Coral-root by Brister's Spring

August 20 

August 20, 2018

That large galium still abundant and in blossom, filling crevices. 

The Corallorhiza multiflora, coral-root (not odontorhiza, I think, for it has twenty-four flowers, and its germ is not roundish oval, and its lip is three-lobed), by Brister's Spring. Found by R. W. E., August 12; also Goodyera pubescens found at same date. 

The purple gerardia is very beautiful now in green grass, and the rhexia also, both difficult to get home. 

I find raspberries still. 

An aster with a smooth leaf narrowed below, somewhat like A. amplexicaulis (or patens (Gray) ?). Is it var. phlogifolius? 

Is that smooth, handsome-stemmed goldenrod in Brown's Sleepy Hollow meadow Solidago serotina? 

Bidens, either connata or cernua, by Moore's potato- field.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 20, 1852


The Corallorhiza multiflora, coral-root (not odontorhiza) found by R. W. E., August 12. See August 13, 1852 ("I hear that the Corallorhiza odontorhiza, coral-root, is out.). See also August 29, 1857 ("Nearby, north [of Indian Rock, west of the swamp], is a rocky ridge, on the east slope of which the Corallorhiza multiflora is very abundant.") and  note to August 13, 1857 ("Corallorhiza multiflora . . . how long") [spotted coral-root (Corallorhiza maculate) -- a saprophytic orchid]


Goodyera pubescens found at same date. See August 20, 1857 ("The Goodyera repens grows behind the spring where I used to sit, amid the dead pine leaves") and note to August 27, 1856 (“Goodyera pubescens, rattlesnake-plantain, is apparently a little past its prime. It is very abundant on Clintonia Swamp hillside. . .”)


The purple gerardia is very beautiful now in green grass, and the rhexia also, both difficult to get home. See August 20, 1851("The Rhexia Virginica is a showy flower at present.") See also note to August 5, 1858 ("I cannot sufficiently admire the rhexia, one of the highest-colored purple flowers, but difficult to bring home in its perfection, with its fugacious petals.")


Bidens, either connata or cernua, by Moore's potato- field. See August 30, 1856 ("Bidens connata abundant at Moore's Swamp, how long? ");  September 12, 1851("in Baker's Meadow beyond Pine Hill. . . the Bidens cernua, nodding burr-marigold, with five petals")September 12, 1859 ("The four kinds of bidens (frondosa, connata, cernua, and chrysanthemoides) abound now, [T]he first two are inconspicuous flowers, cheap and ineffectual, commonly without petals, like the erechthites, but the third and fourth are conspicuous and interesting, expressing by their brilliant yellow the ripeness of the low grounds.");   September 15, 1856 ("What I must call Bidens cernua, like a small chrysanthemoides, is bristly hairy, somewhat connate and apparently regularly toothed"); September 19, 1851 ("Large-flowered bidens,or beggar-ticks,or bur-marigold,now abundant by riverside.")

Behind a picture in R. W. E.'s dining-room.

August 10. 

2 p.m. — Air, 84°; Boiling Spring this after noon., 46°; Brister's, 49°; or where there is little or no surface water the same as in spring. Walden is at surface 80° (air over it 76). 

Aster dumosus and pennyroyal out; how long? 

Sand cherry is well ripe — some of it — and tolerable, better than the red cherry or choke-cherry. 

Juncus acuminatus aka paradoxus

Juncus paradoxus, that large and late juncus (tailed), as in Hubbard's Close and on island above monument and in Great Meadows, say ten days. 

Saw yesterday in Fitzwilliam from the railroad a pond covered with white lilies uniformly about half the size of ours! 

Saw this evening, behind a picture in R. W. E.'s dining-room, the hoary bat. First heard it fluttering at dusk, it having hung there all day. Its rear parts covered with a fine hoary down.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 10, 1860

Aster dumosus and pennyroyal out; how long? See August 5, 1856 ("Aster dumosus, apparently a day or two, with its large conspicuous flower-buds at the end of the branchlets and linear-spatulate involucral scales."); August 11, 1853 ("Evening draws on while I am gathering bundles of pennyroyal on the further Conantum height. I find it amid the stubble mixed with blue-curls and, as fast as I get my hand full, tie it into a fragrant bundle.”)

Sand cherry is well ripe. July 28, 1856 ("Sand cherry ripe. The fruit droops in umble-like clusters, two to four peduncles together, on each side the axil of a branchlet or a leaf. . . . It is black when ripe.")

Juncus paradoxus, that large and late juncus (tailed), as in Hubbard's Close and on island. See August 30, 1858 ("Juncus paradoxus, with seeds tailed at both ends, (it is fresher than what I have seen before, and smaller), not done. Some of it with few flowers! A terete leaf rises above the flower. It looks like a small bayonet rush.")

August 10. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau , August 10

 

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 © 2009-2021

A frail creature, rarely met with, though not uncommon.

June 27

I find that the tops of my stakes in Moore's Swamp are nearly two feet lower than a fortnight ago, or when Garfield began to fill it.

A frail creature, rarely met with

P. M. — To Walden. At the further Brister's Spring, under the pine, I find an Attacus luna, half hidden under a skunk-cabbage leaf, with its back to the ground and motionless, on the edge of the swamp. The underside is a particularly pale hoary green. It is somewhat greener above with a slightly purplish brown border on the front edge of its front wings, and a brown, yellow, and whitish eye-spot in the middle of each wing. 

It is very sluggish and allows me to turn it over and cover it up with another leaf, — sleeping till the night come. It has more relation to the moon by its pale hoary-green color and its sluggishness by day than by the form of its tail. A frail creature, rarely met with, though not uncommon.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 27, 1859

At the further Brister's Spring, under the pine, I find an Attacus luna. See June 27, 1858 ("See an Attacus luna in the shady path, smaller than I have seen before. At first it appears unable or unwilling to fly, but at length it flutters along and upward two or three rods into an oak tree, and there hangs inconspicuous amid the leaves. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,the Luna Moth (Attacus luna)

Went down to the pond-hole behind where I used to live.

September 5 

P. M. — To Walden.

Prinos verticillatus berries reddening. 

I hear two or more wood pewees this afternoon, but had not before for a fortnight or more. The pewee days are over for some time. 

Went down to the pond-hole behind where I used to live. It is quite full of water. The middle or greater part is densely covered with target leaves, crowding one another and.curling up on their edges. Then there is a space or canal of clear water, five to twenty feet wide, quite around them, and the shore is thickly covered with rattlesnake grass, now ripe. 

I find many high blueberries, quite fresh, overhanging the south shore of Walden. 

I find, all about Walden, close to the edge on the steep bank, and at Brister’s Spring, a fine grass now generally past prime, Agrostis perennans, thin grass, or hair grass, on moist ground or near water. The branches of the panicle are but slightly purplish.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 5, 1858


To Walden. Prinos verticillatus berries reddening. See August 20, 1854 ("Prinos berries have begun to redden. ");   September 28, 1851 ("The swamp is bordered with the red-berried alder, or prinos,"); October 10, 1857 ("To Walden over Fair Haven Hill. Some Prinos verticillatus yellowing and browning at once, and in low ground just falling and leaving the bright berries bare") and note to October 2, 1856 (“The prinos berries are in their prime.”)

The pewee days are over for some time. See August 14. 1858 (" The wood pewee, with its young, peculiarly common and prominent. . . . These might be called the pewee-days.")

Many high blueberries, quite fresh, overhanging the south shore of Walden. See December 27, 1857 ("It appears, then, that some of those old gray blueberry bushes which overhang the pond-holes have attained half the age of man. ")

Walden ice.

February 18. 

I find Walden ice to be nine and a half plus inches thick, having gained three and a half inches since the 8th. 

The Rubus hispidus (sempervirens of Bigelow) is truly evergreen. 

There has been so little snow this winter that I have noticed it the more, — red, glossy, and, as it were, plaited. 

I see the ice, three inches thick, heaved up tentwise eighteen inches or more in height, near the shore, yet where the water is too deep for the bottom to have been heaved, as if some steam had heaved it. 

At Brister's further spring, the water which trickles off in various directions between and around little mounds of green grass half frozen, when it reaches the more mossy ground runs often between two perpendicular walls of ice, as at the bottom of a cañon, the top of these perfectly square-edged banks being covered with the moss that originally covered the ground (otherwise undisturbed) and extending several feet on each side at the same level. These icy cliffs are of a loose crystalline composition, with many parallel horizontal seams, as if built up. I suppose that the water flows just under the moss, and, freezing, heaves it one stage; then the next night, perchance, new water, flowing underneath, heaves the whole another stage; and so on, steadily lifting it up. 

Far from here, I see the surface of weeds and mud lifted up in like manner where there is no cañon or rill, but a puddle. 

George Minott tells me that he, when young, used often to go to a store by the side of where Bigelow's tavern was and kept by Ephraim Jones, – the Goodnow store. That was probably the one kept by my old trader. 

Told me how Casey, who was a slave to a man — Whitney — who lived where Hawthorne owns, —the same house, — before the Revolution, ran off one Sunday, was pursued by the neighbors, and hid him self in the river up to his neck till nightfall, just across the Great Meadows. He ran through Gowing's Swamp and came back that night to a Mrs. Cogswell, who lived where Charles Davis does, and got something to eat; then cleared far away, enlisted, and was freed as a soldier after the war. 

Whitney's boy threw snow balls at him the day before, and finally C., who was chopping in the yard, threw his axe at him, and W. said he was an ugly nigger and he must put him in jail. 

He may have been twenty years old when stolen from Africa; left a wife and one child there. Used to say that he went home to Africa in the night and came back again in the morning; i. e., he dreamed of home. Lived to be old. Called Thanksgiving “Tom Kiver.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 18, 1858

I cross one of the bays of Walden, and might the middle.

March 15. 

P. M. — To Hubbard’s Close and Walden. 

I see in the ditches in Hubbard’s Close the fine green tips of spires of grass just rising above the surface of the water in one place, as if unwilling to trust itself to the frosty air. Favored by the warmth of the water and sheltered by the banks of the ditch, it has advanced thus far. 

But generally I see only the flaccid and floating frost-bitten tops of grass which apparently started that warm spell in February. The surface of the ditches is spotted with these pale and withered frost-bitten bladelets. 

It was the first green blush, as it were, — nay, it is purple or lake often, and a true blush, —of spring, of that Indian spring we had in February. An early dawn and premature blush of spring, at which I was not present. 

To be present at the instant when the springing grass at the bottoms of ditches lifts its spear above the surface and bathes in the spring air! Many a first faint crop mantling the pools thus early is mown down by the frost before the village suspects that vegetation has reawakened. 

The trout darts away in the puny brook there so swiftly in a zigzag course that commonly I only see the ripple that he makes, in proportion, in this brook only a foot wide, like that made by a steamer in a canal. Or if I catch a glimpse of him before he buries himself in the mud, it is only a dark film without distinct outline. By his zigzag course he bewilders the eye, and avoids capture perhaps. 

As usual at this date and earlier, there are a few square rods of green grass tufts at Brister’s springs, like a green fire under the pines and alders, and in one place an apparent growth of golden saxifrage. 

At Heywood’s Peak, I start partridges from the perfectly bare hillside. Such the spots they frequent at this season. 

I cross one of the bays of Walden, and might the middle. 

By Thrush Alley, where they have been cutting more wood this winter, I see one of those beetles made of an oak excrescence, such as I have heard of, left by the chopper. 

The whole is a little over four feet long. The head nine or ten inches and the handle about three and a half feet, but all one piece. It was apparently of a young tree, or perhaps a limb, about four inches in diameter with a regular excrescence about it still, eight or nine inches in diameter. This head had been smoothed or trimmed and made more regular by the axe, cut off rather square at the end, and the lower part cut down to a handle of convenient size. And thus the chopper had made in a few moments in the woods a really efficient implement, with his axe only, out of some of the very wood he wished to split. 

A natural beetle. There was no danger that the handle would come off or the head crack. It needed no ringing. And thus he saved the head of his axe.

We are singularly pleased and contented when a mere excrescence is thus converted into a convenient implement. Who was it, what satyr, that invented this rustic beetle? It was shaped:     

An indispensable piece of woodcraft.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 15, 1857

An early dawn and premature blush of spring, at which I was not present. See March 17, 1857 ("No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of the spring, but he will presently discover some evidence that vegetation had awaked some days at least before. . . .I thus detect the first approach of spring by finding here and there its scouts and vanguard which have been slain by the rear-guard of retreating winter.")

At Heywood’s Peak, I start partridges from the perfectly bare hillside. Such the spots they frequent at this season. See March 23, 1856 (" Almost the whole of the steep hillside on the north of Walden is now bare and dry and warm, though fenced in with ice and snow. It has attracted partridges, four of which whir away on my approach.")

I cross one of the bays of Walden, and might the middle. See March 14, 1860 (" I am surprised to find Walden open. No sooner has the ice of Walden melted than the wind begins to play in dark ripples over the surface of the virgin water. Ice dissolved is the next moment as perfect water as if melted a million years."); April 18, 1856 ("Walden is open entirely to-day for the first time, owing to the rain of yesterday and evening. I have observed its breaking up of different years commencing in ’45, and the average date has been April 4th.")

The food of crows in severe weather when the snow is deep.

January 22

P. M. — To Walden. 

The Walden road is nearly full of snow still, to the top of the wall on the north side, though there has been no snow falling since the 14th. The snow lies particularly solid. 

Looking toward the sun, the surface consists of great patches of shining crust and dry driving snow, giving it a watered appearance. 

Miss Minott talks of cutting down the oaks about her house for fuel, because she cannot get her wood sledded home on account of the depth of the snow, though it lies all cut there. 

James, at R. W. E.’s, waters his cows at the-door, because the brook is frozen. 

If you wish to know whether a tree is hollow, or has a hole in it, ask the squirrels. They know as well as whether they have a home or not. Yet a man lives under it all his life without knowing, and the chopper must fairly cut it up before he can tell. If there is a cleft in it, he is pretty sure to find some nutshell or materials of a bird’s nest left in it. 

At Brister’s Spring I see where a squirrel has been to the spring and also sat on a low alder limb and eaten a hazelnut. Where does he find a sound hazelnut now? Has them in a hollow tree. 

At Walden, near my old residence, I find that since I was here on the 11th, apparently within a day or two, some gray or red squirrel or squirrels have been feeding on the pitch pine cones extensively. The snow under one young pine is covered quite thick with the scales they have dropped while feeding overhead. I count the cores of thirty-four cones on the snow there, and that is not all. Under another pine there are more than twenty, and a well-worn track from this to a fence post three rods distant, under which are the cores of eight cones and a corresponding amount of scales.  The track is like a very small rabbit. They have gnawed off the cones which were perfectly closed.  I see where one has taken one of a pair and left the other partly off. He had first sheared off the needles that were in the way, and then gnawed off the sides or cheeks of the twig to come at the stem of the cone, which as usual was cut by successive cuts as with a knife, while bending it. One or two small, perhaps dead, certainly unripe ones were taken off and left unopened. I find that many of those young pines are now full of unopened cones, which apparently will be two years old next summer, and these the squirrel now eats. There are also some of them open, perhaps on the most thrifty twigs. 

Somebody has been fishing in the pond this morning, and the water in the holes is beginning to freeze. 

I see the track of a crow, the toes as usual less spread and the middle one making a more curved furrow in the snow than the partridge as if they moved more unstably, recovering their balance, — feeble on their feet. The inner toe a little the nearest to the middle one. This track goes to every hole but one or two out of a dozen, -- directly from hole to hole, some times flying a little,-- and also to an apple-core on the snow. I am pretty sure that this bird was after the bait which is usually dropped on the ice or in the hole. E. Garfield says they come regularly to his holes for bait as soon as he has left. So, if the pickerel are not fed, it is. It had even visited, on the wing, a hole, now frozen and snowed up, which I made far from this in the middle of the pond several days since, as I discovered by its droppings, the same kind that it had left about the first holes. 

I was surprised, on breaking with my foot the ice in a pickerel-hole near the shore, evidently frozen only last night, to see the water rise at once half an inch above it. Why should the ice be still sinking? Is it growing more solid and heavier? 

Most were not aware of the size of the great elm till it was cut down. I surprised some a few days ago by saying that when its trunk should lie prostrate it would be higher than the head of the tallest man in the town, and that two such trunks could not stand in the chamber we were then in, which was fifteen feet across; that there would be ample room for a double bedstead on the trunk, nay, that the very dinner table we were sitting at, with our whole party of seven, chairs and all, around it, might be set there. On the decayed part of the butt end there were curious fine black lines, giving it a geographical look, here and there, half a dozen inches long, some ? times following the line of the rings; the boundary of a part which had reached a certain stage of decay. The force on the pulleys broke off more than a foot in width in the middle of the tree, much decayed. 

I have attended the felling and, so to speak, the funeral of this old citizen of the town, -- I who commonly do not attend funerals, -- as it became me to do. I was the chief if not the only mourner there. I have taken the measure of his grandeur; have spoken a few words of eulogy at his grave, remembering the maxim de mortuis nil nisi bonum (in this case magnum). But there were only the choppers and the passers-by to hear me. Further the town was not represented; the fathers of the town, the selectmen, the clergy were not there. But I have not known a fitter occasion for a sermon of late. Travellers whose journey was for a short time delayed by its prostrate body were forced to pay it some attention and respect, but the axe-boys had climbed upon it like ants, and commenced chipping at it before it had fairly ceased groaning. There was a man already bargaining for some part. How have the mighty fallen! Its history extends back over more than half the whole history of the town. Since its kindred could not conveniently attend, I attended. Methinks its fall marks an epoch in the history of the town. It has passed away together with the clergy of the old school and the stage-coach which used to rattle beneath it. Its virtue was that it steadily grew and expanded from year to year to the very last. How much of old Concord falls with it! The town clerk will not chronicle its fall. I will, for it is of greater moment to the town than that of many a human inhabitant would be. Instead of erecting a monument to it, we take all possible pains to obliterate its stump, the only monument of a tree which is commonly allowed to stand. Another link that bound us to the past is broken. How much of old Concord was cut away with it! A few such elms would alone constitute a township. They might claim to send a representative to the General Court to look after their interests, if a fit one could be found, a native American one in a true and worthy sense, with catholic principles. Our town has lost some of its venerableness. No longer will our eyes rest on its massive gray trunk, like a vast Corinthian column by the wayside; no longer shall We walk in the shade of its lofty, spreading dome. It is as if you had laid the axe at the feet of some venerable Buckley or Ripley. You have laid the axe, you have made fast your tackle, to one of the king-posts of the town. I feel the whole building wracked by it. Is it not sacrilege to cut down the tree which has so long looked over Concord beneficently? 

Supposing the first fifteen feet to average six feet in diameter, they would contain more than three cords and a foot of wood; but probably not more than three cords. 

With what feelings should not the citizens hear that the biggest tree in the town has fallen! A traveller passed through the town and saw the inhabitants cutting it up without regret. 

The tracks of the partridges by the sumachs, made before the 11th, are perhaps more prominent now than ever, for they have consolidated the snow under them so that as it settled it has left them alto-relievo. They look like broad chains extending straight far over the snow. 

I bring home and examine some of the droppings of the crow mentioned [three] pages back. They are brown and dry, though partly frozen.  After long study with a microscope, I discover that they consist of the seeds and skins and other indigestible parts of red cedar berries and some barberries (I detect the imbricated scale-like leaves of a berry stem and then the seeds and the now black skins of the cedar berries, but easily the large seeds of the barberries) and perhaps something more, and I know whence it has probably come, i. e. from the cedar woods and barberry bushes by Flint’s Pond. These, then, make part of the food of crows in severe weather when the snow is deep, as at present. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 22, 1856

I count the cores of thirty-four cones on the snow there, and that is not all. Under another pine there are more than twenty, and a well-worn track from this to a fence post three rods distant, under which are the cores of eight cones and a corresponding amount of scales. Compare April 2, 1859 ("In the wood on top of Lee's Cliff,...I find under one small pitch pine tree a heap of the cones which have been stripped of their scales, evidently by the red squirrels, . . . I counted two hundred and thirty-nine cones under this tree alone, and most of them lay within two feet square upon a mass of the scales one to two inches deep and three or four feet in diameter.")

I suspect that about all the conspicuous white ducks I see are goosanders

April 7

In my walk in the afternoon of to-day, I see from Conantum, say fifty rods distant, two sheldrakes, male and probably female, sailing on A. Wheeler’s cranberry meadow. I see only the white of the male at first, but my glass reveals the female. The male is easily seen a great distance on the water, being a large white mark. But they will let you come only within some sixty rods ordinarily.

April 7, 2019

I observe that they are uneasy at sight of me and begin to sail away in different directions.

I plainly see the vermilion bill of the male and his orange legs when he flies (but he appears all white above), and the reddish brown or sorrel of the neck of the female, and, when she lifts herself in the water, as it were preparatory to flight, her white breast and belly. She has a grayish look on the sides. 

Soon they approach each other again and seem to be conferring, and then they rise and go off, at first low, down-stream, soon up-stream a hundred feet over the pond, the female leading, the male following close behind, the black at the end of his curved wings very conspicuous. 

I suspect that about all the conspicuous white ducks I see are goosanders. 

I skinned my duck yesterday and stuffed it to-day. It is wonderful that a man, having undertaken such an enterprise, ever persevered in it to the end, and equally wonderful that he succeeded. To skin a bird, drawing backward, wrong side out, over the legs and wings down to the base of the mandibles! Who would expect to see a smooth feather again? This skin was very tender on the breast. I should have done better had I stuffed it at once or turned it back before the skin became stiff. Look out not to cut the ear and eye lid. But what a pot-bellied thing is a stuffed bird compared even with the fresh dead one I found! It looks no longer like an otter, like a swift diver, but a mere waddling duck. How perfectly the vent of a bird is covered! There is no mark externally. 

At six this morn to Clamshell. The skunk-cabbage open yesterday, — the earliest flower this season. I suspect that the spathes do not push up in the spring. This is but three inches high. I see them as high and higher in the fall, and they seem only to acquire color now and gape open. I see but one out, and that sheds pollen abundantly. 

See thirty or forty goldfinches in a dashing flock, in all respects (notes and all) like lesser redpolls, on the trees by Wood’s Causeway and on the railroad bank. There is a general twittering and an occasional mew. Then they alight on the ground to feed, along with F. hyemalis and fox-colored sparrows. 

They are merely olivaceous above, dark about the base of the bill, but bright lemon-yellow in a semicircle on the breast; black wings and tails, with white bar on wings and white vanes to tail. I never saw them here so early before; or probably one or two olivaceous birds I have seen and heard of other years were this. 

Clear, but a cold air. 

P. M. — To Hubbard’s Close and Lee’s Cliff. A mouse-nest of grass, in Stow’s meadow east of railroad, on the surface. Just like those seen in the rye-field some weeks ago, but this in lower ground has a distinct gallery running from it, and I think is the nest of the meadow mouse. 

The pool at Hubbard’s Close, which was full of ice, unbroken gray ice, the 27th of March, is now warm-looking water, with the slime-covered callitriche standing a foot high in it; and already a narrow grass, the lake grass, has sprung up and lies bent nine or ten inches flat on the water. This is very early as well as sudden. 

In ten days there has been this change. How much had that grass grown under the ice? I see many small skaters  in it. 

See a trout as long as my finger, in the ditch dug from Brister’s Spring, which, having no hole or overhanging bank where it could hide, plunged into the mud like a frog and was concealed. 

The female flowers of the hazel are just beginning to peep out. 

At Lee’s Cliff I find the radical leaves of the early saxifrage, columbine, and the tower mustard, etc., much eaten apparently by partridges and perhaps rabbits. They must have their greens in the spring, and earlier than we. 

Below the rocks, the most obviously forward radical leaves are the columbine, tower mustard (lanceolate and petioled and remotely toothed), and catnep, and mullein. Early crowfoot, the butter cup (bulbosa), is a peculiarly sappy, dark pickle-green, decided spring, and none of your sapless evergreens. The little thyme-leaved arenaria, I believe it is, which is evergreen, and some other minute leaves, also, already green the ground. 

The saxifrage on the rocks will apparently open in two days; it shows some white. 

The grass is now conspicuously green about open springs, in dense tufts. The frozen sod, partly thawed in low grounds, sinks under me as I walk.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 7, 1855

I plainly see the vermilion bill of the male and his orange legs when he flies . . .I skinned my duck yesterday and stuffed it to-day. See April 6, 1855 ("It is a perfectly fresh and very beautiful bird, and as I raise it, I get sight of its long, slender vermilion bill (color of red sealing wax) and its clean, bright-orange legs and feet, and then of its perfectly smooth and spotlessly pure white breast and belly, tinged with a faint salmon (or tinged with a delicate buff inclining to salmon)”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

See thirty or forty goldfinches in a dashing flock, in all respects (notes and all) like lesser redpolls, on the trees by Wood’s Causeway and on the railroad bank. There is a general twittering and an occasional mew. See   March 24, 1859 ("I see a flock of goldfinches, first of spring, flitting along the cause way-bank. They have not yet the bright plumage they will have, but in some lights might be mistaken for sparrows. There is considerable difference in color between one and another, but the flaps of their coats are black, and their heads and shoulders more or less yellow . . .  Wilson says, "In the month of April they begin to change their winter dress, and, before the middle of May, appear in brilliant yellow.”"); April 15, 1859 ("Hear a goldfinch, after a loud mewing on an apple tree, sing in a rich and varied way, as if imitating some other bird."); April 19, 1858 (Along the wall under the Middle Conantum Cliff, I saw many goldfinches, male and female, the males singing in a very sprightly and varied manner, sitting still on bare trees. Also uttered their watery twitter and their peculiar mewing.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Goldfinch

The female flowers of the hazel are just beginning to peep out. See note to April 7, 1854 ("The hazel stigmas are well out and the catkins loose, but no pollen shed yet.") See also   March 27, 1853 ("The hazel is fully out. . . .It is in some respects the most interesting flower yet, though so minute that only an observer of nature, or one who looked for them, would notice it. It is the highest and richest colored yet, - ten or a dozen little rays at the end of the buds which are at the ends and along the sides of the bare stems. Some of the flowers are a light, some a dark crimson. The high color of this minute, unobserved flower, at this cold, leafless, and almost flowerless season! It is a beautiful greeting of the spring, ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau: the Hazel

A mouse-nest of grass, in Stow’s meadow . . . the nest of the meadow mouse. See  March 15, 1855 ("Mr. Rice tells me that . . . he heard a squeaking and found that he was digging near the nest of what he called a " field mouse," – by his description probably the meadow mouse. It was made of grass, etc., and, while he stood over it, the mother, not regarding him, came and carried off the young, one by one, in her mouth, being gone some time in each case before she returned, and finally she took the nest itself.  "); March 22, 1855 ("A (probably meadow) mouse nest in the low meadow by stone bridge, where it must have been covered with water a month ago; probably made in fall. Low in the grass, a little dome four inches in diameter, with no sign of entrance . . .Made of fine meadow-grass.");  August 25, 1858 ("I see . . . evidently the short-tailed meadow mouse, or Arvicola hirsuta. Generally above, it is very dark brown, almost blackish, being browner forward. It is also dark beneath. Tail but little more than one inch long. Its legs must be very short, for I can hardly glimpse them. Its nose is not sharp.") See also  See Thompson (Meadow mouse nests are sometimes constructed in their burrows, and are also found at the season of hay harvest, in great numbers, among the vegetation upon the surface of the ground. They are built of coarse straw, lined with fine soft leaves, somewhat in the manner of a bird's nest, with this difference, that they are covered at the top, and the passage into them is from beneath.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse. Thoreau's e meadow mouse or "short-tailed meadow mouse," Arvicola hirsuta, is now known as Microtus pennsylvanicus, meadow Vole.

At Lee’s Cliff I find the radical leaves of the early saxifrage, columbine, and the tower mustard, etc., See  April 1, 1855 ("At the first Conantum Cliff I am surprised to see how much the columbine leaves have grown in a sheltered cleft; also the cinquefoil, dandelion, yarrow, sorrel, saxifrage, etc., etc. They seem to improve the least warmer ray to advance themselves, and they hold all they get.")

April 7. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, April 7

Sheldrakes sail away

in different directions

uneasy of me.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, all the conspicuous white ducks 

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdy-550407

The first pleasant days of Spring

March 7

March 7, 2025

A raw east wind and rather cloudy. 

Methinks the buds of the early willows, the willows of the railroad bank, show more of the silvery down than ten days ago. 

Did I not see crows flying northeasterly yesterday toward night? 

The redness in the ice appears mostly to have evaporated, so that, melted, it does not color the water in a bottle. 

Saw, about a hemlock stump on the hillside north of the largest Andromeda Pond, very abundant droppings of some kind of mice, on that common green moss (forming a firm bed about an inch high, like little pines, surmounted by a fine red stem with a green point, in all three quarters of an inch high), which they had fed on to a great extent, evidently when it was covered with snow, shearing it off level.  They must have fed very extensively on this moss the past winter. 

It is now difficult getting on and off Walden. 

At Brister’s Spring there are beautiful dense green beds of moss, which apparently has just risen above the surface of the water, tender and compact. 

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. At his bridge over the brook it must have been a trout I saw glance,—rather dark, as big as my finger. 

To-day, as also three or four days ago, I saw a clear drop of maple sap on a broken red maple twig, which tasted very sweet. 

The Pyrola secunda is a perfect evergreen. It has lost none of its color or freshness, with its thin ovate finely serrate leaves, revealed now the snow is gone. It is more or less branched. 

Picked up a very handsome white pine cone some six and a half inches long by two and three eighths near base and two near apex, perfectly blossomed. It is a very rich and wholesome brown color, of various shades as you turn it in your hand, —a light ashy or gray brown, somewhat like unpainted wood. as you look down on it, or as if the lighter brown were covered with a gray lichen, seeing only those parts of the scales always exposed, —with a few darker streaks or marks and a drop of pitch at the point of each scale. Within, the scales are a dark brown above (i.e. as it hangs) and a light brown beneath, Very distinctly being marked beneath by the same darker brown, down the centre and near the apex somewhat anchor wise. 

We were walking along the sunny hillside on the south of Fair Haven Pond (on the 4th), which the choppers had just laid bare, when, in a sheltered and warmer place, we heard a rustling amid the dry leaves on the hillside and saw a striped squirrel eying us from its resting-place on the bare ground. It sat still till we were within a rod, then suddenly dived into its hole, which was at its feet, and disappeared. The striped squirrel spring: We listen for the bluebird but we hear him not.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 7, 1855

Methinks the buds of the early willows, the willows of the railroad bank, show more of the silvery down than ten days ago. See  March 4, 1860 ("I see a bush of the early willow . . . whose catkins are conspicuous thirty rods off . . . The bush at this distance had quite a silvery look."); March 21, 1855 ("This increased silveriness was obvious, I think, about the first of March . . . It would be well to observe them once a fortnight through the winter. It is the first decided growth I have noticed, and is probably a month old. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

Did I not see crows flying northeasterly yesterday toward night? See March 2, 1860 ("See thirty or more crows come flying in the usual irregular zigzag manner in the strong wind, from over M. Miles’s, going northeast, — the first migration of them, — without cawing. "); March 5, 1854 (“See crows, as I think, migrating northeasterly. They come in loose, straggling flocks.”);   March 5, 1859 ("I see a crow going north or northeast, high over Fair Haven Hill, and, two or three minutes after, two more, and so many more at intervals of a few minutes. This is apparently their spring movement.")

The redness in the ice appears mostly to have evaporated, so that, melted, it does not color the water in a bottle. See note to March 4, 1855 ("Returning by the Andromeda Ponds, I am surprised to see the red ice visible still, half a dozen rods off. It is melted down to the red bubbles, and I can tinge my finger with it there by rubbing it in the rotted ice.") 

Abundant droppings of some kind of mice, on that common green moss. See  March 14, 1855 ("At one of the holes under the stump of March 7th, caught a Mus leucopus (deer mouse). So this was the kind, undoubtedly, that fed on the moss, ")  See alsoA Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

At Brister’s Spring there are beautiful dense green beds of moss. See March 4, 1859 (" I find near Hosmer Spring in the wettest ground, which has melted the snow as it fell, little flat beds of light-green moss, soft as velvet, which have recently pushed up,   and lie just above the surface of the water. They are scattered about in the old decayed trough. (And there are still more and larger at Brister's Spring.) They are like little rugs or mats and are very obviously of fresh growth, such a green as has not been dulled by winter, a very fresh and living, perhaps slightly glaucous, green. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Mosses Bright Green

I see many tadpoles of medium or full size in deep warm ditches in Hubbard’s meadow. They may probably be seen . . . earlier than frogs. See  February 18, 1857  ("When I approached the bank of a ditch this afternoon, I saw a frog diving to the bottom. "): March 7, 1853  ("What is the earliest sign of spring? The motion of worms and insects? The flow of sap in trees and the swelling of buds? . . . –– Or are there earlier signs in the water? - the tortoises, frogs, etc.") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Frogs, and Turtles Stirring 

To-day, as also three or four days ago, I saw a clear drop of maple sap on a broken red maple twig. See February 23, 1857 ("I have seen signs of the spring . . . I have seen the clear sap trickling from the red maple") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Red Maple Sap Flows

 Picked up a very handsome white pine cone . . . perfectly blossomed.  See February 25, 1860 (''The white pine cones have been blowing off more or less in every high wind ever since the winter began, and yet perhaps they have not more than half fallen yet.'): March 5, 1860 ("White pine cones half fallen. ");   March 21, 1859 ("I see several white pine cones in the path by Wheildon's which appear to have fallen in the late strong winds, but perhaps the ice in the winter took them off. Others still hold on.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Plucking and Stripping a Pine Cone.

The first pleasant days of spring come out like a squirrel and go in again. See March 4, 1855 ("May not this season of springlike weather between the first decidedly springlike day and the first blue bird...be 

called the striped squirrel spring -- In which we go listening for the blue bird, but hear him not.")

March 7.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  March 7

"The first pleasant days 

of spring come out like a squirrel 

and go in again."

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The first pleasant days of 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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-550707

***

We had a cold winter, perhaps the coldest February yet. Below zero many mornings. Temperature averages around 7° (?). 50 days without going above freezing, So today is a warm day in the 20s. 

We hike without snowshoes to the double chair via the upper view walking in our old tracks so as not to sink in. It is up to my knees off the trail. Just south of the lower view we hear an owl make, first, that who-cooks-for-you song, and then some strange noises. It is late afternoon. 

At the view I hear chickadees and at the double chair a woodpecker tapping. This is the only bird life but the woods are full of deer. Many many deer beds and tracks -- in fact I use the deer trails to get up Prichard.

Jane shows me where a bobcat has walked in her tracks. 

Coming down we go over the cliff and I have to slide on my heels. Jane is invigorated and we veer off trail past the pink rock. The snow is sugar-like and easy to go downhill sliding in a mini avalanche. We stay out a little longer going around the house clockwise, and come in just before needing a headlamp

Avoiding deep snow

a bobcat walks in her tracks.

I use the deer trails.

March 7, 2015 zphx

The peculiarly beautiful clean and tender green of the grass there! –The grassy season's beginning

May 5

May 3d and 4th, it rained again, especially hard the night of the 4th, and the river is now very high, far higher than in any other freshet this year; will reach its height probably tomorrow.

Hear what I should call the twitter and mew of a goldfinch  and see the bird go over with ricochet flight. 

The oak leaves apparently hang on till the buds fairly expand.  

Thalictrum anemonoides by Brister's Spring on hillside.

False Hellebore. April 28, 2019

Some skunk-cabbage leaves are now eight or nine inches wide near there. These and the hellebore make far the greatest show of any herbs yet.

The peculiarly beautiful clean and tender green of the grass there!  

May 5, 2022

Green herbs of all kinds, — tansy, buttercups, etc., etc., etc., now make more or less show. Put this with the grassy season's beginning.  

Have not observed a tree sparrow for four or five days.

The Emerson children found blue and white violets May 1st at Hubbard's Close, probably Viola ovata and blanda; but I have not been able to find any yet.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 5, 1854

The river is now very high, far higher than in any other freshet this year; will reach its height probably tomorrow. See May 7, 1854 ("Our principal rain this spring was April 28th, 29th, and 30th, and again, May 3d and 4th . . . The causeways being flooded, I have to think before I set out on my walk how I shall get back across the river.")

Have not observed a tree sparrow for four or five days. See April 23, 1854 ("A rain is sure to bring the tree sparrow and hyemalis to the gardens."); May 4, 1855 ("See no gulls, nor F. hyemalis nor tree sparrows now.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow

Thalictrum anemonoides [Rue Anemone] by Brister's Spring on hillside. See note to May 1, 1856 ("Thalictrum anemonoides well out, probably a day or two . . .by the apple trees. ")

Skunk-cabbage leaves . . .a nd the hellebore make far the greatest show of any herbs yet. See note to April 26, 1860 ("The hellebore now makes a great garden of green under the alders and maples there, five or six rods long and a foot or more high.It grows thus before these trees have begun to leaf, while their numerous stems serve only to break the wind but not to keep out the sun. It is the greatest growth, the most massive, of any plant's; now ahead of the cabbage. Before the earliest tree has begun to leaf it makes conspicuous green patches a foot high."). See allso A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Skunk Cabbage

Green herbs of all kinds . . . now make more or less show. See May 6, 1860 ("As the leaves are putting forth on the trees, so now a great many herbaceous plants are springing up in the woods and fields.")

The grassy season's beginning. See April 9, 1854 ("As yet the landscape generally wears its November russet."); April 14, 1854 ("There is a general tinge of green now discernible through the russet on the bared meadows and the hills, the green blades just peeping forth amid the withered ones"); April 23, 1854 ("How thickly the green blades are starting up amid the russet! The tinge of green is gradually increasing in the face of the russet earth."); April 28, 1854 ("Perhaps the greenness of the landscape may be said to begin fairly now . . . during the last half of April the earth acquires a distinct tinge of green, which finally prevails over the russet."); May 26, 1854 (" The season of grass, now everywhere green and luxuriant.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Brown Season

The Emerson children found blue and white violets May 1st at Hubbard's Close, probably Viola ovata and blanda; but I have not been able to find any yet. See April 23, 1858 ("Saw a Viola blanda in a girl's hand."); April 19, 1858 (Viola ovata . . . Edith Emerson found them there yesterday"); May 7, 1852 ("That little early violet close to the ground in dry fields and hillsides, which only children's eyes detect"); February 5, 1852 ("I suspect that the child plucks its first flower with an insight into its beauty and significance which the subsequent botanist never retains.")

May 5. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 5

The peculiarly

beautiful clean and tender

green of the grass there!

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The grassy season's beginning

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 © 2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540505

Song of the wood thrush

between evening rain showers

and white trillium.

Zphx20240505.