MAY 18, 2016
Ed. Emerson says he saw at Medford yesterday many ground-birds’ nests and eggs under apple trees. R. W. E.’s black currant (which the wild Ribes floridum is said to be much like), maybe a day. R. W. E. says that Agassiz tells him he has had turtles six or seven years, which grew so little, compared with others of the same size killed at first, that he thinks they may live four or five hundred years.
P. M. — To Kalmia Swamp.
Go across fields from R. W. E.’s to my boat at Cardinal Shore.
In A. Wheeler’s stubble-field west of Deep Cut, a female (?) goldfinch on an oak, without any obvious black, is mewing incessantly, the note ending rather musically. When I get over the fence, a flock of twenty or more, male and female, rise from amid the stubble, and, alighting on the oaks, sing pleasantly all together, in a lively manner.
Going along the Spring Path, hear an oft-repeated tchip tchar, tchip tchar, etc., or tchip tcharry (this is a common note with birds) from a large bird on a tree top, a sort of flaxen olive. Made me think of a female rose-breasted grosbeak, though we thought the beak more slender.
On the surface of the water amid the maples, on the Holden Wood shore where I landed, I noticed some of the most splendid iridescence or opalescence from some oily matter, where the water was smooth amid the maples, that I ever saw. It was where some sucker or other fish, perchance, had decayed.
The colors are intense blue and crimson, with dull golden. The whole at first covering seven or eight inches, but broken by the ripples I have made into polygonal figures like the fragments of a most wonderfully painted mirror. These fragments, drift and turn about, apparently, as stifily on the surface as if they were as thick and strong as glass.
The colors are in many places sharply defined in fine lines, making unaccountable figures, as if they were produced by a sudden crystallization. How much color or expression can reside in so thin a substance!
With such accompaniments does a sucker die and mix his juices with the river. This beauty like the rainbow and sunset sky marks the spot where his body has mingled with the elements.
A somewhat similar beauty reappears painted on the clam’s shell. Even a dead sucker suggests a beauty and so a glory of its own. I leaned over the edge of my boat and admired it as much as ever I did a rainbow or sunset sky. The colors were not faint, but strong and fiery, if not angry.
Found a young turtle about two inches long of a flat roundish form, with scales as rough as usual, but a dull reddish or yellowish spot in middle of each scale, and edges beneath were also a pinkish red. Can it be a young yellow-spot?
I have not noticed a tree sparrow since December!
A Sylvia Americana, — parti-colored warbler, — in the Holden Wood, sings a, tshrea tshrea tshrea, tshre’ tshritty tshrit’.
One low Kalmia glauca, before any rhodora there-abouts. Several kalmias, no doubt, to-morrow.
The rhodora there maybe to-morrow. Elsewhere I find it (on Hubbard’s meadow) to-day.
The swamp is all alive with warblers about the hoary expanding buds of oaks, maples, etc., and amid the pine and spruce. They swarm like gnats now. They fill the air with their little tshree tshree sprayey notes.
I see close by, hopping close up to the main stem of young white pines, what you would call a Maryland yellow-throat, but less chubby, yellow throat, beneath, and vent, and dark under tail, black side; but hear no note.
Also another clear pure white beneath, and vent, and side—head; black above, finely marked with yellow; yellow bars on wings; and golden crown; black bill and legs; with a clear, sweet warble like take tche tche, tchut tch utter we. Can this be a chestnut-sided warbler, and I not see the chestnut? Hopping amid oak twigs?
I think I hear a yellow-throated vireo. Hear a tree-toad.
Sail back on Hubbard’s redstart path, and there see a mud turtle draw in his head, . . .
E. Emerson finds half a dozen yellow violets. A hair bird’s nest building. I hear whip-poor-wills about R. W. E.’s.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 18, 1856
A female goldfinch on an oak . . . a flock of twenty or more, male and female, rise from amid the stubble, and, alighting on the oaks, sing pleasantly all together, in a lively manner. See May 13, 1854 ("Goldfinch heard pretty often "); May 17, 1856 ("A goldfinch twitters over."); May 23, 1857 ("The first goldfinch twitters over.");J une 9, 1853 ("Hear a goldfinch; this the second or third only that I have heard."); July 31, 1855 ("Have observed the twittering over of goldfinches for a week."); July 31, 1859 (" The goldfinch's note, the cool watery twitter, is more prominent now"); August 4, 1852 (" hear the singular watery twitter of the goldfinch . . . as it ricochets over, he and his russet female") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Goldfinch
A somewhat similar beauty reappears painted on the clam’s shell. See December 3, 1853 ("When I see even these humble clamshells lying open along the riverside, displaying some blue, or violet, or rainbow tints, I am reminded that some pure serenity has occupied them.")
Found a young turtle about two inches long of a flat roundish form . . . Can it be a young yellow-spot? See June 3, 1856 (" Picked up a young wood tortoise . . .but there was no orange on it . . .So the one of similar rounded form and size and with distinct scales but faint yellow spots on back must have been a young spotted turtle, I think, after all.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow-Spotted Turtle (Emys guttata)
The rhodora there maybe to-morrow. See May 18, 1853 ("The rhodora is one of the very latest leafing shrubs, for its leaf-buds are but just expanding, making scarcely any show yet, but quite leafless amid the blossoms."); May 18, 1855 ("Rhodora; probably some yesterday."); May 18, 1857 ("Pratt says he saw the first rhodora . . . out yesterday"); See also May 13, 1860 ("The rhodora on shore will apparently bloom to-morrow."); May 15, 1855 ("Rhodora will apparently open in two or three days."); May 16, 1853 ("Rhodora, trillium, and yellow violets yesterday at least."); May 17, 1853 (“The rhodora is peculiar for being, like the peach, a profusion of pink blossoms on a leafless stem. This shrub is, then, a late one to leaf out.”); May 17, 1856 ("The rhodora there[Kalmia Swamp] will open in a day or two."); May 17, 1858 ("Rhodora at Clamshell well out.”); May 19, 1854 ("The rhodora is late, and is naked flowering."); May 26, 1859 ("The rhodora at Ledum Swamp is now in its perfection, brilliant islands of color."); May 27, 1856 (“Kalmia in prime, and rhodora.”); May 31, 1857 (“Rhodora now in its prime.”)
The swamp is all alive with warblers . . . They fill the air with their little tshree tshree sprayey notes. See April 19, 1854 ("Within a few days the warblers have begun to come. They are of every hue. Nature made them to show her colors with. There are as many as there are colors and shades. "); May 7, 1852 ("For now, before the leaves, they begin to people the trees in this warm weather. The first wave of summer from the south."); May 15, 1860 ("Deciduous woods now swarm with migrating warblers, especially about swamps.”); May 23, 1857 ("about the edges of the swamps in the woods, these birds are flitting about in the tree-tops like gnats, catching the insects about the expanding leaf-buds");May 28, 1855 ("I have seen within three or four days two or three new warblers “)
I think I hear a yellow-throated vireo. See May 19, 1856 ("Hear and see a yellow-throated vireo, which methinks I have heard before . . . singing indolently, ullia — eelya, and sometimes varied to eelyee.”); May 27, 1854 ("I see and hear the yellow-throated vireo. It is somewhat similar (its strain) to that of the red-eye, prelia pre-li-ay, with longer intervals and occasionally a whistle like tlea tlow, or chowy chow, or tully ho on a higher key. It flits about in the tops of the trees."); May 28, 1855 ("Do I not hear a short snappish, rasping note from a yellow-throat vireo?"); May 29, 1855 ( "Also the yellow-throated vireo—its head and shoulders as well as throat yellow (apparently olive-yellow above), and its strain but little varied and short, not continuous.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow-throated Vireo
Beauty marks the spot
where his body has mingled
with the elements.
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