February 24, 2018
Chickadee pipes forth
its phoebe note the instant
I think it is time.
Surprised to hear
the strain of a song sparrow
from the riverside.
February 24, 1857
I am reminded of spring by the quality of the air. February 24, 1852
The cock-crowing and even the telegraph harp prophesy it, even though the ground is for the most part covered by snow.February 24, 1852
A fine spring morning. February 24, 1857
A very spring-like day, so much sparkling light in the air. February 24, 1860
It seems to be one of those early springs of which we have heard but have never experienced. Perhaps they are fabulous. February 24, 1857
The water on the meadow this still, bright morning is smooth as in April. February 24, 1857
Get my boat out the cellar. February 24, 1857
I now hear at a distance the sound of the laborer's sledge on the rails. February 24, 1852
The very sound of men's work reminds, advertises, me of the coming of spring. February 24, 1852
2 P.M. - Thermometer 42. February 24, 1860
In Wheeler's Wood by railroad. Nuthatches are faintly answering each other, — tit for tat, — on different keys, — a faint creak. Now and then one utters a loud distinct gnah. February 24, 1854
This bird more than any I know loves to stand with its head downward. February 24, 1854
Meanwhile chickadees, with their silver tinkling, are flitting high above through the tops of the pines. February 24, 1854
A chickadee with its winter lisp flits over, and I think it is time to hear its phebe note, and that instant it pipes it forth. February 24, 1857
I am surprised to hear the strain of a song sparrow from the riverside, and as I cross from the causeway to the hill, thinking of the bluebird, I that instant hear one's note from deep in the softened air. February 24, 1857
As the day advances I hear more bluebirds and see their azure flakes settling on the fence-posts. February 24, 1857
Their short, rich, crispy warble curls through the air. Its grain now lies parallel to the curve of the bluebird's warble, like boards of the same lot. February 24, 1857
Observe in one of the little pond-holes between Walden and Fair Haven where a partridge had travelled around in the snow amid the bordering bushes twenty-five rods, and had paused at each high blueberry bush, fed on its red buds and shaken down fragments of its bark on the snow. February 24, 1854
The other day I thought that I smelled a fox very strongly, and went a little further and found that it was a skunk. May not their odors differ in intensity chiefly? February 24, 1854
I now see where one has pawed out the worm-dust or other chankings from a hole in base of a walnut and torn open the fungi, etc., there, exploring for grubs or insects.
The ground is almost completely bare again. February 24, 1857
I am too late by a day or two for the sand foliage on the east side of the Deep Cut. The frost is partly come out of this bank, and it is become dry again in the sun. It is glorious to see the soil again, here where a shovel, perchance, will enter it and find no frost. February 24, 1852
The railroad in the Deep Cut is dry as in spring, almost dusty. The best of the sand foliage is already gone. February 24, 1857
Clear, but very cold and windy for the season. February 24, 1855
Walden is still covered with thick ice, though melted a foot from the shore. February 24, 1857
The whole of the broad meadows is a rough, irregular checker-board of great cakes a rod square or more,—arctic enough to look at. February 24, 1855
Measure the ice of Walden in three places, — Call it then 17 inches on an average. On Fair Haven, in the only place tried, it was 21 inches thick. February 24, 1854
I think that in an average year the ice in such a pond as Fair Haven attains a greater thickness than the snow on a level. February 24, 1854
I see, at Minot Pratt’s, rhodora in bloom in a pitcher with water andromeda. February 24, 1858
Went through that long swamp northeast of Boaz’s Meadow. Interesting and peculiar are the clumps, or masses, of panicled andromeda, with light-brown stems, topped uniformly with very distinct yellow brown recent shoots, ten or twelve inches long, with minute red buds sleeping close along them. February 24, 1858
This uniformity in such masses gives a pleasing tinge to the swamp's surface. Wholesome colors, which wear well. February 24, 1858
I see quite a number of emperor moth cocoons attached to this shrub, some hung round with a loose mass of leaves as big as my two fists. February 24, 1858
What art in the red-eye to make these two adjacent maple twigs serve for the rim of its pensile basket, inweaving them! Surely it finds a place for itself in nature between the two twigs of a maple. February 24, 1858
On the side of the meadow moraine just north of the boulder field, I see barberry bushes three inches in diameter and ten feet high. February 24, 1858
What a surprising color this wood has! It splits and splinters very much when I bend it. February 24, 1858
I cut a cane and, shaving off the outer bark, it is of imperial yellow, as if painted, fit for a Chinese mandarin.
P. M. -To young willow-row near Hunt’s Pond road. February 24, 1855
The willow-row does not begin to look bright yet. The top two or three feet are red as usual at a distance, the lower parts a rather dull green. February 24, 1855
Observe the poplar's swollen buds and the brightness of the willow's bark. It is a natural resurrection, an experience of immortality. February 24, 1852
I now remember a few osiers which I have seen early in past springs, thus brilliantly green and red (or yellow), and it is as if all the landscape and all nature shone. February 24, 1855
Though the twigs were few which I saw, I remember it as a prominent phenomenon affecting the face of Nature, a gladdening of her face. February 24, 1855
You will often fancy that they look brighter before the spring has come, and when there has been no change in them. February 24, 1855\
The clouds reflecting a dazzling brightness from their edges, and though it is rather warm (the wind raw) there are many, finely divided, in a stream southwest to northeast all the afternoon, and some most brilliant mother-o'-pearl. February 24, 1860
I never saw the green in it more distinct. February 24, 1860
This on the thin white edges of clouds as if it were a small piece of a rainbow. February 24, 1860
The French (in the Jesuit Relations) say fil de l'eau for that part of the current of a river in which any floating thing would be carried, generally about equidistant from the two banks. It is a convenient expression, for which I think we have no equivalent. February 24, 1857
The river risen and quite over the meadows yesterday and to-day, and musquash begun to be killed. February 24, 1860
Thermometer at 10° at 10 P. M. February 24, 1855
Dr. Jarvis tells me that he thinks there was as much snow as this in ’35, when he lived in the Parkman house and drove in his sleigh from November 23d to March 30th excepting one day. February 24, 1856
****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge
A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Willows on the Causeway.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red-eyed Vireo
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau:, I Have Seen Signs of the Spring:
*****
October 29, 1857 ("The river is very high for the season and all over the meadow in front of the house, and still rising. Many are out (as yesterday) shooting musquash.")
November 3, 1857 (“Follow up the Boulder Field northward, and it terminates in that moraine.”)
November 3, 1857 (" It would be something to own that pasture with the great rocks in it")
November 18, 1858 ("Notice the short bright-yellow willow twigs on Hubbard’s Causeway")
December 5, 1858 (" On the causeway the yellowish bark of the willows gleams warmly through the ice.")
December 18, 1854 ("Where a partridge took to wing I find the round red buds of the high blueberry plucked about the swamps.")
January 8, 1860 (“After December all weather that is not wintry is springlike.”)
January 9, 1858 ("Some chickadees come flitting close to me, and one utters its spring note, phe-be.”);
January 13, 1856 ("What a wonderful genius it is that leads the vireo to select the tough fibres of the inner bark, instead of the more brittle grasses, for its basket, the elastic pine-needles and the twigs, curved as they dried to give it form, and, as I suppose, the silk of cocoons, etc., etc., to bind it together with!")
January 15, 1857 ("I saw, to my surprise, that it must be a song sparrow, . . .taken refuge in this shed”)
January 22, 1854 ("Once or twice of late I have seen the mother-o'-pearl tints and rainbow flocks in the western sky. The usual time is when the air is clear and pretty cool, about an hour before sundown.")
January 28, 1857 (“Am again surprised to see a song sparrow sitting for hours on our wood-pile in the yard, in the midst of snow in the yard.”)
January 29, 1859 ("Many are out in boats, steering outside the ice of the river over the newly flooded meadows, shooting musquash.")
February 2, 1858 ("As I return from the post-office, I hear the hoarse, robin-like chirp of a song sparrow on Cheney's ground, and see him perched on the top most twig of a heap of brush, looking forlorn and drabbled and solitary in the rain.”)
February 7, 1857 ("It is so warm that I am obliged to take off my greatcoat and carry it on my arm. ")
February 8, 1860("February may be called earine (springlike).")
February 9, 1856 ("I hear a phoebe note from a chickadee"); March 1, 1854 (" I hear the phoebe or spring note of the chickadee");
February 12, 1856 ("From January 6th to January 13th, not less than a foot of snow on a level in open land, and from January 13th to February 7th, not less than sixteen inches on a level at any one time in open land, and still there is fourteen on a level. That is, for twenty-five days the snow was sixteen inches deep in open land!!”)
February 12, 1856 ("The thermometer at 8.30 A. M., 42°. . . .How different the sunlight over thawing snow . . .I experience a springlike melting in my thoughts. ")
February 14, 1856 ("I walk in the bare maple swamps and detect the minute pensile nests of some vireo high over my head . . . And where is that young family now, while their cradle is filled with ice?")February 16, 1855 ("Sounds sweet and musical through this air . . . striking on the rails at a distance.”)
February 14, 1857 ("It is a fine, somewhat springlike day. . .the thermometer in the shade north of house standing 42°.")
February 16, 1856 ("The sun is most pleasantly warm on my cheek; the melting snow shines in the ruts; the cocks crow more than usual in barns; my greatcoat is an incumbrance.")
February 16, 1856 ("Near the shore in one place it was twenty-two inches.”)
February 18, 1857 ("The snow is nearly all gone, and it is so warm and springlike that I walk over to the hill, listening for spring birds.")
February 19, 1856 ("the snow has been deeper since the 17th than before this winter. I think if the drifts could be fairly measured it might be found to be seventeen or eighteen inches deep on a level.”)
February 19, 1854 (“The light ash-colored cocoons of the A. Promethea, with the withered and faded leaves wrapped around them so artfully and admirably secured by fine silk wound round the leaf-stalk and the twig they are taken at a little distance for a few curled and withered leaves left on.”)
February 22, 1855 ("Remarkably warm and pleasant weather, perfect spring.")
February 23, 1855 ("I see great cakes of ice, a rod or more in length and one foot thick, lying high and dry on the bare ground in the low fields some ten feet or more beyond the edge of the thinner ice, washed up by the last rise (the 18th).”)
February 25, 1857 ("The thermometer is at 65° at noon.")
February 25, 1859 ("I heard this morning a nuthatch on the elms in the street; and so their gnah gnah is a herald of the spring.")
February 26, 1851 ("See five red-wings and a song sparrow(?) this afternoon.”)
February 26, 1857 ("Paint the bottom of my boat.”)
March 1, 1856 ("I hear several times the fine-drawn phe-be note of the chickadee")
March 2, 1860 ('Notice the brightness of a row of osiers this morning. This phenomenon, whether referable to a change in the condition of the twig or to the spring air and light, or even to our imaginations, is not the less a real phenomenon, affecting us annually at this season. ")
March 2, 1860 ("Looking up a narrow ditch in a meadow, I see a modest brown bird flit along it furtively, — the first song sparrow, -- and then alight far off on a rock. Ed. Hoar says he heard one February 27th.")
March 3, 1860 (" The first song sparrows are very inconspicuous and shy on the brown earth. You hear some weeds rustle, or think you see a mouse run amid the stubble, and then the sparrow flits low away.")
March 5, 1860 ("George Buttrick thinks that forty musquash have been killed this spring between Hunt's and Flint's Bridge.")
March 5, 1860 ("The song sparrows begin to sing hereabouts.")
March 8, 1855 (“I cross through the swamp south of Boulder Field toward the old dam.”)
March 11, 1854 ("On Tuesday, the 7th, I heard the first song sparrow chirp, and saw it flit silently from alder to alder. This pleasant morning after three days' rain and mist, they generally forthburst into sprayey song from the low trees along the river. The developing of their song is gradual but sure, like the expanding of a flower. This is the first song I have heard.”)
March 11, 1859 (“By riverside I hear the song of many song sparrows, the most of a song of any yet.”)
March 17, 1857(“Launch my boat.”)
March 17, 1859 ("River risen still higher. . . . A great many musquash have been killed within a week. ")
.March 18, 1857 (“I now again hear the song sparrow’s tinkle along the riverside, probably to be heard for a day or two”)
March 27, 1857 (“But now chiefly there comes borne on the breeze the tinkle of the song sparrow along the riverside.”)
March 20, 1859 (". a rich yellow or orange yellow in the upper three or four feet. This is, methinks, the brightest object in the landscape these days. Nothing so betrays the spring sun. I am aware that the sun has come out of a cloud first by seeing it lighting up the osiers. Such a willow-row, cut off within a year or two, might be called a heliometer, or measure of the sun's brightness")
April 9, 1853 ("The sound of the laborers' striking the iron rails of the railroad with their sledges, as in the sultry days of summer, -- resounds, as it were, from the hazy sky as a roof, -- a more confined and . . . domestic sound echoing along between the earth and the low heavens.”)
April 21, 1852 ("In the pasture beyond the brook, where grow the barberries, huckleberries, — creeping juniper, etc., are half a dozen huge boulders, which look grandly now in the storm, covered with greenish-gray lichens, alternating with the slatish-colored rock. Slumbering, silent, . . .I look down on some of them as on the backs of oxen. A certain personality, or at least brute life, they seem to have.")
May 14, 1852 ("Going over the Corner causeway, the willow blossoms fill the air with a sweet fragrance, and I am ready to sing, Ah! willow, willow! These willows have yellow bark, bear yellow flowers and yellowish-green leaves, and are now haunted by the summer yellowbird and Maryland yellow-throat")
May 27, 1854 ("I find the pensile nest of a red-eye between a fork of a shrub chestnut near the path.")
February 24, 2023
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.
February 23<<<<< February 24 >>>>> February 25
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 24
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
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