6 A. M. – To Cliffs.
The robin is the singer at present, such is its power and universality, being found both in garden and wood. Morning and evening it does not fail, perched on some elm or the like, and in rainy days it is one long morning or evening.
The song sparrow is still more universal but not so powerful.
The lark, too, is equally constant, morning and evening, but confined to certain localities, as is the blackbird to some extent.
The bluebird, with feebler but not less sweet warbling, helps fill the air, and the pheobe does her part.
The tree sparrow, F. hyemalis, and fox-colored sparrows make the meadow-sides or gardens where they are flitting vocal, the first with its canary-like twittering, the second with its lively ringing trills or jingle. The third is a very sweet and more powerful singer, which would be memorable if we heard him long enough.
The woodpecker's tapping, though not musical, suggests pleasant associations in the cool morning,-is inspiriting, enlivening.
I hear no hylas nor croakers in the morning. Is it too cool for them?
The gray branches of the oaks, which have lost still more of their leaves, seen against the pines when the sun is rising and falling on them, how rich and interesting!
From Cliffs see on the still water under the hill, at the outlet of the pond, two ducks sailing, partly white.
Hear the faint, swelling, far-off beat of a partridge.
Saw probably female red-wings (?), grayish or dark ashy-brown, on an oak in the woods, with a male (?) whose red shoulder did not appear.
How many walks along the brooks I take in the spring! What shall I call them? Lesser riparial excursions? Prairial? rivular?
When I came out there was not a speck of mist in the sky, but the morning without a cloud is not the fairest.
Now, 8.30 A. M., it rains. Such is April.
A male willow, apparently same with that at H.'s Bridge, or No. 2, near end of second track on west. Another male by ring-post on east side, long cylindrical catkins, now dark with scales, which are generally more rounded than usual and reddish at base and not lanceolate, turning backwards in blossom and exposing their sides or breasts to the sun, from which side burst forth fifty or seventy-five long white stamens like rays, tipped with yellow anthers which at first were reddish above, spears to be embraced by invisible Arnold Winkelrieds; — reddish twigs and clear gray beneath.
These last colors, especially, distinguish it from Nos. 1 and 2. Also a female, four or five rods north of last, just coming into bloom, with very narrow tapering catkins, lengthening already, some to an inch and a half, ovaries conspicuously stalked; very downy twigs, more reddish and rough than last below.
If we consider the eagle as a large hawk, how he falls in our estimation!
Our new citizen Sam Wheeler has a brave new weathercock all gilt on his new barn. This morning at sunrise it reflected the sun so brightly that I thought it was a house on fire in Acton, though I saw no smoke, but that might well be omitted.
The flower-buds of the red maple have very red inner scales, now being more and more exposed, which color the tree-tops a great distance off.
P. M.-To Second Division Brook.
Near Clamshell Hill, I scare up in succession four pairs of good-sized brown or grayish-brown ducks. They go off with a loud squeaking quack. Each pair is by itself. One pair on shore some rods from the water. Is not the object of the quacking to give notice of danger to the rest who cannot see it?
All along under the south side of this hill on the edge of the meadow, the air resounds with the hum of honey-bees, attracted by the flower of the skunk cabbage. I first heard the fine, peculiarly sharp hum of the honey-bee before I thought of them. Some hummed hollowly within the spathes, perchance to give notice to their fellows that plant was occupied, for they repeatedly looked in, and backed out on finding another.
It was surprising to see them, directed by their instincts to these localities, while the earth has still but a wintry aspect so far as vegetation is concerned, buzz around some obscure spathe close to the ground, well knowing what they were about, then alight and enter. As the cabbages were very numerous for thirty or forty rods, there must have been some hundreds of bees there at once, at least.
I watched many when they entered and came out, and they all had little yellow pellets of pollen at their thighs.
As the skunk-cabbage comes out before the willow, it is probable that the former is the first flower they visit. It is the more surprising, as the flower is for the most part invisible within the spathe.
Some of these spathes are now quite large and twisted up like cows ' horns, not curved over as usual. Commonly they make a pretty little crypt or shrine for the flower, like the overlapping door of a tent.
It must be bee-bread (?), then, they are after. Lucky that this flower does not flavor their honey.
I have noticed for a month or more the bare ground sprinkled here and there with several kinds of fungi, now conspicuous, — the starred kind, puffballs, etc.
Now it is fair, and the sun shines, though it shines and rains with short intervals to-day.
I do not see so much greenness in the grass as I expected, though a considerable change. No doubt the rain exaggerates a little by showing all the greenness there is ! The thistle is now ready to wear the rain-drops.
I see, in J. P. Brown's field, by Nut Meadow Brook, where a hen has been devoured by a hawk probably. The feathers whiten the ground. They cannot carry a large fowl very far from the farmyard, and when driven off are frequently baited and caught in a trap by the remainder of their quarry.
The gooseberry has not yet started.
I cannot describe the lark's song.
I used these syllables in the morning to remember it by, -- heetar-su-e-00.
The willow in Miles's Swamp which resembles No. 2 not fairly in blossom yet.
Heard unusual notes from, I think, a chickadee in the swamp, elicited, probably, by the love season, -- che che vet, accent on last syllable, and vissa viss a viss, the last sharp and fine.
Yet the bird looked more slender than the common titmouse, with a longer tail, which jerked a little, but it seemed to be the same bird that sang phebe and he-phebe so sweetly. The woods rang with this.
Nuttall says it is the young that phebe in winter.
I noticed some aspens (tremuliformis) of good size there, which have no flowers!
The first lightning I remember this year was in the rain last evening, quite bright; and the thunder followed very long after. A thunder-shower in Boston yesterday.
One cowslip, though it shows the yellow, is not fairly out, but will be by to-morrow. How they improve their time ! Not a moment of sunshine lost.
One thing I may depend on : there has been no idling with the flowers. They advance as steadily as a clock. Nature loses not a moment, takes no vacation.
These plants, now protected by the water, just peeping forth. I should not be surprised to find that they drew in their heads in a frosty night.
Returning by Harrington's, saw a pigeon woodpecker flash away, showing the rich golden under side of its glancing wings and the large whitish spot on its back, and presently I heard its familiar long-repeated loud note, almost familiar as that of a barn-door fowl, which it somewhat resembles.
The robins, too, now toward sunset, perched on the old apple trees in Tarbell's orchard, twirl forth their evening lays unweariedly.
Is that a willow, the low bush from the fireplace ravine which from the lichen oak, fifty or sixty rods distant, shows so red in the westering sun light? More red, I find, by far than close at hand.
To-night for the first time I hear the hylas in full blast.
Is that pretty little reddish-leaved star-shaped plant by the edge of water a different species of hypericum from the perforatum?
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 6, 1853
Flowers advance as steadily as a clock. See April 6, 1860 ("Vegetation thus comes forward rather by fits and starts than by a steady progress. . . .The spring thus advances and recedes repeatedly, — its pendulum oscillates, — while it is carried steadily forward.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Nature
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