A very large black snake I thought was preparing to strike at me

May 16. 

A. M. – Up Assabet. 

Aralia nudicaulis at Island. The leaf-stalks are often eaten off, probably by some quadruped. 

The flower-buds of the Cornus florida are five eighths of an inch in diameter. 

The Salix lucida will hardly bloom within two days. The S. Torreyana catkins are so reddish that at a little distance it looks some what like the common black cherry now leafing. 

A hummingbird yesterday came into the next house and was caught. Flew about our parlor to-day and tasted Sophia's flowers. In some lights you saw none of the colors of its throat. In others, in the shade the throat was a clear bright scarlet, but in the sun it glowed with splendid metallic, fiery reflections about the neck and throat. 

It uttered from time to time, as it flew, a faint squeaking chirp or chirrup. The hum sounded more hollow when it approached a flower. Its wings fanned the air so forcibly that you-felt the cool wind they raised a foot off, and nearer it was very remarkable. Does not this very motion of the wings keep a bird cool in hot weather? 

The only indigenous willow I noticed yesterday on the Shawsheen — a mile below Fitch's mill — was the small sericea, such as by Assabet white maple. 

What was that loud but distant note of a bird, apparently in the low land, somewhat like the guinea-hen note, also reminding me a little of the plover about Truro light, but apparently a hawk? 

Got quite a view down the valley of the Shawsheen below the junction of Vine Brook, northeast, from a hill in the extreme northeast of Bedford.

P. M. – To Uvularia perfoliata at Flint's Pond. 

See again the warbler of yesterday. All bright yellow beneath and apparently bluish-slate above, but I do not see it well. Its note, with little variation, is like twit twit, twit twit, twitter twitter twe. It must be the parti-colored warbler.

Sat down in the sun in the path through Wright's wood-lot above Goose Pond, but soon, hearing a slight rustling, I looked round and saw a very large black snake about five feet long on the dry leaves, about a rod off. 

When I moved, it vibrated its tail very rapidly and smartly, which made quite a loud rustling or rattling sound, reminding me of the rattlesnake, as if many snakes obeyed the same instinct as the rattle snake when they vibrate their tails. Once I thought I heard a low hiss. 

It was on the edge of a young wood of oaks and a few white pines from ten to eighteen feet high, the oaks as yet bare of leaves. 

As I moved toward the snake, I thought it would take refuge in some hole, but it appeared that it was out on a scout and did not know of any place of refuge near. Suddenly, as it moved along, it erected itself half its length, and when I thought it was preparing to strike at me, to my surprise it glided up a slender oak sapling about an inch in diameter at the ground and ten feet high. 

It ascended this easily and quickly, at first, I think, slanting its body over the lowest twig of the next tree. There were seven little branches for nine feet, averaging about the size of a pipe-stem. It moved up in a somewhat zig zag manner, availing itself of the branches, yet also in part spirally about the main stem. It finds a rest (or hold if necessary) for its neck or forward part of its body, moving crosswise the small twigs, then draws up the rest of its body. From the top of this little oak it passed into the top of a white pine of the same height an inch and a half in diameter at the ground and two feet off; from this into another oak, fifteen feet high and three feet from the pine; from this to another oak, three feet from the last and about the same height; from this to a large oak about four feet off and three or four inches in diameter, in which it was about fourteen feet from the ground; thence through two more oaks, a little lower, at intervals of four feet, and so into a white pine; and at last into a smaller white pine and thence to the ground. 

The distance in a straight line from where it left the ground to where it descended was about twenty-five feet, and the greatest height it reached, about fourteen feet. It moved quite deliberately for the most part, choosing its course from tree to tree with great skill, and resting from time to time while it watched me, only my approach compelling it to move again. 

It surprised me very much to see it cross from tree to tree exactly like a squirrel, where there appeared little or no support for such a body. It would glide down the proper twig, its body resting at intervals of a foot or two, on the smaller side twigs, perchance, and then would easily cross an interval of two feet, sometimes in an ascending, sometimes a descending, direction. If the latter, its weight at last bent the first twig down nearer to the opposite one. It would extend its neck very much, as I could see by the increased width of the scales exposed, till its neck rested across the opposite twig, hold on all the while tightly to some part of the last twig by the very tip of its tail, which was curled round it just like a monkey's. 

I have hardly seen a squirrel rest on such slight twigs as it would rest on in mid-air, only two or three not bigger than a pipe-stem, while its body stretched clear a foot at least between two trees. It was not at all like creeping over a coarse basket work, but suggested long practice and skill, like the rope dancer's. There were no limbs for it to use comparable for size with its own body, and you hardly noticed the few slight twigs it rested on, as it glided through the air. 

When its neck rested on the opposite twig, it was, as it were, glued to it. It helped itself over or up them as surely as if it grasped with a hand. There were, no doubt, rigid kinks in its body when they were needed for support. It is a sort of endless hook, and, by its ability to bend its body in every direction, it finds some support on every side. Perhaps the edges of its scales give it a hold also. 

It is evident that it can take the young birds out of a sapling of any height, and no twigs are so small and pliant as to prevent it. Pendulous sprays would be the most difficult for it, where the twigs are more nearly parallel with the main one, as well as nearly vertical, but even then it might hold on by its tail while its head hung below. I have no doubt that this snake could have reached many of the oriole-nests which I have seen. 

I noticed that in its anger its rigid neck was very much flattened or compressed vertically. At length it coiled itself upon itself as if to strike, and, I presenting a stick, it struck it smartly and then darted away, running swiftly down the hill toward the pond. 

Yellow butterflies. 

Nabalus leaves are already up and coming up in the wood-paths. 

Also the radical leaves of one variety of Solidago arguta, and apparently of S. altissima, are conspicuously up. 

A golden-crowned thrush hops quite near. It is quite small, about the size of the creeper, with the upper part of its breast thickly and distinctly pencilled with black, a tawny head; and utters now only a sharp cluck for a chip. 

See and hear a redstart, the rhythm of whose strain is tse'-tse, tse'-tse, tse', emphasizing the last syllable of all and not ending with the common tsear. 

Hear the night-warbler. 

The Uvularia perfoliata, which did not show itself at all on the 3d, is now conspicuous, and one is open but will not shed pollen before to-morrow. It has shot up about ten inches in one case and bloomed within thirteen days!! 

Ranunculus repens at Brister's Spring; how long? Was that R. repens at the Everett Spring on the 3d? [Yes.]

The whip-poor-will heard. 

E. Hoar detected the other day two ovaries under one scale of a Salix rostrata, and, under another, a stamen and another stamen converted into an ovary.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 16, 1858

To Uvularia perfoliata at Flint's Pond. See May 16, 1852 ("The sessile-leaved bellwort, with three or four delicate pale-green leaves with reflexed edges, on a tender-looking stalk, the single modest-colored flower gracefully drooping, neat, with a fugacious, richly spiced fragrance, facing the ground, the dry leaves, as if unworthy to face the heavens. It is a beautiful sight, a pleasing discovery, the first of the season, -- growing in a little straggling company, in damp woods or swamps. When you turn up the drooping flower, its petals make a perfect geometrical figure, a six-pointed star. ")

A hummingbird in some lights the shade the throat was a clear bright scarlet, but in the sun it glowed with splendid metallic, fiery reflections. See  May 17, 1856 (" A splendid male hummingbird . . . This golden-green gem. Its burnished back looks as if covered with green scales dusted with gold. . . . turning toward me that splendid ruby on its breast, that glowing ruby.") May 15, 1855("Hear a hummingbird in the garden."); May 16, 1852 ("I hear a hummingbird about the columbines.").