The year is but a succession of days,
and I see that I could assign some office to each day
which, summed up, would be the history of the year.
Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852
These truly warm days
just so simple every year –
butterflies and frogs.
 |
| April 5, 2018 |
The bluebird comes to us bright in his vernal dress as a bridegroom . . . Has he not got new feathers then? . . . I have noticed the few phoebes, not to mention other birds, mostly near the river. Is it not because of the greater abundance of insects there, those early moths or ephemeræ? As these and other birds are most numerous there, the red-tailed hawk is there to catch them? April 5, 1853
These days, when a soft west or southwest wind blows and it is truly warm, and an outside coat is oppressive, — these bring out the butterflies and the frogs, and the marsh hawks which prey on the last. Just so simple is every year. Whatever year it may be, I am surveying, perhaps, in the woods; I have taken off my outside coat, perhaps for the first time, and hung it on a tree; the zephyr is positively agreeable on my cheek; I am thinking what an elysian day it is, and how I seem always to be keeping the flocks of Admetus such days — that is my luck; when I hear a single, short, well- known stertorous croak from some pool half filled with dry leaves. You may see anything now — the buff-edged butterfly and many hawks — along the meadow; and hark! while I write down this field note, the shrill peep of the hylodes is borne to me from afar through the woods. April 5, 1854
The shrill peep of the
hylodes is borne to me from
afar through the woods.
April 5, 1854
Fast-Day. 9 A. M. —To Sudbury line by boat. A still and rather warm morning, with a very thick haze concealing the sun and threatening to turn to rain. It is a smooth, April-morning water, and many sportsmen are out in their boats. I see a pleasure-boat, on the smooth surface away by the Rock, resting lightly as a feather in the air. Scare up a snipe close to the water’s edge, and soon after a hen-hawk from the Clamshell oaks. The last looks larger on his perch than flying. The snipe too, then, like crows, robins, blackbirds, and hens, is found near the waterside, where is the first spring (e.g. alders and white maples, etc., etc), and there too especially are heard the song and tree sparrows and pewees, and even the hen-hawk at this season haunts there for his prey. Inland, the groves are almost completely silent as yet. The concert of song and tree sparrows at willow-row is now very full, and their different notes are completely mingled. See a single white-bellied swallow dashing over the river. He, too, is attracted here by the early insects that begin to be seen over the water. See this forenoon a great many of those little fuzzy gnats in the air. It being Fast-Day, we on the water hear the loud and musical sound of bells ringing for church in the surrounding towns. It is a sober, moist day, with a circle round the sun, which I can only see in the reflection in the water. The river appears to have risen still last night, owing to the rain of the 1st, and many spring cranberries are washed together at last, and now many new seeds, apparently of sedges, are loosened and washed up. Now that for the most part it is melted quite to its edge, and there is no ice there, the water has a warmer, April look close under my eye. Now is the first time this year to get spring cranberries. In many places now the river wreck is chiefly composed of Juncus militaris. Was it so in fall? There is a strong muskrat scent from many a shore. See a muskrat floating, which may have been drowned when the river was so high in midwinter, —for this is the second I have seen, —with the rabbit. I saw yesterday a yellow-spot and see to-day a painted tortoise, already out on the bank on a tuft of grass. The muskrat-hunter sits patiently with cocked gun, waiting for a muskrat to put out his head amid the button-bushes. He gets half a dozen in such a cruise.Bush our boat with hemlock to get near some ducks, but another boat above, also bushed, scares them. Hear from one half-flooded meadow that low, general, hard, stuttering tut tut tut of frogs,—the awakening of the meadow. . . . By 4 P. M. it begins to rain gently or mizzle. April 5, 1855
A sober moist day
with a circle round the sun
seen in reflection.
The April weather still continues. It looks repeatedly as if the sun would shine, and it rains five minutes after. I look out to see how much the river has risen. . . .Fair weather again. See half a dozen blackbirds, uttering that sign-like note, on the top of Cheney’s elm, but notice no red at this distance. Were they grackles? Hear after some red-wings sing baby-lee. Do these ever make the sign—like note? Is not theirs a fine shrill whistle ? . . . A warm and pleasant afternoon. The river not yet so high by four or five feet as last winter. Hear, on all sunny hillsides where the snow is melted, the chink clicking notes of the F. hyemalis flitting before me. . . .These birds know where there is a warm hillside as well as we. The warble of the bluebird is in the air. From Tarbell’s bank we look over the bright moving flood of the Assabet with many maples standing in it, the purling and eddying stream, with a hundred rills of snow water trickling into it. . . . Come out upon the high terrace behind Hosmer’s, whence we overlook the bright-blue flood alternating with fields of ice (we being on the same side with the sun). The first sight of the blue water in the spring is exhilarating. See half a dozen white sheldrakes in the meadow, where Nut Meadow Brook is covered with the flood. There are two or three females with them. These ducks swim together first a little way to the right, then suddenly turn together and swim to the left, from time to time making the water fly in a white spray, apparently with a wing. Nearly half a mile off I see their green crests in the sun. They are partly concealed by some floating pieces of ice and snow, which they resemble. . . . It is that walking when we must pick the hardest and highest ground or ice, for we commonly sink several inches in the oozy surface .April 5, 1856
P. M. —-Walked round by the ruins of the factory. See in many places the withered leaves of the aletris in rather low ground, about the still standing withered stems. It was well called husk-root by the squaw. Arthur says that he just counted, at 9.30 P. M., twenty toads that had hopped out from under the wall on to the sidewalk near the house. This, then, is apparently the way with the toads. They very early hop out from under walls on to sidewalks in the warmer nights, long before they are heard to ring, and are often frozen and then crushed there. Probably single ones ring earlier than I supposed. I hear the croaking frogs at 9.30 P. M., also the speed speed over R.’s meadow, which I once referred to the snipe, but R. says is the woodcock, whose other strain he has already heard. April 5, 1857
What I call the young bullfrog, about two and a half inches long, — though it has no yellow on throat. It has a bright-golden ring outside of the iris as far as I can see round it. Is this the case with the bullfrog? May it not be a young Rana fontinalis? No yellow to throat. I found it on the shore of the Clamshell Hill ditch. Can jump much better than the others, and easily gets out of the deep pan. Those to whom I showed the two R. sylvatica could not believe that they were one species, but this morning, on taking them out of the water to examine minutely, they changed so rapidly, chameleon-like, that I could only describe their first appearance from memory. The male grew a lighter brown and the female darker, till in ten minutes there was but a slight shade of difference, and their whole aspect, but especially that of the male, seemed altered also, so that it was not easy to distinguish them. Yet they would readily be recognized for rather dark-colored wood frogs, the posterior extremities of both having distinct dark bars. The female was two and one tenth inches long, the male one and four fifths inches long. The female was (apparently involuntarily) dropping a little spawn in the pan this morning, and the black core was as big as the head of a pin when it issued from the body. The only difference in color that I now noticed, except that the male was a shade the darkest (both a pale brown), was that there was a very distinct dark mark on the front side at the base of the anterior extremities of the female, while there was but the slightest trace of it in the male. Also the female was more green on the flanks and abdomen; also she had some dusky spots beneath. What is described as a yellow line along the lower edge of the dark one through the eyes, i.e. along the upper jaw, and which I observed to be such last spring, was in both these at all times a broad silvery or bright cream-colored line. Putting them into the water, after an hour they again acquired distinct colors, but not quite so distinct at first. It is singular that at the breeding-season, at least, though both are immersed in water, they are of a totally different color, -- the male a very dark brown for a frog, darker than the ordinary color of any Massachusetts frog, without distinct bars to his posterior extremities or a distinct dark line along the snout, while the female is a light reddish brown or lively dead-leaf color, — and that, taken out of water, they rapidly approximate each other till there is only a shade of difference if any. At their breeding-season, then, the colors of the male are not livelier, as in the case of birds, but darker and more sombre. Considering how few of these or of the R. halecina you meet with in the summer, it is surprising how many are now collected in the pools and meadows. The woods resound with the one, and the meadows day and night with the other, so that it amounts to a general awakening of the pools and meadows. I hear this morning the seringo sparrow. . . .
P. M. – I go to the meadow at the mouth of the Mill Brook to find the spawn of the R. halecina. They are croaking and coupling there by thousands, as before, though there is a raw east wind to-day. I see them coupled merely, in a few instances, but no such balls or masses of them about one female as in the case of the R. sylvatica, though this may occur. You can easily get close to them and catch them by wading. The first lagoon within the meadow was not a foot deep anywhere, and I found the spawn where it was about eight inches deep, with a grassy and mossy bottom. It was principally in two collections, which were near together and each about a yard in diameter. The separate masses of this were from two to six, or commonly three or four, inches in diameter, and generally looked quite black and dense or fine-egged in the water. But it really on a closer inspection presented quite an interesting variety of appearances. The black core is about the size of a pin-head, and one half of it is white. It commonly lies with the black side up, and when you look directly down on it, has a rich, very dark blue-purple appearance. When with the white or wrong side up, it looks like a mass of small silvery points or bubbles, and you do not notice the jelly. But it lies also at all intermediate angles, and so presents a variety of appearances. It is attached pretty firmly to the grass and rises just to the surface. There are very fine froth-like bubbles more or less mingled with it. I am not sure that I can distinguish it from that of the R. sylvatica. I caught several of the first. The dark blotches on the back were generally more or less roundish with a crenate edge. There were distinct, raised, light bronze colored ridges from the snout along the side-head and body, which were conspicuous at a distance. They were, all that I caught, distinctly yellow-white beneath, and some had green buttocks. And now, standing over them, I saw that there were considerable lateral bubbles formed when they croaked, i. e., the throat was puffed out on each side quite far behind the snout. The tympanum was very convex and prominent. At evening I find that the male R. sylvatica couples with or fastens himself to the back of the young bull frog (?)*, or whatever it is, and the latter meanwhile croaks, in short croaks four or five times repeated, much like the R. sylvatica, methinks. I hear the hylodes peeping now at evening, being at home, though I have not chanced to hear any during the day. They prefer the evening.April 5, 1858
As I stood on a hill just cut off, I saw, half a dozen rods below, the bright-yellow catkins of a tall willow just opened on the edge of the swamp, against the dark-brown twigs and the withered leaves. This early blossom looks bright and rare amid the withered leaves and the generally brown and dry surface, like the early butterflies. This is the most conspicuous of the March flowers (i. e. if it chances to be so early as March). It suggests unthought-of warmth and sunniness. It takes but little color and tender growth to make miles of dry brown woodland and swamp look habitable and home like, as if a man could dwell there. Mr. Haines, who travelled over the lots with us this very cold and blustering day, was over eighty.
"What raw, blustering weather!" said I . . ."Yes," answered he. "Did you see those two sun-dogs on Saturday?"
They are a pretty sure sign of cold and windy weather. April 5, 1859
This early blossom
bright and rare amid the leaves
– like the butterflies.
P. M. – Row to Clamshell and walk beyond. Fair but windy and cool. When I stand more out of the wind, under the shelter of the hill beyond Clamshell, where there is not wind enough to make a noise on my person, I hear, or think that I hear, a very faint distant ring of toads, which, though I walk and walk all the afternoon, I never come nearer to. It is hard to tell if it is not a ringing in my ears; yet I think it is a solitary and distant toad called to life by some warm and sheltered pool or hill, its note having as it were, a chemical affinity with the air of the spring. It merely gives a slightly more ringing or sonorous sound to the general rustling of inanimate nature. A sound more ringing and articulate my ear detects, under and below the noise of the rippling wind. Thus gradually and moderately the year begins. It creeps into the ears so gradually that most do not observe it, and so our ears are gradually accustomed to the sound, and perchance we do not perceive it when at length it has become very much louder and more general. It is to be observed that we heard of fires in the woods in various towns, and more or less distant, on the same days that they occurred here, — the last of March and first of April. The newspapers reported many. The same cause everywhere produced the same effect. April 5, 1860
I think I hear a
faint distant ring of toads but
never come nearer.
*****
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.
April 5, 2022
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 © 2009-2022
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