The eddy and wearing away of the bank at the stone bridge.

July 20. 

The little Holbrook boy showed me an egg which I unhesitatingly pronounced a peetweet's, given him by Joe Smith. The latter, to my surprise, declares it a meadow-hen's; saw the bird and young, and says the latter were quite black and had hen bills. Can it be so? 

Humphrey Buttrick says he finds snipes' nests in our meadows oftener than woodcocks'. 

P. M. — To Eddy Bridge. 

Abel Hosmer says that the Turnpike Company did not fulfill their engagement to build a new bridge over the Assabet in 1807; that the present stone bridge was not built till about the time the Orthodox meeting-house was built. (That was in 1826.) Benjamin says it was built soon after the meeting-house, or perhaps 1827, and was placed some fifty feet higher up-stream than the old wooden one. 

Hosmer says that the eddy and wearing away of the bank has been occasioned wholly by the bridge; that there was only the regular bend there before. He had thought that it was in consequence of the bridge being set askew or diagonally with the stream, so that the abutments turned the water and gave it a slant into the banks. I think that this did not create, only increased, the evil. 

The bank which it has worn away rises some sixteen feet above low water, and, considering the depth of the water, you may say that it has removed the sand to a depth of twenty-five feet over an area of a quarter of an acre, or say to the depth of three feet or a yard over two acres, or 9680 cubic yards or cartloads, which, at twenty-five cents per load, it would have cost $2420 to move in the ordinary manner, or enough to fill the present river for a quarter of a mile, calling it six rods wide and twelve feet deep. 

Beside creating some small islands and bars close by, this sand and gravel has, of course, been distributed along in the river and on the adjacent meadows below. 

Hosmer complains that his interval has accordingly been very much injured by the sand washed on to it below, — "hundreds of dollars" damage done to him. All this within some thirty-five years. 

It may well be asked what has become of all this sand? Of course it has contributed to form sand-bars below, possibly a great way below. 

Jacob Farmer tells me that he remembers that when about twenty-one years old he and Hildreth were bathing in the Assabet at the mouth of the brook above Winn's, and Hildreth swam or waded across to a sand bar (now the island there), but the water was so deep on that bar that he became frightened, and would have been drowned if he had not been dragged out and resuscitated by others. This was directly over where that island is now, and was then only a bar beginning under water. That island, as he said, had been formed within thirty-five years, or since the Eddy Bridge was built; and I suggest that it may have been built mainly of the ruins of that bank. 

It is the only island in the Assabet for two and a half miles. 

There is a perfect standstill in the eddy at Eddy Bridge now, and there is a large raft of grass, weeds, and lumber perfectly at rest there, against Hosmer's bank. The coarser materials — stones as big as a hen's egg — are dropped close by, but the sand must have been carried far down-stream. 

Hosmer says that when he digs down in his millet- field, twenty rods or more from the river, in his interval, at three or four feet depth he comes to coarse stones which look like an old bed of the river. I see them at each of the small wooden bridges, and very likely they underlie the whole of that interval, covered with sand. 

Such is the character of a river-bottom, — the stones from a hen's egg to the size of your head dropped down to one level, the sand being washed away, and now found in one stratum. 

So completely emasculated and demoralized is our river that it is even made to observe the Christian Sabbath, and Hosmer tells me that at this season on a Sunday morning (for then the river runs lowest, owing to the factory and mill gates being shut above) little gravelly islands begin to peep out in the channel below. Not only the operatives make the Sunday a day of rest, but the river too, to some extent, so that the very fishes feel the influence (or want of influence) of man's religion. 

The very rivers run with fuller streams on Monday morning. All nature begins to work with new impetuosity on Monday. 

I see where turtles' eggs are still being dug up!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 20, 1859

The coarser materials — stones as big as a hen's egg — are dropped close by, but the sand must have been carried far down-stream. See July 16, 1859 ("It is remarkable how the stones are separated from the sand at the Eddy Bridge and deposited in a bar or islands by themselves a few rods lower down.")

When the surface of the earth generally begins to be dry.

March 31. 

The frost is out of our garden, and I see one or two plowing early land. You walk dry now over this sandy land where the frost is melted, even after heavy rain, and there is no slumping in it, for there is no hard-pan and ice to hold the water and make a batter of the surface soil. This is a new condition of things when the surface of the earth generally begins to be dry. 

But there is still much frost in cold ground, and I often feel the crust which was heaved by it sink under me, and for some time have noticed the chinks where the frozen ground has gaped and erected itself from and over stones and sleepers. 

P. M. — To Holbrook's improvements. 

Many painted turtles out along a ditch in Moore's Swamp. These the first I have seen, the water is so high in the meadows. One drops into the water from some dead brush which lies in it, and leaves on the brush two of its scales. Perhaps the sun causes the loosened scales to curl up, and so helps the turtle to get rid of them. 

Humphrey Buttrick says that he has shot two kinds of little dippers, — the one black, the other with some white. 

I see, on a large ant-hill, largish ants at work, front half reddish, back half black, but on another, very large ant-hill near by (a rod to left of Holbrook's road, perhaps fifty rods this side of his clearing on the north side), five feet through, there none out. 

It will show how our prejudices interfere with our perception of color, to state that yesterday morning, after making a fire in the kitchen cooking-stove, as I sat over it I thought I saw a little bit of red or scarlet flannel on a chink near a bolt-head on the stove, and I tried to pick it out, — while I was a little surprised that I did not smell it burning. It was merely the reflection of the flame of the fire through a chink, on the dark stove. This showed me what the true color of the flame was, but when I knew what this was, it was not very easy to perceive it again. It appeared now more yellowish. I think that my senses made the truest report the first time. 

The wood frogs lie spread out on the surface of the sheltered pools in the woods, cool and windy as it is, dimpling the water by their motions, and as you approach you hear their lively wurk wurrk wur-r-k, but, seeing you, they suddenly hist and perhaps dive to the bottom. 

It is a very windy afternoon, wind northwest, and at length a dark cloud rises on that side, evidently of a windy structure, a dusky mass with lighter intervals, like a parcel of brushes lying side by side, — a parcel of "mare's-tails " perhaps. It winds up with a flurry of rain.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 31, 1859

Many painted turtles out along a ditch in Moore's Swamp. These the first I have seen,  See March 31, 1857 ("The tortoises now quite commonly lie out sunning on the sedge or the bank. As you float gently down the stream, you hear a slight rustling and, looking up, see the dark shining back of a picta sliding off some little bed of straw-colored coarse sedge...”); March 31, 1858 ("Ordinarily at this season, the meadows being flooded,. . . I first noticed them underwater on the meadow. But this year it is but a step for them to the sunny bank, and the shores of the Assabet and of ditches are lined with them “) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle (Emys picta)

Humphrey Buttrick says that he has shot two kinds of little dippers, — the one black, the other with some white. See March 27, 1858 ("At length I detect two little dippers . . . They are male and female close together . . . The female is apparently uniformly black, or rather dark brown, but the male has a conspicuous crest, with, apparently, white on the hindhead, a white breast, and white line on the lower side of the neck; i. e., the head and breast are black and white conspicuously.”);  December 26, 1857 ("Humphrey Buttrick tells me that he has shot little dippers. He also saw the bird which Melvin shot last summer (a coot), but he never saw one of them before. The little dipper must, therefore, be different from a coot.”) . “Little dipper” is  Thoreau's name for various small diving birds, perhaps the buffle-head (Fuligulaalbeola), sometimes the pied billed or horned grebe (Podiceps auritus). See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Little Dipper

The wood frogs lie spread out on the surface of the sheltered pools in the woods, cool and windy as it is, dimpling the water by their motions, and as you approach you hear their lively wurk wurrk wur-r-k. See March 31, 1857 (“As I rise the east side of the Hill, I hear the distant faint peep of hylodes and the tut tut of croaking frogs from the west of the Hill. . . .  The dry croaking and tut tut of the frogs (a sound which ducks seem to imitate, a kind of quacking . . .) is plainly enough down there in some pool in the woods, but the shrill peeping of the hylodes locates itself nowhere in particular.”); March 24, 1859 ("I am sitting in Laurel Glen, listening to hear the earliest wood frogs croaking . . . Now, when the leaves get to be dry and rustle under your feet, dried by the March winds, the peculiar dry note, wurrk wurrk wur-r-r-k wurk of the wood frog is heard faintly by ears on the alert, borne up from some unseen pool in a woodland hollow which is open to the influences of the sun."); March 26, 1860 (“The wood frog [first] may be heard March 15, as this year, or not till April 13, as in '56,”). Compare March 31, 1855 (“I go listening for the croak of the first frog, or peep of a hylodes.. . .I listen in vain to hear a frog”). And see note to May 6, 1858 (the frogs of Massachusetts) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica)

I hear one cricket this louring day.

November 5. 

November 5, 2018

Humphrey Buttrick says that he finds old and young of both kinds of small rails, and that they breed here, though he never saw their nests. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

The river has risen somewhat, on account of rain yesterday and the 30th. So it was lowest the 30th. That great fleet of leaves of the 21st October is now sunk to the bottom, near the shore, and are flatted out there, paving it thickly, and but few recently fallen are to be seen on the water; and in the woods the leaves do not lie up so crisp since the rain.

Saw Stewart shoot a Carolina rail, which was standing on the side of a musquash-cabin off Prichard’s, within two rods of him. This has no black throat and is probably the female. 

The large shallow cups of the red oak acorns look like some buttons I have seen which had lost their core. 

The Cornus florida on the Island is still full-leafed, and is now completely scarlet, though it was partly green on the 28th. It is apparently in the height of its color there now, or, if more exposed, perhaps it would have been on the 1st of November. This makes it the latest tree to change. The leaves are drooping, like the C. sericea, while those of some sprouts at its base are horizontal. Some incline to crimson. 

A few white maples are not yet bare, but thinly clothed with dull-yellow leaves which still have life in them. Judging from the two aspens, this tree, and the willows, one would say that the earliest trees to leaf were, perhaps, the last to lose their leaves. 

Little dippers were seen yesterday. 

The few remaining topmost leaves of the Salix sericea, which were the last to change, are now yellow like those of the birch. 

Water milkweed has been discounting some days, with its small upright pods. 

I hear one cricket this louring day. Since but one is heard, it is the more distinct and therefore seems louder and more musical. It is a clearer note, less creaking than before. 

A few Populus grandidentata leaves are still left on. 

The common smooth rose leaves are pretty conspicuously yellow yet along the river, and some dull-reddish high blackberry is seen by the roads. Also meadow sweet is observed yet with the rose. 

It is quite still; no wind, no insect hum, and no note of birds, but one hairy woodpecker. 

That lake grass, Glyceria fluitans, is, me thinks, more noticeable now than in summer on the surface of the fuller stream, green and purple. 

Meadow-sweet is a prominent yellow yet.

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


Humphrey Buttrick says that he finds old and young of both kinds of small rails, and that they breed here, though he never saw their nests See September 7, 1858 ("Storrow Higginson brings from Deerfield this evening some eggs to show me, — among others apparently that of the Virginian rail. It agrees in color, size, etc., according to Wilson, and is like (except, perhaps, in form) to one which E. Bartlett brought me a week or ten days ago, which dropped from a load of hay carried to Stow’s barn! So perhaps it breeds here. Also a smaller egg of same form, but dull white with very pale dusky spots, which may be that of the Carolina rail."); September 9, 1858 ("Rice says he saw two meadow-hens when getting his hay in Sudbury some two months ago, and that they breed there. They kept up a peculiar note. My egg (named Sept. 7th) was undoubtedly a meadow-hen’s Rallus Virginiana."); September 18, 1858 ("Peabody says that they are seen here only in the autumn on their return from the north, though Brewer thinks their nest may be found here."); October 3, 1858 ("One brings me this morning a Carolina rail alive, this year’s bird evidently from its marks. . . . I suspect it may have been hatched here.");October 22, 1858 ("C. tells of hearing after dark the other night frequent raucous notes which were new to him, on the ammannia meadow, in the grass. Were they not meadow-hens? Rice says he saw one within a week."); June 1, 1859 ("Some boys found yesterday, in tussock of sedge amid some flags in a wet place in Cyrus Hosmer's meadow, west of the willow-row, six inches above the water, the nest evidently of a rail, with seven eggs."); July 16, 1860 ("Standing amid the pipes of the Great Meadow, I hear a very sharp creaking peep, no doubt from a rail quite near me, calling to or directing her young, who are meanwhile uttering a very faint, somewhat similar peep")


The Cornus florida on the Island is still full-leafed, and is now completely scarlet, though it was partly green on the 28th. See October 28, 1858 (“The dogwood on the island is perhaps in its prime, — a distinct scarlet, with half of the leaves green in this case. Apparently none have fallen.”)

A few white maples are not yet bare, but thinly clothed with dull-yellow leaves which still have life in them. See October 28, 1858 (“The majority of the white maples are bare, but others are still thickly leaved the leaves being a greenish yellow. It appears, then, that they hold their leaves longer than our other maples, or most trees.”) and note to October 14, 1858 ("The white maples are now apparently in their autumnal dress”)

The few remaining topmost leaves of the Salix sericea, which were the last to change, are now yellow like those of the birch. See November 5, 1855 (“The distant willow-tops are yellowish . . . in the right light. . . ..[B]irches, clear yellow at top”)

I hear one cricket this louring day. Since but one is heard, it is the more distinct and therefore seems louder and more musical. It is a clearer note. See November 1, 1858 ("I hear in the fields just before sundown a shriller chirping of a few crickets, reminding me that their song is getting thin and will soon be quenched"); November 3, 1858 ("Though I listen for them, I do not hear a cricket this afternoon. I think that I heard a few in the afternoon of November 1st. They then sounded peculiarly distinct, being but few here and there on a dry and warm hill, bird-like. Yet these seemed to be singing a little louder and in a little loftier strain, now that the chirp of the cricket generally was quenched.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in November

That lake grass, Glyceria fluitans.  See September 3, 1858 (“That floating grass by the riverside whose lower leaves, so flat and linear, float on the surface of the water.”)

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

I hear one cricket 

more distinct this louring day  – 

and more musical. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I hear one cricket this louring day. 

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/hdt05nov1858

First snow of any consequence.

December 26. 

Snows all day, — first snow of any consequence, three or four inches in all. 

At the double-chair December 26, 2017

Humphrey Buttrick tells me that he has shot little dippers. He also saw the bird which Melvin shot last summer (a coot), but he never saw one of them before. The little dipper must, therefore, be different from a coot. Is it not a grebe?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 26, 1857

Snows all day, — first snow of any consequence, three or four inches in all. See December 26, 1853 ("The first snow of any consequence thus far. It is about three inches deep.”) See also note to November 29, 1856 ("This is the first snow.”)

The little dipper must be different from a coot. Is it not a grebe?  See November 27, 1857 ("Mr. Wesson says . . .that the little dipper is not a coot. . - but he appears not to know a coot”); April 24, 1856 ("Goodwin shot, about 6 P. M., and brought to me a cinereous coot (Fulica Americana) . . .”) See also December 26, 1853  ("Saw in [Walden] a small diver, probably a grebe or dobchick, dipper, or what-not, ... It had a black head, a white ring about its neck, a white breast, black back, and apparently no tail.”)

***

The day after Christmas in the late afternoon we walk to the double-chair via the view, stopping there only briefly because of the strong northwest wind and cold.

Near the junction we hear a raven, turn and see it fly overhead. On the walk we also hear chickadees and downy or hairy woodpecker

Deep in winter woods

we turn to see the raven

soaring overhead.

At the view low clouds are illuminated by the westering sun–- brighter than the landscape below.

I  bushwhack up the mountain  and come across an area that has been trampled down by deer. There are deer bed is all around and she is calling me from above with the same news. As we hike up there are dozens and dozens of deer beds —More than I’ve ever seen in one place.

I use their tracks to find the easiest way up.

When we get to the double-chair, clear the chairs of ice and sit -- there is the first quarter moon in a clear sky. It is 16°.

As we come down the mountain trail, cross the ice on  middle pond and skid  down over the cliff trail, I am thinking what a gift to have this land and these walks together all these years.

What a gift to have 

this land our dogs and these walks--

these years together.

zphz 20171226

To preserve the fruit of our experience

March 24.

P. M. — Paddle up Assabet. 

The water is fast going down. See a small water bug. It is pretty still and warm. 

As I round the Island rock, a striped squirrel that was out the steep polypody rock scampered up with a chuckle. 

On looking close, I see the crimson white maple stigmas here and there, and some early alder catkins are relaxed and extended and almost shed pollen. 

I see many of those narrow four-winged insects (perla?) of the ice now fluttering on the water like ephemerae. They have two pairs of wings indistinctly spotted dark and light. 

Humphrey Buttrick says he saw two or three fish hawks down the river by Carlisle Bridge yesterday; also shot three black ducks and two green-winged teal, — though the latter had no green on their wings, it was rather the color of his boat, but Wesson assured him that so they looked in the spring. 

Buttrick had a double barrelled gun with him, which he said he bought of a broker in Boston for five dollars! Thought it had cost eighteen dollars. He had read Frank Forester and believed him, and accordingly sent to New York and got one of Mullin’s guns for sixty dollars. It was the poorest gun he ever had. He sold it for forty. 

As for cheap or old-fashioned guns bursting, there was Melvin; he had used his long enough, and it had not burst yet. He had given thirty-five dollars for it, say thirty years ago. Had had but one, or no other since. Melvin’s —and Minott’s still more — is such a gun as Frank Forester says he would not fire for a hundred dollars, and yet Melvin has grown gray with using it; i. e., he thinks that it would not be safe to fire a two barrelled gun offered new for less than fifty dollars.

If you are describing any occurrence, or a man, make two or more distinct reports at different times. Though you may think you have said all, you will to-morrow remember a whole new class of facts which perhaps interested most of all at the time, but did not present themselves to be reported. If we have recently met and talked with a man, and would report our experience, we commonly make a very partial report at first, failing to seize the most significant, picturesque, and dramatic points; we describe only what we have had time to digest and dispose of in our minds, without being conscious that there were other things really more novel and interesting to us, which will not fail to recur to us and impress us suitably at last. 

How little that occurs to us in any way are we prepared at once to appreciate! We discriminate at first only a few features, and we need to reconsider our experience from many points of view and in various moods, to preserve the whole fruit of it. 

H.  D.  Thoreau, Journal, March 24, 1857

As I round the Island rock, a striped squirrel that was out the steep polypody rock scampered up with a chuckle. See. March 10,1852 (" I am pretty sure that I hear the chuckle of a ground squirrel among the warm and bare rocks of the Cliffs. "); . March 17, 1859 ("As I float by the Rock, I hear rustling amid the oak leaves above that new water-line, and, there being no wind, I know it to be a striped squirrel, and soon see its long-unseen striped sides . . . a type which I have not seen for a long time, or rather a punctuation-mark, the character to indicate where a new paragraph commences in the revolution of the seasons.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,Signs of the Spring, the striped squirrel comes out

I see many of those narrow four-winged insects (perla?) of the ice now fluttering on the water .See
May 9, 1854("That early narrow curved-winged insect on ice and river which I thought an ephemera [Harris ]says is a Sialis, or maybe rather a Perla.");  March 17, 1858 ("As usual, I have seen for some weeks on the ice these peculiar (perla?) insects with long wings and two tails."); March 22, 1856 (“On water standing above the ice under a white maple, are many of those Perla(?) insects, with four wings, drowned.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Insect Hatches in Spring;and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,Signs of the Spring: insects and worms come forth and are active

Frank Forester: Henry William Herbert (April 3, 1807 – May 17, 1858), pen name Frank Forester, was an English novelist, poet, historian, illustrator, journalist and writer on sport. See July 12, 1855 (quoting Forester’s  “Manual for Young Sportsmen,”)

[Forester] thinks that it would not be safe to fire a two barrelled gun offered new for less than fifty dollars. See Forester’s Manual at 58 ("I do not, of course, mean to say that every cheap gun must necessarily burst ; but I do say that, against each one, severally, the odds are heavy that it will . . .By the word low-priccd guns, I mean, as a general rule, in reference to buying a safe and serviceable piece, any thing like new, with two barrels and the smallest show of exterior ornament, cheaper than fifty dollars.”)

If you are describing any occurrence, or a man, make two or more distinct reports at different times. . . . How little that occurs to us in any way are we prepared at once to appreciate. See March 27, 1857 ("I would fain make two reports in my Journal, first the incidents and observations of to-day; and by tomorrow I review the same and record what was omitted before, which will often be the most significant and poetic part. I do not know at first what it is that charms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to lie fairer and truer in to-morrow’s memory."); October 1, 1856 (“I do not perceive the poetic and dramatic capabilities of an anecdote or story which is told me, its significance, till some time afterwards. . ."); April 20, 1854 ("I find some advantage in describing the experience of a day on the day following. At this distance it is more ideal, like the landscape seen with the head inverted, or reflections in water”); January 10, 1854 ("What you can recall of a walk on the second day will differ from what you remember on the first day, ... as any view changes to one who is journeying amid mountains when he has increased the distance.”); May 5, 1852 ("I succeed best when I recur to my experience not too late, but within a day or two; when there is some distance, but enough of freshness.”); July 23, 1851 ("Do not tread on the heels of your experience. Be impressed without making a minute of it. Put an interval between the impression and the expression, - wait till the seed germinates naturally.”)

March 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 24

We are not at once

conscious of the whole fruit of

our experience.

How little occurs

that we are prepared at once

to appreciate.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

To preserve the fruit of our experience.

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/hdt570324

To-day is suddenly overpowering warm.

May 24. 

Pratt gave me the wing of a sparrow (?) hawk which he shot some months ago. He was coming from his house to his shop early in the morning when he saw this small hawk, which looked like a pigeon, fly past him over the Common with a sparrow in his clutches, and alight about six feet up the south button wood in front of Tolman’s. Having a small Maynard’s revolver in his pocket, loaded with a ball size of a pea, he followed, and, standing twenty-two paces from the tree in the road, aimed and brought down both hawk and sparrow at a distance of about six rods, cutting off the wing of the former with the ball. This he confessed he could not do again if he should try a hundred times. 

It must be a sparrow hawk, according to Wilson and Nuttall, for the inner vanes of the primaries and secondaries are thickly spotted with brownish white.

Humphrey Buttrick says that he hears the note of the woodcock from the village in April and early in May (too late now); that there were some this year breeding or singing by the riverside in front of Abel Heywood’s. He says that when you see one spring right up straight into the air, you may go to the spot, and he will surely come down again after some minutes to within a few feet of the same spot and of you. 

Has known a partridge to fly at once from one to two miles after being wounded (tracked them by the blood) without alighting. Says he has caught as many as a dozen partridges in his hands. He lies right down on them, or where he knows them to be, then passes his hands back and forth under his body till he feels them. You must not lift your body at all or they will surely squeeze out, and when you feel one must be sure you get hold of their legs or head, and not feathers merely. 

To-day is suddenly overpowering warm. Thermometer at 1 P. M., 94° in the shade! but in the afternoon it suddenly fell to 56, and it continued cold the next two days.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 24, 1856

It must be a sparrow hawk . . . See July 2, 1856 (“Looked at the birds in the Natural History Rooms in Boston. Observed no white spots on the sparrow hawk’s wing, or on the pigeon or sharp-shinned hawk’s. Indeed they were so closed that I could not have seen them. Am uncertain to which my wing belongs.”); May 4, 1855 ("I think that what I have called the sparrow hawk falsely, and latterly pigeon hawk, is also the sharp-shinned”); April 16, 1855 ( What I call a pigeon hawk, probably sharp-shinned.”) May 8, 1854 (“Saw a small hawk flying low, about size of a robin — tail with black bars — probably a sparrow hawk; . . . The sparrow hawk is a rather reddish brown and finely and thickly barred above with black.”); October 6, 1859 ("Examine the pigeon and sparrow hawks in the Natural History collection. . . .The sparrow hawks are decidedly red-brown with bluish heads and blue or slate sides; also are much more thickly barred with dark on wing-coverts, back, and tail than the pigeon hawk"). see also  J. J. Audubon ("Every one knows the Sparrow-Hawk [Falco sparverius], the very mention of its name never fails to bring to mind some anecdote connected with its habits . . .”) and  A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Hawk (Merlin)

May 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 24 

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

Bricking up a new well

April 18.

Cold, and still a strong wind. 46 at 2 P. M. 

The Salix discolor peels well; also the aspen (early) has begun to peel. 

As i go by the site of Staples' new barn on the Kettle place, I see that they have just dug a well and are bricking it up. 

Melvin, with a bundle of apple scions in his hand, is sitting close by looking over into the well from time to time. Humphrey Buttrick is at the bottom, bricking up the well.

Melvin says he has heard snipe some days, but thinks them scarce. Clark, who had been mining lately in California and who dug the well, is passing down bricks to Buttrick. Clark has heard a partridge drum.

Melvin says he fears that, the water being so low, the snipes would be overtaken by it and their nests broken up when it rose. He says Josh Haynes told him that he found woodcock's nest, and afterward he sailed over the nest in a boat, an yet, when the water went down, the bird went on and hatched the eggs.

I see that they have dug twenty four feet through  sand and have some four feet of water in the well.

Melvin has seen a dandelion in bloom.  

I find that the side-hill just below the Dutch house is more loose and sandy than half a dozen years ago, and I attribute it to the hens wallowing in the earth and dusting themselves, and also pecking the grass and preventing its growing.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 18, 1860