Spend the day hunting for my boat, which was stolen.

April 19. 

Spend the day hunting for my boat, which was stolen. 

As I go up the riverside, I see a male marsh hawk hunting. He skims along exactly over the edge of the water, on the meadowy side, not more than three or four feet from the ground and winding with the shore, looking for frogs, for in such a tortuous line do the frogs sit. They probably know about what time to expect his visits, being regularly decimated.

Particular hawks farm particular meadows. It must be easy for him to get a breakfast. Far as I can see with a glass, he is still tilting this way and that over the water-line. 

At Fair Haven Pond I see, half a mile off, eight large water-fowl, which I thought at first were large ducks, though their necks appeared long. Studying them patiently with a glass, I found that they had gray backs, black heads and necks with perhaps green reflections, white breasts, dark tips to tails, and a white spot about eyes on each side of bill. At first the whole bird had looked much darker, like black ducks. I did not know but they might be brant or some very large ducks, but at length inclined to the opinion that they were geese. 

At 5.30, being on the Common, I saw a small flock of geese going over northeast. Being reminded of the birds of the morning and their number, I looked again and found that there were eight of them, and probably they were the same I had seen. 

Viola ovata on bank above Lee's Cliff. Edith Emerson found them there yesterday; also columbines and the early potentilla April 13th !!! 

I hear the pine warblers there, and also what I thought a variation of its note, quite different, yet I thought not unfamiliar to me. 

Afterwards, along the wall under the Middle Conantum Cliff, I saw many goldfinches, male and female, the males singing in a very sprightly and varied manner, sitting still on bare trees. Also uttered their watery twitter and their peculiar mewing. 

In the meanwhile I heard a faint thrasher's note, as if faintly but perfectly imitated by some bird twenty or thirty rods off. This surprised me very much. It was equally rich and varied, and yet I did not believe it to be a thrasher. Determined to find out the singer, I sat still with my glass in hand, and at length detected the singer, a goldfinch sitting within gunshot all the while. 

This was the most varied and sprightly performer of any bird I have heard this year, and it is strange that I never heard the strain before. It may be this note which is taken for the thrasher’s before the latter comes. 

P. M. — Down river. 

I find that my Rana halecina spawn in the house is considerably further advanced than that left in the meadows. The latter is not only deeper beneath the surface now, on account of the rain, but has gathered dirt from the water, so that the jelly itself is now plainly seen; and some of it has been killed, probably by frost, being exposed at the surface. I hear the same tut tut tut, probably of the halecina, still there, though not so generally as before. 

See two or three yellow lilies nearly open, showing most of their yellow, beneath the water; say in two or three days. 

Rice tells me of winging a sheldrake once just below Fair Haven Pond, and pursuing it in a boat as it swam down the stream, till it went ashore at Hubbard’s Wood and crawled into a woodchuck’s hole about a rod from the water on a wooded bank. He could see its tail and pulled it out. 

He tells of seeing cartloads of lamprey eels in the spawning season clinging to the - stones at a dam in Saco, and that if you spat on a stone and cast it into the swift water above them they would directly let go and wiggle down the stream and you could hear their tails snap like whips on the surface, as if the spittle was poison to them; but if you did not spit on the stone, they would not let go. 

He thinks that a flock of geese will sometimes stop for a wounded one to get well. 

Hear of bluets found on Saturday, the 17th; how long? 

Hear a toad ring at 9 P. M. Perhaps I first hear them at night, though cooler, because it is still. 

R. W. E. saw an anemone on the 18th.

H.D. Thoreau,  Journal, April 19, 1858

He skims along exactly over the edge of the water, on the meadowy side, not more than three or four feet from the ground and winding with the shore, looking for frogs. See note to April 22, 1856 (“A marsh hawk, in the midst of the rain, is skimming along the shore of the meadow, close to the ground, . . .  It is looking for frogs.”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)

I hear the pine warblers there, and also what I thought a variation of its note, quite different, yet I thought not unfamiliar to me. See April 12, 1858 ("The woods are all alive with pine warblers now. Their note is the music to which I survey"); April 15, 1859 ("Go to a warm pine wood-side on a pleasant day at this season after storm, and hear it ring with the jingle of the pine warbler"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pine Warbler

Along the wall under the Middle Conantum Cliff, I saw many goldfinches, male and female, the males singing in a very sprightly and varied manner, sitting still on bare trees. Also uttered their watery twitter and their peculiar mewing. See April 7, 1855 (“See thirty or forty goldfinches in a dashing flock, in all respects (notes and all) like lesser redpolls, on the trees by Wood’s Causeway and on the railroad bank. There is a general twittering and an occasional mew.”)


In the meanwhile I heard a faint thrasher's note, as if faintly but perfectly imitated by some bird. See April 15, 1859 ("Hear a goldfinch, after a loud mewing on an apple tree, sing in a rich and varied way, as if imitating some other bird. . . . Also a catbird mews? [Could this have been a goldfinch?]"); August 11, 1858 ("The goldfinch is a very fine and powerful singer, and the most successful and remarkable mocking-bird that we have. In the spring I heard it imitate the thrasher exactly, before that bird had arrived, and now it imitates the purple finch.");

Viola ovata on bank above Lee's Cliff. Edith Emerson found them there yesterday. See April 27, 1860 ("Viola ovata common."); April 29, 1855 (“Viola ovata will open to-morrow.”); May 1, 1856 ("Viola ovata on southwest side of hill, high up near pines.”); May 5, 1853 ("The Emerson children found blue and white violets May 1st at Hubbard's Close, probably Viola ovata and blanda; but I have not been able to find any yet.");  May 6, 1855 (“Beyond Clamshell, some white Viola ovata, some with a faint bluish tinge.”); May 9, 1852 (“ That I observed the first of May was a V. ovata, a variety of sagittate. [arrowhead violet]”)