Here is one shaped just like a hand or a mitten with a thumb.

October 11.

October 11, 2020

Sassafras leaves are a rich yellow now and falling fast. They come down in showers on the least touching of the tree. I was obliged to cut a small one while surveying the Bedford road to-day. What singularly and variously formed leaves! For the most part three very regular long lobes, but also some simple leaves; but here is one shaped just like a hand or a mitten with a thumb. They next turn a dark cream color.

Father saw to-day in the end of a red oak stick in his wood-shed, three and a half inches in diameter, which was sawed yesterday, something shining.  It is lead, either the side of a bullet or a large buckshot just a quarter of an inch in diameter. It came from the Ministerial Lot in the southwest part of the town, and we bought the wood of Martial Miles. 

It is completely and snugly buried under some twelve or fifteen layers of the wood, and it appears not to have penetrated originally more than its own thickness, for there is a very close fit all around it, and the wood has closed over it very snugly and soundly, while on every other side it is killed, though snug for an eighth of an inch around it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 11, 1853

Sassafras leaves are a rich yellow. See September 30, 1854 ("I detect the sassafras by its peculiar orange scarlet half a mile distant.")

While surveying the Bedford road to-day. October 8, 1853 ("Surveying on the new Bedford road to-day,"); July 1, 1858 (“I am surveying the Bedford road these days, and have no time for my Journal.”); May 3, 1859 ('Surveying the Bedford road.")

The vertebrae and talons of a partridge in the dry excrement of a fox, left on a rock.

June 11 

Saturday. Another fog this morning. 

The mosquitoes first troubled me a little last night. 

On the river at dusk I hear the toads still, with the bullfrogs. 

The black willow, having shed its fuzzy seeds and expanded its foliage, now begins to be handsome, so light and graceful. 

The upland fields are already less green where the June-grass is ripening its seeds. They are greenest when only the blade is seen. 

In the sorrel-fields, also, what lately was the ruddy, rosy cheek of health, now that the sorrel is ripening and dying, has become the tanned and imbrowned cheek of manhood. 

Probably blackbirds were never less numerous along our river than in these years. They do not depend on the clearing of the woods and the cultivation of or chards, etc. Streams and meadows, in which they delight, always existed. Most of the towns, soon after they were settled, were obliged to set a price upon their heads. In 1672, according to the town records of Concord, instruction was given to the selectmen, "That incorigment be given for the destroying of blackbirds and jaies." (Shattuck, page 45.) 

Murder will out. I find, in the dry excrement of a fox left on a rock, the vertebrae and talons of a partridge (?) which he has consumed. They are memoires pour servir. 

I remember Helen's telling me that John Marston of Taunton told her that he was on board a vessel during the Revolution, which met another vessel, — and, as I think, one hailed the other, — and a French name being given could not be understood, whereupon a sailor, probably aboard his vessel, ran out on the bowsprit and shouted "La Sensible,"  and that sailor's name was Thoreau. 

["La Sensible," was] the vessel in which John Adams was being brought back from or carried out to France. My father has an idea that he stood on the wharf and cried this to the bystanders.] 

My father tells me that, when the war came on, my grandfather, being thrown out of business and being a young man, went a-privateering. I find from his Diary that John Adams set sail from Port Louis at L'Orient in the French frigate Sensible, Captain Chavagnes, June 17th, 1779, the Bonhomme Richard, Captain Jones, and four other vessels being in company at first, and the Sensible arrived at Boston the 2d of August. 

On the 13th of November following, he set out for France again in the same frigate from Boston, and he says that a few days before the 24th, being at the last date "on the Grand Bank of Newfoundland," "we spoke an American privateer, the General Lincoln, Captain Barnes." If the above-mentioned incident occurred at sea, it was probably on this occasion.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 11, 1853

The mosquitoes first troubled me a little last night. At dusk I hear the toads still, with the bullfrogs.  See June 7, 1858 "Mosquitoes quite troublesome here."); June 7, 1854 ("[M]osquitoes are very troublesome in the woods."); June 15, 1860 ("The bullfrogs now commonly trump at night, and the mosquitoes are now really troublesome."); June 16, 1852 ("The sonorous note of bullfrogs is heard a mile off in the river, the loudest sound this evening"). See also June 16, 1860 ("It appears to me that these phenomena occur simultaneously, say June 12th . . .")


A partridge which he has consumed.  See January 27, 1855 ("What a life is theirs, venturing forth only at night for their prey, ranging a great distance, trusting to pick up a sleeping partridge or a hare, and at home again before morning!”); January 1, 1856 (“In the other direction you trace the retreating steps of the disappointed fox until he has forgotten this and scented some new game, maybe dreams of partridges or wild mice.”); June 25, 1860 ("What an unfailing supply of small game it secures that its excrement should be so generally of fur! ")

The French frigate Sensible sailed from L'Orient, France to Boston, Ma between June 17-August 2, 1779, carrying John Adams and his son, and also the french minister to the U.S., Chevalier Anne-Cesar de La Luzerne. See John Adams Journals.  The ship sailed from Boston, MA destination France on November 14, 1779, but a storm damaged the hull and she ended up in Ferrol, Spain on December 8, 1779. John Adams and two suns were traveling with it.  see link.  From Adam's diary:

November 24 1779

We were on the Grand Bank of Newfound Land, and about this time, We spoke with an American Privateer, The General Lincoln Captain Barnes. He came on board and our Captain supplied him with some Wood and other Articles he wanted. 

Jean Thoreau, grandfather of Henry, born at St. Helier's, Jersey, April, 1754, was a sailor on board the American privateer General Lincoln, November, 1779

Five minutes before 3 P. M.

February 3

Five minutes before 3 P. M., Father died.

After a sickness of some two years, going down-town in pleasant weather, doing a little business from time to time, hoeing a little in the garden, etc., Father took to his chamber January 13th, and did not come down again. Most of the time previously he had coughed and expectorated a great deal. Latterly he did not cough, but continued to raise. He continued to sit up in his chamber till within a week before he died. He sat up for a little while on the Sunday four days before he died. Generally he was very silent for many months. He was quite conscious to the last, and his death was so easy that we should not have been aware that he was dying, though we were sitting around his bed, if we had not watched very closely.

I have touched a body which was flexible and warm, yet tenantless, — warmed by what fire? When the spirit that animated some matter has left it, who else, what else, can animate it? 

How enduring are our bodies, after all! The forms of our brothers and sisters, our parents and children and wives, lie still in the hills and fields round about us, not to mention those of our remoter ancestors, and the matter which composed the body of our first human father still exists under another name.

When in sickness the body is emaciated, and the expression of the face in various ways is changed, you perceive unexpected resemblances to other members of the same family; as if within the same family there was a greater general similarity in the framework of the face than in its filling up and clothing. 

Father first came to this town to live with his father about the end of the last century, when he was about twelve years old. (His father died in 1801.) Afterward he went to the Lexington Academy (Parker’s ?) a short time, perhaps a year, then into Deacon White’s store as clerk; then learned the dry—goods business in a store in Salem. (Aunt J. shows me a letter from him directly after his going there, dated 1807.) Was with a Hathaway. When about twenty-one, opened a store for himself on the corner where the town house stands of late years, a yellow building, now moved and altered into John Keyes’s house. 

He did so well there-that Isaac Hurd went into partnership with him, to his injury. They soon dissolved, but could not settle without going to law, when my father gained the case, bringing his books into court. Then, I think, he went to Bangor and set up with Billings, selling to Indians (among others); married; lived in Boston; writes thence to aunts at Bangor in 1815 with John on his knee; moved to Concord (where I was born), then to Chelmsford, to Boston, to Concord again, and here remained. Mother first came to Concord about the same age that father did, but a little before him. 

As far as I know, Father, when he died, was not only one of the oldest men in the middle of Concord, but the one perhaps best acquainted with the inhabitants, and the local, social, and street history of the middle of the town, for the last fifty years. He belonged in a peculiar sense to the village street; loved to sit in the shops or at the post-office and read the daily papers. I think that he remembered more about the worthies (and unworthies) of Concord village forty years ago, both from dealing as a trader and from familiar intercourse with them, than any one else. 

Our other neighbors, now living or very recently dead, have either come to the town more recently than he, or have lived more aloof from the mass of the inhabitants. 

Some have spoken slightingly of the Indians, as a race possessing so little skill and wit, so low in the scale of humanity, and so brutish that they hardly deserved to be remembered,—using only the terms “miserable,” “wretched,” “pitiful,” and the like. In writing their histories of this country they have so hastily disposed of this refuse of humanity (as they might have called it) which littered and defiled the shore and the interior. But even the indigenous animals are inexhaustibly interesting to us. How much more, then, the indigenous man of America! 

If wild men, so much more like ourselves than they are unlike, have inhabited these shores before us, we wish to know particularly what manner of men they were, how they lived here, their relation to nature, their arts and their customs, their fancies and superstitions. They paddled over these waters, they wandered in these woods, and they had their fancies and beliefs connected with the sea and the forest, which concern us quite as much as the fables of Oriental nations do. 

It frequently happens that the historian, though he professes more humanity than the trapper, mountain man, or gold-digger, who shoots one as a wild beast, really exhibits and practices a similar inhumanity to him, wielding a pen instead of a rifle. One tells you with more contempt than pity that the Indian had no religion, holding up both hands, and this to all the shallow-brained and bigoted seems to mean something important, but it is commonly a distinction without a difference. Pray how much more religion has the historian? If Henry Ward Beecher knows so much more about God than another, if he has made some discovery of truth in this direction, I would thank him to publish it in Silliman’s Journal, with as few flourishes as possible. 

It is the spirit of humanity, that which animates both so-called savages and civilized nations, working through a man, and not the man expressing himself, that interests us most. The thought of a so-called savage tribe is generally far more just than that of a single civilized man. 

I perceive that we partially die ourselves through sympathy at the death of each of our friends or near relatives. Each such experience is an assault on our vital force. It becomes a source of wonder that they who have lost many friends still live. After long watching around the sick-bed of a friend, we, too, partially give up the ghost with him, and are the less to be identified with this state of things. 

The writer must to some extent inspire himself. Most but when all are arranged, some life and color will be reflected on them from the mature and successful lines; they will appear to pulsate with fresh life, and he will be enabled to eke out their slumbering sense, and make them worthy of their neighborhood. In his first essay on a given theme, he produces scarcely more than a frame and groundwork for his sentiment and poetry. Each clear thought that he attains to draws in its train many divided thoughts or perceptions. 

The writer has much to do even to create a theme for himself. Most that is first written on any subject is a mere groping after it, mere rubble-stone and foundation. It is only when many observations of different periods have been brought together that he begins to grasp his subject and can make one pertinent and just observation. 

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, February 3, 1859

Father first came to this town to live with his father about the end of the last century, when he was about twelve years old. See December 28, 1858 ("Father says that he and his sisters (except Elizabeth) were born in Richmond Street, Boston, between Salem and Hanover Streets, on the spot where a bethel now stands, on the left hand going from Hanover Street. They had milk of a neighbor, who used to drive his cows to and from the Common every day.”)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 3

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 ©  2009-2023

That rocky shore which so reflects the light.

December 28. 

December 28,2018

P. M. — To Walden. 

The earth is bare. I walk about the pond looking at the shores, since I have not paddled about it much of late years. What a grand place for a promenade! 

Methinks it has not been so low for ten years, and many alders, etc., are left dead on its brink. The high blueberry appears to bear this position, alternate wet and dry, as well as any shrub or tree. I see winterberries still abundant in one place. 

That rocky shore under the pitch pines which so reflects the light, is only three feet wide by one foot high; yet there even to-day the ice is melted close to the edge, and just off this shore the pickerel are most abundant. This is the warm and sunny side to which any one — man, bird, or quadruped — would soonest resort in cool weather. 

I notice a few chickadees there in the edge of the pines, in the sun, lisping and twittering cheerfully to one another, with a reference to me, I think, — the cunning and innocent little birds. One a little further off utters the phoebe note. 

There is a foot more or less of clear open water at the edge here, and, seeing this, one of these birds hops down as if glad to find any open water at this season, and, after drinking, it stands in the water on a stone up to its belly and dips its head and flirts the water about vigorously, giving itself a good washing. I had not suspected this at this season. No fear that it will catch cold. 

The ice cracks suddenly with a shivering jar like crockery or the brittlest material, such as it is. And I notice, as I sit here at this open edge, that each time the ice cracks, though it may be a good distance off toward the middle, the water here is very much agitated. The ice is about six inches thick. 

Aunt Jane says that she was born on Christmas Day, and they called her a Christmas gift, and she remembers hearing that her Aunt Hannah Orrock was so disconcerted by the event that she threw all the spoons outdoors, when she had washed them, or with the dish water. 

Father says that he and his sisters (except Elizabeth) were born in Richmond Street, Boston, between Salem and Hanover Streets, on the spot where a bethel now stands, on the left hand going from Hanover Street. They had milk of a neighbor, who used to drive his cows to and from the Common every day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 28, 1858

That rocky shore under the pitch pines which so reflects the light. See December 25, 1858 (“[T]he rocky shore under the pitch pines at the northeast end.. . . reflects so much light that the rocks are singularly distinct, as if the pond showed its teeth.”)

Chickadees lisping and twittering cheerfully to one another, with a reference to me, I think, — the cunning and innocent little birds. See November 9, 1850 (“The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer and nearer inquisitively, from pine bough to pine bough, till within four or five feet, occasionally lisping a note”); December 1, 1853 (“They are our most honest and innocent little bird, drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances, and deserve best of any of the walker.”); December 3, 1856 (“And they will flit after and close to you, and naively peck at the nearest twig to you, as if they were minding their own business all the while without any reference to you. ”)

The ice cracks suddenly with a shivering jar like crockery or the brittlest material, such as it is. See January 23, 1858 (“Walden, I think, begins to crack and boom first on the south side,. . . like the cracking of crockery. It suggests the very brittlest material, as if the globe you stood on were a hollow sphere of glass and might fall to pieces on the slightest touch. . . . as if the ice were no thicker than a tumbler, though it is probably nine or ten inches. ”); December 25, 1858 (“I stayed later to hear the pond crack, but it did not much. ”) Also Walden ("The cracking and booming of the ice indicate a change of temperature. . . .The pond does not thunder every evening, and I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering; but though I may perceive no difference in the weather, it does. . . . Yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience when it should . . . The largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube.”)

Father says that he and his sisters were born in Richmond Street, Boston, See December 27, 1855 ("Recalled this evening, with the aid of Mother, the various houses (and towns) in which I have lived and some events of my life.”); December 26, 1855 ("In a true history or biography, of how little consequence those events of which so much is commonly made! For example, how difficult for a man to remember in what towns or houses he has lived, or when! Yet one of the first steps of his biographer will be to establish these facts, and he will thus give an undue importance to many of them.”)

Had a chat with Minott how they used to carry on.

October 21. 

A very warm Indian-summer day, too warm for a thick coat. 

It is remarkably hazy, too, but when I open the door I smell smoke, which may in part account for it. After being out awhile I do not perceive the smoke, only on first opening the door. 

It is so thick a blue haze that, when, going along in Thrush Alley Path, I look through the trees into Abel Brooks's deep hollow, I cannot see across it to the woods beyond, though it is only a stone's throw. Like a deep blue lake at first glance. 

Had a chat with Minott, sitting on a log by his door. He says he began to carry a gun when he was fifteen or sixteen years old; afterward he owned three at one time, one training-piece and two fowling-pieces. He lived at James Baker's seven years; not till after he was of age. He used to range all over that neighborhood, away down into Lexington, and knew every stone and stump; used to go chestnutting about Flint's Pond, and a-fishing there, too. The fish and fowl were ten times as plenty as they are now. Why, he has been along the ridges (the moraines toward Ditch Pond) when, the ducks rising up on each side, the sky was black with them. 

His training-piece was an old king's-arm, taken from the British some time, he supposed. It was a capital piece, even for shot, and thoroughly made, made upon honor every part of it. There are no such guns made in this country. The lock was strong and smart, so that when you snapped it, it filled the pan chock-full of fire, and he could burn a single kernel of powder in it. But it took a good deal of powder to load it. He kept its brass mountings burnished so bright that you could see your face in them. He had also owned a French piece. 

Once, too, he had a little English cocking-piece, i. e. fowling-piece. It had the word " London " on the barrel close to the lock. It was a plaguy smart piece, bell-muzzled, and would carry ball well. He could knock over a robin with it eight rods off with ball or a slug. He had a rifle once. What did they use rifles for? Oh, for turkey-shooting. Once, one with his English fowling-piece. He saw many on the road going to it. Saw Dakin and Jonas Minott (Captain Minott's son, who spent quite a fortune on shooting), one offering to take another down to the shooting for a mug of flip. They asked him what he was going to do with that little thing. You paid fourpence a shot at a live turkey only twenty rods off. Those who had rifles were not allowed to rest. 

Amos Baker was there (who was at Concord Fight). The turkey was a large white one. Minott rammed down his slug and, getting down behind a fence, rested on it while the rest laughed at him. He told Amos to look sharp and tell him where his ball struck, and fired. Amos said the ball struck just above the turkey. Others were firing in the mean while. Minott loaded and tried once more, and this time his ball cut off the turkey's neck, and it was his; worth a dollar, at least. You only had to draw blood to get the turkey. Another, a black one, was set up, and this time his ball struck the ground just this side the turkey, then scaled up and passed right through its body, lodging under the skin on the opposite side, and he cut it out.

Rice made his money chiefly by his liquor, etc. Some set up the turkeys they had gained: others "hustled" for liquor or for a supper; i. e., they would take sides and then, putting seven coppers in a hat, shake them up well and empty them, and the party that got the fewest heads after three casts paid for the supper. 

Told me how they used to carry on, on Concord Common formerly, on great days. Once, when they were shaking dice there in the evening for money, round a table with twenty-five or thirty dollars in cash upon it, some rogue fastened a rope to one leg of the table, and so at a distance suddenly started off with the table, at the same time upsetting and extinguishing the light. This made a great outcry. They ran up crying, "Mister, I 'll help you pick up your money," but they put the half into their own pockets. 

Father told me about his father the other night, — that he remembers his father used to breakfast before the family at one time, on account of his business, and he with him. His father used to eat the under crusts of biscuits, and he the upper. His father died in 1801, aged forty-seven. When the war came on, he was apprentice or journeyman to a cooper who employed many hands. He called them together, and told them that on account of the war his business was ruined and he had no more work for them. So, my father thinks, his father went privateering. Yet he remembers his telling him of his being employed digging at some defenses, when a cannon-ball came and sprinkled the sand all over them. 

After the war he went into business as a merchant, commencing with a single hogshead of sugar. His shop was on Long Wharf. He was a short man, a little taller than my father, stout and very strong for his size. Levi Melchier, a powerful man, who was his clerk or tender, used to tell my father that he did not believe he was so strong a man as his father was. He would never give in to him in handling a hogshead of molasses, — setting it on its head, or the like. 

Minott, too, sings the praises of Beatton, the store keeper, though of course he does not remember him. He was a Scotchman and a peddler, and the most honest man that is mentioned in Concord history. You might send a child to the store, and if there was a fraction still due the child after making change, he would give him a needle or a large pin.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 21, 1856

Teasel seed.

September 16. 

P. M. — To Harris's Mill, Acton, with Father. 

September 16, 2016

Aster lavis apparently in prime; very handsome its long, slanting, broad-topped wands by the roadside, even in dry soil, its rays longer and richer purple than usual. 

See a flock of pigeons dash by. From a stout breast they taper straightly and slenderly to the tail. They have been catching them a while. 

William Monroe is said to have been the first who raised teasels about here. He was very sly about it, and fearful lest he should have competitors. At length he lent his wagon to a neighbor, who discovered some teasel seed on the bottom, which he carefully saved and planted, and so competed with Monroe.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 16, 1856


William Monroe is said to have been the first who raised teasels about here. See April 2, 1853 ("Together with the driftwood on the shore of the Assabet and the sawdust from Heywood's mill, I pick up teasel-heads from the factory with the wool still in them. ”); April 11, 1856 ("Here, also, in the river wreck is the never-failing teazle, telling of the factory above, and sawdust from the mill. The teased river! These I do not notice on the South Branch. “); November 18, 1860  ("I frequently see the heads of teasel, called fuller’s thistle, floating on our river, having come from factories above, and thus the factories which use it may distribute its seeds by means of the streams which turn their machinery, from one to another. The one who first cultivated the teasel extensively in this town is said to have obtained the seed when it was not to be purchased - the culture being monopolized - by sweeping a wagon which he had loaned to a teasel-raiser.")

Sugaring lessons.

March 21.

10 A. M. —To my red maple sugar camp.

Found that, after a pint and a half had run from a single tube after 3 P. M. yesterday, it had frozen about half an inch thick, and this morning a quarter of a pint more had run. Between 10.30 and 11.30 A. M. this forenoon, I caught two and three quarters pints more, from six tubes, at the same tree, though it is completely overcast and threatening rain. Four and one half pints in all. 

This sap is an agreeable drink, like iced water (by chance), with a pleasant but slight sweetish taste. I boiled it down in the afternoon, and it made an ounce and a half of sugar, without any molasses, which appears to be the average amount yielded by the sugar maple in similar situations, viz. south edge of a wood, a tree partly decayed, two feet in diameter. 

March 21, 2015

It is worth the while to know that there is all this sugar in our woods, much of which might be obtained by using the refuse wood lying about, without damage to the proprietors, who use neither the sugar nor the wood. 

I left home at ten and got back before twelve with two and three quarters pints of sap, in addition to the one and three quarters I found collected. I put in saleratus and a little milk while boiling, the former to neutralize the acid, and the latter to collect the impurities in a skum. After boiling it till I burned it a little, and my small quantity would not flow when cool, but was as hard as half-done candy, I put it on again, and in a minute it was softened and turned to sugar. 

While collecting sap, the little of yesterday’s lodging snow that was left, dropping from the high pines in Trillium Wood and striking the brittle twigs in its descent, makes me think that the squirrels are running there. 

I noticed that my fingers were purpled, evidently from the sap on my auger. 

Had a dispute with Father about the use of my making this sugar when I knew it could be done and might have bought sugar cheaper at Holden’s. He said it took me from my studies. I said I made it my study; I felt as if I had been to a university. 

It dropped from each tube about as fast as my pulse beat, and, as there were three tubes directed to each vessel, it flowed at the rate of about one hundred and eighty drops in a minute into it. 

One maple, standing immediately north of a thick white pine, scarcely flowed at all, while a smaller, farther in the wood, ran pretty well. The south side of a tree bleeds first in spring. 

I hung my pails on the tubes or a nail. Had two tin pails and a pitcher. Had a three-quarters-inch auger. Made a dozen spouts, five or six inches long, hole as large as a pencil, smoothed with a pencil.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 21, 1856

To my red maple sugar camp. See March 14, 1856 ("[J]ust above Pinxter Swamp, one red maple limb was moistened by sap trickling along the bark. Tapping this, I was surprised to find it flow freely . . . "); March 15, 1856 ("Put a spout in the red maple of yesterday, and hang a pail beneath to catch the sap."); March 24, 1856 ("9 A. M. -- Start to get two quarts of white maple sap and home at 11.30"). See also February 21, 1857 ("Am surprised to see this afternoon a boy collecting red maple sap from some trees behind George Hubbard's. It runs freely. The earliest sap I made to flow last year was March 14th "); March 2, 1860 ("The red maple sap flows freely, and probably has for several days."); March 3, 1857 ("The red maple sap, which I first noticed the 21st of February, is now frozen up in the auger-holes ."); March 4, 1852 (I see where a maple has been wounded the sap is flowing out. Now, then, is the time to make sugar."); March 5, 1852 ("As I sit under their boughs, looking into the sky, I suddenly see the myriad black dots of the expanded buds against the sky. Their sap is flowing.”); April 11, 1856 ("Now is apparently the very time to tap birches of all kinds.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Red Maple Sap Flows

March 21.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 21

It is worth the while 

to know that there is all this 

sugar in our woods. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Sugaring lessons

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-560321

April snow improves the birding

April 15.

Morning. — Snow and snowing; four inches deep.

Yesterday was very cold. Now, I trust, it will come down and out of the air. Many birds must be hard put to it. Some tree sparrows and song sparrows have got close up to the sill of the house on the south side, where there is a line of grass visible, for shelter. When Father came down this morning he found a sparrow squatting in a chair in the kitchen.

 P. M. — This cold, moist, snowy day it is easier to see the birds and get near them. They are driven to the first bare ground that shows itself in the road, and the weather, etc., makes them more indifferent to your approach. The yellow redpoll hops along the limbs within four or five feet of me. The tree sparrows look much stouter and more chubby than usual, their feathers being puffed up and darker also, perhaps with wet. Also the robins and bluebirds are puffed up. 

The Purple Finch

I see the white under sides of many purple finches, busily and silently feeding on the elm blossoms within a few feet of me, and now and then their bloody heads and breasts. They utter a faint, clear chip. Their feathers are much ruffled. The arrival of the purple finches appears to be coincident with the blossoming of the elm, on whose blossom it feeds. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 15, 1854

Snow and snowing; four inches deep. See note to April 2, 1861 ("A drifting snow-storm, perhaps a foot deep on an average.")

The yellow redpoll hops along the limbs within four or five feet of me. See April 15, 1856 ("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.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow Redpoll ( Palm) Warbler

The arrival of the purple finches appears to be coincident with the blossoming of the elm. See April 15, 1856 ("The purple finch is singing on the elms "); April 15, 1852 ("The broad flat brown buds on Mr. Cheney's elm, containing twenty or thirty yellowish-green threads, surmounted with little brownish-mulberry cups, which contain the stamens and the two styles, -- these are just expanding or blossoming now. "). See also April 3, 1858 ("I am surprised by the rich strain of the purple finch from the elms"); April 11, 1853 ("I hear the clear, loud whistle of a purple finch, somewhat like and nearly as loud as the robin, from the elm by Whiting's.”). April 12, 1855 ("I hear a purple finch . . . on an elm, steadily warbling and uttering a sharp chip from time to time"). Also see A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Elms and the Purple Finch