At the same season with this haze of buds comes also the kindred haziness of the air.

May 26. 

Pink azalea in garden. 

Mountain-ash a day; also horse-chestnut the same. Beach plum well out, several days at least. 

Wood pewee, and Minott heard a loon go laughing over this morning. 

The vireo days have fairly begun. They are now heard amid the elm-tops. 

Thin coats and straw hats are worn. I have noticed that notional nervous invalids, who report to the community the exact condition of their heads and stomachs every morning, as if they alone were blessed or cursed with these parts; who are old betties and quiddles, if men; who can't eat their break fasts when they are ready, but play with their spoons, and hanker after an ice-cream at irregular hours; who go more than half-way to meet any invalidity, and go to bed to be sick on the slightest occasion, in the middle of the brightest forenoon, — improve the least opportunity to be sick ; — I observe that such are self-indulgent persons, without any regular and absorbing employment. They are nice, discriminating, experienced in all that relates to bodily sensations. They come to you stroking their wens, manipulating their ulcers, and expect you to do the same for them. Their religion and humanity stick. They spend the day manipulating their bodies and doing no work; can never get their nails clean. 

Some of the earliest willows about warm edges of woods are gone to seed and downy. 

P. M. — To Saw Mill Brook. 

It is very hazy after a sultry morning, but the wind is getting east and cool. 

The oaks are in the gray, or a little more, and the silvery leafets of the deciduous trees invest the woods like a permanent mist. At the same season with this haze of buds comes also the kindred haziness of the air. 

I see the common small reddish butterflies. 

Very interesting now are the red tents of expanding- oak leaves, as you go through sprout-lands, — the crimson velvet of the black oak and the more pinkish white oak. The salmon and pinkish-red canopies or umbrellas of the white oak are particularly interesting. 

The very sudden expansion of the great hickory buds, umbrella-wise. 

Now, at last, all leaves dare unfold, and twigs begin to shoot. 

As I am going down the footpath from Britton's camp to the spring, I start a pair of nighthawks (they had the white on the wing) from amid the dry leaves at the base of a bush, a bunch of sprouts, and away they flitted in zigzag noiseless flight a few rods through the sprout-land, dexterously avoiding the twigs, uttering a faint hollow what, as if made by merely closing the bill, and one alighted flat on a stump. 

On those carpinus trees which have fertile flowers, the sterile are effete and drop off. 

The red choke-berry not in bloom, while the black is, for a day or more at least. 

Roadside near Britton's camp, see a grosbeak, apparently female of the rose-breasted, quite tame, as usual, brown above, with black head and a white streak over the eye, a less distinct one beneath it, two faint bars on wings, dirty-white bill, white breast, dark spotted or streaked, and from time [to time] utters a very sharp chirp of alarm or interrogation as it peers through the twigs at me. 

May 26, 2018

A lady's-slipper. At Cliffs, no doubt, before. 

At Abel Brooks's (or Black Snake, or Red Cherry, or Rye) Hollow, hear the wood thrush. 

In Thrush Alley, see one of those large ant-hills, recently begun, the grass and moss partly covered with sand over a circle two feet in diameter, with holes two to five inches apart, and the dry sand is dark-spotted with the fresh damp sand about each hole. 

My mother was telling to-night of the sounds which she used to hear summer nights when she was young and lived on the Virginia Road, — the lowing of cows, or cackling of geese, or the beating of a drum as far off as Hildreth's, but above all Joe Merriam whistling to his team, for he was an admirable whistler. 

Says she used to get up at midnight and go and sit on the door-step when all in the house were asleep, and she could hear nothing in the world but the ticking of the clock in the house behind her.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 26, 1857

Pink azalea in garden. See May 26, 1860 ("Our pink azalea”); May 25, 1856 ("Azalea nudiflora in garden."); May 29, 1855("Azalea nudiflora in garden”); May 17, 1854 ("Azalea nudiflora in woods begins to leaf now.");May 31, 1853 ("I am going in search of the Azalea nudiflora.”) [Rhododendron periclymenoides , pinxterbloom azalea]

Wood pewee. See note to May 26, 1852 ("I hear the pea-wai, the tender note.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Wood-Pewee

It is very hazy after a sultry morning, but the wind is getting east and cool. See May 26, 1855 (“Again a strong cold wind from the north by west, turning up the new and tender pads”); May 26, 1860 (“Overcast, rain-threatening; wind northeast and cool”)

At the same season with this haze of buds comes also the kindred haziness of the air. See May 15, 1860 ("At this season there is thus a mist in the air and a mist on the earth.") May 15, 1854 ("The aspect of oak and other woods at a distance is somewhat like that of a very thick and reddish or yellowish mist about the evergreens."); May 27, 1855 ("How important the dark evergreens now seen through the haze in the distance and contrasting with the gauze-like, as yet thin-clad deciduous trees").

A lady's-slipper. At Cliffs, no doubt, before. See May 27, 1852 ("Ladies'-slippers out. They perfume the air.”); May 30, 1856 (“The lady’s-slipper in pitch pine wood-side near J. Hosmer’s Desert, probably about the 27th”).

May 26. See  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 26

I never knew it to make such a business of snowing and bring so little to pass.

January 22. 

January 22, 2017

Snows all day, clearing up at night, — a remarkably fine and dry snow, which, looking out, you might suspect to be blowing snow merely. Yet thus it snows all day, driving almost horizontally, but it does not amount to much. 

P. M. — To Walden.

I never knew it to make such a business of snowing and bring so little to pass. The air is filled, so that you cannot see far against it, i.e. looking north-north west, yet but an inch or two falls all day. There is some drifting, however. 

You wonder how the tree sparrows can seek their food on the railroad causeway, flying in the face of such a fine, cold, driving snow-storm. 

Within the woods it is comparatively still. 

In the woods by Abel Brooks's rye hollow I hear a faint note, and see undoubtedly a brown creeper inspecting the branches of the oaks. It has white and black bars on the head, uttering from time to time a fine, wiry, screeping tse, tse, or tse, tse, tse. 

Brown Creeper

Minott tells me that Sam Barrett told him once when he went to mill that a song sparrow took up its quarters in his grist-mill and stayed there all winter. When it did not help itself he used to feed it with meal, for he was glad of its company; so, what with the dashing water and the crumbs of meal, it must have fared well. 

I asked M. about the Cold Friday. He said, "It was plaguy cold; it stung like a wasp." He remembers seeing them toss up water in a shoemaker's shop, usually a very warm place, and when it struck the floor it was frozen and rattled like so many shot. 

Old John Nutting used to say, "When it is cold it is a sign it's going to be warm," and "When it 's warm it 's a sign it 's going to be cold.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 22, 1857

A remarkably fine and dry snow, . . . driving almost horizontally ... See January 19, 1857 ("A fine dry snow, intolerable to face.”);  December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. This is a fine, dry snow, drifting nearly horizontally from the north”)

I asked M. about the Cold Friday [January 19, 1810]. . . .See January 11, 2017 ("Mother remembers the Cold Friday very well. . . .“);February 7, 1855 ("The old folks still refer to the Cold Friday, when they sat before great fires of wood four feet long, with a fence of blankets behind them, and water froze on the mantelpiece.”)

A song sparrow took up its quarters in his grist-mill and stayed there all winter. See January 15, 1857 ("I saw, to my surprise, that it must be a song sparrow, . . .taken refuge in this shed")

I heard a robin begin his strain, and yielded the point to him.

Turdus migratorius

May 4

A robin sings when I, in the house, cannot distinguish the earliest dawning from the full moonlight. His song first advertises me of the daybreak, when I think it night, as I lie looking out into the full moonlight. I heard a robin begin his strain, and yielded the point to him, believing he is better acquainted with the springs of the day than I, — with the signs of day. 

5 A. M. — To Hill. 

Many red-wings and grackles feeding together on meadows. They still fly in flocks. Some dark-ash; are they female grackles? Hear a brown thrasher.

Yellow lily pads are just beginning to show themselves on the surface, the first noticeable on the water. 

All kinds of young maples, and some limbs of large white, begin to leaf. Red maple blossoms begin to cover ground. Ostrya will leaf to-morrow. The second amelanchier, sweet-fern, and early thorn begin to leaf to-day. Small white-barked shrub (andromeda ?) on Island Neck begins to leaf to-morrow.

I think I hear a warbling vireo. 

Birds. Still see three or four crows together, though some at least are building. Jays do not scream as early. Chickadee, spring notes still. Partridges setting. Have noticed no ducks for some days. All the black blackbirds as plenty as ever, and in flocks. Have not noticed robins in flocks for two or three days. See no gulls, nor F. hyemalis nor tree sparrows now. Red tail hawk young fourteen days old. Snipes feeding in numbers on the 29th April. Yellow redpolls in numbers May 1st. woodcocks setting. Purple finch sings steadily. Myrtle-birds numerous, and sing their tea lee, tea lee in morning. White-throated sparrows here, and numerous. No goldfinches for long time. 

The water is now generally off the meadows. 

P.M. — To beeches. 

Seiurus aurocapilla

In cut woods a small thrush, with crown inclining to rufous, tail foxy, and edges of wings dark-ash; clear white beneath. I think the golden-crowned? 

See more white-throated sparrows than any other bird to day in various parts of our walk, generally feeding in numbers on the ground in open dry fields and meadows next to woods, then flitting through the woods. Hear only that sharp, lisping chip from them.

A partridge’s grayish tail-feather, with a subterminal dark band. 

Several larger thrushes on low limbs and on ground, with a dark eye (not the white around it of the wood thrush) and, I think, the nankeen spot on the secondaries. A hermit thrush? 

Sitting in Abel Brooks’s Hollow, see a small hawk go over high in the air, with a long tail and distinct from wings. It advanced by a sort of limping flight yet rapidly, not circling nor tacking, but flapping briskly at intervals and then gliding straight ahead with rapidity, controlling itself with its tail. It seemed to be going a journey. Was it not the sharp-shinned, or Falco fuscus? 

I think that what I have called the sparrow hawk falsely, and latterly pigeon hawk, is also the sharp-shinned (vide April 26th and May 8th, 1854, and April 16th, 1855), for the pigeon hawk’s tail is white-barred. 

Found a black snake’s skeleton. Remarked the globular protuberance on which the vertebrae revolve, and the four (?) sharp, recurved teeth in the lower jaw. 

Red cherry not generally leafing before yesterday. Sand cherry yesterday leafs. 

See where a skunk has probed last night, and large black dung with apparently large ants’ heads and earth or sand and stubble or insects’ wings in it; probably had been probing a large ants’ hill. 

Was that a cerasus or prunus on Pine Hill? 

The beech leaf-buds are very handsome reddish-brown now, some nearly an inch and a half long and very slender, not more than a sixth of an inch in diameter and regularly swelling from each end; will open, apparently, in three or four days. The blossom-buds are still larger; may bloom in eight days. 

Potentilla out. What that plant in Baker’s Pool, with sessile spatulate leaves toothed at end, now four or five inches high? 

Noticed a perfectly regular circular concavity in a sandy soil in a hollow in birch woods, where apparently a partridge had dusted herself.

Yesterday a great many spotted and wood tortoises in the Sam Wheeler birch-fence meadow pool, which dries up. One of the former gradually settled itself into the sod by turning round and round and scratching with its claws. 

A shower.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 4, 1855

Was it not the sharp-shinned, or Falco fuscus? See July 21, 1858 (“A young man killed one of the young hawks, and I saw it. It was the Falco fuscus, the American brown or slate-colored hawk.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sharp-shinned Hawk

I think that what I have called the sparrow hawk falsely, and latterly pigeon hawk, is also the sharp-shinned . . .  See July 2, 1856 (“Looked at the birds in the Natural History Rooms in Boston. Observed no white spots on the sparrow hawk’s wing, or on the pigeon or sharp-shinned hawk’s. Indeed they were so closed that I could not have seen them. Am uncertain to which my wing belongs.”) See also  A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Hawk (Merlin)

I yield the point to

the robin who sings his strain

when I think it night.