When the woodpeckers visit your woods in great numbers.

March 3

Wednesday. 

Moore's larch trees beyond Sleepy Hollow cut this winter. They were much decayed. 

The woodpeckers had stripped many of bark in pursuit of grubs. When the woodpeckers visit your woods in great numbers, you may suspect that it is time to cut them. 

The chopper does not complain of cutting the larch, but when he comes to the splitting there's the rub. The grain runs almost round a four-foot stick sometimes. They make good posts.

 

Are those poplars whose buds I have seen so much expanded for a week or more a new species to me ? The river poplar ? [No.]

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 3, 1852

Cut this winter. December 14, 1851 ("I hear the small woodpecker whistle as he flies to ward the leafless wood on Fair Haven, doomed to be cut this winter."); January 21, 1852 ("This winter they are cutting down our woods more seriously than ever,--Fair Haven hill, Walden, Linnaea, Borealis Wood, etc., etc. Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds!"); January 22, 1852 ("It concerns us all whether these proprietors choose to cut down all the woods this winter or not"); March 11, 1852 (The woods I walked in in my youth are cut off. Is it not time that I ceased to sing?")

Moore's larch trees beyond Sleepy Hollow. See June 6, 1853 ("The larch grows in both Moore's and Pedrick’s swamps. Do not the trees that grow there indicate the depth of the swamp?")

March 3.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau March 3

Fully blossomed cone —

winged black seeds half fill my hand

like tiny fishes.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,

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 © 2009-2025

Air full of bluebirds.

February 28. 

P. M. Down Boston road under the hill. 

Air full of bluebirds as yesterday. 

The sidewalk is bare and almost dry the whole distance under the hill. 

Turn in at the gate this side of Moore's and sit on the yellow stones rolled down in the bay of a digging, and examine the radical leaves, etc., etc. 

Where the edges of grassy banks have caved I see the fine fibrous roots of the grass which have been washed bare during the winter extending straight downward two feet (and how much further within the earth I know not), -- a pretty dense grayish mass. 

The buttonwood seed has apparently scarcely begun to fall yet — only two balls under one tree, but they loose and broken. [Almost entirely fallen March 7th, leaving the dangling stems and bare receptacles.]

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 28. 1861

Air full of bluebirds as yesterday. See February 27, 1861 ("It occurs to me that I have just heard a bluebird. I stop and listen to hear it again, but cannot tell whither it comes."); see also February 8, 1860 ("It will take a yet more genial and milder air before the bluebird's warble can be heard."); February 18, 1857 ("The bluebird does not come till the air consents"); February 24, 1857 ("A]s I cross from the causeway to the hill, thinking of the bluebird, I that instant hear one's note from deep in the softened air."); March 15, 1852 ("A mild spring day.  The air is full of bluebirds. . . .  liquid with the bluebirds' warble. My life partakes of infinity. ") March 17, 1858 ("The air is full of bluebirds. I hear them far and near on all sides of the hill.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Bluebird in Early Spring.

The men killed them, and laid them all in a line on the ground, and they measured several hundred feet.

April 20. 

The Salix purpurea in prime; began, say, 18th. 

A warm day. Now begin to sit without fires more commonly, and to wear but one coat commonly. 

Moore tells me that last fall his men, digging sand in that hollow just up the hill, dug up a parcel of snakes half torpid. They were both striped and black together, in a place somewhat porous, he thought where a horse had been buried once. 

The men killed them, and laid them all in a line on the ground, and they measured several hundred feet. This seems to be the common practice when such collections are found; they are at once killed and stretched out in a line, and the sum of their lengths measured and related.  

It is a warm evening, and I hear toads ring distinctly for the first time. 

C. sees bluets and some kind of thrush to-day, size of wood thrush, — he thought probably hermit thrush.

H. D.. Thoreau, Journal, April 20, 1860

The Salix purpurea in prime; began, say, 18th. See April 10, 1860 ("Salix purpurea apparently will not open for four or five days");. See also April 22, 1859 ("The Salix purpurea in prime, out probably three or four days; say 19th.")

 Now begin to sit without fires more commonly, and to wear but one coat commonly. See April 16, 1855 ("A perfectly clear and very warm day, . . . and I have not got far before, for the first time, I regret that I wore my greatcoat"); April 17, 1855 ("I leave off my greatcoat, though the wind rises rather fresh before I return. It is worth the while to walk so free and light, having got off both boots and greatcoat.");. April 19, 1855 ("Warm and still and somewhat cloudy. Am without greatcoat"); April 25, 1854 (" I swelter under my greatcoat. . . . (I have not left it at home yet),. . . For some time we have done with little fire, nowadays let it go out in the afternoon."); April 26, 1854 ("It is now so warm that I go back to leave my greatcoat for the first time.");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.")

The men killed them. See  note to April 26, 1857 ("I have the same objection to killing a snake that I have to the killing of any other animal, yet the most humane man that I know never omits to kill one.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Striped Snake

I hear toads ring distinctly for the first time.  See  April 20, 1853 ("Saw a toad and a small snake.") See also 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. . . .. Thus gradually and moderately the year begins. It creeps into the ears so gradually that most do not observe it, and so our ears are gradually accustomed to the sound, and perchance we do not perceive it when at length it has become very much louder and more general. ");  April 25, 1859 ("[A] new season has arrived.  . . . It begins when the first toad is heard. Methinks I hear through the wind to-day . . . a very faint, low ringing of toads, as if distant and just begun. It is an indistinct undertone, and I am far from sure that I hear anything. It may be all imagination").  Also see A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Ring of Toads.

C. sees bluets and some kind of thrush to-day, size of wood thrush, — he thought probably hermit thrush. See April 19, 1858 ("Hear of bluets found on Saturday, the 17th; how long? ");  April 21, 1855 ("At Cliffs, I hear at a distance a wood [sic] thrush. It affects us as a part of our unfallen selves..") and note to April 24, 1856 ("Behold my hermit thrush, with one companion, flitting silently through the birches."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: The Arrival of the Hermit Thrush

See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, April 20

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