The origins of the islands in the meadow.

April 12. 

Clears up in afternoon. 

April 12, 2019

P. M. — Paddle to Cliffs. 

I saw a minnow on the 10th which looked like a young brook minnow, not one inch long. When was it spawned? 

The small alder (A. serrulata) is sometimes yellow- flowered, sometimes reddish-flowered. It grows with the incana at Cardinal Shore. 

I see where the musquash has eaten the white base of the pontederia leaves. 

I first perceived the pickerel dart on the 10th, the river having gone down so much that you could not cross the meadows, and that being the first really warm and pleasant day since March 17th. 

Saw a duck, apparently a sheldrake, at the northeast end of Cyanean Meadow. It disappeared at last by diving, and I could not find it. But I saw what looked like a ripple made by the wind, which moved slowly down the river at least forty rods toward the shore and there disappeared. Though I saw no bird there, I suspect that the ripple was made by it. 

Two sheldrakes flew away from this one when first observed. Why did this remain? Was it wounded? Or can those which dart so swiftly across the river and dive be another species and not the young of the season or females of the common one? Is it not, after all, the red-breasted merganser, and did I not see them in Maine? 

I see half a dozen sheldrakes very busily fishing around the base of Lupine Hill or Promontory. There are two full-plumaged males and the rest females, or perhaps some of them young males. They are coasting along swiftly with their bodies sunk low and their heads half under, looking for their prey, one behind another, frequently turning and passing over the same ground again. Their crests are very conspicuous, thus: 

When one sees a fish he at first swims rapidly after it, and then, if necessary, flies close over the water after it, and this excites all the rest to follow, swimming or flying, and if one seizes the fish, which I suspect is commonly a pickerel, they all pursue the lucky fisher, and he makes the water fly far in his efforts to get away and gulp down his fish. I can see the fish in his bill all the while, and he must swallow it very skillfully and quickly, if at all. 

I was first attracted to them by seeing these great birds rushing, shooting, thus swiftly through the air and water and throwing the water high about them. Sometimes they dive and swim quietly beneath, looking for their game. At length they spy me or my boat, and [I] hear a faint quack indicative of alarm, and suddenly all arise and go off. 

In the meanwhile I see two black ducks sailing with them along the shore. These look considerably smaller, and of course carry their heads more erect. They have a raw, gosling look beside the others, and I see their light bills against their dusky necks and heads. At length, when I get near them, I hear their peculiar quack also, and off they go. 

The sheldrakes appear to be a much more lively bird than the black duck. How different from the waddling domestic duck! The former are all alive, eagerly fishing, quick as thought, as they need to be to catch a pickerel. 

I look again at the meadow-crust carried off by the ice. There is one by the railroad bridge, say three rods by one, covered with button-bushes and willows. Another, some five rods by three, at the south end of  Potter Swamp Meadow, also covered densely with button-bushes, etc. It is far from the river, by the edge of the wood. 

Another, and the most interesting one, lies up high some thirty rods north of this near the wood-side and fifteen rods from the river. I measure it with a tape. It is rudely triangular and about four rods on a side, though the sides are longer on the convex line. As well as the other, it is from one to three feet thick and very densely covered with button-bushes, with a few black and other willows and late roses from four to seven feet high. As dense and impassable as any kind of thicket that we have, and there are, besides, countless great yellow and white lily and pontederia roots in it. It is a large and densely bushy island in the meadow. It would surprise any one to behold it. 

Suppose that you were to find in the morning such a slice of the earth's crust with its vegetation dropped in your front yard, if it could contain it. I think we should not soon hear the last of it. It is an island such as might almost satisfy Sancho Panza's desires. It is a forest, in short, and not a very small one either. It is Birnam wood come to Dunsinane. It contained at least eight square rods. 

There was another piece covered in like manner, some five rods long and three wide, sunk off Cardinal Shore on a hard sandy bottom, and so deep that its whole size did not appear above water. I could not touch the bottom with my oars on the outside. This no one would have detected for an immigrant or new-come land unless very familiar with the shore, for if the raw edge is concealed it looks exactly as if it grew there like the others near by. There was a strip with out anything but grass on it, some five rods long by twenty feet wide, and two pieces making as much more in length end to end with it on the [sic]. In all there must have been from a third to half an acre on this single meadow, which came from far up-stream, I could not tell from where. 

I saw more up the stream, and they were all dropped nearly in a line on the east side for half a mile or more. Such revolutions can take place and none but the proprietor of the meadow notice it, for the traveller passing within sight does not begin to suspect that the bushy island which he sees in the meadow has floated from elsewhere, or if he saw it when on its voyage, he would not know it for a voyager. 

In one year all the raw edge is concealed, and the vegetation thus transplanted does not appear to find it out. These must have been carried off about the 16th of March or when the river broke up, perhaps in that strong southwest wind of the 19th. The ice, being eighteen or twenty inches thick and having ten thousand strong handles to take hold by, aided too often by the lightness of the frozen meadow, can easily lift these masses, and if there were rocks imbedded in them, would move them also. For the cake of ice may be a dozen rods or more in breadth.

These have generally grounded high on the meadows, where the lilies, etc., will all die. Indeed, most of them have already been killed by frost, and probably the button-bush will much of it die too. Also that which has sunk in deep water will die. 

I saw one piece a rod wide nearly in the middle of the river, and detected it only by the top [of] a few twigs seen above the surface. The willows or osiers will do well, and the roses, wherever they may lodge on the banks or in the meadow, but the button-bush must stand immediately on the edge of the river or other water, and there they are most likely to be placed. 

The present islands, bushy or wooded, in the meadow have no doubt commonly had this origin. The soil is there doubled, and so elevated, and the plants set out at the same time. The surface being at once elevated one to three feet for four rods or more, though the button-bush dies, willows will live and maples and alders, etc., spring up there. When the flood comes with icy hands you have got a mighty lifter at work. Black willows ten feet high and these four or five rods of button-bushes are all taken up together with their soil and carried upright and without jarring to a new locality half a mile or more distant. 

I observe that different meadows are at different levels above the river. The great Sudbury meadows are low. Cyanean Meadow is generally higher than the ammannia meadow. I can cross the last still, but not the first. The surface has been much taken off the last by the ice, and perhaps more has lodged on the other. Mantatuket Meadow appears to be about the height of Cyanean Meadow generally, or hardly so low. The Potter Swamp Meadow is lower than any that I have named in Concord. 

Perhaps those valleys parallel with the river are where the water has swept off the meadow-crust the most, and not old channels? It is evident that this transportation of the meadow surface affects the relative height of the meadows very much. Some meadows are now saved by the causeways and bridges and willow-rows. Though there were a hundred pieces in Potter Swamp Meadow, there were none in the meadow this side the causeway. Probably more meadow, etc., was transported two hundred years ago than to-day there, when the river, at high water especially, was less obstructed. This is the origin of almost all inequalities of surface in the meadows, and it is impossible to say how many of the clumps of bushes you see there have been thus transplanted. 

As for that mass which sunk in deep water off Cardinal Shore, the cake of ice which transported it may have struck the shore many rods from its burden and melted in that position. Consider what a new arrangement of the clumps in the mead is thus made every year. The revolution from each source is now confined to the space between two causeways and bridges, or two willow-rows, while formerly it was only confined by the form or dimensions of the meadow. 

I find, on that most interesting mass of meadow and button-bushes, or the top of a sort of musquash-mound, a very peculiar stercus, precisely like a human one in size and form and color externally, so that I took it for such. But it was nearly inodorous and contained some fish-scales, and it was about the color of fireproof-brick dust within. I think it was that of an otter, quite fresh. 

I hear that the epigsea is no more forward than on the 8th.

Pine warblers heard in the woods by C. to-day. This, except the pigeon woodpecker and pigeon and hawks, as far as they are migratory, is the first that I should call woodland (or dry woodland) birds that arrives. 

The red-wings generally sit on the black willows and the swamp white oaks and maples by the water, and sing o-gurgle-ee this evening, as if glad to see the river's brink appearing again and smooth waters also. 

The grackles are feeding on the meadow-edge.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 12, 1859

The small alder (A. serrulata) is sometimes yellow-flowered, sometimes reddish-flowered. It grows with the incana at Cardinal Shore. See   May 25, 1851 ("Alnus serrulata, the common alder, with a grayish stem, leaves smooth on both sides. Alnus incana, the speckled alder, downy on under side of leaves.");  April 13, 1855 ("The Alnus incana blossoms begin generally to show. The serrulata will undoubtedly blossom to-morrow in some places. "); April 16, 1852 ("I think that the tassels of the Alnus incana are rather earlier, longer, and more yellow, with smaller scales, than those of the A. serrulata, which are not yellow but green, mixed with the purplish or reddish brown scales."); April 17, 1858 ("The female flowers of the alder are now very pretty when seen against the sun, bright-crimson."); April 18, 1852 ("The catkins of the Alnus incana at Jenny's Brook are longer than ever, — three or four inches.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Alders

When one sees a fish he at first swims rapidly after it, and then, if necessary, flies close over the water after it, and this excites all the rest to follow, swimming or flying, and if one seizes the fish, which I suspect is commonly a pickerel, they all pursue the lucky fisher, and he makes the water fly far in his efforts to get away and gulp down his fish. See March 30, 1858 ("I saw one come up with a large fish, whereupon all the rest, as they successively came to the surface, gave chase to it, while it held its prey over the water in its bill, and they pursued with a great rush and clatter a dozen or more rods over the surface, making a great furrow in the water,") See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Goosander, Merganser)

Pine warblers heard in the woods, the first that I should call woodland (or dry woodland) birds that arrives. See note to  April 12, 1858 ("The woods are all alive with pine warblers now. Their note is the music to which I survey.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pine Warbler

I look again at the meadow-crust carried off by the ice. There is one by the railroad bridge, say three rods by one, covered with button-bushes and willows. See August 3, 1859 ("The low water reveals a mass of meadow sunk under the railroad bridge. Both this and Lee’s Bridge are thus obstructed this year."); August 9, 1859 ("I see under the railroad bridge a mass of meadow which lodged there last spring") See also April 13, 1854 ("The transplanting of fluviatile plants is carried on on a very large and effective scale. Even in one year a considerable plantation will thus be made on what had been a bare shore, and its character changed. The meadow cannot be kept smooth.")

The red-wings generally sit on the black willows and the swamp white oaks and maples by the water, and sing o-gurgle-ee this evening, as if glad to see the river's brink appearing again and smooth waters also. See March 19, 1858 (" A new era has come. The red-wing's gurgle-ee is heard when smooth waters begin; they come together. "); March 22, 1855 ("[T]he blackbirds already sing o-gurgle ee-e-e from time to time on the top of a willow or elm or maple.");  April 9, 1856 ("The red-wing’s o’gurgle-ee-e is in singular harmony with the sound and impression of the lapsing stream or the smooth, swelling flood beneath his perch. He gives expression to the flood.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Red-wing in Spring

April 12. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 12

The red-wings  sing  as 

if glad to see the river's 

brink and smooth waters.