Suddenly as I go to my boat.

April 12

There is still a little snow ice on the north side of our house, two feet broad, a relic of the 25th of December. This is all there is on our premises.

According to Rees’s Cyclopaedia, the sap of the birches is fermentable in its natural state. Also, “Ratray, the learned Scot, affirms, that he has found by experiment, that the liquor which may be drawn from the birch tree in the springtime is equal to the whole weight of the tree, branches, roots, and all together.” 

I think on the whole that, of the particular trees which I tapped, the yellow and canoe birches flowed the fastest. 

Hazy all day, with wind from the west, threatening rain. Haze gets to be very thick and perhaps smoky in the afternoon, concealing distinct forms of clouds, if there are any. Can it have anything to do with fires in woods west and southwest? Yet it is warm. 

5 P. M.—Sail on the meadow. 

There suddenly flits before me and alights on a small apple tree in Mackay’s field, as I go to my boat, a splendid purple finch. Its glowing redness is revealed when it lifts its wings, as when the ashes is blown from a coal of fire. Just as the oriole displays its gold.

The river is going down and leaving the line of its wrack on the meadow. It was at its height when the snow generally was quite melted here, i. e. yesterday.  

Rains considerably in the evening.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 12, 1856

There is still a little snow ice on the north side of our house, See April 11, 1860 ("I have not seen any lingering heel of a snow-bank since April came in.")

Of the particular trees which I tapped, the yellow and canoe birches flowed the fastest. See April 11, 1856 ("Now is apparently the very time to tap birches of all kinds. . . .On the whole, I have not observed so much difference in the amount of sap flowing from the six kinds of trees which I have tapped as I have observed between different trees of the same kind,") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Birches in Season

A splendid purple finch. See  April 12, 1855 ("I hear a purple finch . . . on an elm, steadily warbling and uttering a sharp chip from time to time"); see also  April 3, 1858 ("I am surprised by the rich strain of the purple finch from the elms"); April 10, 1861 ("Purple finch"); April 11, 1853 ("I hear the clear, loud whistle of a purple finch, somewhat like and nearly as loud as the robin, from the elm by Whiting's."); April 15, 1854 ("The arrival of the purple finches appears to be coincident with the blossoming of the elm, on whose blossom it feeds");  and see also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Elms and the Purple Finch

The river is going down and leaving the line of its wrack on the meadow. It was at its height  when the snow generally was quite melted here, i. e. yesterday. See April 8, 1856 ("River had risen so since yesterday I could not get under the bridge "); April 9, 1856 ("River, still rising.");  April 10, 1856 ("We may now say that the ground is bare . . .Thus does this remarkable winter disappear at last"); April 11, 1856 ("Yonder graceful tree . . . marks where is the bank of the river, though now it stands in the midst of a flood a quarter of a mile from land ") See also April 1, 1858 ("The river is at summer level. . . . It is remarkable that the river seems rarely to rise or fall gradually, but rather by fits and starts, and hence the water-lines, as indicated now by the sawdust, are very distinct parallel lines four or five or more inches apart.”) 

April 12. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 12

Hazy all day with 

wind from the west threatening 

rain in the evening.

Splendid purple finch –

its glowing redness revealed

when it lifts its wings.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Suddenly as I go to my boat.

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 ©  2009-2026