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| May 2, 2019 |
I see on the Salix rostrata by railroad many honey bees laden with large and peculiarly orange-colored pellets of its pollen.
P. M. — Up Assabet.
Those swarms of small miller-like insects which fly low over the surface of the river, sometimes constantly falling to and touching the surface and then rising again. When at rest they are seen to be blackish-winged, but flying they look light-colored. They flutter low and continuously over the same place. Theirs is a sort of dance.
A peetweet and its mate at Mantatuket Rock. The river seems really inhabited when the peetweet is back and those little light-winged millers (?). This bird does not return to our stream until the weather is decidedly pleasant and warm. He is perched on the accustomed rock. Its note peoples the river, like the prattle of children once more in the yard of a house that has stood empty.
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.
I heard yesterday, and perhaps for several days, the soft purring sound of what I take to be the Rana palustris, breeding, though I did not this time see the frog.
I feel no desire to go to California or Pike's Peak, but I often think at night with inexpressible satisfaction and yearning of the arrowheadiferous sands of Concord. I have often spent whole afternoons, especially in the spring, pacing back and forth over a sandy field, looking for these relics of a race. This is the gold which our sands yield.
The soil of that rocky spot on Simon Brown's land is quite ash-colored — now that the sod is turned up — by Indian fires, with numerous pieces of coal in it. There is a great deal of this ash-colored soil in the country. We do literally plow up the hearths of a people and plant in their ashes. The ashes of their fires color much of our soil.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 2, 1859
Small pewee. See April 30, 1856 (“I hear the small pewee’s tche-vet’ repeatedly.”); 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 3, 1855 “Small pewee; tchevet, with a jerk of the head.”); May 5, 1858 ("Saw and heard the small pewee yesterday.”); May 7, 1852 (“he 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. . . . Now I remember the yellowbird comes when the willows begin to leave out. (And the small pewee on the willows also.) ”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Small Pewee
I see on the Salix rostrata by railroad many honey bees laden with large and peculiarly orange-colored pellets of its pollen. See May 6, 1858 (“The Salix rostrata staminate flowers are of very peculiar yellow, — a bright, what you might call yellow yellow.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Willows on the Causeway
The tender yellowish green of the aspen leaf just expanded suddenly. See May 2, 1855 ("The young aspens are the first of indigenous trees conspicuously leafed”); May 4, 1856 ("The aspen there [the Island]just begun to leaf."); May 5, 1858 ("The aspen leaves at Island to-day appear as big as a nine pence suddenly"); May 17, 1860 ("Standing in the meadow near the early aspen at the island, I hear the first fluttering of leaves, - a peculiar sound, at first unaccountable to me”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau the Aspens.
A peetweet and its mate at Mantatuket Rock. See May 2, 1858 (“Peetweet on a rock”); April 30, 1856 (“As I go along the Assabet, a peetweet skims away from the shore.”); May 4, 1856 (“See a peetweet on Dove Rock, which just peeps out. As soon as the rocks begin to be bare the peetweet comes and is seen teetering on them and skimming away from me.”)
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