Row to Fair Haven.
Thermometer 56° or 54º.
See shad-flies.
Scare up woodcock on the shore by my
boat's place, — the first I had seen. It was feeding within a couple of rods,
but I had not seen or thought of it. When I made a loud and sharp sound driving
in my rowlocks, it suddenly flew up. It is evident that we very often come
quite near woodcocks and snipe thus concealed on the ground, without starting
them and so without suspecting that they are near. These marsh birds, like the
bittern, have this habit of keeping still and trusting to their resemblance to
the ground.
See now hen-hawks, a pair, soaring high as for pleasure, circling
ever further and further away, as if it were midsummer. The peculiar flight of
a hawk thus fetches the year about. I do not see it soar in this serene and
leisurely manner very early in the season, methinks.
The early luzula is almost
in bloom; makes a show, with its budded head and its purplish and downy, silky
leaves, on the warm margin of Clamshell Bank.
Two or three dandelions in bloom
spot the ground there.
Land at Lee's Cliff.
The cassandra (water-brush) is
well out, — how long? — and in one place we disturb great clouds of the
little fuzzy gnats that were resting on the bushes, as we push up the shallow
ditch there.
The Ranunculus fascicularis is now in prime, rather than before.
The columbine is hardly yet out.
I hear that the Viola ovata was found the 17th
and the 20th, and the bloodroot in E. Emerson's garden the 20th.
J. B. Moore
gave me some mineral which he found being thrown out of [a] drain that was
dug between Knight's factory and his house. It appears to me to be red lead
and quartz, and the lead is quite pure and marks very well, or freely, but is
pretty dark.
H.
D. Thoreau, Journal, April 22, 1860
The early luzula is almost in bloom; makes a show, with its budded head and its purplish and downy, silky leaves. See April 30, 1859 ("Luzula campestris is almost out at Clamshell. Its now low purplish and silky-haired leaves are the blooming of moist ground and early meadow-edges.")
Two or three dandelions in bloom spot the ground there. See April 22, 1855 ("The grass is now become rapidly green by the sides of the road, promising dandelions and butter cups. "); April 29, 1857 ("I commonly meet with the earliest dandelion set in the midst of some liquid green patch. It seems a sudden and decided progress in the season.")
We disturb great clouds of the little fuzzy gnats that were resting on the bushes.
See April 22, 1852 ("I see swarms of gnats in the air."); See also April 21, 1855 ("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.") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ)
The Ranunculus fascicularis is now in prime, rather than before. See April 11, 1858 ("Crowfoot (Ranunculus fascicularis) at Lee's since the 6th, apparently a day or two before this.")
The columbine is hardly yet out. See April 18, 1856 (“Columbine, and already eaten by bees. Some with a hole in the side.”); April 30, 1855 (" Columbine just out; one anther sheds."); May 1, 1854 ("I think that the columbine cannot be said to have blossomed there [Lee's Cliff] before to-day, — the very earliest.”)
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