bodies floating, make more than half a dozen perhaps drowned out last winter.

After sunset paddle up to the Hubbard Bath. The bushes ringing with the evening song of song sparrows and robins, and the evening sky reflected from the surface of the rippled water like the lake grass on pools. 

A spearers’ fire seems three times as far off as it is.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 25, 1855


The common wild rose to-morrow. See   June 13, 1853 (""The smooth wild rose yesterday.);  July 11, 1855 ("What a splendid show of wild roses, whose sweetness is mingled with the aroma of the bayberry!") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose

Hear a faint cheep and at length detect the white throated sparrow, the handsome and well-marked bird. See April 25, 1854 ("[Saw] on the low bushes, — shrub oaks, etc., — by path, a large sparrow with ferruginous- brown and white-barred wings, — the white-throated sparrow, — uttered a faint ringing chirp.")  see also A Book of the Seasons
by Henry Thoreau,  the White-throated Sparrow

Hear the peculiar squeaking notes of a pigeon woodpecker. See April 23, 1852 (" Heard the pigeon woodpecker today, that long-continued unmusical note, somewhat like a robin's, heard afar, yet pleasant to hear because associated with a more advanced stage of the season"); April 23, 1855 ("Saw two pigeon woodpeckers approach and, I think, put their bills together and utter that o-week, o-week.") See also A Book of the Seasons  by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Woodpecker (flicker)

The bushes ringing with the evening song of song sparrows and robins See April  9, 1855 ("At sunset after the rain, the robins and song sparrows fill the air along the river with their song.") See also A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)

A spearers’ fire seems three times as far off as it is. See April 25, 1856 ("At evening see a spearer’s light.")

April 25.  See A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, April 25

Bushes ring with song –
evening sky reflected from
the rippled water.

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/hdt-550425

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