Summer yellowbird on the opening Salix alba.

May 2. 

Summer yellowbird on the opening Salix alba. 

Chimney swallows and the bank or else cliff ditto. 

Small pewee? 

Our earliest gooseberry in garden has bloomed. 

What is that pondweed-like plant floating in a pool near Breed's, with a slender stem and linear leaves and a small whorl of minute leaves on the surface, and nutlets in the axils of the leaves, along the stem, as if now out of bloom? [Callitriche verna.] 

Missouri currant.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 2, 1853

Summer yellowbird on the opening Salix alba. See May 2, 1860 ("Salix alba apparently yesterday.")  See also   May 7, 1852 ("The first summer yellowbirds on the willow causeway. The birds come not singly, as the earliest, but all at once, i. e. many yellowbirds all over town. Now I remember the yellowbird comes when the willows begin to leave out. "); May 10, 1858 (" For some days the Salix alba have shown their yellow wreaths here and there, suggesting the coming of the yellowbird, and now they are alive with them."); May 10, 1853 ("At this season the traveller passes through a golden gate on causeways where these willows are planted, as if he were approaching the entrance to Fairyland; and there will surely be found the yellowbird, and already from a distance is heard his note, a tche tche tche tcha tchar tcha, — ah, willow, willow.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Summer Yellowbird also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Willows on the Causeway

Small pewee? See May 2, 1859 ("Small pewee and young lackey caterpillars.") See also  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.") and note to May 3, 1855 ("Small pewee; tchevet, with a jerk of the head."); May 7, 1852 ("And the small pewee on the willows also.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the "Small Pewee"

Our earliest gooseberry in garden has bloomed. See April 1, 1860 ("Our gooseberry begins to show a little green, but not our currant"); April 3, 1853 ("The Missouri currant is perhaps more advanced than the early gooseberry in our garden."); April 30, 1852  ("At Saw Mill Run the swamp gooseberry is partly leaved out. This, . . .methinks is the earliest shrub or tree that shows leaves. [The Missouri currant in gardens is equally forward; the cultivated gooseberry nearly so.]") May 4, 1860 ("Currant out a day or two at least, and our first gooseberry a day later.")


Missouri currant. See May 4, 1858 ("The Missouri currant, probably to-day."); May 5, 1855 ("Missouri currant look as if they would bloom to-morrow.”);