Henry Thoreau, March 17, 1857
I have seen signs of the spring.
I have seen a frog swiftly sinking in a pool,
or where he dimpled the surface as he leapt in.
I have seen the brilliant spotted tortoises
stirring at the bottom of ditches.
February 18. When I approached the bank of a ditch this afternoon, I saw a frog diving to the bottom. February 18, 1857
February 23. I have seen signs of the spring. I have seen a frog swiftly sinking in a pool, or where he dimpled the surface as he leapt in. February 23, 1857
February 23. P. M. — See two yellow-spotted tortoises in the ditch south of Trillium Wood. You saunter expectant in the mild air along the soft edge of a ditch filled with melted snow and paved with leaves, in some sheltered place, yet perhaps with some ice at one end still, and are thrilled to see stirring amid the leaves at the bottom, sluggishly burying themselves from your sight again, these brilliantly spotted creatures. There are commonly two, at least. The tortoise is stirring in the ditches again. In your latest spring they still look incredibly strange when first seen, and not like cohabitants and contemporaries of yours. What mean these turtles, these coins of the muddy mint issued in early spring? The bright spots on their backs are vain unless I behold them. The spots seem brighter than ever when first beheld in the spring, as does the bark of the willow. February 23, 1857
March 7. What is the earliest sign of spring? The motion of worms and insects? The flow of sap in trees and the swelling of buds? Do not the insects awake with the flow of the sap? Bluebirds, etc., probably do not come till insects come out –– Or are there earlier signs in the water? - the tortoises, frogs, etc. March 7, 1853
March 7. I see many tadpoles of medium or full size in deep warm ditches in Hubbard’s meadow. They may probably be seen as soon as the ditches are open, thus earlier than frogs. March 7, 1855
March 8. Walk these days along the brooks, looking for tortoises and trout, etc. March 8, 1855
March 10. I find a yellow-spotted tortoise (Emys guttata) in the brook. March 10,1853
A Change in the Air A Sunny Nook in Spring Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding Braided Ripples of Melting Snow Shine in the Ruts Bright Blue Water Buzzing Flies Ducks Afar, Sailing on the Meadow Frogs, and Turtles Stirring Geese Overhead Greening Grasses and Sedges I begin to think that my wood will last Insects and Worms Come Forth and are Active Listening for the Bluebird March is famous for its Winds Mosses Bright Green My Greatcoat on my Arm Perla-like Insects Appear Red Maple Sap Flows Ripples made by Fishes Skunks Active The Anxious Peep of the Early Robin The crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows The Days have grown Sensibly Longer The Eaves Begin to Run The Gobbling of Turkeys The Grackle Arrives The Hawks of March The New Warmth of the Sun The Note of the Dark-eyed Junco Going Northward The Red-Wing Arrives The Skunk Cabbage Blooms The Softened Air of these Warm February Days The Song Sparrow Sings The Spring Note of the Chickadee The Spring Note of the Nuthatch The Striped Squirrel Comes Out The Water Bug (Gyrinus) The Woodchuck Ventures Out Walking without Gloves Woodpeckers Tapping
March 7. I see many tadpoles of medium or full size in deep warm ditches in Hubbard’s meadow. They may probably be seen as soon as the ditches are open, thus earlier than frogs. March 7, 1855
March 8. Walk these days along the brooks, looking for tortoises and trout, etc. March 8, 1855
March 8. I saw, in Monroe's well by the edge of the river, the other day, a dozen frogs, chiefly shad frogs, which had been dead a good while. March 8, 1860
March 10. I find a yellow-spotted tortoise (Emys guttata) in the brook. March 10,1853
March 10. Two frogs (may have been Rana fontinalis; did not see them) jumped into Hosmer's grassy ditch. March 10, 1859
March 13. I am surprised to see, not only many pollywogs through the thin ice of the warm ditches, but, in still warmer, stagnant, unfrozen holes in this meadow, half a dozen small frogs, probably Rana palustris March 13, 1855
March 15. Am surprised to hear, from the pool behind Lee's Cliff, the croaking of the wood frog. It is all alive with them, and I see them spread out on the surface. Their note is somewhat in harmony with the rustling of the now drier leaves. It is more like the note of the classical frog, as described by Aristophanes, etc. How suddenly they awake! yesterday, as it were, asleep and dormant, to-day as lively as ever they are. The awakening of the leafy woodland pools. They must awake in good condition. As Walden opens eight days earlier than I have known it, so this frog croaks about as much earlier. Many large fuzzy gnats and other insects in air.
March 18. C. has already seen a yellow-spotted tortoise in a ditch. March 18, 1854
March 22. At Nut Meadow Brook, water-bugs and skaters are now plenty. I see the Emys guttata with red spots. Some which I think to be the same sex have striated scales, while others are smooth above. What I take to be the female has a flat-edged shell as well as depressed sternum. The yellow spots appear like some yellow wood let in. The spots are brightest when they are in the water. They are in couples . . . The Emys guttata is first found in warm, muddy ditches. March 22, 1853
March 18. C. has already seen a yellow-spotted tortoise in a ditch. March 18, 1854
March 22. At Nut Meadow Brook, water-bugs and skaters are now plenty. I see the Emys guttata with red spots. Some which I think to be the same sex have striated scales, while others are smooth above. What I take to be the female has a flat-edged shell as well as depressed sternum. The yellow spots appear like some yellow wood let in. The spots are brightest when they are in the water. They are in couples . . . The Emys guttata is first found in warm, muddy ditches. March 22, 1853
March 22. The phenomena of an average March . . . those little frogs (sylvatica males ?) at spring-holes and ditches, the yellow-spot turtle and wood turtle, Rana fontinalis, and painted tortoise come forth, and the Rana sylvatica croaks.. March 22. 1860
March 24. Begins to sprinkle while I am sitting in Laurel Glen, listening to hear the earliest wood frogs croaking. I think t. . .you will hear many of them sooner than you will hear many hylodes . . . How moderate on her first awakening, how little demonstrative! You may sit half an hour before you will hear another. . . .Can you ever be sure that you have heard the very first wood frog in the township croak? March 24, 1859
March 24. In the ditch under the west edge of Trillium Wood I see six yellow-spot turtles. March 24, 1859
March 24. There sits also on the bank of the ditch a Rana fontinalis, and it is altogether likely they were this species that leaped into a ditch on the 10th. This one is mainly a bronze brown, with a very dark greenish snout, etc., with the raised line down the side of the back. March 24, 1859
March 26. Though it is rather cool and windy in exposed places, I hear a faint, stertorous croak from a frog in the open swamp; at first one faint note only, which I could not be sure that I had heard” March 26, 1857
March 28. See . . .dead frogs, and the mud stirred by a living one, in this ditch, and afterward in Conantum Brook a living frog, the first of the season. March 28, 1852
March 28. Cleaning out the spring on the west side of Fair Haven Hill, I find a small frog, apparently a bullfrog, just come forth, which must have wintered in the mud there.March 28, 1858
March 30. The frogs are now heard leaping into the ditches on your approach. March 30, 1858
March 31. As I rise the east side of the Hill, I hear the distant faint peep of hylodes and the tut tut of croaking frogs from the west of the Hill. March 31, 1857
*****
See also: A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,
- The Yellow-Spotted Turtle (Emys guttata)
- The Pickerel frog (Rana palustris orLithobates palustris)
- The Green Frog in Spring (Rana Fontinalis)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Frogs, and Turtles Stirring
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 © 2009-2023
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