Our peaches begin to bloom; others probably earlier. Domestic plums open; some maybe yesterday. Missouri currant open yesterday or day before. One apple on a roof open.
The beech blossom in house opens; say to-morrow in woods, and probably will leaf generally by the next day.
Second gooseberry in garden open.
White ash begins to leaf; and waxwork. Clethra leafs. High blueberry open by Hubbard’s Bath. Black scrub oak leafs, and chinquapin. Red choke-berry leafed, say two days later than black.
P. M. — To Cliffs via Hubbard’s Bath.
See a male hen-harrier skimming low along the side of the river, often within a foot of the muddy shore, looking for frogs, with a very compact flock of small birds, probably swallows, in pursuit. Occasionally he alights and walks or hops flutteringly a foot or two over the ground.
The Lombardy poplar and silvery white leafed at least two days ago.
Vaccinium vacillans leafed, and perhaps flower opened, if that is one near West Fair Haven Spring.
Some hickories, just opening their leaves, make quite a show with the red inner sides of the bud-scales turned back.
All the oak leaves off the shrub oak plain, except apparently a few white oaks.
Some gaylussacias leafed. Uva-ursi at Cliffs out some time, and some new shoots leafing.
Under the dead pine on which the fish hawk sat on the 12th inst, a half-mile from the river, I find a few fish bones — one, I am pretty sure from comparison, the jaw of a pout. So that in three instances, the only ones observed this year, they were feeding on pouts.
Probably the mice, etc., had picked up the rest of his droppings. Thus these inhabitants of the interior get a taste of fish from time to time, -- crumbs from the fish hawk’s table.
Prinos verticillatus leafs.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 14, 1855
See a male hen-harrier skimming low along the side of the river, often within a foot of the muddy shore, looking for frogs. See May 14, 1853 ("What is that small slate-colored hawk with black tips to wings?") and note to May 14, 1857 ("See a pair of marsh hawks, the smaller and lighter-colored male, with black tips to wings, and the large brown female, sailing low over J. Hosmer's sprout-land and screaming, apparently looking for frogs or the like.”); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)
Some hickories, just opening their leaves, make quite a show with the red inner sides of the bud-scales turned back. See May 17, 1853 ("How red are the scales of some hickory buds, now turned back!"); May 24, 1860 (“I notice the first shadows of hickories, - not dense and dark shade, but open-latticed, a network of sun and shadow on the north sides of the trees.”); May 26, 1857 ("The very sudden expansion of the great hickory buds, umbrella-wise."); May 29, 1857 (“Those great hickory buds, how much they contained! You see now the large reddish scales turned back at the base of the new twigs. Suddenly the buds burst, and those large pinnate leaves stretched forth in various directions.”)
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