Shad-flies on the water, schooner-like.

May 4. 

P. M. — To Cedar Swamp via Assabet. 

Among others, I see republican swallows flying over river at Island. Again I see, as on the 30th of April, swallows flying low over Hosmer’s meadow, over water. though comparatively few. About a foot above the water, about my boat, are many of those little fuzzy gnats, and I suspect that it is these they are attracted by. 

(On the 6th, our house being just painted, the paint is peppered with the myriads of the same insects which have stuck to it. They are of various sizes, though all small, and there are a few shad-flies also caught. They are particularly thick on the coping under the eaves, where they look as if they had been dusted on, and dense swarms of them are hovering within a foot. Paint a house now, and these are the insects you catch. I suspect it is these fuzzy gnats that the swallows of the 30th were catching.) 

The river is gone down so much — though checked by the rain of the 2d and 3d — that I now observe the tortoises on the bottom, a sternothaerus among them. 

Hear the something like has twe twe twe twé, ter té te twe twe of the myrtle-bird, and see the bird on the swamp white oaks by Island. 

The aspen there just begun to leaf; not quite the white maple. 

I observe that the river meadows, especially Hosmer’s, are divided by two or more ridges and valleys (the latter alone now covered with water and so revealed), parallel with the river. The same phenomenon, but less remarkable, on the Wheeler meadow. Are they the traces of old river-banks, or where, in freshets, the current of the river meets the meadow current, and the sediment is deposited? 

See a peetweet on Dove Rock, which just peeps out. As soon as the rocks begin to be bare the peetweet comes and is seen teetering on them and skimming away from me. 

Having fastened my boat at the maple, met, on the bank just above, Luke Dodge, whom I met in a boat fishing up that way once or twice last summer and previous years. Was surprised to hear him say, “I am in my eighty-third year.” He still looks pretty strong and has a voice like a nutmeg-grater. Within two or three years at most, I have seen him walking, with that remarkable gait. It is encouraging to know that a man may fish and paddle in this river in his eighty-third year. 

He says he is older than Winn, though not the oldest man in the town. Mr. Tolman is in his eighty sixth year. 

Went up Dodge’s (an Englishman who once lived up it and no relation of the last-named) Brook and across Barrett’s dam. 

In the Cedar Swamp Andromeda calyculata abundantly out; how long? Viburnum nudum leafing. Smilacina trifolia recently up; will apparently open in ten or twelve days. 

At the dam, am amused with the various curves of jets of water which leak through at different heights. According to the pressure. For the most part a thin sheet was falling smoothly over the top and cutting short off some smaller jets from the first crack (or edge of the first plank), leaving them like white spikes seen through the water. The dam leaked in a hundred places between and under the planks, and there were as many jets of various size and curve. Reminds me of the tail-piece in Bewick, of landlord drawing beer(?) from two holes, and knowledge of artist shown. 

Shad-flies on the water, schooner-like. Hear and see a goldfinch, on the ground.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 4, 1856

The aspen there (the Island) just begun to leaf. . . . See  May 5, 1858  ("The aspen leaves at Island to-day appear as big as a nine pence suddenly");  May 17, 1860   ("Standing in the meadow near the early aspen at the island, I hear the first fluttering of leaves, - a peculiar sound, at first unaccountable to me");  May 2, 1859 ("I am surprised by the tender yellowish green of the aspen leaf just expanded suddenly"); May 2, 1855 ("The young aspens are the first of indigenous trees conspicuously leafed"). See also A Book of the Seasons, the Aspens. 

Went up Dodge’s Brook and across Barrett’s dam. See May 31, 1853 ("In the meanwhile, Farmer, who was hoeing, came up to the wall, and we fell into a talk about Dodge's Brook, which runs through his farm.  . . .")

Shad-flies on the water, schooner-like. See May 1, 1854 ("The water is strewn with myriads of wrecked shad-flies, erect on the surface, with their wings up like so many schooners all headed one way.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Insect Hatches in Spring

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