Saw and heard the small pewee yesterday.

May 5. 

May 5, 2018

The two Rana palustris which I caught May 1st have been coupled ever since in a firkin in my chamber. They were not coupled when I caught them. Last night I heard them hopping about, for the first time, as if trying to get out. Perhaps the female was trying to find a good place to deposit her spawn. 

As soon as I get up I find that she has dropped her spawn, a globular mass, wrong or white side up, about two inches in diameter, which still adheres to her posterior, and the male still lies on her back. A few moments later they are separate. 

The female moves about restlessly from time to time, the spawn still attached, but soon it is detached from her posterior, still adhering to her right leg, as if merely sticking to it. In the course of the forenoon it becomes quite detached. 

At night they are coupled again. The spawn was not dropped at 10 P.M. the evening before, but apparently in the night. The female now looked long and lank. 

This is the first spawn I have known to be dropped by the R. palustris. I should not know it by its appearance from that of the sylvatica and halecina.

The only frogs hereabouts whose spawn I do not know are the bullfrogs, R. fontinalis, and hylodes. The first have not begun to trump, and I conclude are not yet breeding; the last, I think, must be nearly done breeding, and probably do not put their spawn in the river proper; possibly, therefore, the oat spawn of yesterday may be that of the R. fontinalis.

Saw and heard the small pewee yesterday. 

The aspen leaves at Island to-day appear as big as a nine pence suddenly.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 5, 1858

Saw and heard the small pewee yesterday. See May 3, 1854 ("What I have called the small pewee on the willow by my boat, — quite small, uttering a short tchevet from time to time.”); May 7, 1852 ("The first small pewee sings now che-vet, or rather chirrups chevet, tche-vet — a rather delicate bird with a large head and two white bars on wings.) Also note to May 3, 1855("Small pewee; tchevet, with a jerk of the head.”)   ~ The “Small Pewee” is listed as Muscicapa acadia in Report on the Fishes, Reptiles and Birds of Massachusetts 295 (1839), also in Thompson, Natural History of Vermont, part I, 76 (1842). Probably what Thoreau calls the "small pewee” is what we now know as the Least Flycatcher (Empidonax minimus). It arrives in Massachusetts the last week in April and in Vermont the first week of May. See A Book of the Seasons, the "Small Pewee”

The aspen leaves at Island to-day appear as big as a nine pence suddenly. See May 2, 1855 (" The young aspens are the first of indigenous trees conspicuously leafed.”); May 2, 1859 (" I am surprised by the tender yellowish green of the aspen leaf just expanded suddenly, even like a fire, seen in the sun, against the dark-brown twigs of the wood, though these leafets are yet but thinly dispersed. It is very enlivening.”); May 4, 1856 ("The aspen there ( the Island) just begun to leaf.”)