I come to get the now empty nests of the wood pewees found June 27th.

August 13. 

This month thus far has been quite rainy. It has rained more or less at least half the days. You have had to consider each afternoon whether you must not take an umbrella. It has about half the time either been dogdayish or mizzling or decided rain. It would rain five minutes and be fair the next five, and so on, alternately, a whole afternoon. The farmers have not been able to get much of their hay. On the whole it has been rather cool. It has been still decidedly summer, with some reminiscences of autumn. The last week has been the heart of the huckleberry season. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

The dullish-blue or lead-colored Viburnum dentatum berries are now seen, not long, overhanging the side of the river, amid cornels and willows and button-bushes. They make a dull impression, yet held close in some lights they are glossy. The umbelled fruits —viburnums and cornels, aralias, etc. — have begun. 

As I am paddling up the north side above the Hemlocks, I am attracted by the singular shadows of the white lily pads on the rich-brown muddy bottom. It is remarkable how light tends to prevail over shadow there. It steals in under the densest curtain of pads and illustrates the bottom. The shadows of these pads, seen (now at 3 P. M.) a little one side, where the water is eighteen inches or two feet deep, are rarely orbicular or entire-edged or resembling the leaf, but are more or less perfect rosettes, generally of an oval form, with five to fifteen or more regularly rounded petals, open half-way to the centre. You cannot commonly refer the shadow to its substance but by touching the leaf with your paddle. 

Light knows a thousand tricks by which it prevails. Light is the rule, shadow the exception. The leaf fails to cast a shadow equal in area to itself. While it is a regular and almost solid disk, the shadow is a rosette or palmate, as if the sun, in its haste [to] illustrate every nook, shone round the shortest corner. Often if you connect the extremities of the petals, you have the general outline and size of the leaf, and the shadow is less than the substance by the amount of the openings. These petals seem to depend for their existence on the some what scalloped, waved, or undulating edge of the pad, and the manner in which the light is reflected from it. Generally the two sharp angles of the pad are almost entirely eroded in the shadow. The shadows, too, have a slight halo about them. 

Such endless and varied play of light and shadow is on the river bottom! It is protean and somewhat weird even. The shadow of the leaf might be mistaken for that of the flower. The sun playing with a lily leaf draws the outline of a lily on the bottom with its shadow. 

The broad-leaved helianthus on bank opposite Assabet Spring is not nearly out, though the H. divaricatus was abundantly out on the 11th. 

I landed to get the wood pewee nest in the Lee Wood. Perhaps those woods might be called Mantatukwet’s, for he says he lived at the foot of Nawshawtuct about fifty years before 1684. 

Hypopytis abundantly out (how long ?), apparently a good while, in that long wood-path on the left side, under the oak wood, before you begin to rise, going from the river end. Very little indeed is yet erect, and that which is not is apparently as forward as the rest. Not generally quite so high as the Monotropa uniflora which grows with it. I see still in their midst the dry upright brown spikes of last year’s seed-vessels. The chimaphila is more of an umbel. 

Where that dense young birch grove, four to eight feet high, was burned over in the spring, — I am pretty sure it was early in May,— I see now a yet more dense green crop of Solidago altissima, three or four feet high and budded to bloom. Where did all the seed come from? I think the burning was too late for any seed to have blown on since. Did it, then, lie in the ground so low as to escape the fire? The seed may have come from plants which grow in the old path along the fence on the west side. 

It is a singular fact, at any rate, that a dense grove of young white birches, covering half a dozen acres, may be burned over in May, so as to kill nearly all, and now, amid the dead brown trees, you see [a] dense green crop of Solidago altissima covering the ground like grass, four feet high. Nature practices a rotation of crops, and always has has some seed ready in the ground. 

Young white maples below Dove Rock are an inch and a half high, and red maples elsewhere about one inch high. 

I come to get the now empty nests of the wood pewees found June 27th. 

In each case, on approaching the spot, I hear the sweet note of a pewee lingering about, and this alone would have guided me within four or five rods. I do not know why they should linger near the empty nest, but perhaps they have built again near there or intend to use the same nest again (?). Their full strain is pe-ah-ee' (perhaps repeated), rising on the last syllable and emphasizing that, then pe’-ee, emphasizing the first and falling on the last, all very sweet and rather plaintive, suggesting innocence and confidence in you. In this case the bird uttered only its last strain, regularly at intervals. 

These two pewee nests are remarkably alike in their position and composition and form, though half a mile apart. They are both placed on a horizontal branch of a young oak (one about fourteen, the other about eighteen, feet from ground) and three to five feet from main trunk, in a young oak wood. Both rest directly on a horizontal fork, and such is their form and composition that they have almost precisely the same color and aspect from below and from above. 

The first is on a dead limb, very much exposed, is three inches in diameter outside to outside, and two inches in diameter within, the rim being about a quarter of an inch thick, and it is now one inch deep within. Its framework is white pine needles, especially in the rim, and a very little fine grass stem, covered on the rim and all without closely with small bits of lichen (cetraria?), slate-colored without and blackish beneath, and some brown caterpillar (?) or cocoon (?) silk with small seed—vessels in it. They are both now thin and partially open at the bottom, so that I am not sure they contain all the original lining. This one has no distinct lining, unless it is a very little green usnea amid the loose pine needles. The lichens of the nest would readily be confounded with the lichens of the limb. Looking down on it, it is a remarkably round and neat nest. 

The second nest is rather more shallow now and half an inch wider without, is lined with much more usnea (the willow down which I saw in it June 27 is gone; perhaps they cast it out in warm weather !), and shows a little of some slender brown catkin (oak ?) beneath, without. 

These nests remind me of what I suppose to be the yellow-throat vireo’s and hummingbird’s. The lining of a nest is not in good condition — perhaps is partly gone — when the birds have done with it. 

The remarkable difference between the two branches of our river, kept up down to the very junction, indicates a different geological region for their channels.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 13, 1858

The dullish-blue or lead-colored Viburnum dentatum berries overhanging the side of the river. See August 27, 1856 ("Then there are the Viburnum dentatum berries, in flattish cymes, dull leadcolored berries, depressed globular, three sixteenths of an inch in diameter, with a mucronation, hard, seedy, dryish, and unpalatable.")

The remarkable difference between the two branches of our river indicates a different geological region for their channels. See July 16, 1859 ("The stream is remarkably different from the [Concord]. It is not half so deep. It is considerably more rapid. The bottom is not muddy but sandy and occasionally stony. Though far shallower, it is less weedy than the other. ... This is owing, perhaps, not only to the greater swiftness of the current, but to the want of mud under the sand. You wonder what makes the difference between this stream and the other. It seems impossible that it should be a geological difference in the beds of the streams so near together. Is it not owing simply to the greater swiftness of this stream?"); July 5, 1852 ("We are favored in having two rivers, flowing into one, whose banks afford different kinds of scenery, the streams being of different characters; one a dark, muddy, dead stream, full of animal and vegetable life, with broad meadows and black dwarf willows and weeds, the other comparatively pebbly and swift, with more abrupt banks and narrower meadows. To the latter I go to see the ripple, and the varied bottom with its stones and sands and shadows; to the former for the influence of its dark water resting on invisible mud, and for its reflections. It is a factory of soil, depositing sediment.")

August 13. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, August 13.

 

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 © 2009-202

The beauty of willows

August 7. 

Saturday. 

P. M. —Up Assabet. 

The most luxuriant groves of black willow, as I recall them, are on the inside curves, or on sandy capes between the river and a bay, or sandy banks parallel with the firmer shore, e. g. between Lee’s and Fair Haven on north side, point of Fair Haven Island, opposite Clamshell and above, just below stone bridge, Lee Meadow or opposite house, below Nathan Barrett’s at Bay, sandy bank below Dove Rock. 

They also grow on both sides sometimes, where the river runs straight through stagnant meadows or swamps,—e.g. above Hollowell Bridge, —or on one side, though straight, along the edge of a swamp,—as above Assabet Spring,—but rarely ever against a firm bank or hillside, the positive male shore, e.g. east shore of Fair Haven Pond, east side above railroad bridge, etc. 

Measured the two largest of three below Dove Rock. The southernmost is three feet nine inches in circumference at ground, and it branches there. The westernmost is four feet two inches in circumference at ground and three feet two inches at three feet above ground. Or the largest is one foot and four inches in diameter at ground. 

They all branch at the ground, dividing within four or five feet into three or four main stems. The three here have the effect of one tree, seen from the water, and are twenty-five feet high or more, and, all together, broader than high. They are none of them upright, but in this case, close under a higher wood of maples and swamp white oak, slant over the stream, and, taken separately or viewed from the land side, are very imperfect trees. 

If you stand at their base and look upward or outward, you see a great proportion of naked trunk but thinly invested with foliage even at the summit, and they are among the most unsightly trees. The lower branches slant down ward from the main divisions so as commonly to rest on the water. 

But seen from the water side no tree of its height, methinks, so completely conceals its trunk. They meet with many hard rubs from the ice and from driftwood in freshets in the course of their lives, and whole trees are bent aside or half broken off by these causes, but they soon conceal their injuries. 

The Sternothaerus odoratus knows them well, for it climbs highest up their stems, three or four feet or more nowadays, sometimes seven or eight along the slanting branches, and is frequently caught and hung by the neck in its forks. They do not so much jump as tumble off when disturbed by a passer. 

The small black mud tortoise, with its muddy shell, eyes you motionless from its resting-place in a fork of the black willow. They will climb four feet up a stem not more than two inches in diameter, and yet undo all their work in an instant by tumbling off when your boat goes by. The trunk is covered with coarse, long, and thick upraised scales. It is this turtle’s castle and path to heaven. He is on the upward road along the stem of the willow, and by its dark stem it is partially concealed. 

Yes, the musquash and the mud tortoise and the bittern know it well. 

But not these sights alone are now seen on our river, but the sprightly kingbird glances and twitters above the glossy leaves of the swamp white oak. Perchance this tree, with its leaves glossy above and whitish beneath, best expresses the life of the kingbird and is its own tree. 

How long will it be after we have passed before the mud tortoise has climbed to its perch again? 

The author of the Chinese novel “Ju-Kiao-Li,” some eight hundred years ago, appears to have appreciated the beauty of willows. Pe, his principal character, moved out of the city late in life, to a stream bordered with willows, about twenty miles distant, in order to spend the rest of his days drinking wine and writing verses there. He describes the eyebrow of his heroine as like a willow leaf floating on the surface of the water. 

In the upper part of J. Farmer’s lane I find huckleberries which are distinctly pear-shaped, all of them. These and also other roundish ones near by, and apparently huckleberries generally, are dotted or apparently dusted over with a yellow dust or meal, which looks as if it could be rubbed off. Through a glass it looks like a resin which has exuded, and on the small green fruit is of a bright orange or lemon-color, like small specks of yellow lichens. It is apparently the same as that on the leaves. 

Monarda fistula is now apparently in prime, four and more, eight or ten rods behind red oak on Emerson’s Assabet field.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 7, 1858

The most luxuriant groves of black willow are on the inside curves, —but rarely ever against a firm bank or hillside, the positive male shore. See March 24, 1855 ("Rivers are continually changing their channels, -eating into one bank and adding their sediment to the other, - so that frequently where there is a great bend you see a high and steep bank or bill on one side, which the river washes, and a broad meadow on the other. ");August 15, 1858 (" I notice the black willows . . . to see where they grow, distinguishing ten places. In several instances they are on the concave or female side distinctly."); August 19, 1858 ("I noticed the localities of black willows as far up as the mouth of the river in Fair Haven Pond, but not so carefully as elsewhere, and from the last observations I infer that the willow grows especially and almost exclusively in places where the drift is most likely to lodge, as on capes and points and concave sides of the river") See also August 25, 1856 ("Why is the black willow so strictly confined to the bank of the river?"); May 14, 1852 (“Going over the Corner causeway, the willow blossoms fill the air with a sweet fragrance, and I am ready to sing, Ah! willow, willow!”); May 10, 1854 (“I perceive the sweetness of the willows on the causeway. ”); February 14, 1856(“I was struck to-day by the size and continuousness of the natural willow hedge on the east side of the railroad causeway, at the foot of the embankment, next to the fence. Some twelve years ago, when that causeway was built through the meadows, there were no willows there or near there, but now, just at the foot of the sand-bank, where it meets the meadow, and on the line of the fence, quite a dense willow hedge has planted itself. ”); May 12, 1857 (“When I consider how many species of willow have been planted along the railroad causeway within ten years, of which no one knows the history, and not one in Concord beside myself can tell the name of one, so that it is quite a discovery to identify a single one in a year, and yet within this period the seeds of all these kinds have been conveyed from some other locality to this, I am reminded how much is going on that man wots not of”) and A Book of Seasons: the Propogation of the Black Willow.

Huckleberries generally are dotted or apparently dusted over with a yellow dust or meal, which looks as if it could be rubbed off. Through a glass it looks like a resin which has exuded, and on the small green fruit is of a bright orange or lemon-color. See August 8, 1858 ("I see there [at Ledum Swamp], especially near the pool, tall and slender huckleberry bushes of a peculiar kind. Some are seven feet high. They are, for the most part, three or four feet high, very slender and drooping, bent like grass to one side. The berries are round and glossy-black, with resinous dots, as usual, and in flattish-topped racemes, sometimes ten or twelve in a raceme, but generally more scattered. Call it, perhaps, the tall swamp huckleberry")

The Sternothaerus odoratus is frequently caught and hung by the neck in its forks. See August 6, 1855 ("Saw a Sternotherus odoratus, caught by the neck and hung in the fork between a twig and main trunk of a black willow, about two feet above water, — apparently a month or two, being nearly dry. Probably in its haste to get down had fallen and was caught. I have noticed the same thing once or twice before. ")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musk Turtle (Sternothaerus odoratus )

As he looked at my sail, I listened to his singing.

May 19. 

Thick fog in the morning, which lasted late in the forenoon and left behind it rainy clouds for the afternoon. 

P. M. — To Cedar Swamp. 

Landed at Island Neck, and saw a small striped snake in the act of swallowing a Rana palustris, within three feet of the water. The snake, being frightened, released his hold, and the frog hopped off to the water. 

Hear and see a yellow-throated vireo, which methinks I have heard before. Going and coming, he is in the top of the same swamp white oak and singing indolently, ullia — eelya, and sometimes varied to eelyee. 

The tanager is now heard plainly and frequently. 

Louisiana Water Thrush

I see running along the water’s edge on the Island Neck, amid the twigs, a new bird, slender and somewhat warbler-like, but plainly a Turdus, with a deep, dark chocolate-brown back (apparently uniformly) , apparently cream-colored beneath, handsomely and abundantly spotted with dark brown, vent white, light flesh-colored legs, yellowish or cream-colored line over eyes. Me thinks it teetered or wagged its tail. Flew soon and was quite shy. I think it must have been the Turdus aquaticus from its dark chocolate-brown back and running along the water’s edge. Feel pretty sure, yet that is said to have white (?) over eye. I lost it before I had examined fully. Quite a discovery. Vide golden-crowned thrush carefully. 

Apple in bloom; some, no doubt, earlier. Night hawk’s squeak. Red-Wing’s nest made, and a robin's without mud, on black willow four feet above water. 

As I sail up the reach of the Assabet above Dove Rock with a fair wind, a traveller riding along the highway is watching my sail while he hums a tune. How inspiring and elysian it is to hear when the traveller or the laborer from a call to his horse or the murmur of ordinary conversation rises into song! It paints the landscape suddenly as no agriculture, no flowery crop that can be raised. It is at once another land, the abode of poetry. I am always thus affected when I hear in the fields any singing or instrumental music at the end of the day. It implies a different life and pursuits than the ordinary. As he looked at my sail, I listened to his singing. Perchance they were equally poetic, and we repaid each other. Why will not men oftener advertise me of musical thoughts? The singer is in the attitude of one inviting the muse, — aspiring. 

The Maryland yellow-throat amid the alders sings now, whit-we-chee whit-we-chee whit-we-chee whit-whit, the last two fast, or whit alone, or none. 

Wood pewee. 

Woolly aphides on alder. 

The Smilacina trifolia will apparently bloom to-morrow or next day.

Returning, stopped at Barrett’s sawmill while it rained a little. Was also attracted by the music of his saw. He was sawing a white oak log; was about to saw a very ugly and knotty white oak log into drag plank, making an angle. Said that about as many logs were brought to his mill as ten years ago, — he did not perceive the difference, — but they were not so large, and perhaps they went further for them. 

I observed that he was not grinding. No, he said, it was the first day he had not had a grist, though he had plenty of water; probably because the farmers were busy planting. There were white oak, pine, maple, and walnut logs waiting to be sawed. 

A bullfrog, sluggish, by my boat’s place. 

On the 13th I saw washed up to the edge of the ' meadow, this side of Clamshell, portions of one or two large bluish-white eggs, apparently a size larger than hens’ eggs, which may have been laid last year by some wild fowl in the meadow. 

May 19, 2016

If my friend would take a quarter part the pains to show me himself that he does to show me a piece of roast beef, I should feel myself irresistibly invited. He says, — 

“ Come and see
Roast beef and me.”

I find the beef fat and well done, but him rare.

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

Saw a small striped snake in the act of swallowing a Rana palustris . . .. The snake, being frightened, released his hold, and the frog hopped off to the water. See  August 23, 1851 ("He had a toad in his jaws, which he was preparing to swallow with his jaws distended to three times his width, but he relinquished his prey in haste and fled"); July 23, 1856 ("Saw . . . a small bullfrog in the act of swallowing a young but pretty sizable apparently Rana palustris, . . . I sprang to make him disgorge, but it was too late to save him. ")

Hear and see a yellow-throated vireo, which methinks I have heard before. . . . See May 27, 1854 ("I see and hear the yellow-throated vireo. It is somewhat similar (its strain) to that of the red-eye, prelia pre-li-ay, with longer intervals and occasionally a whistle like tlea tlow, or chowy chow, or tully ho on a higher key.”)

A traveller riding along the highway is watching my sail while he hums a tune. See March 26, 1855 ('"Sail down to the Great Meadows. A strong wind with snow driving from the west and thickening the air. The farmers pause to see me scud before it."); April 18, 1856 ("The farmer neglects his team to watch my sail."); September 27, 1858 ("The farmers digging potatoes on shore pause a moment to watch my sail and bending mast.")

May 19.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 19

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

Shad-flies on the water, schooner-like.

May 4. 

P. M. — To Cedar Swamp via Assabet. 

Among others, I see republican swallows flying over river at Island. Again I see, as on the 30th of April, swallows flying low over Hosmer’s meadow, over water. though comparatively few. About a foot above the water, about my boat, are many of those little fuzzy gnats, and I suspect that it is these they are attracted by. 

(On the 6th, our house being just painted, the paint is peppered with the myriads of the same insects which have stuck to it. They are of various sizes, though all small, and there are a few shad-flies also caught. They are particularly thick on the coping under the eaves, where they look as if they had been dusted on, and dense swarms of them are hovering within a foot. Paint a house now, and these are the insects you catch. I suspect it is these fuzzy gnats that the swallows of the 30th were catching.) 

The river is gone down so much — though checked by the rain of the 2d and 3d — that I now observe the tortoises on the bottom, a sternothaerus among them. 

Hear the something like has twe twe twe twé, ter té te twe twe of the myrtle-bird, and see the bird on the swamp white oaks by Island. 

The aspen there just begun to leaf; not quite the white maple. 

I observe that the river meadows, especially Hosmer’s, are divided by two or more ridges and valleys (the latter alone now covered with water and so revealed), parallel with the river. The same phenomenon, but less remarkable, on the Wheeler meadow. Are they the traces of old river-banks, or where, in freshets, the current of the river meets the meadow current, and the sediment is deposited? 

See a peetweet on Dove Rock, which just peeps out. As soon as the rocks begin to be bare the peetweet comes and is seen teetering on them and skimming away from me. 

Having fastened my boat at the maple, met, on the bank just above, Luke Dodge, whom I met in a boat fishing up that way once or twice last summer and previous years. Was surprised to hear him say, “I am in my eighty-third year.” He still looks pretty strong and has a voice like a nutmeg-grater. Within two or three years at most, I have seen him walking, with that remarkable gait. It is encouraging to know that a man may fish and paddle in this river in his eighty-third year. 

He says he is older than Winn, though not the oldest man in the town. Mr. Tolman is in his eighty sixth year. 

Went up Dodge’s (an Englishman who once lived up it and no relation of the last-named) Brook and across Barrett’s dam. 

In the Cedar Swamp Andromeda calyculata abundantly out; how long? Viburnum nudum leafing. Smilacina trifolia recently up; will apparently open in ten or twelve days. 

At the dam, am amused with the various curves of jets of water which leak through at different heights. According to the pressure. For the most part a thin sheet was falling smoothly over the top and cutting short off some smaller jets from the first crack (or edge of the first plank), leaving them like white spikes seen through the water. The dam leaked in a hundred places between and under the planks, and there were as many jets of various size and curve. Reminds me of the tail-piece in Bewick, of landlord drawing beer(?) from two holes, and knowledge of artist shown. 

Shad-flies on the water, schooner-like. Hear and see a goldfinch, on the ground.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 4, 1856

The aspen there (the Island) just begun to leaf. . . . See  May 5, 1858  ("The aspen leaves at Island to-day appear as big as a nine pence suddenly");  May 17, 1860   ("Standing in the meadow near the early aspen at the island, I hear the first fluttering of leaves, - a peculiar sound, at first unaccountable to me");  May 2, 1859 ("I am surprised by the tender yellowish green of the aspen leaf just expanded suddenly"); May 2, 1855 ("The young aspens are the first of indigenous trees conspicuously leafed"). See also A Book of the Seasons, the Aspens. 

Went up Dodge’s Brook and across Barrett’s dam. See May 31, 1853 ("In the meanwhile, Farmer, who was hoeing, came up to the wall, and we fell into a talk about Dodge's Brook, which runs through his farm.  . . .")

Shad-flies on the water, schooner-like. See May 1, 1854 ("The water is strewn with myriads of wrecked shad-flies, erect on the surface, with their wings up like so many schooners all headed one way.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Insect Hatches in Spring

;

The white birch sap flows yet from a stump cut last fall.

April 23.

P. M. — Up Assabet to white cedars. 

The river risen again, on account of the rain of the last three days, to nearly as high as on the 11th. I can just get over Hosmer’s meadow. 

The red maple did not shed pollen on the 19th and could not on the 20th, 21st, or 22d, on account of rain; so this must be the first day, — the 23d, —though I see none quite so forward by the river. 

The wind is now westerly and pretty strong. 

No sap to be seen in the bass. The white birch sap flows yet from a stump cut last fall, and a few small bees, flies, etc., are attracted by it.

Along the shore by Dove Rock I hear a faint tseep like a fox colored sparrow, and, looking sharp, detect upon a maple a white-throated sparrow. It soon flies to the ground amid the birches two or three rods distant, a plump-looking bird and, with its bright white and yellow marks on the head distinctly separated from the slate-color, methinks the most brilliant of the sparrows. Those bright colors, however, are not commonly observed.  

The white cedar swamp consists of hummocks, now surrounded by water, where you go jumping from one to another. The fans are now dotted with the minute reddish staminate flowers, ready to open. The skunk cabbage leaf has expanded in one open place there; so it is at least as early as the hellebore of yesterday. 

Returning, when near the Dove Rock saw a musquash crossing in front. He dived without noise in the middle of the river, and I saw by a bubble or two where he was crossing my course, a few feet before my boat. He came up quietly amid the alders on my right, and lay still there with his head and back partly out. His back looked reddish-brown with a black grain inmixed. 

I think that that white root washed up since the ice broke up, with a stout stem flat on one side and narrow green or yellowish leaf-bud rolled up from each side, with a figure in, in the middle, is the yellow lily, and probably I have seen no pontederia. 

The white lily root is thickly clothed with a slate-blue fur or felt, close-fitting, reflecting prismatic colors under the microscope, but generally the slate-color of the fur of most animals, and perhaps it is designed to serve a similar use, viz. for warmth and dryness. The end of the root is abruptly rounded and sends forth leaves, and along the sides of the root are attached oval bulb-like offshoots, one or two inches long, with very narrow necks, ready, apparently, to be separated soon from the parent stock. 

Hear the yellow redpoll sing on the maples below Dove Rock, —a peculiar though not very interesting strain, or jingle. 

A very handsome little beetle, deep, about a quarter of an inch long, with pale-golden wing-cases, artificially and handsomely marked with burnished dark-green marks and spots, one side answering to the other; front and beneath burnished dark-green; legs brown or cinnamon-color. It was on the side of my boat. 

Brought it home in a clam’s shells tied up, —a good insect-box.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 23, 1856

The river risen again. I can just get over Hosmer’s meadow. See April 23, 1855 ("River higher than before since winter. Whole of Lee Meadow covered."); See also April 22, 1857 ("The river higher than before and rising. C. and I sail rapidly . . . — cutting off great bends by crossing the meadows.")

I hear a faint tseep land, looking sharp, detect upon a maple a white-throated sparrow with its bright white and yellow marks on the head distinctly separated from the slate-color . . . See April 25, 1855 ("Hear a faint cheep and at length detect the white throated sparrow, the handsome and well-marked bird . . .  with a yellow spot on each side of the front, . . . I first saw the white-throated sparrow at this date last year. “); see also A Book of the Seasons: the White-throated Sparrow 

Cedar Swamp . . minute reddish staminate flowers, ready to open.  See April 23, 1855 ("White cedar to-morrow."); April 24, 1854 ("The white cedar female blossoms are open . . . New plant (Racemed andromeda) flower-budded at Cedar Swamp amid the high blueberry, panicled andromeda, clethra, etc.— upright dense racemes of reddish flower-buds on reddish terminal shoots.”); April 24, 1855 ("The sprigs of red cedar, now full of the buff-colored staminate flowers, like fruit, are very rich . . . [Its pollen] is a clear buff color, while that of the white cedar is very different, being a faint salmon.”); April 26, 1856 ("The white cedar gathered the 23d does not shed pollen in house till to-day, and I doubt if it will in swamp before to-morrow.");  April 26, 1857 ("The white cedar is apparently just out. The higher up the tree, the earlier")