A warm, moist night, the moon partially obscured by misty clouds, all the village asleep.

April 15.

6.30 A. M. —To Hill. 

It is warmer and quite still; somewhat cloudy in the east. The water quite smooth, — April smooth waters. 

I hear very distinctly Barrett’s sawmill at my landing.

The purple finch is singing on the elms about the house, together with the robins, whose strain its resembles, ending with a loud, shrill, ringing chili chilt chilt chilt. 

I push across the meadow and ascend the hill. The white-bellied swallows are circling about and twittering above the apple trees and walnuts on the hillside. 

Not till I gain the hilltop do I hear the note of the Fringilla juncorum (huckleberry-bird) from the plains beyond. 

Returned again toward my boat, I hear the rich watery note of the martin, making haste over the edge of the flood. A warm morning, over smooth water, before the wind rises, is the time to hear it.

Near the water are many recent skunk probings, as if a drove of pigs had passed along last night, death to many beetles and grubs. 

pale moon, April 15, 2016

From amid the willows and alders along the wall there, I hear a bird sing, a-chitter chitter chitter chitter chitter chitter, che che che che, with increasing intensity and rapidity, and the yellow redpoll hops in sight. 

A grackle goes over (with two females), and I hear from him a sound like a watchman’s rattle, — but little more musical. 

What I think the Alnus serrulata (?) will shed pollen to-day on the edge of Catbird Meadow. Is that one at Brister’s Spring and at Depot Brook crossing? Also grows on the west edge of Trillium Wood. 

Coming up from the riverside, I hear the harsh rasping char-r char-r of the crow blackbird, like a very coarsely vibrating metal, and, looking up, see three flying over. 

Some of the early willow catkins have opened in my window. As they open, they curve backwards, exposing their breasts to the light. 

By 9 A. M. the wind has risen, the water is ruffled, the sun seems more permanently obscured, and the character of the day is changed. It continues more or less cloudy and rain-threatening all day. 

First salmon and shad at Haverhill to-day. 

Ed. Emerson saw a toad in his garden to-day, and, coming home from his house at 11 P. M., a still and rather warm night, I am surprised to hear the first loud, clear, prolonged ring of a toad, when I am near Charles Davis’s house. The same, or another, rings again on a different key. I hear not more than two, perhaps only one. 

I had only thought of them as commencing in the warmest part of some day, but it would seem that they may first be heard in the night. Or perhaps this one may have piped in the day and his voice been drowned by day’s sounds. Yet I think that this night is warmer than the day has been. While all the hillside else, perhaps, is asleep, this toad has just awaked to a new year. 

It is a rather warm, moist night, the moon partially obscured by misty clouds, all the village asleep, only a few lights to be seen in some Windows, when, as I pass along under the warm hillside, I hear a clear, shrill, prolonged ringing note from a toad, the first toad of the year, sufficiently countenanced by its Maker in the night and the solitude, and then again I hear it (before I am out of hearing, i.e. it is deadened by intervening buildings), on a little higher key. 

At the same time, I hear a part of the hovering note of my first snipe, circling over some distant meadow, a mere waif, and all is still again. A-lulling the watery meadows, fanning the air like a spirit over some far meadow’s bay. 

And now for vernal sounds there is only the low sound of my feet on the Mill-Dam sidewalks.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 15, 1856

The purple finch is singing on the elms . See April 15, 1854 ("The arrival of the purple finches appears to be coincident with the blossoming of the elm, on whose blossom it feeds.") See also 
A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Elms and the Purple Finch

The white-bellied swallows are circling.  See  April 15, 1855 (" Many martins (with white—bellied swallows) are skimming and twittering above the water, perhaps catching the small fuzzy gnats with which the air is filled"); April 15, 1859 ("I see and hear white-bellied swallows as they are zigzagging through the air with their loud and lively notes."); See also April 8, 1856 ("Another very pleasant and warm day. The white bellied swallows have paid us twittering visits the last three mornings. You must rush out quickly to see them, for they are at once gone again.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White-bellied Swallow

I hear the rich watery note of the martin, making haste over the edge of the flood. A warm morning, over smooth water, before the wind rises, is the time to hear it. See April 15, 1855 ("Many martins (with white—bellied swallows) are skimming and twittering above the water, perhaps catching the small fuzzy gnats."); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Martins in Early Spring

Near the water are many recent skunk probings . . . death to many beetles and grubs. See April 4, 1859 ("For a fortnight past, or since the frost began to come out, I have noticed the funnel-shaped holes of the skunk in a great many places and their little mincing tracks in the sand. Many a grub and beetle meets its fate in their stomachs.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Skunk

The yellow redpoll hops in sight. See April 15, 1854 ("The yellow redpoll hops along the limbs within four or five feet of me."). See also April 21, 1855 ("I see yellow redpolls on the bushes near the water, — handsome birds, -— but hear no note."); April 23, 1856 ("Hear the yellow redpoll sing on the maples below Dove Rock, —a peculiar though not very interesting strain, or jingle.”) and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow Redpoll ( Palm) Warbler

What I think the Alnus serrulata (?) will shed pollen to-day on the edge of Catbird Meadow. See April 13, 1855 ("The Alnus incana blossoms begin generally to show. The serrulata will undoubtedly blossom to-morrow in some places."); April 13, 1856   ("There were alders out at Well Meadow Head, as large bushes as any. Can they be A. serrulata?"): April 16, 1852  ("I think that the tassels of the Alnus incana are rather earlier, longer, and more yellow, with smaller scales, than those of the A. serrulata, which are not yellow but green, mixed with the purplish or reddish brown scales."): See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The Alders

Some of the early willow catkins have opened in my window.  See  April 15, 1852 ("I think that the largest early-catkined willow in large bushes in sand by water now blossoming -- the fertile catkins with paler blossoms, the sterile covered with pollen, a pleasant lively bright yellow -- is the brightest flower I have seen thus far");  See also April 9, 1856  ("[Willow catkins] will perhaps blossom by day after tomorrow.");  April 12, 1852 ("See the first blossoms (bright-yellow stamens or pistils) on the willow catkins to-day . . . this earliest, perhaps swamp, willow with its bright-yellow blossoms on one side of the ament. It is fit that this almost earliest spring flower should be yellow, the color of the sun.")

By 9 A. M. the wind has risen, the water is ruffled, the sun seems more permanently obscured, and the character of the day is changed. See August 25, 1852 ("What a salad to my spirits is this cooler, darker day!”); February 5, 1855 ("In a journal it is important in a few words to describe the weather, or character of the day, as it affects our feelings."); February 18, 1860 ("Sometimes, when I go forth at 2 P.M. there is scarcely a cloud in the sky, but soon one will appear in the west and steadily advance and expand itself, and so change the whole character of the afternoon and of my thoughts.")

First salmon and shad at Haverhill to-day . . . I am surprised to hear the first loud, clear, prolonged ring of a toad. See April 13, 1853 ("First hear toads . . . a loud, ringing sound filling the air, which yet few notice. First shad caught at Haverhill to-day."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Ring of Toads.

April 15.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, April 15

The village asleep . . .

a clear, shrill, prolonged ringing –

 first toad of the year.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A warm, moist night, the moon partially obscured by misty clouds, all the village asleep

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560415

Studying birds nests.

January 19

Another bright winter day. 

P. M. —-To river to get some water asclepias to see what birds’ nests are made of. 

The only open place in the river between Hunt’s Bridge and the railroad bridge is a small space against Merrick’s pasture just below the Rock. As usual, just below a curve, in shallow water, with the added force of the Assabet. 

The willow osiers of last year’s growth on the pollards in Shattuck’s row, Merrick’s pasture, from four to seven feet long, are perhaps as bright as in the spring, the lower half yellow, the upper red, but they are a little shrivelled in the bark. 

Measure again the great elm in front of Charles Davis’s on the Boston road, which he is having cut down. The chopper, White, has taken off most of the limbs and just begun, tried his axe, on the foot of the tree. He will probably fall it on Monday, or the 21st. 

At the smallest place between the ground and the limbs, seven feet from the ground, it is fifteen feet and two inches in circumference; at one foot from the ground on the lowest side, twenty-three feet and nine inches. 

White is to have ten dollars for taking off the necessary limbs and cutting it down merely, help being found him. He began on Wednesday. Davis and the neighbors were much alarmed by the creaking in the late storms, for fear it would fall on their roofs. It stands two or three feet into Davis’s yard. 

As I come home through the village at 8.15 P. M., by a bright moonlight, the moon nearly full and not more than 18° from the zenith, the wind northwest, but not strong, and the air pretty cold, I see the melon-rind arrangement of the clouds on a larger scale and more distinct than ever before. There were eight or ten courses of clouds, so broad that with equal intervals of blue sky they occupied the whole width of the heavens, broad white cirro-stratus in perfectly regular curves from west to east across the whole sky. The four middle ones, occupying the greater part of the visible cope, were particularly distinct. They were all as regularly arranged as the lines on a melon, and with much straighter sides, as if cut with a knife. 

I hear that it attracted the attention of those who were abroad at 7 P. M., and now, at 9 P. M., it is scarcely less remarkable. On one side of the heavens, north or south, the intervals of blue look almost black by contrast. There is now, at nine, a strong wind from the northwest. Why do these bars extend east and west? Is it the influence of the sun, which set so long ago? or of the rotation of the earth? The bars which I notice so often, morning and evening, are apparently connected with the sun at those periods. 

Robin's nest January 22, 2020

Observe within the material of a robin’s nest, this afternoon, a cherry-stone. 

Gather some dry water milkweed stems to compare with the materials of the bird’s nest of the 18th. The bird used, I am almost certain, the fibres of the bark of the stem, —not the pods,- -just beneath the epidermis; only the bird’s is older and more fuzzy and finer, like worn twine or string. The fibres and bark have otherwise the same appearance under the microscope. 

I strip off some bark about one sixteenth of an inch wide and six inches long and, separating ten or twelve fibres from the epidermis, roll it in my fingers, making a thread about the ordinary size. This I can not break by direct pulling, and no man could. I doubt if a thread of flax or hemp of the same size could be made so strong. What an admirable material for the Indian’s fish-line! 

I can easily get much longer fibres. I hold a piece of the dead weed in my hands, strip off a narrow shred of the bark before my neighbor’s eyes and separate ten or twelve fibres as fine as a hair, roll them in my fingers, and offer him the thread to try its strength. He is surprised and mortified to find that he cannot break it.  Probably both the Indian and the bird discovered for themselves this same (so to call it) wild hemp. 

The corresponding fibres of the mikania seem not so divisible, become not so fine and fuzzy; though somewhat similar, are not nearly so strong. 

I have a hang-bird’s nest from the riverside, made almost entirely of this, in narrow shreds or strips with the epidermis on, wound round and round the twigs and woven into a basket. That is, this bird has used perhaps the strongest fibre which the fields afforded and which most civilized men have not detected. 

Knocked down the bottom of that summer yellowbird’s nest made on the oak at the Island last summer. It is chiefly of fern wool and also, apparently, some sheep’s wool (?), with a fine green moss (apparently that which grows on button-bushes) inmixed, and some milkweed fibre, and all very firmly agglutinated together. Some shreds of grape-vine bark about it. Do not know what portion of the whole nest it is.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 19, 1856 

The great elm in front of Charles Davis’s on the Boston road, which he is having cut down. See January 21, 1856 ("Four men, cutting at once, began to fell the big elm at 10 A. M., went to dinner at 12, and got through at 2.30 P. M"); January 22, 1856 ("Most were not aware of the size of the great elm till it was cut down . . . I have attended the felling and, so to speak, the funeral of this old citizen of the town."); January 26, 1856 ("It was one hundred and thirty-two years old, or came up in the year 1724, just before Lovewell’s Fight.")

I see the melon-rind arrangement of the clouds on a larger scale and more distinct than ever before, broad white cirro-stratus in perfectly regular curves from west to east across the whole sky.  Compare January 19, 1859 ("Looking up, I perceive that almost the entire heavens are covered with a very beautiful mackerel sky.") See February 19, 1852 ("Considering the melon-rind arrangement of the clouds, by an ocular illusion the bars appearing to approach each other in the east and west horizons, I am prompted to ask whether the melons will not be found to be in this direction oftenest."); December 21, 1851 ("To-night, as so many nights within the year, the clouds arrange themselves in the east at sunset in long converging bars, according to the simple tactics of the sky. It is the melon-rind jig . . .converging bars inclose the day at each end as within a melon rind, and the morning and evening are one day"); December 29, 1859 ("The clouds were very remarkable this cold afternoon, about twenty minutes before sunset, consisting of very long and narrow white clouds converging in the horizon (melon-rind-wise) both in the west and east") 

Birds' nests. See December 30, 1855 (“He who would study birds’ nests must look for them in November and in winter as well as in midsummer, for then the trees are bare and he can see them, and the swamps and streams are frozen and he can approach new kinds”); January 24, 1856 ("The snow is so deep along the sides of the river that I can now look into nests which I could hardly reach in the summer.")

I strip off some  [water milkweed (asclepias)] bark . . .Probably both the Indian and the bird discovered for themselves this same (so to call it) wild hemp.  See   February 9, 1853 ("Dr. Harris thinks the Indians had no real hemp but their apocynum, and, he thinks, a kind of nettle, and an asclepias, etc."); April 24, 1856 ("The inner bark of this [dog’s-bane pod] makes a strong twine like that of the milkweed."); August 13, 1856 (" I stripped off a shred of Indian hemp bark and could not break it. It is as strong as anything of the kind I know."); August 16, 1856 ("I find the dog's-bane (Apocynum androsoemifolium) bark not the nearly so strong as that of the A. cannabinum. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Dogsbane and Indian hemp and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Milkweed.

Observe within the material of a robin’s nest, this afternoon, a cherry-stone. See September 1, 1859 ("The cherry-birds and robins seem to know the locality of every wild cherry in the town."); See also July 14, 1856 ("While drinking at Assabet Spring in woods, noticed a cherry-stone on the bottom. A bird that came to drink must have brought it half a mile. So the tree gets planted!"); September 1, 1860 ("See how artfully the seed of a cherry is placed in order that a bird may be compelled to transport it.. . . Thus a bird's wing is added to the cherry-stone which was wingless, and it does not wait for winds.")

That summer yellowbird’s nest made on the oak at the Island last summer. See May 31, 1855 ( A yellowbird building a nest on a white oak on the Island. She goes to a fern for the wool""); See also June 7, 1855 ("A yellowbird’s nest on a willow bough against a twig, ten feet high, four eggs. "); June 9, 1855 ("A yellowbird’s nest eight feet from ground in crotch of a very slender maple."); June 19, 1855 ("A yellowbird’s nest saddled on a horizontal (or slanting down amid twigs) branch of a swamp white oak, within reach, six feet high, of fern down and lint; a sharp cone bottom; four eggs, just laid, pale flesh-color with brown spots; have one");. June 20, 1855 ("A summer yellowbird’s, saddled on an apple, of cotton-wool, lined with hair and feathers, three eggs, white with flesh-colored tinge and purplish-brown and black spots")

A cherry-stone

within the material

of a robin’s nest. 

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Studying birds nests

 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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt560119

In Oliver N. Bacon's History of Natick, page 235, it is said that, of phænogamous plants, “upwards of 800 species were collected from Natick soil in three years time, by a single individual.” I suspect it was Bacon the surveyor.

There is given a list of those which are rare in that vicinity. Among them are the following which I do not know to grow here : Actæa rubra ( W.), ' Asclepias tuberosa, Alopecurus pratensis, ' Corallorhiza odontorhiza ( ? ) ( Nutt.), Drosera filiformis ( Nutt. ), Ledum latifolium, ' Malaxis lilifolia ( W.) ( what in Gray ? ), Sagina procumbens.

Among those rare there but common here are Calla Virginica, Glecoma hederacea, Iris prismatica, Lycopus Virginicus, Mikania scandens, Prunus borealis, Rhodora Canadensis, Xyris aquatica, Zizania aquatica.

They, as well as we, have Equisetum hyemale, Kalmia glauca, Liatris scariosa, Ulmus fulva, Linnæa borealis, Pyrola maculata, etc., etc. Bacon quotes White, who quotes Old Colony Memorial account of manners and customs, etc., of our ancestors.

Bacon says that the finest elm in Natick stands in front of Thomas F. Hammond's house, and was set out “about the year 1760.” “The trunk, five feet from the ground, measures fifteen and a half feet.”

G. Emerson gives a different account, q. v..