Now is the time to set trees and consider what things you will plant in your garden.

April 30. 

2 P. M. Down the Boston road and across to Turnpike, etc., etc. 

The elms are now generally in blossom and Cheney's elm still also.

The last has leaf - buds which show the white.

Now, before any leaves have appeared, their blossoms clothe the trees with a rich, warm brown color, which serves partially for foliage to the street walker, and makes the tree more obvious. Held in the hand, the blossoms of some of the elms are quite rich and variegated, now purple and yellowish specked with the dark anthers and two light styles.

I know not why some should be so much earlier than others.

It is a beautiful day, - a mild air, — and all farmers and gardeners out and at work.

Now is the time to set trees and consider what things you will plant in your garden.

Yesterday I observed many fields newly plowed, the yellow soil looking very warm and dry in the sun; and one boy had fixed his handkerchief on a stick and elevated it on the yoke, where it flapped or streamed and rippled gayly in the wind, as he drove his oxen dragging a harrow over the plowed field.

I see now what I should call a small-sized bullfrog in the brook in front of Alcott's house that was.

The sweet gale is in blossom.  Its rich reddish-brown buds have expanded into yellowish and brown blossoms, all male blossoms that I see.  Those handsome buds that I have observed are the male blossom buds then. This has undoubtedly been in bloom a day or two in some places.

I saw yesterday a large-sized water-bug; to-day many in the brook; yesterday a trout; to-day shiners, I think.

The huckleberry-bird sings.

When I look, the inhabitants are beginning to plant in their gardens, the air is so fine and peculiar that I seem to see the hills and woods through a mirage. I am doubtful about their distance and exact form and elevation. The sound of a spade, too, sounds musical on the spring air.

(To-night for the first time I sit without a fire.)

One plower in a red flannel shirt, who looks picturesquely under the hill, suggests that our dress is not commonly of such colors as to adorn the landscape.

(To-night and last night the spearer's light is seen on the meadows; he has been delayed by the height of the water.)

I like very well to walk here on the low ground on the meadow; to see the churches and houses in the horizon against the sky and the now very blue Mt. Wachusett seeming to rise from amid them. When you get still further off on the lowest ground, you see distant barns and houses against the horizon, and the mountain appears to preside over this vale alone, which the adjacent hills on right and left fence in.

The season advances by fits and starts; you would not believe that there could be so many degrees to it. If you have had foul and cold weather, still some advance has been made, as you find when the fair weather comes, new lieferungs of warmth and summeriness, which make yesterday seem far off and the dog-days or midsummer incredibly nearer.

Yesterday I would not have believed that there could have been such an improvement on that day as this is, short of midsummer or June.

My pocket being full of the flowers of the maple, elm, etc., my handkerchief by its fragrance reminded me of some fruitful or flowery bank, I know not where.

A pleasant little

green knoll north of the Turnpike

near the Lincoln line.

I thought that the greenness of the sward there on the highest ground was occasioned by the decay of the roots of two oaks, whose old stumps still remained.

The greenness covered a circle about two rods in diameter.

It was too late to feel the influence of the drip of the trees.

We have had no such summer heat this year (unless when I was burned in the Deep Cut), yet there is an agreeable balmy wind.

I see here, while looking for the first violet, those little heaps made by the mole cricket (?), or by worms (?)

I observe to-day the bright-crimson (?) perfect flowers of the maple, —  crimson styles, sepals, and petals (crimson or scarlet ?), — whose leaves are not yet very handsome in the rain as you look to the sky; and the hum of small bees from them. So much color have they.


Crossing the Turnpike, we entered Smith's high lands.

Dodging behind a swell of land to avoid the men who were plowing, I saw unexpectedly (when I looked to see if we were concealed by the field) the blue mountains' line in the west (the whole intermediate earth and towns being concealed), this greenish field for a foreground sloping upward a few rods, and then those grand mountains seen over it in the background, so blue, — seashore, earth-shore, — and, warm as it is, covered with snow which reflected the sun.

Then when I turned, I saw in the east, just over the woods, the modest, pale, cloud-like moon, two thirds full, looking spirit-like on these daylight scenes.  Such a sight excites me.

The earth is worthy to inhabit.

The far river-reach from this hill.

It is not so placid a blue as if with a film of azure over it to-day, however. The more remote the water, the lighter the blue, perchance.

It is like a lake in Tartary; there our camels will find water.

Here is a rock made to sit on, — large and inviting, which you do not fear to crush.

I hear the flicker and the huckleberry bird.

Yet no leaves apparent.

This in some measure corresponds to the fine afternoon weather after the leaves have fallen, though there is a different kind of promise now than then.  We are now going out into the field to work; then we were going into the house to think.

I love to see alders and dogwood instead of peach trees.

May we not see the melted snow lapsing over the rocks on the mountains in the sun, as well as snow? The white surfaces appear declivitous.

While we sit here, I hear for the first time the flies buzz so dronishly in the air.

I see travellers like mere dark objects in the yellow road afar, — the Turnpike.

Hosmer's house and cottage under its elms and on the summit of green smooth slopes looks like a terrestrial paradise, the abode of peace and domestic happiness.

Far over the woods westward, a shining vane, glimmering in the sun.

At Saw Mill Run the swamp (?) gooseberry (is it?) is partly leaved out.

This, being in the shade of the woods, and not, like the thimble-berry, in a warm and sunny place, methinks is the earliest shrub or tree that shows leaves. [The Missouri currant in gardens is equally forward; the cultivated gooseberry nearly so; the lilac not so.]

The neatly and closely folded, plaited, leaves of the hellebore are rather handsome objects now.

As you pull them apart, they emit a slight marshy scent, somewhat like the skunk-cabbage.

They are tender and dewy within, folded fan-like.

I hear a wood thrush here, with a fine metallic ring to his note. This sound most adequately expresses the immortal beauty and wildness of the woods.

I go in search of him. He sounds no nearer.

On a low bough of a small maple near the brook in the swamp, he sits with ruffled feathers, singing more low or with less power, as it were ventriloquizing; for though I am scarcely more than a rod off, he seems further off than ever.

Caught three little peeping frogs.

When I approached, and my shadow fell on the water, I heard a peculiarly trilled and more rapidly vibrated note, somewhat, in kind, like that which a hen makes to warn her chickens when a hawk goes over, and most stopped peeping; another trill, and all stopped.

It seemed to be a note of alarm.

I caught one. It proved to be two coupled. They remained together in my hand.

This sound has connection with their loves probably.

(I hear a trilled sound from a frog this evening. It is my dreaming midsummer frog, and he seems to be toward the depot.) 

I find them generally sitting on the dead leaves near the water's edge, from which they leap into the water.
 

On the hill behind Hosmer's, half an hour before sunset --  

The hill on the Boston road is very handsome with its regular promontories, and the smokes seen against it rising from the chimneys, what time the laborer takes his tea.

The robins sing power fully on the elms; the little frogs peep; the woodpecker's harsh and long-continued cry is heard from the woods; the huckleberry-bird's simple, sonorous trill.

The plowed land shines where a drag has passed over it.

It is a pleasant place for a house, because you overlook the road, and the near land seems to run into the meadow.

Saw male willow catkins in Tuttle's lane, now just out of bloom, about two inches long.

The flower of some of the earliest elms is by no means to be despised at this season.

It is conspicuous and rich in any nosegay that can now be made.

The female plants of the sweet-gale are rare (?) here. The scales of the male catkins are "set with amber-colored resinous dots” (Emerson).


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 30, 1852

The sweet gale is in blossom. Its rich reddish-brown buds have expanded into yellowish and brown blossoms, all male blossoms that I see. See April 13, 1860 ("– I go up the Assabet to look at the sweet-gale, which is . . . abundantly out at Pinxter Swamp."); April 22, 1855 ("The blossoms of the sweet-gale are now on fire over the brooks, contorted like caterpillars.") December 31, 1859 ("The oblong-conical sterile flower-buds or catkins of the sweet-gale, half a dozen at the end of each black twig, dark-red, oblong-conical, spotted with black, and about half an inch long, are among the most interesting buds of the winter. . . . The sterile and fertile flowers are not only on distinct plants, but they commonly grow in distinct patches. . . . It grows along the wet edge of banks and the river and in open swamps.")

The huckleberry-bird sings. See April 27, 1852 ("Heard the field or rush sparrow this morning (Fringilla juncorum), George Minott's "huckleberry-bird." It sits on a birch and sings at short intervals, apparently answered from a distance. It is clear and sonorous heard afar; but I found it quite impossible to tell from which side it came; sounding like phe, phe, phe, pher-pher-tw-tw-tw-t-t-t-t, — the first three slow and loud, the next two syllables quicker, and the last part quicker and quicker, becoming a clear, sonorous trill or rattle, like a spoon in a saucer.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Field Sparrow

The season advances by fits and starts. . . lieferungs of warmth and summeriness, which make yesterday seem far off and the dog-days or midsummer incredibly nearer. See April 25, 1854 ("The summer approaches by almost insensibly increasing lieferungs of heat, each awakening some new bird or quadruped or reptile.")

So much color have they. See April 29, 1856 ("How pretty a red maple in bloom (they are now in prime), seen in the sun against a pine wood, . . . they are of so cheerful and lively a color."); April 29, 1859 ("Those red maples are reddest in which the fertile flowers prevail.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Red Maple

Then when I turned, I saw in the east, just over the woods, the modest, pale, cloud-like moon, two thirds full, looking spirit-like on these daylight scenes. See June 30, 1852 (" Moon nearly full; rose a little before sunset. . . . At first a mere white cloud."); See also April 12, 1851 (" I realize that I may not see her again in her glory this night, that. . . the sun will have risen, and she will appear but as a cloud herself, and sink unnoticed into the west.")

To see the churches and houses in the horizon against the sky and the now very blue Mt. Wachusett seeming to rise from amid them. See December 27, 1853 ("The outline of the mountains is wonderfully distinct and hard, and they are a dark blue and very near. Wachusett looks like a right whale over our bow, plowing the continent, with his flukes well down.")

On the hill behind Hosmer's, half an hour before sunset --See May 17, 1853 ("Ah, the beauty of this last hour of the day — when a power stills the air and smooths all waters and all minds — that partakes of the light of the day and the stillness of the night")

At Natural History Rooms

April 29. 

Return to Concord.

At Natural History Rooms in Boston.

Have I seen the least bittern? It is so brown above and yellowish, woolly, white beneath.

The American goshawk is slate above, gray beneath; the young spotted dark and white beneath, and brown above.

Fish hawk, white beneath.

Young of marsh hawk, reddish-brown above, iron-rusty beneath.

Summer duck with a crest.

Dusky duck, not black, but rather dark brown.

The velvet ducks I saw, hardly large enough for this.

My whiter ducks may be the Merganser castor, or the red breasted.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 29, 1853

Interesting to me are their habits and conversation who live along the shores of a great river.

April 27.

Haverhill. — The warbling vireo.

Talked with a fisherman, who was cracking and eating walnuts on a post before his hut.

He said he got twenty cents a stick for sawing marked logs, which were mostly owned at Lowell, but trees that fell in and whatever was not marked belonged to them. Much went by in the ice and could not be got.They haul it in and tie it.

He called it Little Concord where I lived. They got some small stuff which came from that river, and said he knew the ice, it was blue (it is not) and was turned over by the falls.

The Lawrence dam breaks up the ice so now that it will not be so likely to jam below and produce a freshet.

Said a thousand dollars' damage was done by a recent freshet to the farm just above, at the great bend. The wind blowing on to the shore ate it away, trees and all. In the greatest freshet he could remember, methinks about ten years ago, the water came up to his window-sill.

His family took refuge on the hillside.

His barn was moved and tipped over, his well filled up, and it took him, with help, a day or more to clear a passage through the ice from his door to his well. His trees were all prostrated by the ice. This was apparently between twenty and thirty feet above the present level.

Says the railroad bridge hurts the fishing by stopping the ice and wearing away and deepening the channel near the north shore, where they fish, — draw their seines. Call it sixty rods wide, — their seines being thirty rods long, and twenty-five feet deep in the middle.

Interesting to me are their habits and conversation who live along the shores of a great river.

The shore, here some seventy or eighty feet high, is broken by gullies, more or less sandy, where water has flowed down, and the cottages rise not more than one sixth or one seventh the way up.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 27, 1853

.

The warbling vireo. See May 6, 1852 ("Hear the first warbling vireo this morning on the elms. This almost makes a summer."): May 10, 1853 ("New days, then, have come, ushered in by the warbling vireo, yellowbird, Maryland yellow-throat, and small pewee, and now made perfect by the twittering of the kingbird and the whistle of the oriole amid the elms")

Haverhill. —  See April 11, 1853 ("To Haverhill via Cambridge and Boston."); April 13, 1853 (" First shad caught at Haverhill to-day.");April 19, 1853 ("Haverhill. — Willow and bass strip freely."); April 21, 1853 ("Haverhill. — A peach tree in bloom."); April 23, 1853 ("Haverhill — Martins."); April 24, 1863 ("Sunday. To and around Creek Pond and back over Parsonage hill, Haverhill."); April 29, 1853 (" Return to Concord."); May 16, 1853 ("Had thunder-shower while I was in Haverhill in April.")

They got some small stuff which came from that river. See November 4, 1858 ("When the Haverhill fishermen told me that they could distinguish the Concord River stuff (i. e. driftwood) I see they were right, for much of it is chestnut rails, and of these they have but few.")

Apparently a pigeon hawk.

April 25. 

Horace Mann brings me apparently a pigeon hawk. The two middle tail-feathers are not tipped with white and are pointed almost as a woodpecker's.

Audubon's "Pigeon Hawk" [Merlin]
(Falco columbarius")
"Wings from two to three inches shorter than the tail, on the middle feathers of which are five, on the lateral six, broad whitish bands. Adult male with the cere greenish-yellow, the feet pale orange, the upper parts light bluish-grey, each feather with a black central line; lower parts reddish or yellowish-white, the breast and sides with large oblong brown spots; tibial feathers light red, streaked with blackish-brown. Female with the cere and legs greenish-yellow, the upper parts dark greyish-brown, the lower pale red, spotted as in the male. Young with the head light reddish-brown, streaked with dusky, the upper parts brownish-grey, the feathers margined and spotted with pale red, throat white, lower parts pale red, streaked with brown. The tail-bands vary from pale red to white."

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 25, 1861

Apparently a pigeon hawk. See  April 16, 1855 ("What I call a pigeon hawk, probably sharp-shinned.”); May 4, 1855 ("I think that what I have called the sparrow hawk falsely, and latterly pigeon hawk, is also the sharp-shinned , for the pigeon hawk’s tail is white-barred."); July 2, 1856 (“Looked at the birds in the Natural History Rooms in Boston. Observed no white spots on the sparrow hawk’s wing, or on the pigeon or sharp-shinned hawk’s.");  October 22, 1855 (“Suddenly a pigeon hawk dashes over the bank very low and within a rod of me . . . It sits a few moments, balancing itself and spreading its tail and wings, -- a chubby little fellow. Its back appears a sort of deep chocolate-brown.”); April 29, 1856 ("Scared a small dark-brown hawk from an apple tree. . .I saw with my glass that his tail was barred with white. Must it not be a pigeon hawk then? He looked a dark slate as he sat, with tawny-white thighs and under head, . . .I think I have not described this white-barred hawk before");  September 14, 1859 ("What kind of hawk is this? I can learn nothing from Wilson and Nuttall. The latter thinks that neither the pigeon nor sparrow hawk is found here !!"); April 27, 1860 ("I saw yesterday, and see to-day, a small hawk which I take to be a pigeon hawk. . . . I am decided by his size (as well as color) and his low, level skimming.") Compare April 25, 1860 ("The size more than anything made me think it a sharp-shin.") and  J. J. Audubon ("Every one knows the Sparrow-Hawk [Falco sparverius], the very mention of its name never fails to bring to mind some anecdote connected with its habits . . .”) See also  A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Hawk (Merlin)

Think I hear bay-wings.

 

April 23.

April 23, 2021

Think I hear bay-wings.

Toads ring.

H. D Thoreau, Journal, April 23, 1861

Think I hear bay-wings. See  note to April 15, 1859 ("The bay-wing now sings — the first I have been able to hear . . .When the laborer rests on his spade to-day, the sun having just come out, he is not left wholly to the mercy of his thoughts, nature is not a mere void to him, but he can hardly fail to hear the pleasing and encouraging notes of some newly arrived bird. The strain of the grass finch is very likely to fall on his ear and convince him, whether he is conscious of it or not, that the world is beautiful and life a fair enterprise to engage in ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bay-Wing Sparrow

Toads ring. See  April 23, 1858 ("The toads ring now by day, but not very loud nor generally"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: The Ring of Toads

In the river near the Nine-Acre Corner bridge.

 April 22.

It was high water again about a week ago, Mann thinks within three or four inches as high as at end of winter.

He obtained to-day the buffle-headed duck, diving in the river near the Nine-Acre Corner bridge. I identify it at sight as my bird seen on Walden. 

I hear a chip-bird.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 22, 1861

My bird seen on Walden. See December 26, 1853 ("Saw in [Walden] a small diver, probably a grebe or dobchick, dipper, or what-not, ... It had a black head, a white ring about its neck, a white breast, black back, and apparently no tail.”); April 19, 1855 ("A little duck, asleep with its head in its back, exactly in the middle of the pond. It has a moderate-sized black head and neck, a white breast, and seems dark-brown above, with a white spot on the side of the head, not reaching to the out side, from base of mandibles, and another, perhaps, on the end of the wing, with some black there. . . .I think it is the smallest duck I ever saw.); and note to September 27, 1860 ("Looking up, I see a little dipper . . in the middle of the river. . .. I sit down and watch it . . . . soon the dipper is thus tolled along to within twenty feet of where I sit, and I can watch it at my leisure. It has a dark bill and considerable white on the sides of the head or neck, with black between it, no tufts, and no observable white on back or tail.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Little Dipper

I hear a chip-bird. See April 9, 1853("The chipping sparrow, with its ashy-white breast and white streak over eye and undivided chestnut crown, holds up its head and pours forth its che che che che che che. " ); April 17, 1860 ("It perches on a cherry tree, perchance, near the house, and unseen, by its steady che-che-che-che-che che, affecting us often without our distinctly hearing it, it blends all the other and previous sounds of the season together. It invites us to walk in the yard and inspect the springing plants."") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau The Chipping Sparrow (Fringilla socialis).)

Spring ephemera.

April 21.

Hepatica April 27, 2024

Pratt collects very handsome tufts of Hepatica triloba in flower at Melrose, and the bloodroot out also there.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 21, 1861

The bloodroot out at Melrose.  See April 22, 1860 ("I hear that the Viola ovata was found the 17th and the 20th, and the bloodroot in E. Emerson's garden the 20th.");  April 23, 1858 ("I receive to-day Sanguinaria Canadensis [bloodroot] from Brattleboro, well in bloom,")

bloodroot

The hermit thrush.

April 20.

H. Mann brings me the hermit thrush.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 20, 1861

H. Mann brings me the hermit thrush. See April 20, 1860 (" C sees bluets and some kind of thrush to-day, size of wood thrush, — he thought probably hermit thrush."); see also  April 21, 1858 ("Ed. Hoar says he heard a wood thrush the 18th.");  April 24, 1856 ("Returning, in the low wood just this side the first Second Division Brook, near the meadow, see a brown bird flit, and behold my hermit thrush, with one companion, flitting silently through the birches. I saw the fox-color on his tail-coverts, as well as the brown streaks on the breast. Both kept up a constant jerking of the tail as they sat on their perches." and also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: The Arrival of the Hermit Thrush

See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, April 20

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2023

That early yellow smell.

April 17.

Stood by the riverside early this morning. The water has been rising during the night. The sun has been shining on it half an hour. It is quite placid. The village smokes are seen against the long hill. And now I see the river also is awakening, a slight ripple beginning to appear on its surface. It wakens like the village. It proves a beautiful day, and I see that glimmering or motion in the air just above the fields, which we associate with heat.  . . . 

Observed in the second of the chain of ponds between Fair Haven and Walden a large (for the pond) island patch of the dwarf andromeda, I sitting on the east bank; its fine brownish-red color very agreeable and memorable to behold.

In the last long pond, looking at it from the south, I saw it filled with a slightly grayish shrub which I took for the sweet-gale, but when I had got round to the east side, chancing to turn round, I was surprised to see that all this pond-hole also was filled with the same warm brownish-red-colored andromeda.

The fact was I was opposite to the sun, but from every other position I saw only the sun reflected from the surface of the andromeda leaves, which gave the whole a grayish-brown hue tinged with red; but from this position alone I saw, as it were, through the leaves which the opposite sun lit up, giving to the whole this charming warm, what I call Indian, red color, — the mellowest, the ripest, red imbrowned color; but when I looked to the right or left, i. e. north or south, the more the swamp had the mottled light or grayish aspect where the light was reflected from the surfaces of the leaves.

And afterward, when I had risen higher up the hill, though still opposite the sun, the light came reflected upward from the surfaces, and I lost that warm, rich red tinge, surpassing cathedral windows. Let me look again at a different hour of the day, and see if it is really so.

It is a very interesting piece of magic. . . .

The pond is still half covered with ice, and it will take another day like this to empty it. It is clear up tight to the shore on the south side, — dark-gray cold ice, completely saturated with water. The air from over it is very cold.

The scent of the earliest spring flowers! I smelt the willow catkins to-day, tender and innocent after this rude winter, yet slightly sickening, yet full of vernal promise.

This odor, — how unlike anything that winter affords, or nature has afforded this six months! A mild, sweet, vernal scent, not highly spiced and intoxicating, as some ere long, but attractive to bees, — that early yellow smell. The odor of spring, of life developing amid buds, of the earth's epithalamium.

The first flowers are not the highest-scented, — as catkins, as the first birds are not the finest singers, blackbirds and song sparrows, etc. The beginnings of the year are humble. But though this fragrance is not rich, it contains and prophesies all others in it.

The leaves of the Veratrum viride, American hellebore, now just pushing up.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  April 17, 1852

The chain of ponds between Fair Haven and Walden. See April 19 1852 ("Crossed by the chain of ponds to Walden. The first, looking back, appears elevated high above Fair Haven between the hills above the swamp, and the next higher yet. Each is distinct, a wild and interesting pond with its musquash house."); December 5, 1852 ("Walden has no visible inlet nor outlet, but it is on the one hand distantly and indirectly related to Flint's Pond, which is more elevated, by a chain of small ponds coming from that quarter, and on the other hand directly and manifestly related to Concord River, which is lower, by a similar chain of ponds, through which in some other geological period it may have flowed"); November 24, 1857 ("These andromeda swamps charmed me more than twenty years ago, — I knew not why, — and I called them “a moccasin-print.”")

Let me look again at a different hour of the day, and see if it is really so. It is a very interesting piece of magic. See April 19 1852 (".The thing that pleases me most within these three days is the discovery of the andromeda phenomenon . .... It is a natural magic. These little leaves are the stained windows in the cathedral of my world.”); January 10,1855 ("As I go toward the sun now at 4 P. M., the translucent leaves are lit up by it and appear of a soft red, more or less brown, like cathedral windows, but when I look back from the sun, the whole bed appears merely gray and brown or less reddish.”); May 5, 1855 ("I can neither get the red cathedral-window light looking toward the now westering sun in a most favorable position, nor the gray colors in the other direction, but it is all a grayish green."); November 24, 1857 (“Looking toward the sun, the andromeda in front of me is a very warm red brown and on either side of me, a pale silvery brown; looking from the sun, a uniform pale brown.”) See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Andromeda Phenomenon

The pond is still half covered with ice, and it will take another day like this to empty it. See April 19, 1852 ("Walden is clear of ice. The ice left it yesterday, then, the 18th") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-Out

The scent of the earliest spring flowers! I smelt the willow catkins to-day, tender and innocent. . .that early yellow smell. See April 17, 1855 (“The second sallow catkin (or any willow) I have seen in blossom . . . but find already a bee curved close on each half-opened catkin, intoxicated with its early sweet."); April 17, 1860 (' Willows (Salix alba) probably"); April 29, 1855 ("For two or three days the Salix alba, with its catkins (not yet open) and its young leaves, or bracts (?), has made quite a show, before any other tree, —a pyramid of tender yellowish green in the russet landscape."). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  the Earliest Flower

False Hellebore. April 28, 2019

The leaves of the Veratrum viride, American hellebore, now just pushing up.  April 2, 1856 ("The plaited buds of the hellebore are four or five inches high."); April 10, 1859 ("The hellebore buds are quite conspicuous and interesting to-day, but not at all unrolled, though six or eight inches high."); See  also  note to April 26, 1860 ("Before the earliest tree has begun to leaf it makes conspicuous green patches a foot high.")

; 

The contents of creatures' stomachs

April 16. 

Horace Mann says that he killed a bullfrog in Walden Pond which had swallowed and contained a common striped snake which measured one foot and eight inches in length.

Says he saw two blue herons (?) go over a fortnight ago.

He brought me some days ago the contents of a stake driver's stomach or crop. It is apparently a perch (?), some seven inches long originally, with three or four pebble-shaped, compact masses of the fur of some very small quadruped, as a meadow mouse, some one fourth inch thick by three fourths in diameter, also several wing-cases of black beetles such as I see on the meadow flood.

He brought me also some time ago the contents of a black duck's crop (killed at Goose Pond), -- green gobbets of fine grass (?) or weeds (?), apparently from the bottom of the pond (just then begun to spring up), but I have not yet examined these out of the bottle.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 16, 1861

Horace Mann says that he killed a bullfrog which had swallowed and contained a common striped snake. See May 19, 1856 ("Saw a small striped snake in the act of swallowing a Rana palustris, within three feet of the water. The snake, being frightened, released his hold, and the frog hopped off to the water. ")

Says he saw two blue herons go over.  See April 14, 1859 ("You have not seen our weedy river, you do not know the significance of its weedy bars, until you have seen the blue heron wading and pluming itself on it"); April 15, 1855 ("We have a fine view of a blue heron, standing erect and open to view on a meadow island, by the great swamp south of the bridge."); April 29, 1854 ("I meet a blue heron flying slowly down stream. He flaps slowly and heavily, his long, level, straight and sharp bill projecting forward, then his keel-like neck doubled up, and finally his legs thrust out straight behind.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Blue Heron and April 16, 1855 ("At sunset, the mountains, after this our warmest day as yet, have a peculiar soft mantle of blue haze, pale blue as a blue heron.")

An early hebaceous pasture plant.

April 15.

April 15, 2023

Mouse-ear.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 15, 1853

See April 10, 1859 ("Cinquefoil . . ., with bluets, mouse-ear, and Viola ovata (of the herbaceous plants), I should call pasture flowers (among those of March and April)"); April 6, 1858 ("No mouse-ear there yet"); April 11, 1858 ("Mouse-ear, not yet. "); April 15, 1860 ("Mouse-ear"): April 29, 1854 ("The mouse-ear is now fairly in blossom in many places. It never looks so pretty as now in an April rain, covered with pearly drops."); May 26, 1855 ("Already the mouse-ear down begins to blow in the fields and whiten the grass, together with the bluets"); October 2, 1857 ("There is a more or less general reddening of the leaves at this season, down to the cinquefoil and mouse-ear, sorrel and strawberry under our feet") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Mouse-ear and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Earliest Flower

Going to law.

April 11. 

I hear that Judge Minott of Haverhill once told a client, by way of warning, that two millers who owned mills on the same stream went to law about a dam, and at the end of the lawsuit one lawyer owned one mill and the other the other.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 11, 1861

I hear the clear, loud whistle of a purple finch.

April 11. 

I hear the clear, loud whistle of a purple finch, somewhat like and nearly as loud as the robin, from the elm by Whiting's.

The maple which I think is a red one, just this side of Wheildon's, is just out this morning.

9 A. M. – To Haverhill via Cambridge and Boston.

Dr. Harris says that that early black-winged, buff edged butterfly is the Vanessa Antiopa, and is introduced from Europe, and is sometimes found in this state alive in winter.

The orange-brown one with scalloped wings, and smaller somewhat, is Vanessa Progne.

The early pestle-shaped bug or beetle is a cicindela, of which there are three species, one of them named from a semicolon-like mark on it.

Vide Hassley on spiders in Boston Journal of Natural History.

At Natural History Rooms, saw the female red-wing, striped white and ash; female cow-bird, ashy-brown.

First.

The swamp sparrow is ferruginous-brown (spotted with black) and ash above about neck; brownish-white beneath; undivided chestnut crown.

Second.

The grass-bird, grayish-brown, mingled with ashy-whitish above; light, pencilled with dark brown beneath; no marked crown; outer tail feathers whitish, perhaps a faint bar on wing.

Third.

Field sparrow, smaller than either; marked like first, with less black, and less distinct ash on neck, and less ferruginous and no distinct crown.

Fourth.

Savannah sparrow, much like second, with more black, but not noticeable white in tail, and a little more brown; no crown marked.

Emberiza miliaria Gmel* (What is it in Nuttall?) appears to be my young of purple finch.

One Maryland yellow-throat, probably female, has no black on side head, and is like a summer yellow bird except that the latter has ends of the wings and tail black.

The yellow-rump warbler (what is it in Nuttall?) is bluish-gray, with two white bars on wings, a bright yellow crown, side breasts, and rump. Female less distinct.

Blackburnian is orange-throated.

American redstart, male, is black forward, coppery orange beneath and stripe on wings and near base of tail. Female dark ashy and fainter marks.

American Redstart

J. E. Cabot thought my small hawk might be Cooper's hawk.

Says that Gould, an Englishman, is the best authority on birds.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 11, 1853

I hear the clear, loud whistle of a purple finch from the elm by Whiting's. See April 15, 1854 ("The arrival of the purple finches appears to be coincident with the blossoming of the elm, on whose blossom it feeds"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Elms and the Purple Finch and note to April 10, 1861 ("Purple finch.")

The maple which I think is a red one, just this side of Wheildon's, is just out this morning. See April 10, 1853 (''The male red maple buds now show eight or ten (ten counting everything) scales, alternately crosswise, and the pairs successively brighter red or scarlet, which will account for the gradual reddening of their tops. They are about ready to open.");

Dr. Harris says that that early black-winged, buff edged butterfly is the Vanessa Antiopa. See  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Buff-edged Butterfly

The orange-brown one with scalloped wings, and smaller somewhat, is Vanessa Progne. See April 9, 1853 ("A middling-sized orange-copper butterfly on the mill road, at the clearing, with deeply scalloped wings. You see the buff-edged and this, etc., in warm, sunny southern exposures on the edge of woods or sides of rocky hills and cliffs, above dry leaves and twigs, where the wood has been lately cut and there are many dry leaves and twigs about.")

The grass-bird, grayish-brown, mingled with ashy-whitish above; light, pencilled with dark brown beneath; no marked crown; outer tail feathers whitish, perhaps a faint bar on wing.  [The Vesper Sparrow (Pooecetes gramineus).] See October 16, 1855 ("I look at a grass-bird on a wall in the dry Great Fields. There is a dirty-white or cream-colored line above the eye and another from the angle of the mouth beneath it and a white ring close about the eye. The breast is streaked with this creamy white and dark brown in streams, as on the cover of a book"); April 13, 1855 ("See a sparrow without marks on throat or breast, running peculiarly in the dry grass in the open field beyond, and hear its song, and then see its white feathers in tail; the bay-wing."); April 29, 1855 ("The bay on its wings is not obvious except when it opens them. The white circle about the eye is visible afar. . . . It is rather . . .concealed by its color . . . with its chestnut crown and light breast.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bay-Wing Sparrow

Field sparrow, . . . marked like [swamp sparrow], with less  black, and less distinct ash on neck, and less ferruginous and no distinct crown. See  April 8, 1853 ("Heard the field sparrow again"); April 27, 1852 ("Heard the field or rush sparrow this morning (Fringilla juncorum), George Minott's "huckleberry-bird." ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Field Sparrow

Savannah sparrow, much like [grass-bird], with more black, but not noticeable white in tail, and a little more brown; no crown marked. According to Guide to Thoreau’s Birds "Thoreau frequently called the Savannah Sparrow Passerculus sandwichensis the seringo or seringo-bird, but he also applied the name to other small birds."  See June 10, 1854 ("The bay-wing sparrow apparently is not my seringo, after all. What is the seringo? I see some with clear, dirty-yellow breasts, but others, as to-day, with white breasts, dark-streaked. Both have the yellow over eye and the white line on crown, and agree in size, but I have seen only one with distinct yellow on wings. Both the last, i. e. except only the bay-wing, utter the seringo note. Are they both yellow-winged sparrows? or is the white-breasted with streaks the Savannah sparrow?"); June 12, 1854 ("Do I not see two birds with the seringo note, — the Savannah (?) sparrow, larger with not so bright a yellow over eye, none on wing, and white breast, and beneath former streaked with dark and perhaps a dark spot, and the smaller yellow-winged, with spot on wing also and ochreous breast and throat ?"); July 16, 1854 ("Is it the yellow-winged or Savannah sparrow with yellow alternating with dark streaks on throat, as well as yellow over eye, reddish flesh-colored legs, and two light bars on wings?“); April 22, 1856 ("The seringo also sits on a post, with a very distinct yellow line over the eye,"); June 26, 1856 ("According to Audubon’s and Wilson’s plates, . . .the Savannah sparrow [has] no conspicuous yellow on shoulder, a yellow brow, and white crown line. . . .saw, apparently, the F. Savanna. . . Distinctly yellow-browed and spotted breast."); December 7, 1858  ("Dr. Bryant calls my seringo (i. e. the faint-noted bird) Savannah sparrow.”); April 27, 1859 (“Hear and see the seringo in fields next the shore. No noticeable yellow shoulder, pure whitish beneath, dashed throat and a dark-brown line of dashes along the sides of the body.”) 

One Maryland yellow-throat, probably female, has no black on side head, and is like a summer yellow bird. See May 18, 1856 ("I see. . .what you would call a Maryland yellow-throat, but less chubby, yellow throat, beneath, and vent, and dark under tail, black side; but hear no note."); May 17, 1860; ("I see a female Maryland yellow-throat busily seeking its food amid the dangling fruit of the early aspen, in the top of the tree.")

The yellow-rump warbler is bluish-gray, with two white bars on wings, a bright yellow crown, side breasts, and rump. See October 14, 1855 ("Black bill and feet, yellow rump, brown above, yellowish-brown on head, cream-colored chin, two white bars on wings, tail black, edged with white, — the yellow-rump warbler or myrtle-bird without doubt.");September 29, 1858 ("One or two myrtle-birds in their fall dress, with brown head and shoulders, two whitish bars on wings, and bright-yellow rump.")

Female [redstart] dark ashy and fainter marks. See May 29, 1855 ("females of the redstart, described by Wilson, — very different from the full-plumaged black males."); September 12, 1857 ("Crossing east through the spruce swamp, I think that I saw a female redstart.")  See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The American Redstart

Cabot thought my small hawk might be Cooper's hawk. See April 7, 1853 ("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");April 10, 1853 ("What was that smaller, broader-winged hawk with white rump of April 7th ? For, after all, I do not find it described."); December 7, 1858 ("Dr. Bryant . . . says Cooper’s hawk is just like the sharp-shinned, only a little larger commonly. He could not tell them apart.")

A day in a life. April 10

 

April 10.

 

 April 10, 1852 (“See ahead the waves running higher in the middle of the meadow, and here they get the full sweep of the wind and they break into whitecaps. ”). See April 10, 1856 ("I set out to sail, the wind northwest, but it is so strong, and I so feeble, that I gave it up. The waves dashed over into the boat and with their sprinkling wet me half through in a few moments.");April 14, 1856 ("I steer down straight through the Great Meadows, with the wind almost directly aft, feeling it more and more the farther I advance into them. They make a noble lake now. The boat, tossed up by the rolling billows, keeps falling again on the waves with a chucking sound which is inspiriting"); March 16, 1860 ("I make more boisterous and stormy voyages now than at any season. . . . I vastly increase my sphere and experience by a boat.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Sailing

April 10, 1853 (“The male red maple buds are about ready to open”). See April 1, 1860 ("The red maple buds are considerably expanded, and no doubt make a greater impression of redness.")

 April 10, 1854 (“The crimson stigmas of the white maple make handsome show”).. See March 29, 1853 ("The female flowers of the white maple, crimson stigmas from the same rounded masses of buds with the male, are now quite abundant. . . . The two sorts of flowers are not only on the same tree and the same twig and sometimes in the same bud, but also sometimes in the same little cup."); April 8, 1855 ("The crimson female stigmas also peeping forth. See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, White Maple Buds and Flowers

 April 10, 1855 (“As for the saxifrage, when I had given it up for to-day, having, after a long search in the warmest clefts and recesses, found only three or four buds which showed some white, I at length, on a still warmer shelf, found one flower partly expanded, and its common peduncle had shot up an inch”).. See April 8, 1858 ("At Lee's Cliff I find no saxifrage in bloom above the rock,. .. but on a few small warm shelves under the rocks the saxifrage makes already a pretty white edging along the edge of the grass sod [?] on the rocks; has got up three or four inches, and may have been out four or five days.") 

 April 10, 1855 (“At Lee’s the early sedge; one only sheds pollen. ”).See April 7, 1854 ("On the Cliff I find, after long and careful search, one sedge above the rocks, low amid the withered blades of last year, out, its little yellow beard amid the dry blades and few green ones, — the first herbaceous flowering I have detected. . . . It must have been so first either on the 5th or 6th.”)

 April 10, 1856 (“I set out to sail, the wind northwest, but it is so strong, and I so feeble, that I gave it up”).. . . . See April 10, 1852 ("We lay to in the lee of an island a little north of the bridge, where the surface is quite smooth, and the woods shelter us completely, while we hear the roar of the wind behind them, with an agreeable sense of protection, and see the white caps of the waves on either side.")

April 10, 1856 (“Our meadow looks as angry now as it ever can.”). See March 29, 1852 (“The water on the meadows looks very dark from the street. . . . There is more water and it is more ruffled at this season than at any other, and the waves look quite angry and black. ”) March 18, 1854 ("The white caps of the waves on the flooded meadow, seen from the window, are a rare and exciting spectacle, — such an angry face as our Concord meadows rarely exhibit.")

April 10, 1856 (“Went to look at the golden saxifrage in Hubbard’s Close .”)..  See April 12, 1855 ("Golden saxifrage out at Hubbard’s Close, -- one, at least, effete. It may have been the 10th.”); April 1, 1855 “(One of the earliest-looking plants in water is the golden saxifrage.”)[Golden-saxifrage (Chrysosplenium americanum), a native wetland and aquatic plant that frequents small streams and seepy areas in swamps and forests. The inconspicuous flowers are noticeable only for their eight brick-red anthers when it blooms in May.]

 April 10, 1859  (“Hear the first stuttering frog croak — probably halecina”)..:[Rana halecina (Lithobates pipiens)  – Northern Leopard Frog.] See   April 3, 1858 (“I stood perfectly still, and ere long they began to reappear one by one, and spread themselves out on the surface. They were the R. halecina. I could see very plainly the two very prominent yellow lines along the sides of the head and the large dark ocellated marks, even under water, on the thighs, etc. Gradually they begin to recover their voices, but it is hard to say at first which one of the dozen within twenty feet is speaking. . . .. Their note is a hard dry tut tut tut tut, not at all ringing like the toad’s, and produced with very little swelling or motion of the throat, but as much trembling of the whole body; and from time to time one makes that faint somewhat bullfrog-like er er er. Both these sounds, then, are made by one frog, and what I have formerly thought an early bullfrog note was this. This, I think, is the first frog sound I have heard from the river meadows or anywhere, except the croaking leaf-pool frogs and the hylodes. . . . This might be called the Day of the Snoring Frogs, or the Awakening of the Meadows. “); April 5, 1855 ("Hear from one half-flooded meadow that low, general, hard, stuttering tut tut tut of frogs,—the awakening of the meadow.”);  April 8, 1852 ("To-day I hear the croak of frogs in small pond-holes in the woods"); ; April 9, 1853 (“The whole meadow resounds, probably from one end of the river to the other, this evening, with this faint, stertorous breathing. It is the waking up of the meadows." );April 13, 1855 ("The small croaking frogs are now generally heard in all those stagnant ponds or pools in woods floored with leaves, which are mainly dried up in the summer.");  ; April 13, 1856 ("As I go by the Andromeda Ponds, I hear the tut tut of a few croaking frogs. . ."); April 15, 1855 ("That general tut tut tut tut, or snoring, of frogs on the shallow meadow heard first slightly the 5th. )

 April 10, 1859 (“This makes twenty-two days of windy weather.”) See April 6, 1859 ("For nineteen days, from the 19th of March to the 6th of April, both inclusive, we have had remarkably windy weather. For ten days of the nineteen the wind has been remarkably strong and violent . . .The last seven, including to-day, have all been windy, five of them remarkably so; wind from northwest."); April 8, 1859 ("We have had, most of the time, during this windy weather for a month past, when the wind was northwest, those peculiar brushy clouds which look as if a little snow or rain was falling in the northwest, but they prove to be wind chiefly.")

 April 10, 1860 (Cheney elm, many anthers shed pollen, probably 7th “”). See note to April 7, 1859 ("The Cheney elm looks as if it would shed pollen to-morrow,[no], and the Salix purpurea will perhaps within a week")

April 10, 1860 (“Salix purpurea apparently will not open for four or five days”).  See April 13, 1859  ("The Salix purpurea will hardly open for five days yet."); April 22, 1859 ("The Salix purpurea in prime, out probably three or four days; say 19th.")

 April 10, 1861 (“Purple finch”).  See  April 18, 1852 ("Observe all kinds of coincidences, as what kinds of birds come with what flowers."); April 7, 1859 ("The Cheney elm looks as if it would shed pollen to-morrow."); April 7, 1860 ("The purple finch, — if not before"); April 10, 1860 ("Cheney elm, many anthers shed pollen, probably 7th."); April 11, 1853 ("I hear the clear, loud whistle of a purple finch, somewhat like and nearly as loud as the robin, from the elm by Whiting's."); April 12, 1855 ("I hear a purple finch . . . on an elm, steadily warbling and uttering a sharp chip from time to time"); April 12, 1856 ("There suddenly flits before me . . . a splendid purple finch. Its glowing redness is revealed when it lifts its wings.");  April 13, 1852 ("The elm buds begin to show their blossoms."); April 15, 1856 ("The purple finch is singing on the elms about the house, together with the robins, whose strain its resembles, ending with a loud, shrill, ringing chili chilt chilt chilt."); April 15, 1854 ("The arrival of the purple finches appears to be coincident with the blossoming of the elm, on whose blossom it feeds"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Elms and the Purple Finch