A Book of the Seasons: Signs of the Spring: Perla-like Insects Appear.

I perceive this spring

 that the year is a circle.

I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures

 completes the world.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

I have seen signs of the spring.

February 23, 1857

February 18.  I  see on ice by the riverside, front of N. Barrett's, very slender insects a third of an inch long, with grayish folded wings reaching far behind and two antennæ. Somewhat in general appearance like the long wasps. February 18, 1854

March 3. I see a dirty-white miller fluttering about over the winter-rye patch next to Hubbard’s Grove. March 3, 1855

March 3. I see one of those gray-winged (long and slender) perla-like insects by the waterside this afternoon. March 3, 1860

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. March 7, 1853 

March 7. I also see — but their appearance is a regular early spring, or late winter, phenomenon — a great many of those slender black-bodied insects from one quarter to (with the feelers one inch long, with six legs and long gray wings, two feelers before, and two forks or tails like feelers for convenience Perla. They are crawling slowly about over the snow. March 7, 1859

Perla marginata

(These peculiar insects with long wings and two tails.)

March 10. You are always surprised by the sight of the first spring bird or insect; they seem premature, and there is no such evidence of spring as themselves, so that they literally fetch the year about. March 10, 1855 

March 11. Many of those dirty-white millers or ephemera in the air. March 11, 1855

March 14. I go down the bank of the river in the Great Meadows. Many of those small, slender insects, with long, narrow wings (some apparently of same species without), are crawling about in the sun on the snow and bark of trees, etc. March 14, 1857

March 17. As usual, I have seen for some weeks on the ice these peculiar (perla?) insects with long wings and two tails. March 17, 1858

March 22. On water standing above the ice under a white maple, are many of those Perla (?) insects, with four wings, drowned, though it is all ice and snow around the country over. Do not see any flying, nor before this. March 22, 1856

March 22. The phenomena of an average March . . . Many insects and worms come forth and are active,- and the perla insects still about ice and water, — as tipula, grubs, and fuzzy caterpillars, minute hoppers on grass at springs; gnats, large and small, dance in air; the common and the green fly buzz outdoors; the gyrinus, large and small, on brooks, etc., and skaters; spiders shoot their webs, and at last gossamer floats; the honey bee visits the skunk- cabbage; fishworms come up, sow-bugs, wireworms etc.; various larvæ are seen in pools; small green and also brown grasshoppers begin to hop, small ants to stir (25th); Vanessa Antiopa out 29th; cicindelas run on sand; and small reddish butter flies are seen in wood-paths, etc., etc., etc.  March 22, 1860 

March 24. See many of those narrow four-winged insects (perla?) of the ice now fluttering on the water like ephemerae. They have two pairs of wings indistinctly spotted dark and light. March 24, 1857

See Signs of the Spring:

• 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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Insects appear

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