A season for nests and eggs. Critchicrotches in prime.

May 25

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

May 25, 2025

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

Late rose shoots, two inches, say a fortnight since. See  July 23, 1860  ("The late rose is now in prime along the river, a pale rose-color but very delicate, keeping up the memory of roses.") See also 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose

Wood pewee. See May 22, 1854 (" I hear also pe-a-wee pe-a-wee, and then occasionally pee-yu, the first syllable in a different and higher key emphasized, — all very sweet and naive and innocent."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Arrival of the Eastern Wood Pewee

Apparently yellowbirds’ nests just completed. See May 28, 1855 ("Examined my two yellowbirds’ nests of the 25th. Both are destroyed, —pulled down and torn to pieces probably by some bird, — though they but just begun to lay. ); June 2, 1855 ("Three yellowbirds’ nests, which I have marked since the 25th of May, the only ones which I have actually inspected, have now all been torn to pieces, though they were in places (two of them, at least) where no boy is at all likely to have found them") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Summer Yellowbird

Scared a screech owl . . .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.  See  May 26, 1855 ("At the screech owl's nest I now find two young slumbering, almost uniformly gray above, about five inches long  with little dark-grayish tufts for incipient horns (?)."); April 23, 1859 ("A large hickory by the wall on the north side (or northeast side) of the hill apparently just blown down, the one I saw the screech owl go into two or three years ago.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Screech Owl; A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The Brown Thrasher

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

Critchicrotches in prime. See May 23, 1860 ("Critchicrotches now tender to eat."); May 27, 1852 ("The fruit of the sweet flag is now just fit to eat, and reminds me of childhood, — the critchicrotches. They would help sustain a famished traveller. The inmost tender leaf, also, near the base, is quite palatable, as children know. I love it as well as muskrats (?)."); May 29 1854 (Critchicrotches have been edible some time in some places."); and note to June 12, 1852 ("The critchicrotches are going to seed. I love the sweet-flag as well as the muskrat (?). Its tender inmost leaf is very palatable below.")

Heard the first regular bullfrog’s trump on the 18th; none since.  See May 25, 1852 ("I hear the first troonk of a bullfrog.”) See also A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, The Bullfrog in Spring

The golden robin keeps whistling. See May 13, 1855 ("The gold robin, just come, is heard in all parts of the village. I see both male and female."); May 14, 1856 ("Air full of golden robins. Their loud clear note betrays them as soon as they arrive.") See also A Book of the Seasons   by Henry Thoreau, The Golden Robin

Is that sweet-scented vernal grass just begun to bloom at celtis shore? See May 14, 1858 ("See what I call vernal grass in bloom in many places."); May 14, 1859 ("Vernal grass quite common at Willis Spring now."); May 23, 1860 ("Say the sweet-scented vernal grass is in its prime."); May 27, 1857 ("I perceived that rare meadow fragrance on the 25th. Is it not the sweet-scented vernal grass? I see what I have called such, now very common.")

Hear a quail and the summer spray frog, amid the ring of toads. See May 25, 1851 (“Now, at 8.30 o'clock P.M., I hear the dreaming of the frogs.  So it seems to me, and so significantly passes my life away. It is like the dreaming of frogs in a summer evening."); 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, 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");  May 20, 1858 ("Hear a quail whistle."); June 1, 1856 (" Heard a quail whistle May 30th."); June 1, 1860 ("Farmer has heard the quail a fortnight. Channing yesterday."); June 3, 1859 ("Quail heard."); 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”)  And also  June 13, 1851 ("The different frogs mark the seasons pretty well,- the peeping hyla, the dreaming frog, and the bullfrog.") and A Book of the Seasons  by Henry Thoreau, The Ring of Toads

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

Cornus florida,

no bloom – Does it not flower 

every other year? 

The golden robin 

keeps whistling something like Eat 

it, Potter, eat it!

Is that sweet-scented 

vernal grass, just begun to

bloom at celtis shore?

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A season for nests and eggs.

                                     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-550525