I would make a chart of our life,
know how its shores trend,
that butterflies reappear and when,
know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.
Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852
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
Sping Azure (Mass Audubon)
First blue butterfly
fluttering over dry leaves
in the sunny wood.
April 19. Hear the field sparrow sing on his dry upland, it being a warm day, and see the small blue butterfly hovering over the dry leaves. April 19, 1860
April 24. That fine slaty-blue butterfly, bigger than the small red, in wood-paths. April 24, 1855
April 28. As I was measuring along the Marlborough road, a fine little blue-slate butterfly fluttered over the chain. Even its feeble strength was required to fetch the year about. How daring, even rash, Nature appears, who sends out butterflies so early! April 28, 1856
April 30. That interesting small blue butterfly (size of small red) is apparently just out, fluttering over the warm dry oak leaves within the wood in the sun. Channing also first sees them to-day. The moment it rests and closes its wings, it looks merely whitish-slate, and you think at first that the deeper blue was produced by the motion of its wings, but the fact is you now see only their undersides which thus [sic] whitish spotted with black, with a dark waved line next the edge. April 30, 1859
May 1. This occurred to me yesterday as I sat in the woods admiring the beauty of the blue butterfly *. . . We are not chiefly interested in birds and insects, for example, as they are ornamental to the earth and cheering to man, but we spare the lives of the former only on condition that they eat more grubs than they do cherries, and the only account of the insects which the State encourages is of the "Insects Injurious to Vegetation." We too admit both a good and a bad spirit, but we worship chiefly the bad spirit, whom we fear. We do not think first of the good but of the harm things will do us . . . Children are attracted by the beauty of butterflies, but their parents and legislators deem it an idle pursuit. May 1, 1859
May 4. I go into Holden Swamp to hear warblers. See a little blue butterfly (or moth) — saw one yesterday — fluttering about over the dry brown leaves in a warm place by the swamp-side, making a pleasant contrast. May 4, 1858
- See Lewis Hyde, What Thoreau knew about Butterflies ("'[T]he butterfly that set his [May 1, 1859] reflection in motion must have been the Spring Azure, fittingly described by Harris as a “beautiful azure-blue butterfly” whose light blue wings have “the lustre of satin” on top and are “pearl-gray, with little blackish spots.'")
See also:
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Small Red Butterfly
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Buff-edged Butterfly
Mass Audubon, Spring Azure Celastrina ladon
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Butterfly in Spring
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 © 2009-2025
