April 7, 2020
6 A. M. — I did not
notice any bees on the willows I looked at yesterday, though so many on the
cabbage.
The white-bellied swallows advertise themselves this morning,
dashing up the street, and two have already come to disturb the bluebirds at
our box.
Saw and heard this morning, on a small elm and the wall by Badger’s, a
sparrow (? ), seemingly somewhat slaty-brown and lighter beneath, whose note
began loud and clear, twee-tooai, etc., etc., ending much like the field
sparrow. Was it a female F. hyemalis? Or a field, or a swamp, sparrow? Saw no
white in tail.
Also saw a small, plain, warbler-like bird for a moment, which I
did not recognize.
10 A. M. — Down river in boat to Bedford, with C.
A windy,
but clear, sunny day; cold wind from north west.
Notice a white maple with
almost all the staminate flowers above or on the top, most of the stamens now
withered, before the red maple has blossomed. Another maple, all or nearly all
female. The staminiferous flowers look light yellowish, the female dark crimson.
These white maples flower branches droop quite low, striking the head of the
rower, and curve gracefully upward at the ends.
Another sucker, the counterpart
of the one I saw the other day, tail gone, but not purpled snout, being fresher.
Is it the work of a gull or of the spearer? Do not the suckers chiefly attract
the gulls at this season?
River has risen from last rains, and we cross the
Great Meadows, scaring up many ducks at a great distance, some partly white,
some apparently black, some brownish (?).
It is Fast-Day, and many gunners are
about the shore, which makes them shy. I never cross the meadow at this
season without seeing ducks.
That is probably a marsh hawk, flying low over the
water and then skirting the meadow’s copsy edge, when abreast, from its
apparently triangular wings, reminding me of a smaller gull. Saw more
afterward.
A hawk above Ball’s Hill which, though with a distinct white rump, I
think was not the harrier but sharp-shinned, from its broadish, mothlike form,
light and slightly spotted beneath, with head bent downward, watching for prey.
A great gull, though it is so fair and the wind northwest, fishing over the
flooded meadow. He slowly circles round and hovers with flapping wings in the
air over particular spots, repeatedly returning there and sailing quite low
over the water, with long, narrow, pointed wings, trembling throughout their
length.
Hawks much about water at this season.
If you make the least correct
observation of nature this year, you will have occasion to repeat it with
illustrations the next, and the season and life itself is prolonged.
I am
surprised to see how much in warm places the high blueberry buds are started,
some reddish, some greenish, earlier now than any gooseberries I have noticed.
Several painted tortoises; no doubt have been out a long time.
Walk in and
about Tarbell’s Swamp. Heard in two distinct places a slight, more prolonged
croak, somewhat like the toad. This? Or a frog? It is a warmer sound than I
have heard yet, as if dreaming outdoors were possible.
Many spotted
tortoises are basking amid the dry leaves in the sun, along the side of a still,
warm ditch cut through the swamp. They make a great rustling a rod ahead, as
they make haste through the leaves to tumble into the water.
The flower-buds of
the andromeda here are ready to open, almost. Yet three or four rods off from
all this, on the edge of the swamp, under a north hillside, is a long strip of
ice five inches thick for ten or twelve rods.
The first striped snake crawling
off through leaves in the sun.
Crossed to Bedford side to see where [they] had
been digging out ( probably ) a woodchuck.
How handsome the river from those
hills! The river southwest over the Great Meadows a sheet of sparkling molten
silver, with broad lagoons parted from it by curving lines of low bushes; to
the right or northward now, at 2 or 3 P. M., a dark blue, with small smooth,
light edgings, firm plating, under the lee of the shore.
Fly like bees buzzing
about, close to the dry, barren hill side.
The only large catkins I notice
along the river side are on the recent yellow-green shoots from the stump of
what looks like the ordinary early swamp willow, which is common, — nearby
almost wholly grayish and stinted and scarcely opening yet.
Small bee-like
wasps (?) and flies are numerous on them, not flying when you stand never so
close.
A large leech in the water, serpentine this wise, as the snake is not.
Approach near to Simon Brown’s ducks, on river. They are continually bobbing
their heads under water in a shallow part of the meadow, more under water
than above. I infer that the wild employ themselves likewise. You are most
struck with the apparent ease with which they glide away, - not seeing the
motion of their feet, - as by their wills.
As we stand on Nawshawtuct at 5 P. M.,
looking over the meadows, I doubt if there is a town more adorned by its river
than ours. Now the sun is low in the west, the northeasterly water is of a
peculiarly ethereal light blue, more beautiful than the sky, and this broad
water with innumerable bays and inlets running up into the land on either side
and often divided by bridges and causeways, as if it were the very essence and
richness of the heavens distilled and poured over the earth, contrasting with
the clear russet land and the paler sky from which it has been subtracted, —
nothing can be more elysian. Is not the blue more ethereal when the sun is at
this angle? The river is but a long chain of flooded meadows.
I think our most
distant extensive low horizon must be that northeast from this hill over Ball’s
Hill, — to what town is it? It is down the river valley, partly at least toward
the Merrimack, as it should be.
What is that plant with a whorl of four, five,
or six reddish cornel-like leaves, seven or eight inches from the ground, with
the minute relics of small dried flowers left, and a large pink (?) bud now springing,
just beneath the leaves? [Large cornel (Canadensis).] It is a true evergreen, for, it dries soon in the
house, as if kept fresh by the root.
H.
D. Thoreau, Journal, April 7, 1853
If you make the least correct observation of nature this year, you will have occasion to repeat it with illustrations the next, and the season and life itself is prolonged. See August 24, 1852 (“The year is but a succession of days, and I see that I could assign some office to each da ywhich, summed up, would be the history of the year,”); October 26, 1853 ("You only need to make a faithful record of an average summer day's experience and summer mood, and read it in the winter, and it will carry you back to more than that summer day alone could show.")
Many spotted tortoises are basking amid the dry leaves in the sun, along the side of a still, warm ditch. See April 7, 1856 ("See a yellow-spotted tortoise in a ditch."); See also February 23, 1857 ("See two yellow-spotted tortoises in the ditch south of Trillium Wood. . . .In your latest spring they still look incredibly strange when first seen, and not like cohabitants and contemporaries of yours. What mean these turtles, these coins of the muddy mint issued in early spring? The bright spots on their backs are vain unless I behold them. The spots seem brighter than ever when first beheld in the spring, as does the bark of the willow."); March 26, 1860 ("The yellow-spotted tortoise may be seen February 23, as in '57, or not till March 28, as in '55, — thirty-three days") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow-Spotted Turtle (Emys guttata)
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