The white-fingered flower of the sprout-lands.

May 6. 

May 6, 2017

River three and one fourth inches below summer level. Why is it only three eighteenths of an inch lower than last Sunday (April 29)? For we are in the midst of a remarkable drought, and I think that if there had been any rain within a week near the sources of the river I should have heard of it. Is it that these innumerable sources of the river which the springs in the meadows are, are able to keep up the supply? The river had been falling steadily a good while before. Why, then, has it not fallen more the past week?

The dog’s-tooth violet was sent from Cambridge in flower, May 1st. 

2 P. M. – To Second Division. 

74°; wind southeast; and hazy. 

A goldfinch apparently not quite in summer dress; with a dark-brown, not black, front. 

See a song sparrow’s nest with four eggs in the side of a bank, or rather ditch. I commonly find the earliest ones in such sheltered and concealed places. What did they do before the white man came here with his ditches and stone walls? 

(Methinks by the 13th I hear the bay wing sing the oftenest.)

 As I go down the warm sandy path in the gully behind J. P. Brown’s, I see quite a number of Viola pedata, indigo-weed shoots six inches high, a prenanthes leaf eight inches high, and two-leaved Solomon’s-seal pushing up, — all signs of warm weather. 

As the leaves are putting forth on the trees, so now a great many herbaceous plants are springing up in the woods and fields. 

There is a peculiar stillness associated with the warmth, which the cackling of a hen only serves to deepen, increasing the Sabbath feeling.

In the Major Heywood path see many rather small (or middle-sized) blackish butterflies. 

The Luzula campestris is apparently in prime. Oryzopsis grass well out, how long? 

Now at last we seek the shade these days, as the most grateful. Sit under the pines near the stone guide post on the Marlborough road. The note of the pine warbler, which sounded so warm in March, sounds equally cool now. 

The Second Division rush is not yet out. It is the greatest growth of what you may call the grass kind as yet, the reddish tops, say sixteen inches high (above the now green), trembling in the wind very agreeably. 

The dark beds of the white ranunculus in the Second Division Brook are very interesting, the whitish stems seen amid and behind the dark-brown old leaves. 

The white-throated sparrow, and probably the 28th of April. 

The large osmunda ferns, say one foot high, some of them; also a little brake one foot high. 

Hear probably a yellow-throated vireo in the woods. 

A creeper (black and white) yesterday. 

Sit on the steep north bank of White Pond. The Amelanchier Botryapium in flower now spots the brown sprout-land hillside on the southeast side, across the pond, very interestingly. Though it makes but a faint impression of color, I see its pink distinctly a quarter of a mile off. It is seen now in sprout-lands half a dozen years old, where the oak leaves have just about all fallen except a few white oaks. (It is in prime about the 8th.) Others are seen directly under the bank on which we sit, on this side, very white against the blue water. Many at this distance would not notice those shad bush flowers on the hillside, or (would) mistake them for whitish rocks. They are the more interesting for coming thus between the fall of the oak leaves and the expanding of other shrubs and trees. 

Some of the larger, near at hand, are very light and elegant masses of white bloom. The white-fingered flower of the sprout-lands. In sprout-lands, having probably the start or preëminence over the other sprouts, from not being commonly, or at all, cut down with the other trees and shrubs, they are as high or higher than any of them for five or six years, and they are so early that they feel almost the full influence of the sun, even amid full grown deciduous trees which have not leafed, while they are considerably sheltered from the wind by them.  

There is so fine a ripple on White Pond that it amounts to a mere imbrication, very regular. 

The song of the robin heard at 4:30 P. M., this still and hazy day, sounds already vespertinal. 

Maple keys an inch and a half long. 

Mists these mornings. 

Our second shad-bush out, how long? It is generally just beginning in the woods. 

My chamber is oppressively warm in the evening.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 6, 1860

I see quite a number of Viola pedata. See May 6, 1859 ("Viola pedata begins to be common about white pine woods there") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

The note of the pine warbler, which sounded so warm in March, sounds equally cool now. See April 2, 1853 ("Hear and see what I call the pine warbler, --vetter vetter vetter vetter vet, -- the cool woodland sound. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pine Warbler

Hear probably a yellow-throated vireo in the woods. See May 6, 1859 ("Hear yellow-throat vireo, and probably some new warblers."). See also May 27, 1854 ("I see and hear the yellow-throated vireo. It is somewhat similar (its strain) to that of the red-eye, prelia pre-li-ay, with longer intervals.")

A creeper (black and white) yesterday. See May 11, 1856 ("The black and white creeper also is descending the oaks, etc., and uttering from time to time his seeser seeser seeser. What a rich, strong striped blue-black and white bird.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Black and White Creeper

A goldfinch apparently not quite in summer dress; with a dark-brown, not black, front. See April 7, 1855 ("They are merely olivaceous above, dark about the base of the bill, but bright lemon-yellow in a semicircle on the breast; black wings and tails, with white bar on wings and white vanes to tail. I never saw them here so early before; or probably one or two olivaceous birds I have seen and heard of other years were this.")

See a song sparrow’s nest with four eggs in the side of a bank, or rather ditch. I commonly find the earliest ones in such sheltered and concealed places. See April 30, 1858 ("I find a Fringilla melodia nest with five eggs.. . . perfectly sheltered under the shelving turf and grass on the brink of a ditch. ") See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)

In the Major Heywood path the The Luzula campestris is apparently in prime. Oryzopsis grass well out. See May 1 1859 ("Luzula campestris. Also the Oryzopsis Canadensis by the Major Heywood path-side . . . six inches high or more, with fine bristle-like leaves.").

The Amelanchier Botryapium in flower now spots the brown sprout-land hillside. See May 2, 1855 ("Amelanchier Botryapium yesterday leafed."); May 5, 1860 ("Amelanchier Botryapiumflower in prime."); May 8, 1854 ("The early Amelanchier Botryapium overhangs the rocks and grows in the shelves, with its loose, open-flowered racemes, curving downward, of narrow-petalled white flowers, red on the back and innocently cherry-scented"); May 10, 1854 ("The shad-bush in blossom is the first to show like a fruit tree on the hill sides . . .before even its own leaves are much expanded. ") May 12, 1855 ("I now begin to distinguish where at a distance the Amelanchier Botryapium, with its white against the russet, is waving in the wind."); May 17, 1853 (“The petals have already fallen from the Amelanchier Botryapium, and young berries are plainly forming.”)

Maple keys an inch and a half long. See May 1, 1860 ("The sugar maple keys (or buds?) hang down one inch, quite.")