This dark, damp, cold day.

April 29, 2015

April 29.

This morning it snows, but the ground is not yet whitened. This will probably take the cold out of the air. 

Many chip-birds are feeding in the yard, and one bay-wing. The latter incessantly scratches like a hen, all the while looking about for foes. The bay on its wings is not obvious except when it opens them. The white circle about the eye is visible afar. Now it makes a business of pluming itself, doubling prettily upon itself, now touching the root of its tail, now thrusting its head under its wing, now between its wing and back above, and now between its legs and its belly; and now it drops flat on its breast and belly and spreads and shakes its wings, now stands up and repeatedly shakes its wings. It is either cleaning itself of dirt acquired in scratching and feeding, — for its feet are black with mud, — or it is oiling its feathers thus. It is rather better concealed by its color than the chip bird with its chestnut crown and light breast. The chip-bird scratches but slightly and rarely; it finds what it wants on the surface, keeps its head down more steadily, not looking about. I see the bay-wing eat some worms. 

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. 

The water now rapidly going down on the meadows, a bright-green grass is springing up. 

P. M. — By boat to Lupine Hill. 

It did not whiten the ground. Raw, overcast, and threatening rain. 

A few of the cones within reach on F. Monroe’s larches shed pollen; say, then, yesterday. The crimson female flowers are now handsome but small.

That lake grass — or perhaps I should call it purple grass — is now apparently in perfection on the water. Long and slender blades (about an eighth of an inch wide and six to twelve inches long, the part exposed) lie close side by side straight and parallel on the surface, with a dimple at the point where they emerge. Some are a very rich purple, with apparently a bloom, and very suggestive of placidity. It is a true bloom, at any rate,—the first blush of the spring caught on these little standards elevated to the light. By the water they are left perfectly smooth and flat and straight, as well as parallel, and thus, by their mass, make the greater impression on the eye. It has a strong marshy, somewhat fishy, almost seaweed-like scent when plucked. Seen through a glass the surface is finely grooved. 

The scrolls of the interrupted fern are already four or five inches high. 

I see a woodchuck on the side of Lupine Hill, eight or ten rods off. He runs to within three feet of his hole; then stops, with his head up. His whole body makes an angle of forty-five degrees as I look sideways at it. I see his shining black eyes and black snout and his little erect ears. 

He is of a light brown forward at this distance (hoary above, yellowish or sorrel beneath), gradually darkening backward to the end of the tail, which is dark-brown. The general aspect is grizzly, the ends of most of the hairs being white. The yellowish brown, or rather sorrel, of his throat and breast very like the sand of his burrow, over which it is slanted. No glaring distinctions to catch the eye and betray him. 

As I advance, he crawls a foot nearer his hole, as if to make sure his retreat while he satisfies his curiosity. Tired of holding up his head, he lowers it at last, yet waits my further advance. 

The snout of the little sternothaerus is the most like a little black stick seen above the water of any of the smaller tortoises. I was almost perfectly deceived by it close at hand; but it moved. 

Choke-cherry begins to leaf. Dandelions out yesterday, at least. Some young alders begin to leaf. Viola ovata will open to-morrow. 

Mountain-ash began to leaf, say yesterday. Makes a show with leaves alone before any tree. 

Paddling slowly along, I see five or six snipes within four or five rods, feeding on the meadow just laid bare, or in the shallow and grassy water. This dark, damp, cold day they do not mind me. View them with my glass. How the ends of their wings curve upward! They do not thrust their bills clear down commonly, but wade and nibble at something amid the grass, apparently on the surface of the water. Sometimes it seems to be the grass itself, sometimes on the surface of the bare meadow. They are not now thrusting their bills deep in the mud. They have dark-ash or slate-colored breasts. 

At length they take a little alarm and rise with a sort of rippling whistle or peep, a little like a robin’s peep, but faint and soft, and then alight within a dozen rods. I hear often at night a very different harsh squeak from them, and another squeak much like the nighthawk’s, and also the booming.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 29, 1855

One bay-wing . . .The white circle about the eye is visible afar. See  April 13, 1855 ("See a sparrow without marks on throat or breast, running peculiarly in the dry grass in the open field beyond, and hear its song, and then see its white feathers in tail; the bay-wing"); April 23, 1854 ("The bay-wing has a light ring at some distance around the eye.")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Bay-Wing Sparrow (Fringilla graminea)

 The scrolls of the interrupted fern are already four or five inches high. See  April 29, 1859 ("Interrupted fern scrolls there, four to five inches high."); April 30, 1858 ("I noticed one of the large scroll ferns, with its rusty wool, up eight inches on the 28th"); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau: The Interrupted Fern (Osmunda claytoniana)

I see a woodchuck on the side of Lupine Hill. See April 2, 1858 (“At Hubbard’s Grove I see a woodchuck. He waddles to his hole and then puts out his gray nose within thirty feet to reconnoitre”); April 12, 1855 (“For a week past I have frequently seen the tracks of woodchucks in the sand.”);  April 17, 1855 ("See a woodchuck. His deep reddish-brown rear, somewhat grizzled about, looked like a ripe fruit mellowed by winter."); April 30, 1855 (“The woodchuck has. . . exactly that peculiar rank scent which I perceive in a menagerie.”);  May 30, 1859 ("When I entered the interior meadow of Gowing's Swamp I heard a slight snort, and found that I had suddenly come upon a woodchuck . . . Its colors were gray, reddish brown, and blackish, the gray-tipped wind hairs giving it a grizzly look above, and when it stood up its distinct rust-color beneath was seen, while the top of its head was dark-brown, becoming black at snout, as also its paws and its little rounded ears.")

The snout of the little sternothaerus is the most like a little black stick seen above the water, See September 11, 1854 ("Measured to-day the little Sternothærus odoratus which came out the ground in the garden September 9th. . .  It does not so much impress me as an infantile beginning of life as an epitome of all the past of turtledom and of the earth. I think of it as the result of all the turtles that have been.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  the Musk Turtle (Sternothaerus odoratus)

Dandelions out yesterday, at least. See April 29, 1859 ("First observe the dandelion well out in R. W. E.'s yard. "); April 29, 1857 ("At Tarbell's watering-place, see a dandelion, its conspicuous bright-yellow disk in the midst of a green space on the moist bank. It seems a sudden and decided progress in the season")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Dandelion in Spring and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  the Earliest Flower

And also the booming. See April 9, 1855 ("Some twenty minutes after sundown I hear the first booming of a snipe.") and note to April 9, 1858 ("This “booming” of the snipe is our regular village serenade.”); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau: the Snipe

April 29.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, April 29

This morning it snows

but does whiten the ground  –

a dark damp cold day.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, This dark, damp, cold day 

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

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