The hazel is out
at this cold leafless season
greeting the spring.
The hazel is fully out. The 23d was perhaps full early to date them. It is in some respects the most interesting flower yet, though so minute that only an observer of nature, or one who looked for them, would notice it. It is the highest and richest colored yet, - ten or a dozen little rays at the end of the buds which are at the ends and along the sides of the bare stems. Some of the flowers are a light, some a dark crimson. The high color of this minute, unobserved flower, at this cold, leafless, and almost flowerless season! It is a beautiful greeting of the spring, when the catkins are scarcely relaxed and there are no signs of life in the bush. March 27, 1853
Of our seven indigenous flowers which begin to bloom in March, four, i. e. the two alders, the aspen, and the hazel, are not generally noticed so early, if at all, and most do not observe the flower of a fifth, the maple. The first four are yellowish or reddish brown at a little distance, like the banks and sward moistened by the spring rain. March 27, 1859
The browns are the prevailing shades as yet, as in the withered grass and sedge and the surface of the earth, the withered leaves, and these brown flowers. March 27, 1859
See my frog hawk. (C. saw it about a week ago.) It is the hen-barrier, i.e. marsh hawk, male. Slate-colored; beating the bush; black tips to wings and white rump. March 27, 1855
Tried to see the faint-croaking frogs at J. P. Brown's Pond in the woods. They are remarkably timid and shy; had their noses and eyes out, croaking, but all ceased, dove, and concealed themselves, before I got within a rod of the shore. Stood perfectly still amid the bushes on the shore, before one showed himself; finally five or six, and all eyed me, gradually approached me within three feet to reconnoitre, and, though I waited about half an hour, would not utter a sound nor take their eyes off me, - were plainly affected by curiosity. March 27, 1853
I see but one tortoise (Emys guttata) in Nut Meadow Brook now; the weather is too raw and gusty. March 27, 1853
As I go up the Assabet, I see two Emys insculpta on the bank in the sun, and one picta. They are all rather sluggish, and I can paddle up and take them up. March 27, 1857
See a wood tortoise in the brook. March 27, 1855
Hear a lark in that meadow. Twitters over it on quivering wing and awakes the slumbering life of the meadow. The turtle and frog peep stealthily out and see the first lark go over. March 27, 1857
But now chiefly there comes borne on the breeze the tinkle of the song sparrow along the riverside, and I push out into wind and current. March 27, 1857
March 27, 2020
If you make the least correct
observation of nature this year,
you will have occasion to repeat it
with illustrations the next,
and the season and life itself is prolonged.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: the Hazel
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle (Emys picta)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow-Spotted Turtle (Emys guttata)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: the Hawks of March
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2016
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality.”
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