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
Watching the ripples
dash across the surface of
this small woodland lake.
April 9, 2014
Observe the Alnus incana, which is distinguished from the common by the whole branchlet hanging down, so that the sterile aments not only are but appear terminal, and by the brilliant polished reddish green of the bark, and by the leaves. The snow now disappearing, I observe the Mill Brook suddenly inclosed between two lines of green. The maple by the bridge in bloom. April 9, 1852
Snow disappearing
two lines of green suddently
enclose the Mill Brook.
A warm and hazy but breezy day . . . 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. . . The cowslips are well out, – the first conspicuous herbaceous flower, for the cabbage is concealed in its spathe. The Populus tremuliformis, just beyond, resound with the hum of honey-bees, flies, etc. These male trees are frequently at a great distance from the females. Do not the bees and flies alone carry the pollen to the latter? I did not know at first whence the humming of bees proceeded. At this comparatively still season, before the crickets begin, the hum of bees is a very noticeable sound, and the least hum or buzz that fills the void is detected. Here appear to be more bees than on the willows. On the last, where I can see them better, are not only bees with pellets of pollen, but more flies, small bees, and a lady-bug. What do flies get here on male flowers, if not nectar? Bees also in the female willows, of course without pellets. It must be nectar alone there . . .The more I study willows, the more I am confused. April 9, 1853
At this still season
before crickets begin the hum
of bees fills the void.
Saw several more redpolls with their rich, glowing yellow breasts by the causeway sides. Saw a wren on the edge of Nathan Stow's wood and field, with some of the habits of a creeper, lurking along a fallen pine and birch, in and out in a restless manner with tail up, a snuff-colored bird with many white spots and a fine chirping note. The beaked hazel stigmas out; put it just after the common. I am surprised to find Walden completely open. When did it open? According to all accounts, it must have been between the 6th and 9th. Fair Haven must have opened entirely the 5th or 6th, and Walden very nearly at the same time. This proves how steadily it has been melting, notwithstanding the severe cold of the last half of March; i. e., it is less affected by transient heat or cold than most ponds. The flowers have blossomed very suddenly this year as soon as the long cold spell was over, and almost all together. As yet the landscape generally wears its November russet. April 9, 1854
The flowers blossom
suddenly all together –
long cold spell over.
Some twenty minutes after sundown I hear the first booming of a snipe. The forenoon was cloudy and in the afternoon it rained, but the sun set clear, lighting up the west with a yellow light, which there was no green grass to reflect, in which the frame of a new building is distinctly seen, while drops hang on every twig, and producing the first rainbow I have seen or heard of except one long ago in the morning. With April showers, me thinks, come rainbows. Why are they so rare in the winter? . . . At sunset after the rain, the robins and song sparrows fill the air along the river with their song . . . Several flocks of geese went over this morning also. Now, then, the main body are moving. Now first are they generally seen and heard. April 9, 1855
Sunset after rain
the robins and song sparrows
fill the air with song.
I remarked how many old people died off on the approach of the present spring. It is said that when the sap begins to flow in the trees our diseases become more violent. It is now advancing toward summer apace, and we seem to be reserved to taste its sweetness – but to perform what great deeds? April 9, 1856
Early aspen catkins have curved downward an inch, and began to shed pollen apparently yesterday. White maples also, the sunny sides of clusters and sunny sides of trees in favorable localities, shed pollen to-day. I hear the note of a lark amid the other birds on the meadow. For two or three days, have heard delivered often and with greater emphasis the loud, clear, sweet phebe note of the chickadee, elicited by the warmth . . .
Wandering over that high huck-leberry pasture, I hear the sweet jingle of the Fringilla juncorum.
FIELD or RUSH SPARROW, Fringilla juncorum
In a leafy pool in the low wood toward the river, hear a rustling, and see yellow-spot tortoises dropping off an islet, into the dark, stagnant water, and four or five more lying motionless on the dry leaves of the shore and of islets about. Their spots are not very conspicuous out of water, and in most danger. The warmth of the day has penetrated into these low, swampy woods on the northwest of the hill and awakened the tortoises from their winter sleep. These are the only kind of tortoise I have seen this year. . . .
We go seeking the south sides of hills and woods, or deep hollows, to walk in this cold and blustering day. We sit by the side of Little Goose Pond, which C. calls Ripple Lake or Pool, to watch the ripples on it. Now it is nearly smooth, and then there drops down on to it, deep as it lies amid the hills, a sharp and narrow blast of the icy north wind careering above, striking it, perhaps, by a point or an edge, and swiftly spreading along it, making a dark-blue ripple. Now four or five windy bolts, sharp or blunt, strike it at once and spread different ways. The boisterous but playful north wind evidently stoops from a considerable height to dally with this fair pool which it discerns beneath. You could sit there and watch these blue shadows playing over the surface like the light and shade on changeable silk, for hours . . . Watching the ripples fall and dash across the surface of low-lying and small woodland lakes is one of the amusements of these windy March and April days . . . While to you looking down from a hillside partly from the sun, these points and dashes look thus dark-blue, almost black, they are seen by another, standing low and more opposite to the sun, as the most brilliant sheeny and sparkling surface, too bright to look at. Thus water agitated by the wind is both far brighter and far darker than smooth water, seen from this side or that, — that is, as you look at the inclined surface of the wave which reflects the sun, or at the shaded side. For three weeks past, when I have looked northward toward the flooded meadows they have looked dark-blue or blackish, in proportion as the day was clear and the wind high from the north west, making high waves and much shadow. We can sit in the deep hollows in the woods, like Frosty Hollow near Ripple Lake, for example, and find it quite still and warm in the sun, as if a different atmosphere lurked there; but from time to time a cold puff from the rude Boreas careering overhead drops on us, and reminds us of the general character of the day. While we lie at length on the dry sedge, nourishing spring thoughts, looking for insects, and counting the rings on old stumps. April 9, 1859
I sit on a rock in the warm, sunny swamp, where the ground is bare, and wait for my vessels to be filled. It is perfectly warm and perhaps drier than ever here. The great butterflies, black with buff-edged wings, are fluttering about, and flies are buzzing over this rock. The spathes of the skunk-cabbage stand thickly amid the dead leaves, the only obvious sign of vegetable life. A few rods off I hear some sparrows busily scratching the floor of the swamp, uttering a faint iseep iseep and from time to time a sweet strain. It is probably the fox-colored sparrow. These always feed thus, I think, in woody swamps, a flock of them - rapidly advancing, flying before one another, through the swamp. A robin peeping at a distance is mistaken for a hyla. A gun fired at a muskrat on the other side of the island towards the village sounds like planks thrown down from a scaffold, borne over the water. Meanwhile I hear the sap dropping into my pail . . .
P. M. —Up railroad. A very warm day. The Alnus incana, especially by the railroad opposite the oaks, sheds pollen. . . . The wind has now risen, a warm, but pretty stormy southerly wind, and is breaking up those parts of the river which were yet closed . . . The willow catkins there near the oaks show the red of their scales at the base of the catkins dimly through their down, —a warm crimson glow or blush. They are an inch long, others about as much advanced but rounded. They will perhaps blossom by day after to morrow, and the hazels on the hillside beyond as soon at least, if not sooner. They are loose and begin to dangle. The stigmas already peep out, minute crimson stars. The skaters are as forward to play on the first smooth and melted pool, as boys on the first piece of ice in the winter. It must be cold to their feetI go off a little to the right of the railroad, and sit on the edge of that sand-crater near the spring by the railroad.
Sitting there on the warm bank, above the broad, shallow, crystalline pool, on the sand, amid russet banks of curled early sedge-grass, showing a little green at base, and dry leaves, I hear one hyla peep faintly several times. This is, then, a degree of warmth suflicient for the hyla. He is the first of his race to awaken to the new year and pierce the solitudes with his voice. He shall wear the medal for this year. You hear him, but you will never find him . . .
While I am looking at the hazel, I hear from the old locality, the edge of the great pines and oaks in the swamp by the railroad, the note of the pine warbler. It sounds far off and faint, but, coming out and sitting on the iron rail, I am surprised to see it within three or four rods, on the upper part of a white oak, where it is busily catching insects, hopping along toward the extremities of the limbs and looking off on all sides, twice darting off like a wood pewee, two rods, over the railroad, after an insect and returning to the oak, and from time to time uttering its simple, rapidly iterated, cool-sounding notes. When heard a little within the wood, as he hops to that side of the oak, they sound particularly cool and inspiring, like a part of the ever green forest itself, the trickling of the sap. Its bright yellow or golden throat and breast, etc., are conspicuous at this season, — a greenish yellow above, with two white bars on its bluish-brown wings. It sits often with loose-hung wings and forked tail. . . .The water on the meadows now, looking with the sun, is a far deeper and more exciting blue than the heavens. The thermometer at 5 P. M. is 66°+, and it has probably been 70° or more; and the last two days have been nearly as warm. This degree of heat, then, brings the Fringilla juncorum and pine warbler and awakes the hyla. April 9, 1856
Sitting on a rock
waiting for my pail to fill —
I hear the sap drip.
April rain at last, but not much; clears up at night . . . I hear the booming of snipe this evening, and Sophia says she heard them on the 6th. The meadows having been bare so long, they may have begun yet earlier. Persons walking up or down our village street in still evenings at this season hear this singular winnowing sound in the sky over the meadows and know not what it is. This “booming” of the snipe is our regular village serenade. I heard it this evening for the first time, as I sat in the house, through the window. Yet common and annual and remarkable as it is, not one in a hundred of the villagers hears it, and hardly so many know what it is . . . Mr. Hoar was almost the only inhabitant of this street whom I had heard speak of this note, which he used annually to hear and listen for in his sundown or evening walks. April 9, 1858
Over the meadows,
singular winnowing sound.
The booming of snipe.
We lie on dry sedge
counting the rings on old stumps
nourishing spring thoughts.
Small reddish butterflies common; also, on snowbanks,many of the small fuzzy gnats . . .The phoebe note of chickadee. White frost these mornings. April 9, 1861
*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice Out
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blue waters in Spring
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A Sunny Nook in Spring
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Small Red Butterfly
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Water-bug
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The first frogs to begin calling
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow-Spotted Turtle (Emys guttata)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: the Cowslip
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Skunk Cabbage
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, White Maple Buds and Flowers
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Alders
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Aspens
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow Redpoll ( Palm) Warbler
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pine Warbler
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Fox-colored Sparrow.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Field Sparrow (Fringilla juncorum)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Robin in Spring
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Lark in Early Spring
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Snipe
A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, Birds in the Rain
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring, Geese Overhead
April 9, 2017
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.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 9
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 © 2009-2024
tinyurl.com/HDT09April
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