A Book of the Seasons: Fuzzy Gnats

I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

How we enjoy a warm 

and pleasant day at this season! 

We dance like gnats in the sun. 

Henry Thoreau March 25, 1859

February 2.  The winter gnat is seen in the warm air.  February 2, 1854

March 2. We see one or two gnats in the air. March 2, 1860

March 5. We see one or two little gnats or mosquitoes in the air. March 5, 1859 

March 7.   See some fuzzy gnats in the air.  It is an overcast and moist but rather warm afternoon. March 7, 1854

March 7.  C. says that he saw a swarm of very small gnats in the air yesterday. March 7, 1860

March 13. I see some of my little gnats of yesterday in the morning sun, somewhat mosquito-like. March 13, 1853

March 15.  Many large fuzzy gnats and other insects in air.  March 15, 1860

March 19. I see little swarms of those fine fuzzy gnats in the air. I am behind the Hemlocks. It is their wings which are most conspicuous, when they are in the sun. Their bodies are comparatively small and black, and they have two mourning plumes in their fronts. Are not these the winter gnat? They keep up a circulation in the air like water-bugs on the water. They people a portion of the otherwise vacant air, being apparently fond of the sunshine, in which they are most conspicuous. Sometimes a globular swarm two feet or more in diameter, suggesting how genial and habitable the air is become.   March 19, 1858 

March 20. It cheers me more to behold the swarms of gnats which have revived in the spring sun. March 20, 1858

March 23.  We cross to Lee's shore and sit upon the bare rocky ridge overlooking the flood southwest and northeast. It is quite sunny and sufficiently warm. I see one or two of the small fuzzy gnats in the air. March 23, 1859

March 28  The little fuzzy gnats, too, are in swarms in the air, peopling that uncrowded space. They are not confined by any fence. Already the distant forest is streaked with lines of thicker and whiter haze over the successive valleys March 28, 1858

March 29.   Under the south side of Clamshell Hill, in the sun, the air is filled with those black fuzzy gnats, and I hear a fine hum from them. The first humming of insects — unless of those honey-bees the other day— of the season March 29, 1853

March 31.  The fuzzy gnats are in the air, and bluebirds, whose warble is thawed out. I am uncomfortably warm, gradually unbutton both my coats, and wish that I had left the outside one at home. March 31, 1855

April 2.There are many fuzzy gnats now in the air, windy as it is. Especially I see them under the lee of the middle Conantum cliff, in dense swarms, all headed one way, but rising and falling suddenly all together as if tossed by the wind. They appear to love best a position just below the edge of the cliff, and to rise constantly high enough to feel the wind from over the edge, and then sink suddenly down again. They are not, perhaps, so thick as they will be, but they are suddenly much thicker than they were, and perhaps their presence affects the arrival of the phoebe, which, I suspect, feeds on them.  April 2, 1859

April 5.   See a single white-bellied swallow dashing over the river. He, too, is attracted here by the early insects that begin to be seen over the water.  See this forenoon a great many of those little fuzzy gnats in the air. April 5, 1855

April 9. Small reddish butterflies common; also, on snowbanks, small fuzzy gnats and large black dor-bug-like beetles.  April 9, 1861

April 15. Robins sing now at 10 A. M. as in the morning, and the phoebe; and pigeon woodpecker’s cackle is heard, and many martins (with white—bellied swallows) are skimming and twittering above the water, perhaps catching the small fuzzy gnats with which the air is filled. April 15, 1855

April 21.  All the button-bushes, etc., etc., in and about the water are now swarming with those minute fuzzy gnats about an eighth of an inch long. The insect youth are on the wing. The whole shore resounds with their hum wherever we approach it, and they cover our boat and persons. They are in countless myriads the whole length of the river. April 21, 1855

April 24.  The little fuzzy gnats are about. I see a vertical circular cobweb, more than a foot in diameter, nearly filled with them, and this revealed the existence of the swarms that had filled the air on all sides. If it had been as many yards wide as it was inches, it would probably have been just as full. April 24, 1857

April 28.   Those little gnats of the 21st are still in the air in the sun under this hill, but elsewhere the cold strong wind has either drowned them or chilled them to death. I see where they have taken refuge in a boat and covered its bottom with large black patches.  April 28, 1855

April 30. I observed yesterday that the barn swallows confined themselves to one place, about fifteen rods in diameter, in Willow Bay, about the sharp rock. They kept circling about and flying up the stream (the wind easterly), about six inches above the water, — it was cloudy and almost raining, — yet I could not perceive any insects there. Those myriads of little fuzzy gnats mentioned on the 21st and 28th must afford an abundance of food to insectivorous birds. Many new birds should have arrived about the 21st. There were plenty of myrtle-birds and yellow redpolls where the gnats were.   April 30, 1855

May 4. 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.)  May 4, 1856

May 8.    I see countless little fuzzy gnats in the air, and dust over the road, between me and the departed sun. May 8 1857

May 22.  I noticed a cobweb the other day, between the thole-pins of my boat, which was perfectly black with those little fuzzy gnats which fly at that height and take shelter from wind in boats and the like. A little clammy hairy cerastium (?) (like a Cerastium viscosum, slender and erect), about three inches high, will open in a day or two on the rock near the bass., May 22, 1856

June 10. Water-plants are thickly covered and defiled with the sloughs, perhaps of those little fuzzy gnats (in their first state) which have so swarmed over the river. June 10, 1856 

September 3. Though it is warm enough, I notice again the swarms of fuzzy gnats dancing in the cooler air, which also is decidedly autumnal. September 3, 1860

September 9. I have noticed for a week or more some swarms of light-colored and very small fuzzy gnats in the air, yet not in such concentrated swarms as I shall see by and by. September 9, 1859

September 19.  As I stand on the shore of the most westerly Cassandra Pond but one, I see in the air between me and the sun those interesting swarms of minute light-colored gnats, looking like motes in the sun. These may be allied to the winter gnat of Kirby and Spence. Do they not first appear with cooler and frosty weather, when we have had a slight foretaste of winter? Then in the clear, cool air they are seen to dance. These are about an eighth of an inch long, with a greenish body and two light-colored plumes in front; the wings not so long as the body. So I think they are different from those over the river in the spring. I see a dozen of these choirs within two or three rods, their centres about six feet above the surface of the water andromeda. These separate communities are narrow horizontally and long vertically, about eighteen inches wide and densest in the middle, regularly thinning to nothing at the edges. These individuals are constantly gyrating up and down, cutting figures of 8 like the water-bug, but keeping nearly about the same place. It is to me a very agreeable reminder of cooler weather. September 19, 1858

September 29.   Catch some of those little fuzzy gnats dancing in the air there over the shelly bank, and these are black, with black plumes, unlike those last seen over the Cassandra Pond. September 29, 1858

October 19. I noticed, two or three days ago, after one of those frosty mornings, half an hour before sunset of a clear and pleasant day, a swarm, — were they not of winter gnats ? — between me and the sun like so many motes,. . .Each insect was acting its part in a ceaseless dance, rising and falling a few inches while the swarm kept its place. Is not this a forerunner of winter? October 19, 1856

December 6. This is the warmest and pleasantest day yet. . . . I see many little gnat-like insects in the air there.   December 6, 1852

January 6.  A winter (?) gnat out on the bark of a pine. January 6, 1854

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats

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