A slight sea-turn, the wind coming cool and easterly this morning,

May 31. 

May 31,, 2018

A. M. – To Island.

Choke-cherry, a day or two.

Cornus florida, not yet for two or three days. I saw some in Connecticut with involucres much more rosaceous than ours.

A yellowbird’s nest of that grayish milkweed fibre, one egg, in alder by wall west of Indian burying(?)-ground.

P. M. — To Laurel Glen.

I see, running along on the flat side of a railroad rail on the causeway, a wild mouse with an exceedingly long tail. Perhaps it would be called the long-tailed meadow mouse. It has no white, only the feet are light flesh-color; but it is uniformly brown as far as I can see, — for it rests a long time on the rail within a rod, – but when I look at it from behind in the sun it is a very tawny almost golden brown, quite hand some. It finally runs, with a slight hop, — the tarsus of the hind legs being very long while the fore legs are short and its head accordingly low, – down the bank to the meadow.

I saw on the 29th white Viola pedata, and to-day a white V. cucullata.

There were severe frosts on the nights of the 28th and 29th, and now I see the hickories turned quite black, and in low ground the white oak shoots, though they do not show black in drying. Also many ferns are withered and black and some Prinos lavigatus tips, etc.

I find a chewink's nest with four eggs (fresh) on the side-hill at Jarvis’s wood-lot, twenty feet below wood-chuck’s hole at canoe birch. The nest is first of withered leaves, then stubble, thickly lined with withered grass and partly sheltered by dead leaves, shoved [?] up a huckleberry bush.

There was a slight sea-turn, the wind coming cool and easterly this morning, which at first I mistook for the newly leafing deciduous trees investing the evergreens, which is a kind of sea-turn in harmony with the other. I remember that the stage-drivers riding back and forth daily from Concord to Boston and becoming weather-wise perforce, often meeting the sea-breeze on its way into the country, were wont to show their weather wisdom by telling anxious travellers that it was nothing but a sea-turn.

At 5 P.M., go to see a gray squirrel's nest in the oak at the Island point. It is about fifteen feet from the ground, – the entrance, — where a limb has been broken off, and the tree is hollow above and below. One young one darted past downward under my face, with the speed of a bird. There is much short brown dung about, and a smell of urine, and the twigs around have been gnawed.

Does not the voice of the toad along the river sound differently now from what it did a month ago? I think it is much less sonorous and ringing, a more croaking and inquisitive or qui vive sound. Is it not less prolonged also?


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 31, 1858

Cornus florida, not yet. See June 4, 1858 ("I find the Cornus florida out in my pitcher when I get home June 4th, though it was not out on Island May 31st, and it is well out on Island when I look June 6th. I will say, therefore, that it opened June 3d."); See also May 22, 1856 ("The Cornus florida does not bloom this year."); May 25, 1855 ("Cornus florida, no bloom. Was there year before last? Does it not flower every other year?”)

A yellowbird’s nest of that grayish milkweed fibre. See  May 31, 1855 ("See a yellowbird building a nest on a white oak on the Island. She goes to a fern for the wool."); See also January 19, 1856 ("Knocked down the bottom of that summer yellow bird’s nest made on the oak at the Island last summer. It is chiefly of fern wool and also, apparently, some sheep’s wool (?), with a fine green moss (apparently that which grows on button-bushes) inmixed, and some milkweed fibre, and all very firmly agglutinated together.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau The Summer Yellowbird

A wild mouse with an exceedingly long tail. Perhaps it would be called the long-tailed meadow mouse. [Likely the jumping mouse] See December 13, 1852 ("I observed a mouse . . . reddish brown above and cream-colored beneath . . . I think it must be the Gerbillus Canadensis, See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

I saw on the 29th white Viola pedata, and to-day a white V. cucullata. See May 18, 1857 ("Pratt has found perfectly white Viola pedata behind Easterbrook place, and cultivated them, but now lost them.") A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

There were severe frosts on the nights of the 28th and 29th, and now I see the hickories turned quite black. See May 31, 1854 ("Cold weather. "); May 31, 1856 ("It has been very cold for two or three days, and to-night a frost is feared. The telegraph says it snowed in Bangor to-day. The hickory leaves are blackened by blowing in the cold wind.”); See also May 21, 1855 (“[C]old weather, indeed, from the 20th to 23d inclusive. Sit by fires, and sometimes wear a greatcoat and expect frosts.”); May 22, 1859 (“”I see that by the very severe frost of about the 15th, or full of the moon, a great many leaves were killed. . . which now show brown or blackish.")

I find a chewink's nest with four eggs. See June 1, 1856 ("A chewink’s nest a rod and a half south of Walden road, opposite Goose Pond path, under a young oak, covered by overarching dry sedge; four eggs, pretty fresh. I am pretty sure the bird uttered the unusual hoarse and distressed note while I was looking at them. "); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chewink (Rufous-sided Towhee)

There was a slight sea-turn, the wind coming cool and easterly this morning. See April 30, 1856 ("At one o’clock there was the usual fresh easterly wind and sea-turn , and before night it grew quite cold for the season. The regularity of the recurrence of this phenomenon is remarkable . . . Early in the afternoon, or between one and four, the wind changes . . . and a fresh cool wind from the sea produces a mist in the air.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Sea-turn

Go to see a gray squirrel's nest See note to June 1, 1860 ("This makes three gray squirrels' nests that I have seen and heard of (seen two of them) this year, made thus of leaves and sticks open in the trees, and I hear of some more similar ones found in former years, so that I think this mode of nesting their young may be the rule with them here")

Does not the voice of the toad along the river sound differently now from what it did a month ago? See May 31, 1860 ("Hear the sprayey note of toads now more than ever, after the rain."); See also  May 13, 1860 ("It is so warm that I hear the peculiar sprayey note of the toad generally at night."); May 16, 1853 ("Nature’appears to have passed a crisis. . . . The sprayey dream of the toad has a new sound."); May 19, 1854 ("I hear the sprayey-note frog now at sunset."); May 25, 1859 ("Hear within a day or two what I call the sprayey note of the toad, different and later than its early ring.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Ring of Toads

May 31. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 31

The voice of the toad

first heard a month ago sounds

differently now.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The voice of the toad

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 © 2009-2024

The hawk rises when we approach and circles about over the wood.

May 30. 

Hear of lady's-slipper seen the 23d; how long? 

I saw the Nuphar advena above water and yellow in Shrewsbury the 23d. 

P. M.–To hen-harrier's nest and to Ledum Swamp.

Edward Emerson shows me the nest which he and another discovered. It is in the midst of the low wood, sometimes inundated, just southwest of Hubbard's Bath, the island of wood in the meadow.

The hawk rises when we approach and circles about over the wood, uttering a note singularly like the common one of the flicker. 

The nest is in a more bushy or open place in this low wood, and consists of a large mass of sedge and stubble with a very few small twigs, as it were accidentally intermingled. It is about twenty inches in diameter and remarkably flat, the slight depression in the middle not exceeding three quarters of an inch. The whole opening amid the low bushes is not more than two feet in diameter. The thickness of it raises the surface about four inches above the ground. The inner and upper part is uniformly rather fine and pale-brown sedge. 

There are two dirty, or rather dirtied, white eggs left (of four that were), one of them one and seven tenths inches long, and not “spherical,” as Brewer says, but broad in proportion to length. [Another is one and seven eighths inches long by one and a half inches. Vide the last (which was addled).]

Ledum, one flower out, but perhaps if Pratt had not plucked some last Sunday it might have bloomed here yesterday? It is decidedly leafing also.

Andromeda Polifolia by the ditch well out, how long?

I perceive the turpentine scent of the ledum in the air as I walk through it. 

As I stand by the riverside some time after sundown, I see a light white mist rising here and there in wisps from the meadow, far and near, — less visible within a foot of me, — to the height of three or four or ten feet. It does not rise generally and evenly from every part of the meadow, but, as yet, over certain spots only, where there is some warm breath of the meadow turned into cloud.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal  May 30, 1858

Hear of lady's-slipper seen the 23d. See note to May 30, 1856 ("The lady’s-slipper in pitch pine wood-side near J. Hosmer’s Desert, probably about the 27th.")

The nest is in the midst of the low wood, sometimes inundated, just southwest of Hubbard's Bath, the island of wood in the meadow. The hawk rises when we approach and circles about over the wood, uttering a note singularly like the common one of the flicker. See May 14, 1857 ("See a pair of marsh hawks, the smaller and lighter-colored male, with black tips to wings, and the large brown female, sailing low over J. Hosmer's sprout-land and screaming, apparently looking for frogs or the like. Or have they not a nest near? They hover very near me.");  See May 20, 1856 (“Two marsh hawks, male and female, flew about me a long time, screaming, the female largest, with ragged wing ,. . . they have, no doubt, a nest thereabouts. ”)

Ledum, one flower out, but perhaps if Pratt had not plucked some last Sunday it might have bloomed here yesterday. See February 4, 1858 ("Discover the Ledum latifolium, quite abundant over a space about six rods in diameter just east of the small pond-hole")

May 30 See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 30

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 © 2009-2021

So the cows eat barberries, and help disperse or disseminate them exactly as they do the apple!

May 29. 

May 29, 2018

P. M. – To Bateman's Pond via Pratt's. 

Buttonwood, one tree, not for two or three days. 

Rubus triflorus, well out, at Calla Swamp, how long?

Calla apparently in two or three, or three or four days, the very earliest. 

Arethusa bulbosa, well out. 

Cornus Canadensis blooms apparently with C. florida; not quite yet. 

I mistook dense groves of little barberries in the droppings of cows in the Boulder Field for apple trees at first. So the cows eat barberries, and help disperse or disseminate them exactly as they do the apple! That helps account for the spread of the barberry, then. 

See the genista, winter-killed at top, some seven or eight rods north of the southernmost large boulder in the Boulder Field. 

Cannot find any large corydalis plants where it has been very plenty. 

A few of the Cornus florida buds by the pond have escaped after all. 

Farmer describes an animal which he saw lately near Bateman's Pond, which he thought would weigh fifty or sixty pounds, color of a she fox at this season, low but very long, and ran somewhat like a woodchuck. I think it must have been an otter, though they are described as dark glossy-brown.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 29, 1858

Calla apparently in two or three, or three or four days, the very earliest. See June 7, 1857 (“Pratt has got the Calla palustris, in prime. . .from the bog near Bateman's Pond”) and note to July 2, 1857 ("Calla palustris . . . at the south end of Gowing's Swamp. Having found this in one place, I now find it in another.")

Arethusa bulbosa, well out. See note to May 29, 1856 ("Two Arethusa bulbosa at Hubbard’s Close apparently a day or two.")

See the genista, winter-killed at top, some seven or eight rods north of the southernmost large boulder in the Boulder Field. See May 21, 1858 ("Pratt shows me what I take to be Genista tinctoria (not budded) from the Boulder Field");  June 28, 1858  ("The Genista tinctoria has been open apparently a week. It has a pretty and lively effect, reminding me for some reason of the poverty-grass."). See also April 21, 1852 ("In the pasture beyond the brook, where grow the barberries, huckleberries, — creeping juniper, etc., are half a dozen huge boulders, which look grandly now in the storm, covered with greenish-gray lichens, alternating with the slatish-colored rock. Slumbering, silent, . . .I look down on some of them as on the backs of oxen. A certain personality, or at least brute life, they seem to have."); November 3, 1857 ("It is singular that several of those rocks should be thus split into twins. Even very low ones, just appearing above the surface, are divided and parallel, having a path between them. It would be something to own that pasture with the great rocks in it")

The Cornus florida by the pond. See May 18, 1857 (“There is a large tree [Cornus florida] on the further side the ravine near Bateman's Pond and another by some beeches on the rocky hillside a quarter of a mile northeast.”)

These various shades of grass remind me of June, now close at hand.

May 28. 

May 28, 2018

May 28, 2018

I get the nest of the turtle dove above named, it being deserted and no egg left. It appears to have been built on the foundation of an old robin’s nest and consists of a loose wisp of straw and pinweed, the seedy ends projecting, ten inches long, laid across the mud foundation of the robin’s nest, with a very slight depression. Very loose and coarse material is artificially disposed, without any lining or architecture. It was close to a frequented path of the cemetery and within reach of the hand. 

Hear the wood pewee. 

P. M. — By boat to Great Meadows to look for the bittern's nest. 

The Cornus florida involucres are partly expanded, but not yet very showy. 

Salix nigra apparently one day in one place. 

The Salix pedicellaris, which abounds in the Great Meadows, is a peculiar and rather interesting willow, some fifteen inches high and scarcely rising above the grass even now. With its expanded reddish ovaries, it looks like the choke-berry in bud at a little distance. 

The Ranunculus Purshii is now abundant and conspicuous in river. 

I see common in these meadows what appears to be that coarse grass growing in circles, light or yellowish green, with dense wool-grass-like heads and almost black involucres, just begun to bloom. Is it the Scirpus sylvaticus var. atrovirens? (Vide pressed.) As I look far over the meadow, which is very wet, — often a foot of water amid the grass, – I see this yellowish green interspersed with irregular dark-green patches where it is wettest, just like the shadow of a cloud, – and mistook it for that at first. That was a dark-green and fine kind of sedge. These various shades of grass remind me of June, now close at hand. 

From time to time I hear the sound of the bittern, concealed in the grass, indefinitely far or near, and can only guess at the direction, not the distance. I fail to find the nest. 

I come, in the midst of the meadow, on two of the Emys meleagris, much larger than I have found before. Perhaps they are male and female, the one's sternum being decidedly depressed an eighth of an inch, the other's not at all. They are just out of the water, partly concealed by some withered grass, and hiss loudly and run out their long necks very far and struggle a good deal when caught. They continue to scratch my hand in their efforts to escape as I carry them, more than other turtles do. 

The dorsal shield of each is just seven inches long; the sternum of what appears to be the female is about an eighth inch shorter, of the male near a quarter of an inch longer, yet in both the projection of the sternum is chiefly forward. Breadth of shell in the male four and seven eighths, of female four and a half, in middle, but the female widens a little behind. Height of each about two and three quarters inches.

The smoothish dark-brown shells, high, regularly rounded, are very thickly but not conspicuously spotted (unless in water) with small oval or elongated yellow spots, as many as fifty or sixty to a scale, and more or less raying from the origin of the scale, becoming larger and horn-colored on the marginal scales especially of one. The thickly and evenly distributed yellow marks of the head and neck correspond to those of the shell pretty well. 

They are high-backed turtles. The sternum is horn-color, with a large dark or blackish spot occupying a third or more of the rear outer angle of each scale. The throat is clear light-yellow and much and frequently exposed. Tail, tapering and sharp. The claws are quite sharp and perfect. One closes its forward valve to within an eighth of an inch, but the posterior not so much, and evidently they are not inclined to shut up close, if indeed they can at this season, or at all. The sternum of the male, notwithstanding the depression, curves upward at each extremity much more than the female's. 

They run out their heads remarkably far and have quite a harmless and helpless expression, yet, from the visible length of neck, the more snake-like. About the size of the wood tortoise. Very regularly and smoothly rounded shells. Voided many fragments of common snail-shells and some insect exuviae. 

Hear for a long time, as I sit under a willow, a summer yellowbird sing, without knowing what it is. It is a rich and varied singer with but few notes to remind me of its common one, continually hopping about. 

See already one or two (?) white maple keys on the water. 

Saw the mouse-ear going to seed in Worcester the 23d. 

The red actaea is fully expanded and probably has been open two or three days, but there will be no pollen till to-morrow. 

What kind of cherry tree is that, now rather past prime, wild-red-cherry-like, if not it, between the actaea and river near wall? Some ten inches in diameter. 

Hear the night hawk? and see a bat to-night. 

The earliest cinnamon fern, apparently not long. 

E. Hoar finds the Eriophorum vaginatum at Ledum Swamp, with lead-colored scales; how long?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 28, 1858

May 28, ,2018

The Ranunculus Purshii is now abundant and conspicuous in river. See May 26, 1855 ("The Ranunculus Purshii in that large pool in the Holden Swamp Woods makes quite a show at a little distance now."); June 6, 1857 ('The Ranunculus Purshii is in some places abundantly out now and quite showy. It must be our largest ranunculus (flower).”) See also May 18, 1853 ("Surprised to see a Ranunculus Purshii open.")

These various shades of grass remind me of June.  See May 27, 1855 ("The fields now begin to wear the aspect of June, their grass just beginning to wave;. . . ”);  May 27, 1853 ("A new season has commenced - summer - leafy June.”)

Two of the Emys meleagris, much larger than I have found before. See March 20, 1857 (“[Agassiz says t]he Cistuda Blandingii (which he has heard of in Massachusetts only at Lancaster) copulates at eight or nine years of age. He says this is not a Cistuda but an Emys.”); July 20 1857 (“De Kay does not describe the Cistuda Blandingii as found in New York. ”)

See already one or two white maple keys on the water. See May 29, 1854 (“The white maple keys have begun to fall and float down the stream like the wings of great insects.”); May 30, 1853 ("The white maple keys falling and covering the river."); 

May 28. SeeA Book of the Seasons,, by Henry Thoreau, May 28

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 ©  2009-2021

To measure the egg.

May 27. 

May 27, 2018

At Boston, Cambridge, and Concord. 

De Kay describes the Esox fasciatus, which is apparently mine of May 11th. As I count, the rays are the same in number, viz. “P. 13, V. 9, D. 14, A. 13, C. 20.” He says it is from six to eight inches long and abundant in New York; among other things is distinguished by “a muddy tinge of the roundish pectoral, abdominal, and ventral fins; and by a broad concave or lunated tail.” I do not observe the peculiarity in the tail in mine, now it is in spirits. 

Ed. Emerson shows me an egg of a bittern (Ardea minor) from a nest in the midst of the Great Meadows, which four boys found, scaring up the bird, last Monday, the 24th. It was about a foot wide on the top of a tussock, where the water around was about one foot deep. I will measure the egg. They were a little developed. It is clay-colored, one and seven eighths inches long by one and nine sixteenths, about the same size at each end.  

Also an egg of a turtle dove, one of two in a nest in a pitch pine, about six feet from the ground, in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, by the side of a frequented walk, on a fork on a nearly horizontal limb. The egg is milk-white, elliptical, one and three sixteenths inches long by seven eighths wide.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 27, 1858

De Kay describes the Esox fasciatus., which is apparently mine of May 11th. See May 11, 1858 (“the little brook (?) pickerel, of Hubbard's ditches, . . . I caught two directly. ”) See also Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History ("[Mr. Putnam] exhibited specimens of the young and adult pickerel, to show that the "short-nosed pickerel " is specifically distinct from the "long-nosed " — the Esox reticulatus — and said that the " short-nosed " species is the Esox fasciatus of Dekay, which is not the young of the Esox reticulates”)   See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

A nest of a bittern (Ardea minor) in the midst of the Great Meadows about a foot wide on the top of a tussock. See  June 11, 1860 ("I hear a sound just like a small dog barking hoarsely, and, looking up, see it was made by a bittern  (Ardea minor), a pair of which flap over the meadows and probably nest in some tussock thereabouts.”)

Boston

May 26. 

May 26, 2018

3 P. M. – Return to Boston.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 26, 1858

May 26. See  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 26

Visited the Egyptian Museum.

May 25. 

May 25, 2018

Visited the Egyptian Museum. The chariot wheel might have been picked out of a ditch in Carlisle, and the infant's shoe have been found with it. 

P. M. — To Staten Island. 

See an abundance of Ranunculus abortivus in the wood-path behind Mr. E.'s house, going to seed and in bloom. The branches are fine and spreading, about eight or ten inches high. (Vide pressed plants.) 

Also some R. recurvatus; and, well out, what appears to be Thaspium trifoliatum (?) in flower, in path to house. (Vide pressed.)

Potatoes just hoed; ours not fairly up.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal May 25, 1858

Ranunculus recurvatus well out See May 26, 1855 ("Ranunculus recurvatus at Corner Spring up several days at least; pollen.")

We walk to the fort on the main road and back on the Boulder trail. On the way I hear the eastern wood pewee for the first time peweeing in the now summery woods. We smell rain as we start out and hear rain in the canopy at the fort We cut saplings there. Going back past the wetland we look at cinnamon firm and Royal fern --  and a little ways on maidenhair fern I take a picture of it when I go to post it later find it Henry on May 26 has been looking at the mathematical purity of ferns in the open air. Zphx 20180525

In the the aquarium at Barnum's the glass boxes with nothing but water (labelled fresh or salt) seemed sufficiently interesting.

May 24.

Monday. To New York by railroad.

All through Connecticut and New York the white involucres of the cornel (C. Florida), recently expanded, some of them reddish or rosaceous, are now conspicuous. It is not quite expanded in Concord.

It is the most showy indigenous tree now open. (One plant at Staten Island on the 25th had but just begun to flower, i. e. the true flowers to open.)

After entering the State of New York I observed, now fully in bloom, what I call the Viburnum prunifolium, looking very like our V. Lentago in flower at a little distance. It is thorny, as they told me at Staten Island, and the same I dealt with at Perth Amboy, and is insufficiently described.

It grows on higher and drier ground than our V. nudum, but its fruit, which is called “nanny berries,” resembles that rather than the V. Lentago. It shows now rich, dense, rounded masses of white flowers; i.e., the surface of the bushes makes the impression of regular curves or convex masses of bloom, bearing a large proportion to the green leaves.

The pink azalea, too, not yet out at home, is generally out, with the cornel. (I see it also next day at Staten Island.)

I saw a musquash swimming across a pool, I think after entering upon Manhattan Island!

In the evening, looked at the aquarium at Barnum's. The glass boxes with nothing but water (labelled fresh or salt) and pebbles seemed sufficiently interesting.

There were breams only two inches long, probably hatched only last year. The sea-anemones were new and interesting to me. The ferns, etc., under glass a fine parlor ornament.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 24, 1858



The white involucres of the cornel (C. Florida), recently expanded, some of them reddish or rosaceous, are now conspicuous. It is not quite expanded in Concord. See  May 16, 1858 ("The flower-buds of the Cornus florida are five eighths of an inch in diameter."). See also   May 25, 1855 ("Cornus florida, no bloom. Was there year before last? Does it not flower every other year?”); May 22, 1856("The Cornus florida does not bloom this year.")

May 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 24 

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 © 2009-2021

A lightning trench

May 23. 

In Worcester. 

5 A. M.  Walk with Blake, Brown, and Rogers to Quinsigamond Pond, carrying our breakfast. 

Paddled up the pond northerly three quarters of a mile from the bridge, and lunched in Shrewsbury on the east side. See some quite fresh frog-spawn of the dark kind, like the Rana palustris, for instance. Cross and ascend Wigwam Hill. Krigia and comandra out there. Brown thrasher's nest on ground, under a small tree, with four eggs. 

Found in the water, eight or ten inches deep, just behind the Lake House, a nasturtium not quite open, which I think must be a variety of the horse-radish (N. Armoracia). Yet such a variety is not described by Gray, for the immersed stem leaves were all narrowly dissected and pinnate (vide pressed specimen), and I saw similar ones in the streets in Worcester in dry ground. The lowest portion — for I had not the root — had the true horse-radish taste. It seemed to be the result of its growing at some time in water. Has the N. lacustre the common horse-radish taste? 

A little south of the Boston and Worcester turnpike, and six rods from the west side of the pond, I saw a chestnut about eighteen inches in diameter which was struck by lightning in the night some ten days ago. There was left standing only a splinter of the stump, some seven feet high, with the main limbs fallen upon and around it. The bark and thin slivers or strips of the wood had been cast to a dozen rods around in all directions, the ground being strewn with them, and some rested on the top of an adjacent wood-pile. Also one. or two large limbs were thrown to a distance. 

But what was most remarkable and peculiar, there was a trench somewhat more than two rods long, five feet wide at top, and more than two feet deep, leading perfectly straight from the foot of the tree toward the pond, large old roots being burst through, in the gravelly soil, and masses of the earth cast a rod each way, yet most of the dirt formed a bank to the trench. It would have taken an Irishman at least three hours to have dug this. Then, after an interval of three or four rods, where the ground was a little higher, the trench reappeared at the water's edge, though quite short there, exactly in the line of the first ditch continued, and there some two cartloads of gravelly soil were thrown out, and the water stood in it.

I counted in all nine places within eight or ten rods along the water's edge, or six or eight rods from the tree, where it had made a short furrow in the ground; and in some cases there were slight furrows here and there between these and the tree, as if the lightning had diverged in rays from the base of the tree, perhaps (?) at first along the roots to the pond.

Did it pass through the ground when it did not break the surface? The bark was not so much stripped off as I have seen, but the wood was finely splintered.

H. d. Thoreau, Journal, May 23, 1858

See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau May 23

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 © 2009-2021

Before man was here to behold them, the sun was reflected from the lily pad after the May storm as brightly as now.

May 22. 

Saturday. Ed. Emerson brings me the egg of a hawk, dirty bluish-white, just found, with three other eggs not much developed, in a nest on the ground. Probably a hen-harrier's. 

P. M. — By cars to Worcester, on way to New York.

We have had much rainy weather for about a week, and it has just cleared up. I notice, as I glide along, that the sun coming out shines brightly on smooth waters, ponds, and flooded meadows raised by the rain, and is reflected from the new lily pads, which most now first generally notice, spread out on the surface, the foul weather having prevented our observing their growth. Something like this annually occurs. 

After this May storm the sun bursts forth and is reflected brightly in some placid hour from the new leaves of the lily spread out on the surface in the ponds and pools raised [by] the rain, and we seem to have taken a long stride into summer. 

So was it also in a former geological age, when water and water-plants prevailed and before man was here to behold them. The sun was then reflected from the lily pad after the May storm as brightly as now.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 22, 1858

Something like this annually occurs. After this May storm the sun bursts forth and we seem to have taken a long stride into summer. See May 22, 1857 ("When the May storm is over, then the summer is fairly begun. "); May 17, 1853 ("Does not summer begin after the May storm?”);May 11, 1854 (" I suspect that summer weather may be always ushered in in a similar manner, — thunder-shower, rainbow, smooth water, and warm night.")


Water-plants prevailed and before man was here to behold them. See April 28, 1852 ("This may, perhaps, be nearly the order of the world's creation. Such were the first localities afforded for plants, water-bottoms, bare rocks, and scantily clad lands, and land recently bared of water.Thus we have in the spring of the year the spring of the world represented."); February 11, 1854 ("For how many aeons did the willow shed its yellow pollen annually before man was created!")

The propagation of birches by seed blown in winter.

May 21. 

May 21, 2018

P. M. – To Boulder Field. 

Horse-chestnut in bloom. 

Aetoea  spicata var. rubra will bloom, apparently, in four or five days. It is now fifteen inches high. 

Lilac in bloom. 

Pratt shows me what I take to be Genista tinctoria (not budded) from the Boulder Field. It has leafed; when? 

Also a ranunculus from his land, – which has been out how long?— which is very near to R. repens, but has small flowers, petals less than the calyx, and leaves, methinks, more divided, but I did not see it open. It may be a variety of repens. 

His daughter has found in bloom: huckleberry on the 19th; Viola pubescens, 16th; Geranium maculatum, 18th. 

I notice that the old indigo-bird path behind Pratt's is for some distance distinctly defined by young birches, three or four feet high, which are now clothed with tender leaves before the young oaks, etc., on each side. They are especially thick in the ruts, while there are but few here and there in the sprout-land generally. I suspect that the seed was blown and lodged there in the winter. 

E. Hoar saw Silene Pennsylvanica out in Lincoln to day, in a warm cleft of a rock; also Cerasus pumila between here and Newton.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 21, 1858

Birches thick in the ruts, the seed was blown and lodged there in the winter. See March 2, 1856 ("Walking up the river by Prichard's, was surprised to see, on the snow over the river, a great many seeds and scales of birches, . . . A great proportion of the seed that was carried to a distance lodged in the hollow over the river, and when the river breaks up will be carried far away, to distant shores and meadows. "); May 12, 1858 (“I notice that birches near meadows,. . . grow in more or less parallel lines a foot or two apart, parallel with the shore, apparently the seed having been dropped there either by a freshet or else lodged in the parallel waving hollows of the snow.”)

A very wild sight.

May 20. 

P. M. – Up Assabet. 

A cloudy afternoon, with a cool east wind, producing a mist. 

May 20, 2018

Hundreds of swallows are now skimming close over the river, at its broadest part, where it is shallow and runs the swiftest, just below the Island, for a distance of twenty rods. There are bank, barn, cliff, and chimney swallows, all mingled together and continually scaling back and forth, – a very lively sight. 

They keep descending or stooping to within a few inches of the water on a curving wing, without quite touching it, and I suppose are attracted by some small insects which hover close over it. They also stoop low about me as I stand on the flat island there, but I do not perceive the insects. They rarely rise more than five feet above the surface, and a general twittering adds to the impression of sociability. 

The principal note is the low grating sound of the bank swallow, and I hear the vit vit of the barn swallow. The cliff swallow, then, is here. 

Are the insects in any measure confined to that part of the river? Or are they congregated for the sake of society? I have also in other years noticed them over another swift place, at Hubbard's Bath, and also, when they first come, in smaller numbers, over the still and smooth water under the lee of the Island wood. They are thick as the gnats which perhaps they catch. 

Swallows are more confident and fly nearer to man than most birds. It may be because they are more protected by the sentiment and superstitions of men. 

The season is more backward on account of the cloudy and rainy weather of the last four or five days and some preceding. 

The Polygonatum pubescens, not quite. 

The red oak is not out. 

Hear a quail whistle. 

I notice that the sugar maple opposite Barrett's does not bloom this year, nor does the canoe birch by the Hemlocks bear sterile catkins. Perhaps they more or less respect the alternate years. 

3.30 P. M. — To Brister's Hill. 

Going along the deep valley in the woods, just before entering the part called Laurel Glen, I heard a noise, and saw a fox running off along the shrubby side-hill. It looked like a rather small dirty-brown fox, and very clumsy, running much like a wood chuck. It had a dirty or dark brown tail, with very little white to the tip. A few steps further I came upon the remains of a woodchuck, yet warm, which it had been eating. Head, legs, and tail, all remained, united by the skin, but the bowels and a good part of the flesh were eaten. This was evidently a young fox, say three quarters grown, or perhaps less, and appeared as full as a tick. 

There was a fox-hole within three rods, with a very large sand-heap, several cartloads, before it, much trodden. Hearing a bird of which I was in search, I turned to examine it, when I heard a bark behind me, and, looking round, saw an old fox on the brow of the hill on the west side of the valley, amid the bushes, about ten rods off, looking down at me. 

At first it was a short, puppy-like bark, but afterward it began to bark on a higher key and more prolonged, very unlike a dog, a very ragged half-screaming bur ar-r-r. I proceeded along the valley half a dozen rods after a little delay (the fox being gone), and then looked round to see if it returned to the woodchuck. 

I then saw a full-grown fox, perhaps the same as the last, cross the valley through the thin low wood fifteen or twenty rods behind me, but from east to west, pausing and looking at me anxiously from time to time. It was rather light tawny (not fox-colored) with dusky-brown bars, and looked very large, wolf-like. The full-grown fox stood much higher on its legs and was longer, but the body was apparently not much heavier than that of the young. 

Going a little further, I came to another hole, and ten feet off was a space of a dozen square feet amid some little oaks, worn quite bare and smooth, apparently by the playing of the foxes, and the ground close around a large stump about a rod from the hole was worn bare and hard, and all the bark and much of the rotten wood was pawed or gnawed off lately. They had pawed a deep channel about one and in between the roots, perhaps for insects. There lay the remains of another woodchuck, now dry, the head, skin, and legs being left, and also part of the skin of a third, and the bones of another animal, and some partridge feathers. The old foxes had kept their larder well supplied. 

Within a rod was another hole, apparently a back door, having no heap of sand, and five or six rods off another in the side of the hill with a small sand-heap, and, as far down the valley, another with a large sand-heap and a back door with none. There was a well-beaten path from the one on the side hill five or six rods long to one in the valley, and there was much blackish dung about the holes and stump and the path. By the hole furthest down the valley was another stump, which had been gnawed (?) very much and trampled and pawed about like the other. I suppose the young foxes play there. 

There were half a dozen holes or more, and what with the skulls and feathers and skin and bones about, I was reminded of Golgotha. These holes were some of them very large and conspicuous, a foot wide vertically, by eight or ten inches, going into the side-hill with a curving stoop, and there was commonly a very large heap of sand before them, trodden smooth. It was a sprout-land valley, cut off but a year or two since. 

As I stood by the last hole, I heard the old fox bark, and saw her (?) near the brow of the hill on the north west, amid the bushes, restless and anxious, overlooking me a dozen or fourteen rods off. I was, on doubt, by the hole in which the young were. She uttered at very short intervals a prolonged, shrill, screeching kind of bark, beginning lower and rising to a very high key, lasting two seconds; a very broken and ragged sound, more like the scream of a large and angry bird than the bark of a dog, trilled like a piece of vibrating metal at the end. 

It moved restlessly back and forth, or approached nearer, and stood or sat on its haunches like a dog with its tail laid out in a curve on one side, and when it barked it laid its ears flat back and stretched its nose forward. Sometimes it uttered a short, puppy like, snappish bark. It was not fox-colored now, but a very light tawny or wolf-color, dark-brown or dusky beneath in a broad line from its throat; its legs the same, with a broad dusky perpendicular band on its haunches and similar ones on its tail, and a small whitish spot on each side of its mouth. There it sat like a chieftain on his hills, looking, methought, as big as a prairie wolf, and shaggy like it, anxious and even fierce, as I peered through my glass. 

I noticed, when it withdrew, – I too withdrawing in the opposite direction, — that as it had descended the hill a little way and wanted to go off over the pinnacle without my seeing which way it went, it ran one side about ten feet, till it was behind a small white pine, then turned at a right angle and ascended the hill directly, with the pine between us. The sight of it suggested that two or three might attack a man. The note was a shrill, vibrating scream or cry; could easily be heard a quarter of a mile. 

How many woodchucks, rabbits, partridges, etc., etc., they must kill, and yet how few of them are seen! A very wolfish color. It must have been a large fox, and, if it is true that the old are white on the sides of the face, an old one. They evidently used more than a half dozen holes within fifteen rods. I withdrew the sooner for fear by his barking he would be betrayed to some dog or gunner. 

It was a very wild sight to see the wolf-like parent circling about me in the thin wood, from time to time pausing to look and bark at me. 

This appears to be nearest to the cross fox of Audubon, and is considered a variety of the red by him and most others, not white beneath as the red fox of Harlan. Emmons says of the red fox, “In the spring the color appears to fade,” and that some are “pale yellow,” but does not describe minutely. This was probably a female, for Bell says of the English fox that the female “loses all her timidity and shyness when suckling her young;” also that they are a year and a half in attaining their full size.

[I find afterward three or four more fox-holes near by, and see where they have sat on a large upturned stump, which had heaved up earth with it. Many large pieces of woodchuck's skin about these holes. They leave the head and feet. A scent of carrion about the holes.]

Hear the pepe. 

See tanagers, male and female, in the top of a pine, one red, other yellow, from below. We have got to these high colors among birds. 

Saw in the street a young cat owl, one of two which Skinner killed in Walden Woods yesterday. It was almost ready to fly, at least two and a half feet in alar extent; tawny with many black bars, and darker on wings. Holmes, in Patent Office Report, says they “pair early in February.” 

So I visited the nest. It was in a large white pine close on the north side of the path, some ten rods west of the old Stratton cellar in the woods. This is the largest pine thereabouts, and the nest is some thirty-five feet high on two limbs close to the main stem, and, according to Skinner, was not much more than a foot across, made of small sticks, nearly flat, “without fine stuff!” There were but two young. This is a path which somebody travels every half-day, at least, and only a stone's throw from the great road. There were many white droppings about and large rejected pellets containing the vertebrae and hair of a skunk. 

As I stood there, I heard the crows making a great noise some thirty or forty rods off, and immediately suspected that they were pestering one of the old owls, which Skinner had not seen. It proved so, for, as I approached, the owl sailed away from amidst a white pine top, with the crows in full pursuit, and he looked very large, stately, and heavy, like a seventy-four among schooners. I soon knew by the loud cawing of the crows that he had alighted again some forty rods off, and there again I found him perched high on a white pine, the large tawny fellow with black dashes and large erect horns. Away he goes again, and the crows after him.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 20, 1858

Hundreds of swallows are now skimming close over the river. See note to May 16, 1857 (“An unusual number of swallows are flying low over [the meadows].”)

I heard the old fox bark, a prolonged, shrill, screeching kind of bark, beginning lower and rising to a very high key, lasting two seconds; a very broken and ragged sound. See January 23, 1858 ("What a smothered, ragged, feeble, and unmusical sound is the bark of the fox! ")

Hear the pepe. See May 18,  1857 ("Hear the pepe, how long?”) ; June 6, 1857 ("As I sit on Lee's Cliff, I see a pe-pe on the topmost dead branch of a hickory eight or ten rods off. . . . mouse-colored above and head (which is perhaps darker), white throat, and narrow white beneath, with no white on tail.”); June 10, 1855 ("Nest of the Muscicapa Cooperi, or pe pe, on a white spruce in the Holden Swamp . . .”)

Tanagers, male and female, in the top of a pine, one red, other yellow . . . these high colors among birds. See May 23, 1853 ("I hear and see a tanager. How he enhances the wildness and wealth of the woods! That contrast of a red bird with the green pines and the blue sky! ...”); May 24, 1860 ("You can hardly believe that a living creature can wear such colors.”); May 28, 1855 (" I see a tanager, the most brilliant and tropical-looking bird we have, bright-scarlet with black wings, the scarlet appearing on the rump again between wing-tips. . . .A remarkable contrast with the green pines.”)

It was a very wild sight. See November 27, 1857 (“Returning, I see a fox run across the road in the twilight . . . I feel a certain respect for him, . . ., he still maintains himself free and wild in our midst.”)  and note to January 21, 1857 (“It is remarkable how many tracks of foxes you will see . . . yet a regular walker will not glimpse one oftener than once in eight or ten years.”)

This appears to be nearest to the cross fox of Audubon; Emmons says of the red fox that some are “pale yellow.” See January 30, 1855 ("Minott to-day enumerates the red, gray, black, and what he calls the Sampson fox.”) and Z. Thompson, Natural History of Vermont 35 (“A blackish stripe passing from the neck down the back and another crossing it alright angles over the shoulders . . . Instead of considering the Cross Fox a distinct species, I have concluded to adopt the opinion of Dr. Richardson, who regards it merely as a variety of the common fox.”)