April true.

April 1. 

8 A. M. —Up Assabet. 

See an Emys guttata sunning on the bank. I had forgotten whether I ever saw it in this river. 

Hear a phoebe, and this morning the tree sparrows sing very sweetly about Keyes’s arbor-vitae and Cheney’s pines and apple trees. 

Crow blackbirds. I think it must have been these I saw the 29th of March. 

Checkerberries very fair and abundant now near Muhlenbergii Brook, contrasting with the red-brown leaves. They are not commonly touched by the frost.

I see children picking spring cranberries in the meadows. 

It is a true April evening, feeling and looking as if it would rain, and already I hear a robin or two singing their evening song.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 1, 1857

I had forgotten whether I ever saw it [Emys guttata] in this river. See  March 28, 1857 (“Do I ever see a yellow-spot turtle in the river? Do I ever see a wood tortoise in the South Branch?”)

Hear a phoebe . . . See April 1, 1859 (“[U]p 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. “); April 6, 1856 ("What confidence after the lapse of many months, I come out to this waterside, some warm and pleasant spring morning, and, listening, hear, from farther or nearer, through the still concave of the air, the note of the first pewee!")

Checkerberries very fair and abundant now near Muhlenbergii Brook. . . See October 15, 1856 (“An abundance of checkerberries by the hemlock at V. Muhlenbergii Brook. A remarkable year for berries.”)

A true April evening, feeling and looking as if it would rain, and already I hear a robin or two singing their evening song. See April 2, 1854 ("Sitting on the rail over the brook, I hear something which reminds me of the song of the robin in rainy days in past springs.”): April 1, 1854 ("The robin now begins to sing sweet powerfully. . . .April has begun like itself. It is warm and showery, while I sail away with a light southwest wind toward the Rock.”); April 1, 1855 (The month comes in true to its reputation.  . . .warm rain on the roof, and . . .the puddles shining in the road. “)

A fine healthy and handsome scarlet oak.

December 13. 

December 13, 2016

P. M. — To Hill and round by J. Hosmer woodland and Lee house. 

I see some of those great andromeda puffs still hanging on the twigs behind Assabet Spring, black and shrivelled bags. 

The river is generally open again. The snow is mostly gone. In many places it is washed away down to the channels made by the mice, branching galleries. 

I go through the lot where Wheeler's Irishmen cut last winter. Though they changed hands, they did not cut twice in a place, and the stump, instead of having a smooth surface, is roughly hacked. 

There is a fine healthy and handsome scarlet oak between Muhlenbergii Brook and the Assabet River watering-place, in the open land. It is about thirty- five feet high and spreads twenty-five, perfectly regular. It is very full of leaves, excepting a crescent of bare twigs at the summit about three feet wide in the middle. The leaves have a little redness in them.

There is a dense growth of young birches from the seed in the sprout-land lot just beyond on the riverside, now apparently two or three years old,

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 13, 1856

The river is generally open again.   See December 13, 1850 ("The river froze over last night, — skimmed over."); December 13, 1852 ("River and ponds all open."); December 13, 1859 (" Now that the river is frozen we have a sky under our feet also.)

Though they changed hands, they did not cut twice in a place. . .  See December 11, 1856 ("[Minott] complains that the choppers make a very long carf nowadays, doing most of the cutting on one side, to avoid changing hands so much.")

A  fine healthy and handsome scarlet oak . . . very full of leaves, . . . a little redness in them. See October 30, 1855 ("I see that the scarlet oak leaves have still some brightness; perhaps the latest of the oaks."); October 21, 1855 ("Up Assabet. . . . [T]he scarlet oak is very bright and conspicuous. How finely its leaves are out against the sky with sharp points, especially near the top of the tree! . . .)

There is a dense growth of young birches from the seed in the sprout-land lot . . . See December 8, 1859 ("The birches, seen half a mile off toward the sun, are the purest dazzling white of any tree.")

The chickadees resume their winter ways before the winter comes.

October 15. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

A smart frost, which even injured plants in house. Ground stiffened in morning; ice seen. 

October 15, 2016

River lower than for some months. Banks begin to wear almost a Novemberish aspect. The black willow almost completely bare; many quite so. It loses its leaves about same time with the maples. 

The large ferns are now rapidly losing their leaves except the terminal tuft. Other species about the edges of swamps were turned suddenly dark cinnamon-color by the frost of yesterday. 

The water is very calm and full of reflections. Large fleets of maple and other leaves are floating on its surface as I go up the Assabet, leaves which apparently came down in a shower with yesterday morning's frost. Every motion of the turtles is betrayed by their rustling now.

Mikania is all whitish woolly now. Yet many tortoises are still out in the sun. 

An abundance of checkerberries by the hemlock at V. Muhlenbergii Brook. A remarkable year for berries. Even this, too, is abundant like the rest. They are tender and more palatable than ever now. I find a little pile of them, maybe fifteen or twenty, on the moss with each a little indentation or two on it, made apparently by some bird or beast. 

The chickadees are hopping near on the hemlock above. They resume their winter ways before the winter comes. 

A great part of the hemlock seeds fallen.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 15, 1856

Large fleets of maple and other leaves. . .came down in a shower with yesterday morning's frost.  See October 15, 1853 (“[H]ow the leaves come down in showers after this touch of the frost!.”);  October22,1854 (“Pretty hard frosts these nights. Many leaves fell last night, and the Assabet is covered with their fleets.”); October 15, 1857 (“There has been a great fall of leaves in the night on account of this moist and rainy weather. . .”)

The chickadees . . .resume their winter ways before the winter comes. See October 15, 1859 (The chickadees sing as if at home. They are not travelling singers hired by any Barnum. Theirs is an honest, homely, heartfelt melody.""). See also  October 11, 1851 ("The chickadee, sounding all alone, now that birds are getting scarce, reminds me of the winter, in which it almost alone is heard.”); October 13, 1860 ("Now, as soon as the frost strips the maples, and their leaves strew the swamp floor and conceal the pools, the note of the chickadee sounds cheerfully winterish.”); October 17, 1856 (" I heard a smart tche-day-day-day close to my ear, and, looking up, see four of these birds, which had come to scrape acquaintance with me, hopping amid the alders within three and four feet of me. I had heard them further off at first, and they had followed me along the hedge. They day-day 'd and lisp their faint notes alternately, and then, as if to make me think they had some other errand than to peer at me, they peck the dead twigs with their bills — the little top-heavy, black-crowned, volatile fellows."); 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 (“[T]he little chickadees . . . inquisitively hop nearer and nearer to me. 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.”)


A great part of the hemlock seeds fallen. See October 31, 1853 ("The hemlock seeds are apparently ready to drop from their cones.”)

So the tree gets planted!

July 14.

P. M. — To Muhlenbergii Brook. 

Anthony Wright found a lark's nest with fresh eggs on the 12th in E. Hubbard's meadow by ash tree, — two nests, probably one a second brood. 

Nasturtium hispidum (?), apparently three or four days. 

See and hear martins twittering on the elms by riverside. 

Bass out about two days at Island. 

There is a pyrus twenty feet high with small fruit at Assabet Spring. 

Noli-me-tangere already springs at Muhlenbergii Brook, some days. 

Saw apparently my little ruby(?)-crested wren(?) on the weeds there. 

Senecio long gone to seed and dispersed. 

Canada thistle some time on Huckleberry Pasture-side beyond. 

Ceratophyllum with a dense whorl of twelve little oval red-dotted apparent flower-buds (?) in an axil. 

While drinking at Assabet Spring in woods, noticed a cherry-stone on the bottom. A bird that came to drink must have brought it half a mile. So the tree gets planted!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 14, 1856

Bass out about two days at Island. See July 17, 1856 ("Hear at distance the hum of bees from the bass with its drooping flowers at the Island, a few minutes only before sunset. It sounds like the rumbling of a distant train of cars"); July 18, 1854 ("We have very few bass trees in Concord, but walk near them at this season and they will be betrayed, though several rods off, by the wonderful susurrus of the bees, etc., which their flowers attract.") Compre July 3, 1853 ("There are no flowers on bass trees commonly this year."); June 3, 1857 ("The bass at the Island will not bloom this year. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,The Basswood

Saw apparently my little ruby-crested wren on the weeds there. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: the ruby-crowned or crested wren.

 ("

While drinking at Assabet Spring. See May 2, 1855 ("Open the Assabet spring."); July 12, 1857 ("I drink at every cooler spring in my walk these afternoons."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, At Assabet Spring

A bird that came to drink must have brought it half a mile. See September 1, 1860 ("See how artfully the seed of a cherry is placed in order that a bird may be compelled to transport it. . . .The bird is bribed with the pericarp to take the stone with it and do this little service for Nature. Thus a bird's wing is added to the cherry-stone which was wingless, and it does not wait for winds to transport it."); also September 21, 1860 ("I suspect that ... those [seeds] the wind takes are less generally the food of birds and quadrupeds than the heavier and wingless seeds") and  August 19, 1852 ("The small fruits of most plants are now generally ripe or ripening, and this is coincident with the flying in flocks of such young birds now grown as feed on them.").