A season for nests and eggs.

May 25.

May 25, 2014

A rather warm night the last; window slightly open. Hear buzz of flies in the sultryish morning air on awaking. 

8 A. M. - To Hill. 

Late rose shoots, two inches, say a fortnight since. Salix nigra pollen, a day at least. 

Wood pewee. 

Apparently yellowbirds’ nests just completed —one by stone bridge causeway, another on birch by mud turtle meadow. 

Veronica peregrina in Mackay’s strawberries, how long? 

Most of the robins’ nests I have examined this year had three eggs, clear bluish green. A chip-bird’s nest on a balm-of-Gilead, eight feet high, between the main stem and a twig or two, with four very pale blue-green eggs with a sort of circle of brown-black spots about larger end. Red-wing’s nest with four eggs — white, very faintly tinged with (perhaps) green and curiously and neatly marked with brown-black spots and lines on the large end. Red-wings now generally beginning to lay. 

Fever-root one foot high and more, say a fortnight or three weeks. 

Scared a screech owl out of an apple tree on hill; flew swiftly off at first like a pigeon woodpecker and lit near by facing me; was instantly visited and spied at by a brown thrasher; then flew into a hole high in a hickory near by, the thrasher following close to the tree. It was reddish or ferruginous. 

Choke cherry pollen on island, apparently two or three days. 

Hemlock pollen, probably to-morrow; some in house to-day; say to-day; not yet leafing. 

Aralia nudicaulis, perhaps two days pollen. 

Cornus florida, no bloom. Was there year before last? Does it not flower every other year? Its leaf, say, just after C. sericea. 

Tupelo leaf before button-bush; maybe a week now. Red oak pollen, say a day or two before black. Swamp white oak pollen. 

River at summer level, four inches below long stone. Grass patches conspicuous, and flags and Equisetum limosum and pontederia (eight inches high), and white lily pads now (after yellow) red above, and purplish polygonum leaves in beds above water. 

For some days the handsome phalanxes of the Equisetum limosum have attracted me. The button-bush hardly yet generally begun to leaf. Critchicrotches in prime. 

Heard the first regular bullfrog’s trump on the 18th; none since. Juniper, plucked yesterday, sheds pollen in house to-day, and probably in field. Is our white willow Gray’s var. 2d, coerulea? 

The golden robin keeps whistling something like Eat it, Potter, eat it! 

Cares exilis river-shore opposite Wheeler’s gate, six inches high, but the culm smooth —some time. 

Is that sweet-scented vernal grass just begun to bloom at celtis shore? Fir balsam begun to leaf —with flower. Cottony aphides on white pines. 

Hear a quail and the summer spray frog, amid the ring of toads.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 25, 1855

Cornus florida, no bloom. . . .Does it not flower every other year? See May 22, 1856 ("The Cornus florida does not bloom this year. . .")

Heard the first regular bullfrog’s trump on the 18th; none since.  . . . See May 25, 1852 ("I hear the first troonk of a bullfrog.”)

Is that sweet-scented vernal grass just begun to bloom at celtis shore? See May 27, 1857 ("I perceived that rare meadow fragrance on the 25th. Is it not the sweet-scented vernal grass? ")

Hear a quail and the summer spray frog, amid the ring of toads. See May 25, 1859 ("Hear within a day or two what I call the sprayey note of the toad, different and later than its early ring.");May 25, 1851 (“I hear the dreaming of the frogs. ") ; May 25, 1860 ("5 P.M. the toads ring loud and numerously, as if invigorated by this little moisture and coolness.”) See also May 13, 1860 ("It is so warm that I hear the peculiar sprayey note of the toad generally at night."); May 16, 1853 ("Nature’appears to have passed a crisis. . .. The sprayey dream of the toad has a new sound");June 12, 1855 (“I hear the toad, which I have called “spray frog” falsely, still. . . .A peculiarly rich, sprayey dreamer, now at 2 P. M.! . . . This rich, sprayey note possesses all the shore. It diffuses itself far and wide over the water and enters into every crevice of the noon, and you cannot tell whence it proceeds”); Compare May 25, 1851 ("Now, at 8.30 o'clock P.M., I hear the dreaming of the frogs.”); May 25, 1852 ("I hear the first troonk of a bullfrog.”); And see also June 13, 1851 ("The different frogs mark the seasons pretty well,- the peeping hyla, the dreaming frog, and the bullfrog.")