Prelude of the toad.

March 31. 

Surveying again for Ed. Hoar the wood land adjoining his farm. 

A yet warmer day. A very thick haze, concealing mountains and all distant objects like a smoke, with a strong but warm southwest wind. Your outside coat is soon left on the ground in the woods, where it first becomes quite intolerable. 

The small red butterfly in the wood-paths and sprout-lands, and I hear at midafternoon a very faint but positive ringing sound rising above the susurrus of the pines, — of the breeze, — which I think is the note of a distant and perhaps solitary toad; not loud and ringing, as it will be. 

Toward night I hear it more distinctly, and am more confident about it. I hear this faint first reptilian sound added to the sound of the winds thus each year a little in advance of the unquestionable note of the toad. Of constant sounds in the warmer parts of warm days there now begins to be added to the rustling or crashing, waterfall-like sound of the wind this faintest imaginable prelude of the toad. 

I often draw my companion's attention to it, and he fails to hear it at all, it is so slight a departure from the previous monotony of March. This morning you walked in the warm sprout-land, the strong but warm southwest wind blowing, and you heard no sound but the dry and mechanical susurrus of the wood; now there is mingled with or added to it, to be detected only by the sharpest ears, this first and faintest imaginable voice. 

I heard this under Mt. Misery. Probably they come forth earlier under the warm slopes of that hill. 

The pewee sings in earnest, the first I have heard; and at even I hear the first real robin's song. 

I hear that there has been a great fire in the woods this afternoon near the factory. Some say a thousand acres have been burned over. This is the dangerous time, —between the drying of the earth, or say when dust begins to fly, and the general leafing of the trees, when it is shaded again. These fires are a perfectly regular phenomenon of this season. 

Many refer to them this thick haze, but, though in the evening I smell the smoke (no doubt) of the Concord fire, I think that the haze generally is owing to the warm southwest wind having its vapor condensed by our cooler air. 

An engine sent from town and a crowd of boys; and I hear that one man had to swim across a pond to escape being burnt. 

One tells me he found the saxifrage out at Lee's Cliff this afternoon, and another, Ellen Emerson, saw a yellow or little brown snake, evidently either the Coluber ordinatus or else amænus, probably the first.

Sit without fire.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 31, 1860

 

The small red butterfly in the wood-paths and sprout-lands. See  March 31, 1858 (“In the wood-paths now I see many small red butterflies”); April 8, 1855 (“Afterward I see a small red one over the shore.”); See also A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, The Small Red Butterfly

Your outside coat is soon left on the ground in the woods, where it first becomes quite intolerable. See  March 31, 1855 ("I am uncomfortably warm, gradually unbutton both my coats, and wish that I had left the outside one at home.") See also  March 15, 1852 ("This afternoon I throw off my outside coat. A mild spring day.. . .My life partakes of infinity."); April 5, 1854 ("Whatever year it may be, I am surveying, perhaps, in the woods; I have taken off my outside coat, perhaps for the first time, and hung it on a tree; . . .; when I hear a single, short, well- known stertorous croak from some pool half filled with dry leaves.")

I hear this faint first reptilian sound added to the sound of the winds thus each year a little in advance of the unquestionable note of the toad. See  April 5, 1860 (" I hear, or think that I hear, a very faint distant ring of toads, which, though I walk and walk all the afternoon, I never come nearer to. . . .It merely gives a slightly more ringing or sonorous sound to the general rustling of inanimate nature. "); April 13, 1853 ("First hear toads (and take off coat), a loud, ringing sound filling the air, which yet few notice."); April 13, 1858 ("Hear the first toad in the rather cool rain, 10 A. M."); April 15, 1856 (" I hear a clear, shrill, prolonged ringing note from a toad, the first toad of the year"); May 1, 1857 ("There is a cool and breezy south wind, and the ring of the first toad leaks into the general stream of sound, unnoticed by most.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Ring of Toads.

The pewee sings in earnest, the first I have heard. See  March 16, 1854 ("The first phoebe near the water is heard. ");  March 29, 1858 ("Hear a phoebe early in the morning over the street.");  March 30, 1851 ("Spring is already upon us.  . . . The pewee is heard, and the lark. "); April  1, 1857. (" Up Assabet . . .Hear a phoebe"); April 1, 1859("At the Pokelogan up the Assabet, I see my first phoebe, the mild bird. It flirts its tail and sings pre vit, pre vit, pre vit, pre vit incessantly, as it sits over the water, and then at last, rising on the last syllable, says pre-VEE, as if insisting on that with peculiar emphasis.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Phoebe

At even I hear the first real robin's song. See  March 31, 1852 ("The robins sing at the very earliest dawn. I wake with their note ringing in my ear.");  See also March 12, 1854 ("I hear my first robin peep distinctly at a distance. No singing yet. "); April  1, 1857.  ("Already I hear a robin or two singing their evening song."); April 1, 1852 ("I hear a robin singing in the woods south of Hosmer's, just before sunset. It is a sound associated with New England village life. It brings to my thoughts summer evenings when the children are playing in the yards before the doors and their parents conversing at the open windows. It foretells all this now, before those summer hours are come.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring

A yellow or little brown snake, evidently either the Coluber ordinatus or else amænus, probably the first. See October 18, 1858 (“Noticed a little snake, eight or nine inches long, in the rut in the road in the Lincoln woods. It was brown above with a paler-brown dorsal stripe, which was bounded on each side by a row of dark-brown or blackish dots one eighth inch apart, the opposite rows alternating; beneath, light cream-color or yellowish white. Evidently Storer’s Coluber ordinatus.”); October 29, 1857 (“I see evidently what Storer calls the little brown snake (Coluber ordinatus). . . . Above it is pale-brown, with a still lighter brown stripe running down the middle of the back”); October 11, 1856 (“It is apparently Coluber amaenus, the red snake. Brown above, light-red beneath, about eight inches long . . . It is a conspicuous light red beneath, then a bluish-gray line along the sides, and above this brown with a line of lighter or yellowish brown down the middle of the back.”); September 9, 1857 ("It was a dark ash-color above, with darker longitudinal lines, light brick-red beneath. There were three triangular buff spots just behind the head, one above and one each side. It is apparently Coluber amaenus”); April 29, 1858 (“A little brown snake with blackish marks along each side of back and a pink belly. Was it not the Coluber amaenus?”)  

Some say a thousand acres have been burned over. See April 2, 1860 ("Walked to the Mayflower Path and to see the great burning of the 31st. I smelled the burnt ground a quarter of a mile off. It was a very severe burn, the ground as black as a chimney-back. The fire is said to have begun by an Irishman burning brush near Wild' s house in the south part of Acton, and ran north and northeast some two miles before the southwest wind, crossing Fort Pond Brook. I walked more than a mile along it and could not see to either end, and crossed it in two places. A thousand acres must have been burned.")

These fires are a perfectly regular phenomenon of this season. See March 29, 1858 ("I saw, on the hillside far across the meadow by Holbrook's clearing, what I at first took for a red flag or handkerchief carried along on a pole, just above the woods. It was a fire in the woods, and I saw the top of the flashing flames above the tree-tops. The woods are in a state of tinder, and the smoker and sportsman and the burner must be careful now."); April 4, 1856 ("Already I hear of a small fire in the woods in Emerson’s lot, set by the engine, the leaves that are bare are so dry."); April 9, 1856 ("Now look out for fires in the woods, for the leaves are never so dry and ready to burn as now. The snow is no sooner gone, —nay, it may still cover the north and west sides of hills, — when a day or two’s sun and wind will prepare the leaves to catch at the least spark."); April 21, 1859 ("Put out a fire in the woods, the Brister lot.");April 5, 1860  ("We heard of fires in the woods in various towns, and more or less distant, on the same days that they occurred here, — the last of March and first of April. The newspapers reported many. The same cause everywhere produced the same effect.") See also February 8, 1858 ("Two or three-acres were burned over, set probably by the engine. Such a burning as commonly occurs in the spring.")

One tells me he found the saxifrage out at Lee's Cliff this afternoon. See April 3, 1853("To my great surprise the saxifrage is in bloom. It was, as it were, by mere accident that I found it.. . . under a projecting rock in a little nook on the south side of a stump, I spied one little plant which had opened three or four blossoms high up the Cliff. "); April 27, 1852 ("On Conantum Cliffs I find to-day for the first time the early saxifrage (Saxifraga vernalis) in blossom, growing high and dry in the narrow seams, where there is no soil for it but a little green moss. It is one of the first flowers, not only in the spring of the year, but in the spring of the world.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Saxifrage in Spring (Saxifraga vernalis)

Sit without fire. See April 30, 1859 (" The warmest afternoon yet. Sat in sun without fire this forenoon."); May 2, 1858 ("Sit without fire to-day and yesterday."); May 3, 1857 ("To-day we sit without fire.")

To measure the egg.

May 27. 

May 27, 2018

At Boston, Cambridge, and Concord. 

De Kay describes the Esox fasciatus, which is apparently mine of May 11th. As I count, the rays are the same in number, viz. “P. 13, V. 9, D. 14, A. 13, C. 20.” He says it is from six to eight inches long and abundant in New York; among other things is distinguished by “a muddy tinge of the roundish pectoral, abdominal, and ventral fins; and by a broad concave or lunated tail.” I do not observe the peculiarity in the tail in mine, now it is in spirits. 

Ed. Emerson shows me an egg of a bittern (Ardea minor) from a nest in the midst of the Great Meadows, which four boys found, scaring up the bird, last Monday, the 24th. It was about a foot wide on the top of a tussock, where the water around was about one foot deep. I will measure the egg. They were a little developed. It is clay-colored, one and seven eighths inches long by one and nine sixteenths, about the same size at each end.  

Also an egg of a turtle dove, one of two in a nest in a pitch pine, about six feet from the ground, in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, by the side of a frequented walk, on a fork on a nearly horizontal limb. The egg is milk-white, elliptical, one and three sixteenths inches long by seven eighths wide.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 27, 1858

De Kay describes the Esox fasciatus., which is apparently mine of May 11th. See May 11, 1858 (“the little brook (?) pickerel, of Hubbard's ditches, . . . I caught two directly. ”) See also Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History ("[Mr. Putnam] exhibited specimens of the young and adult pickerel, to show that the "short-nosed pickerel " is specifically distinct from the "long-nosed " — the Esox reticulatus — and said that the " short-nosed " species is the Esox fasciatus of Dekay, which is not the young of the Esox reticulates”)   See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

A nest of a bittern (Ardea minor) in the midst of the Great Meadows about a foot wide on the top of a tussock. See  June 11, 1860 ("I hear a sound just like a small dog barking hoarsely, and, looking up, see it was made by a bittern  (Ardea minor), a pair of which flap over the meadows and probably nest in some tussock thereabouts.”)

Singular little hollows in the sand.

January 18

At the Dugan Desert, I notice, under the overhanging or nearly horizontal small white oaks and shrub oaks about the edge, singular little hollows in the sand, evidently made by drops of rain or melting snow falling from the same part of the twig, a foot or two, on the same spot a long time. 

They are very numerous under every such low horizontal bough, on an average about three quarters of an inch apart or more. They are a third of an inch wide and a quarter to even three quarters of an inch deep; made some days ago evidently. 

The F. hyemalis about.  I hear that the Emerson children found ladies’-delights out yesterday.

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

The F. hyemalis about. See December 28, 1856 ("Am surprised to see the F. hyemalis here."); December 29, 1856 ("Do not the F. hyemalis, lingering yet, and the numerous tree sparrows foretell an open winter?");  January 3, 1858 ("I see a flock of F. hyemalis this afternoon, the weather is hitherto so warm."). See also January 23, 1858 ("The wonderfully mild and pleasant weather_continues. The ground has been bare since the 11th. . . .  There has been but little use for gloves this winter, though I have been surveying a great deal for three months. The sun, and cockcrowing, bare ground, etc., etc., remind me of March.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis)

Ladies'-delight. Viola tricolor (pansy) ; see Botanical Index to Thoreau's Journal

January 18. A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 18

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 © 2009-2022

What is lost in time is gained in power.

December 13. 

P. M. – To Goose Pond. 

This and the like ponds are just covered with virgin ice just thick enough to bear, though it cracks about the edges on the sunny sides. You may call it virgin ice as long as it is transparent. I see the water-target leaves frozen in under the ice in Little Goose Pond. 

I see those same two tortoises (of Dec. 2d), moving about in the same place under the ice, which I can not crack with my feet. The Emerson children see six under the ice of Goose Pond to-day. Apparently many winter in the mud of these ponds and pond-holes. 

In sickness and barrenness it is encouraging to believe that our life is dammed and is coming to a head, so that there seems to be no loss, for what is lost in time is gained in power. All at once, unaccountably, as we are walking in the woods or sitting in our chamber, after a worthless fortnight, we cease to feel mean and barren. 

I go this afternoon thinking I may find the stakes set for auction lots on the Ministerial Lot in December, '51. 

I find one white birch standing and two fallen. The latter were faced at one end, for the numbers, and at the other rotten and broken off as short, apparently, as if sawed, because the bark so tears. At first I did not know but they had been moved, but thinking that if they had fallen where they stood I should find some hole or looseness in the ground at the rotten end, I felt for it and in each case found it; in one, also, the rotten point of the stake. 

Thus in six years two out of three stout (two-and-a-half-inch) birch stakes were flat. The hickory stake I set on R. W. E.'s town line in March, ’50, was flat this last summer, or seven years, but a white stake set in ’49–50 on Moore and Hosmer's lot was standing aslant this month. 

A surveyor should know what stakes last longest. 

I hear a characteristic anecdote respecting Mrs. Hoar, from good authority. Her son Edward, who takes his father's place and attends to the same duties, asked his mother the other night, when about retiring, 

“Shall I put the cat down cellar?” 

“No,” said she, “you may put her outdoors.” 

The next night he asked, “Shall I put the cat outdoors?” 

“No,” answered she, “you may put her down cellar.”

The third night he asked, “Shall I put the cat down cellar or outdoors?” 

“Well,” said his mother, “you may open the cellar door and then open the front door, and let her go just which way she pleases.” 

Edward suggested that it was a cold night for the cat to be outdoors, but his mother said, 

“Who knows but she has a little kitten somewhere to look after?” 

Mrs. H. is a peculiar woman, who has her own opinion and way, a strong-willed, managing woman.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 13, 1857

Water target or water shield: an aquatic plant, Brasenia schreberi, of thewater lily family, having purple flowers, floating, elliptic leaves, and ajellylike coating on the underwater stems and roots.

I see those same two tortoises (of Dec. 2d). See December 2, 1857 ("Measuring Little Goose Pond, I observed two painted tortoises moving about under the thin transparent ice.")

All at once, after a worthless fortnight, we cease to feel mean and barren. See December 13, 1851 ("By stepping aside from my chosen path so often, I see myself better and am enabled to criticise myself. Of this nature is the only true lapse of time.")

I go this afternoon thinking I may find the stakes set for auction lots on the Ministerial Lot in December, '51. See  November 14, 1851 ("Surveying the Ministerial Lot in the southwestern part of the town."); November 18, 1851 ("Surveying these days the Ministerial Lot."); November 24, 1851("Setting stakes in the swamp (Ministerial).")

The milkman came with oxen.

January 20. 

There probably is not more than twelve to fifteen inches of snow on a level, yet the drifts are very large. Neither milkman nor butcher got here yesterday, and to-day the milkman came with oxen, partly through the fields. Though the snow is nowhere deep in the middle of the main street, the drifts are very large, especially on the north side, so that, as you look down the street, it appears as uneven as a rolling prairie. 

Heard, in the Dennis swamp by the railroad this afternoon, the peculiar goldfinch-like mew — also like some canaries — of, I think, the lesser redpoll (?). Saw several. Heard the same a week or more ago. 

I hear that Boston Harbor froze over on the 18th, down to Fort Independence. 

The river has been frozen everywhere except at the very few swiftest places since about December 18th, and everywhere since about January 1st. 

At R. W. E.'s this evening, at about 6 p. m., I was called out to see Eddy's cave in the snow. It was a hole about two and a half feet wide and six feet long, into a drift, a little winding, and he had got a lamp at the inner extremity. I observed, as I approached in a course at right angles with the length of the cave, that the mouth of the cave was lit as if the light were close to it, so that I did not suspect its depth. Indeed, the light of this lamp was remarkaoly reflected and distributed. The snowy walls were one universal reflector with countless facets. I think that one lamp would light sufficiently a hall built of this material. The snow about the mouth of the cave within had the yellow color of the flame to one approaching, as if the lamp were close to it. We afterward buried the lamp in a little crypt in this snow drift and walled it in, and found that its light was visible, even in this twilight, through fifteen inches' thickness of snow. The snow was all aglow with it. If it had been darker, probably it would have been visible through a much greater thickness. 

But, what was most surprising to me, when Eddy crawled into the extremity of his cave and shouted at the top of his voice, it sounded ridiculously faint, as if he were a quarter of a mile off, and at first I could not believe that he spoke loud, but we all of us crawled in by turns, and though our heads were only six feet from those outside, our loudest shouting only amused and surprised them. Apparently the porous snow drank up all the sound. The voice was, in fact, muffled by the surrounding snow walls, and I saw that we might lie in that hole screaming for assistance in vain, while travellers were passing along twenty feet distant. It had the effect of ventriloquism. 

So you only need make a snow house in your yard and pass an hour in it, to realize a good deal of Esquimau life.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 20, 1857

I hear that Boston Harbor froze over See Special to The New York Times.FEB. 22, 1904,

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BOSTON HARBOR FROZEN OVER. For First Times Since 1855 Ice Extends Mile from Shore.

The river has been frozen everywhere except at the very few swiftest places. See January 19, 1856 ("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.”); January 19, 1860 (“It is evident mere shallowness is not enough to prevent freezing, for that shallowest space of all, in middle of river at Barrett's Bar, has been frozen ever since the winter began. It is the swifter though deeper, but not deep, channels on each side that remain open.”); January 20, 1856 ("The river has been frozen solidly ever since the 7th, and that small open strip of yesterday (about one rod wide and in middle) was probably not more than a day or two old. It is very rarely closed, I suspect, in all places more than two weeks at a time. .”)

Heard, in the Dennis swamp by the railroad this afternoon, the peculiar goldfinch-like mew — also like some canaries — of, I think, the lesser redpoll. See November 21, 1852("The commonest bird I see and hear nowadays is that little red crowned or fronted bird I described the 13th. I hear now more music from them. They have a mewing note which reminds me of a canary-bird. They make very good forerunners of winter. Is it not the {lesser redpoll}?”); March 5, 1853 (“They have a sharp bill, black legs and claws, and a bright-crimson crown or frontlet, in the male reaching to the base of the bill, with, in his case, a delicate rose or carmine on the breast and rump. Though this is described by Nuttall as an occasional visitor in the winter, it has been the prevailing bird here this winter. ”);   December 11, 1855 ("Standing there, though in this bare November landscape, I am reminded of the incredible phenomenon of small birds in winter. ... There is no question about the existence of these delicate creatures, their adaptedness to their circumstances. . . .The age of miracles is each moment thus returned. Now it is wild apples, now river reflections, now a flock of lesser redpolls.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

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.

Grape vines, curled, crisped, and browned by the frosts

October 1.

A-barberrying by boat to Conantum, carrying Ellen, Edith, and Eddie.

Grapevines, curled, crisped, and browned by the frosts, are now more conspicuous than ever. Some grapes still hang on the vines. 

Got three pecks of barberries. 

Huckleberries begin to redden. 

Robins and bluebirds collect and flit about. 

Flowers are scarce.

October 1, 2013

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 1, 1853

A-barberrying by boat to Conantum, carrying Ellen, Edith, and Eddie. See September 18, 1856 ("By boat to Conantum, barberrying ."); September 25, 1855 ("Carry Aunt and Sophia a-barberrying to Conantum.")  See also  April 1, 1857 ("I see children picking spring cranberries in the meadows. "); June 29, 1852 ("Children bring you the early blueberry to sell now."); July 16, 1851 ("Berries are just beginning to ripen, and children are planning expeditions after them."); July 24, 1853 ("This season of berrying is so far respected that the children have a vacation to pick berries"); July 31, 1856 ("How thick the berries — low blackberries, Vaccinium vacillans, and huckleberries. . . The children should grow rich if they can get eight cents a quart for black berries, as they do."); August 5, 1852 ("The men, women, and children who perchance come hither blueberrying in their season get more than the value of the berries in the influences of the scene"); August 12, 1856 (" The Emerson children say that Aralia nudicaulis berries are good to eat."); August 27, 1859 ("The children have done bringing huckleberries to sell for nearly a week.") See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Common Barberry

Robins and bluebirds collect and flit about.  See September 18, 1852 ("The robins of late fly in flocks, and I hear them oftener."); September 19, 1854 ("I see large flocks of robins keeping up their familiar peeping and chirping."); October 10, 1853 ("The faint suppressed warbling of the robins sounds like a reminiscence of the spring.") October 16, 1857 ("A robin sings once or twice, just as in spring! "); October 18, 1857 ("I see many robins on barberry bushes, probably after berries"); October 20, 1857 ("The barberry bushes are now alive with, I should say, thousands of robins feeding on them."); October 31, 1851 ("The robins now fly in flocks.")