I would make a chart of our life,
know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.
Observe all kinds of coincidences,
as what kinds of birds come with what flowers.
Henry Thoreau
The Cherry-Bird
See how artfully the seed of a cherry is placed
in order that a bird may be compelled to transport it.
It is placed in the very midst of a tempting pericarp,
so that the creature that would devour a cherry
must take a stone into its mouth.
The bird is bribed with the pericarp
to take the stone with it and do this little service for Nature.
Thus a bird's wing is added to the cherry-stone which was wingless,
and it does not wait for winds to transport it.
September 1, 1860
March 14. I hear that many cherry-birds have been seen. March 14, 1858
March 20. On that same tree by Conant's orchard, I see a flock of cherry-birds with that alert, chieftain-like look, and hear their seringo note, as if made by their swift flight through the air. They have been seen a week or two. March 20, 1858
May 14. Flood tells me he saw cherry-birds on the 12th of April in Monroe's garden. May 14, 1856
May 18. In the yellow birch and ash swamp west of big yellow birch, I hear the fine note of cherry-birds, much like that of young partridges, and see them on the ash trees. May 18, 1857
May 26. Cherry-birds. May 26, 1859
May 26. Cherry-birds. May 26, 1860
May 29. Cherry-birds on the apple trees. May 29, 1856
May 30. Cherry-bird on a cherry; also pecking at the apple blossoms. May 30, 1855
June 2. Cherry-birds are the only ones I see in flocks now. I can tell them afar by their peculiar fine springy note. June 2, 1853
June 6. Still see cherry-birds in flocks of five or six. June 6, 1856
June 9. For a day or two I have heard the fine seringo note of the cherry-birds, and seen them flying past, the only (?) birds, methinks, that I see in small flocks now, except swallows . . . It is twilight . . . Chimney and bank swallows are still hovering over the river, and cherry-birds fly past. June 9, 1854
June 14. Mr. Bacon thinks that cherry-birds are abundant where cankerworms are. June 14, 1854
June 14. A cherry-bird’s nest and two eggs in an apple tree fourteen feet from ground. One egg, round black spots and a few oblong, about equally but thinly dispersed over the whole, and a dim, internal, purplish tinge about the large end. It is difficult to see anything of the bird, for she steals away early, and you may neither see nor hear anything of her while examining the nest, and so think it deserted. June 14, 1855
June 16. Cherry-birds numerous, the bold, combative-looking fellows, - etc., etc . . .The note of the cherry-bird is fine and ringing, but peculiar and very noticeable. With its crest it is a resolute and combative-looking bird. June 16, 1854
June 16. The cherry-bird’s egg was a satin color, or very pale slate, with an internal or what would be called black-and-blue ring about large end. June 16, 1855
June 21. Cherry-birds. I have not seen, though I think I have heard them before, — their fine seringo note, like a vibrating spring in the air. They are a handsome bird, with their crest and chestnut breasts. There is no keeping the run of their goings and comings, but they will be ready for the cherries when they shall be ripe. June 21, 1852
June 21. Still see cherry-birds in flock. June 21, 1853
June 25. An unusual quantity of amelanchier berries . . . I never saw nearly so many before. It is a very agreeable surprise. I hear the cherry-birds and others about me, no doubt attracted by this fruit. June 25, 1853
July 5. It is growing warm again, but the warmth is different from that we have had. We lie in the shade of locust trees. Haymakers go by in a hay-rigging. I am reminded of berrying. I scent the sweet-fern and the dead or dry pine leaves. Cherry-birds alight on a neighboring tree. The warmth is something more normal and steady, ripening fruits . . . It begins to be such weather as when people go a-huckle-berrying. Nature offers fruits now as well as flowers. We have become accustomed to the summer. It has acquired a certain eternity. July 5, 1852
July 10. Cherry-bird commonly heard . . . The singing birds at present are: —Rural: Song sparrow, seringos, flicker, kingbird, goldfinch, link of bobolink, cherry-bird. July 10, 1854
July 19. The cherry-birds are making their seringo sound as they flit past. July 19,1851
July 28. Cherry-bird common. July 28, 1854
August 12. Cherry-bird heard. August 12, 1854
August 14. The fine note of the cherry-bird, pretty often. August 14, 1858
August 19. Saw cherry-birds flying lower over Heywood meadow like swallows, apparently for flies, and heard them, cricket-like. August 19, 1854
August 29. Many birds nowadays resort to the wild black cherry tree, as here front of Tarbell's. I see them continually coming and going directly from and to a great distance, — cherry birds, robins, and kingbirds. August 29, 1854
August 26. I saw a cherry-bird peck from the middle of its upright (vertical) web on a bush one of those large (I think yellow-marked) spiders within a rod of me. It dropped to the ground, and then the bird picked it up. It left a hole or rent in the middle of the web. The spider cunningly spreads his net for feebler insects, and then takes up his post in the centre, but perchance a passing bird picks him from his conspicuous station. August 26, 1859
September 1. In the sprout-land behind Britton's Camp, I came to a small black cherry full of fruit, and then, for the first time for a long while, I see and hear cherry-birds — their shrill and fine seringo — and the note of robins, which of late are scarce. We sit near the tree and listen to the now unusual sounds of these birds, and from time to time one or two come dashing from out the sky toward this tree, till, seeing us, they whirl, disappointed, and perhaps alight on some neighboring twigs and wait till we are gone. The cherry-birds and robins seem to know the locality of every wild cherry in the town. You are as sure to find them on them now, as bees and butterflies on the thistles. If we stay long, they go off with a fling, to some other cherry tree, which they know of but we do not. September 1, 1859
September 10. Cherry-birds common. September 10, 1854
September 22. The mountain-ash trees are alive with robins and cherry-birds nowadays, stripping them of their fruit (in drooping clusters). It is exceedingly bitter and austere to my taste. Such a tree fills the air with the watch-spring-like note of the cherry-birds coming and going. September 22, 1859
October 5. See a cherry-bird. October 5, 1857
December 22. In a (apparently kingbird's?) nest on this island I saw three cherry-stones, as if it had carried home this fruit to its young. It was, outside, of gnaphalium and saddled on a low limb. Could it have been a cherry-bird? December 22, 1859
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cherry-Bird (cedar waxwing)
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 © 2009-2026
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