This “booming” of the snipe is our regular village serenade.

April 9.

April rain at last, but not much; clears up at night.

At 4.30 P.M. to Well Meadow Field.

The yew looks as if it would bloom in a day or two, and the staminate Salix humilis in the path in three or four days. Possibly it is already out elsewhere, if, perchance, that was not it just beginning on the 6th on the Marlborough road. The pistillate appear more forward. It must follow pretty close to the earliest willows.

I hear the booming of snipe this evening, and Sophia says she heard them on the 6th. The meadows having been bare so long, they may have begun yet earlier.

Persons walking up or down our village street in still evenings at this season hear this singular winnowing sound in the sky over the meadows and know not what it is. This “booming” of the snipe is our regular village serenade. 

I heard it this evening for the first time, as I sat in the house, through the window. Yet common and annual and remarkable as it is, not one in a hundred of the villagers hears it, and hardly so many know what it is. Yet the majority know of the Germanians who have only been here once. Mr. Hoar was almost the only inhabitant of this street whom I had heard speak of this note, which he used annually to hear and listen for in his sundown or evening walks.

R. Rice tells me that he has seen the pickerel-spawn hung about in strings on the brush, especially where a tree had fallen in. He thinks it was the pickerel’s because he has seen them about at the time. This seems to correspond with mine of April 3d, though he did [not] recognize the peculiar form of it.

I doubt if men do ever simply and naturally glorify God in the ordinary sense, but it is remarkable how sincerely in all ages they glorify nature. The praising of Aurora, for instance, under some form in all ages is obedience to as irresistible an instinct as that which impels the frogs to peep.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 9, 1858

The yew looks as if it would bloom in a day or two, and the staminate Salix humilis in the path in three or four days. See April 13, 1858 ("That unquestionable staminate Salix humilis beyond yew will not be out for three or four days. Its old leaves on the ground are turned cinder-color, as are those under larger and doubtful forms.")

This “booming” of the snipe is our regular village serenade. See April 9, 1853 ("Evening. -- Hear the snipe a short time at early starlight. . . . Louder than all is heard the shrill peep of the hylodes and the hovering note of the snipe, circling invisible above them all.");  April 9, 1855 ("Some twenty minutes after sundown I hear the first booming of a snipe."); See also April 15, 1856 (" I hear a part of the hovering note of my first snipe, circling over some distant meadow"); April 18, 1854 (" One[snipe] booms now at 3 p. m."); April 18, 1856 ("This evening I hear the snipes generally and peeping of hylas from the door. ")' April 25, 1859 ("The snipe have hovered commonly this spring an hour or two before sunset and also in the morning . . . and they appear to make that sound when descending, — one quite by himself.") and  A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Snipe

Pickerel-spawn hung about in strings on the brush. See April 3, 1858 ("a curious kind of spawn. It was white, each ovum about as big as a robin-shot or larger, with mostly a very minute white core, no black core, and these were agglutinated together in the form of zigzag hollow cylinders, two or three inches in diameter and one or two feet long, looking like a lady's ruff or other muslin work, on the bottom or on roots and twigs of willow and button-bush")   See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

Mother-o'-pearl tints and rainbow flocks in the western sky.

January 22. 

Saw, January 20th, some tree sparrows in the yard. 

Once or twice of late I have seen the mother-o'-pearl tints and rainbow flocks in the western sky. The usual time is when the air is clear and pretty cool, about an hour before sundown. 

Yesterday I saw a very permanent specimen, like a long knife-handle of mother-of-pearl, very pale with an interior blue with the rosaceous tinges. Methinks the summer sky never exhibits this so finely. 

When I was at C.'s the other evening, he punched his cat with the poker because she purred too loud for him. 

R. Rice says he saw a white owl two or three weeks since. 

Harris told me on the 19th that he had never found the snow-flea. 

No second snow-storm in the winter can be so fair and interesting as the first. 

Last night was very windy, and to-day I see the dry oak leaves collected in thick beds in the little hollows of the snow-crust. These later falls of the leaf.

A fine freezing rain on the night of the 19th produced a hard crust on the snow, which was but three inches deep and would not bear.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 22, 1854

Mother-o'-pearl tints in the western sky about an hour before sundown. . . .Methinks the summer sky never exhibits this so finely. See January 22, 1852 ("One mother-o'-pearl tint is common to the winter sky half an hour before sundown."); See also December 18, 1852("Loring's Pond beautifully froze . . . it was so exquisitely polished that the sky and scudding dun-colored clouds, with mother-o'-pearl tints, were reflected in it as in the calmest water."); December 26, 1855 ("The sun is gone before five. Just before I looked for rainbow flocks in the west, but saw none,"); December 27, 1853 ("I look far, but see no rainbow flocks in the sky."); December 30, 1855 ("Looking up over the top of the hill now, southwest, at 3.30 P.M., I see a few mother-o’-pearl tints, and methinks the same or rainbow tints in the drifting snow there, against the bright light of the unseen sun. Only in such clear cold air as this have the small clouds in the west that fine evanishing edge. It requires a state of the air that quickly dissipates all moisture. It must be rare in summer. In this rare atmosphere all cloud is quickly dissipated and mother-o’-pearl tinted as it passes away."); January 9, 1854 ("Looking for rainbow-tinted clouds, small whiffs of vapor which form and disperse, this clear, cold afternoon"); January 13, 1852 ("Here I am on the Cliffs at half past three or four o'clock. . . .I see. . .in the west, flitting mother-o'-pearl clouds, which change their loose-textured form and melt rapidly away, even while I write."); February 13, 1860 ("It is surprising what a variety of distinct colors the winter can show us . . .There is the red of the sunset sky, and of the snow at evening, and in rainbow flocks during the day, and in sun-dogs."); February 24, 1860 ("some [clouds]most brilliant mother-o'-pearl. I never saw the green in it more distinct. This on the thin white edges of clouds as if it were a small piece of a rainbow.").

Rice says he saw a white owl. See  March 1, 1854 ("Have heard of two white owls, — one about Thanksgiving time and one in midwinter.")

Harris told me on the 19th that he had never found the snow-flea. See January 22, 1860 ("The snow-fleas are thickest along the edge of the wood here, but I find that they extend quite across the river . . . This must be as peculiarly a winter animal as any. It may truly be said to live in snow."). See also January 1, 1853 ("Agassiz told him that Harris [ the librarian of Harvard University, and one of Thoreau's professors] was the greatest entomologist in the world. "); January 15, 1852 ("For the first time this winter I notice snow-fleas this afternoon in Walden Wood . . .Their number is almost infinite."); February 2, 1854 ("As it is a melting day, the snow is everywhere peppered with snow-fleas.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Snow Flea

Last night was very windy, and to-day I see the dry oak leaves collected in thick beds. See January 8, 1852 (" I notice that almost every track which I made yesterday. . .has got a dead leaf in it.."); January 15, 1856 ("Seeing the tracks where a leaf had blown along and then tacked and finally doubled and returned on its trail, I think it must be the tracks of some creature new to me."); January 31, 1856 ("The fall of these withered leaves after each rude blast, so clean and dry that they do not soil the snow, is a phenomenon quite in harmony with the winter.") January 7, 1857("[E]ach track of the fox has proved a trap which has caught from three or four to eight or ten leaves each, snugly packed; and thus it is reprinted.")

What is the use, in Nature's economy, of these occasional floods in August?

August 25. 

 P. M. — To Hill by boat. Silvery cinquefoil now begins to show itself commonly again. Perhaps it is owing to the rain, spring like, which we have in August. 

I paddle directly across the meadow, the river is so high, and land east of the elm on the third or fourth row of potatoes. The water makes more show on the meadows than yesterday, though hardly so high, be cause the grass is more flatted down. 

I easily make my way amid the thin spires. Almost every stem which rises above the surface has a grasshopper or caterpillar upon it. Some have seven or eight grasshoppers, clinging to their masts, one close and directly above an other, like shipwrecked sailors, now the third or fourth day exposed. Whither shall they jump? It is a quarter of a mile to shore, and countless sharks lie in wait for them. They are so thick that they are like a crop which the grass bears; some stems are bent down by their weight. 

This flood affects other inhabitants of these fields than men; not only the owners of the grass, but its inhabitants much more. It drives them to their upper stories, — to take refuge in the rigging. Many that have taken an imprudent leap are seen struggling in the water. How much life is drowned out that inhabits about the roots of the meadow-grass! How many a family, perchance, of short-tailed meadow mice has had to scamper or swim! 

The river-meadow cranberries are covered deep. I can count them as they lie in dense beds a foot under water, so distinct and white, or just beginning to have a red cheek. They will probably be spoiled, and this  crop will fail. 

Potatoes, too, in the low land on which water has stood so long, will rot. 

The farmers commonly say that the spring floods, being of cold water, do not injure the grass like later ones when the water is warm, but I suspect it is not so much owing to the warmth of the water as to the age and condition of the grass and whatever else is exposed to them. They say that if you let the water rise and stand some time over the roots of trees in warm weather it will kill them. 

This, then, may be the value of these occasional freshets in August: they steam and kill the shrubs and trees which had crept into the river meadows, and so keep them open perpetually, which, perchance, the spring floods alone might not do. 

It is commonly supposed that our river meadows were much drier than now originally, or when the town was settled. They were probably drier before the dam was built at Billerica, but if they were much or at all drier than now originally, I ask what prevented their being converted into maple swamps? Maples, alders, birches, etc., are creeping into them quite fast on many sides at present. If they had been so dry as is supposed they would not have been open meadows. It seems to be true that high water in midsummer, when perchance the trees and shrubs are in a more tender state, kills them. 

It "steams" them, as it does the grass; and maybe the river thus asserts its rights, and possibly it would still to great extent, though the meadows should be considerably raised. Yet, I ask, why do maples, alders, etc., at present border the stream, though they do not spring up to any extent in the open meadow? Is it because the immediate bank is commonly more firm as well as higher (their seeds also are more liable to be caught there), and where it is low they are protected by willows and button-bushes, which can bear the flood? Not even willows and button-bushes prevail in the Great Meadows, — though many of the former, at least, spring up there, — except on the most elevated parts or hummocks.

The reason for this cannot be solely in the fact that the water stands over them there a part of the year, be cause they are still more exposed to the water in many places on the shore of the river where yet they thrive. Is it then owing to the soft character of the ground in the meadow and the ice tearing up the meadow so extensively? On the immediate bank of the river that kind of sod and soil is not commonly formed which the ice lifts up. Why is the black willow so strictly confined to the bank of the river? 

What is the use, in Nature's economy, of these occasional floods in August? Is it not partly to preserve the meadows open? 

Mr. Rice says that the brook just beyond his brother Israel's in Sudbury rises and runs out before the river, and then you will see the river running up the brook as fast as the brook ran down before. 

Apparently half the pads are now afloat, notwithstanding the depth of the water, but they are almost all white lily pads, the others being eaten and decayed. They have apparently lengthened their stems some what. They generally lie with more or less coil, prepared for a rise of the water, and perhaps the length of that coil shows pretty accurately to how great a rise they are ordinarily subject at this season. 

I was suggesting yesterday, as I have often before, that the town should provide a stone monument to be placed in the river, so as to be surrounded by water at its lowest stage, and a dozen feet high, so as to rise above it at its highest stage; on this feet and inches to be permanently marked; and it be made some one's duty to record each high or low stage of the water. Now, when we have a remarkable freshet, we cannot tell surely whether it is higher than the one thirty or sixty years ago or not. It would be not merely interesting, but often practically valuable, to know this. 

Reuben Rice was telling me to-night that the great freshet of two or three years ago came, according to his brother Israel, within two inches of one that occurred about forty years ago. I asked how he knew. He said that the former one took place early (February?), and the surface froze so that boys skated on it, and the ice marked a particular apple tree, girdled it, so that it is seen to this day. 

But we wish to speak more confidently than this allows. It is important when building a causeway, or a bridge, or a house even, in some situations, to know exactly how high the river has ever risen. It would need to be a very large stone or pile of stones, which the ice could not move or break. Perhaps one corner of a bridge abutment would do. 

Rice killed a woodchuck to-day that was shearing off his beans. He was very fat. 

I cross the meadows in the face of a thunder-storm rising very dark in the north. There are several boats out, but their crews soon retreat homeward before the approaching storm. It comes on rapidly, with vivid lightning striking the northern earth and heavy thunder following. 

Just before, and in the shadow of, the cloud, I see, advancing majestically with wide circles over the meadowy flood, a fish hawk and, apparently, a black eagle (maybe a young white-head). The first, with slender curved wings and silvery breast, four or five hundred feet high, watching the water while he circles slowly southwesterly. What a vision that could detect a fish at that distance! The latter, with broad black wings and broad tail, hovers only about one hundred feet high; evidently a different species, and what else but an eagle? 

They soon disappear southwest, cutting off a bend. The thunder-shower passed off to the southeast.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 25, 1856

Silvery cinquefoil now begins to show itself commonly again. See September 1, 1853 ("Methinks the silvery cinquefoil is of late much more abundant") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Cinquefoil in Autumn

Why is the black willow so strictly confined to the bank of the river? See August 7, 1858 ("The most luxuriant groves of black willow are on the inside curves, —but rarely ever against a firm bank or hillside, the positive male shore. “); August 15, 1858 (“I notice the black willows . . . to see where they grow, distinguishing ten places. In seven instances they are on the concave or female side distinctly.”); August 19, 1858 (“I noticed the localities of black willows as far up as the mouth of the river in Fair Haven Pond, but not so carefully as elsewhere, and from the last observations I infer that the willow grows especially and almost exclusively in places where the drift is most likely to lodge, as on capes and points and concave sides of the river, though I noticed a few exceptions to my rule.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Propogation of the Willow.

I cross the meadows –

the face of a thunder-storm 

rising in the north.

Barn swallows in the nest still.

August 22.
I hear of some young barn swallows in the nest still in R. Rice’s barn, Sudbury.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 22, 1855

Late snows blind us most.

March 14

Three inches of snow in the morning, and it snows a little more during the day, with occasional gleams of sunshine. Winter back again in prospect, and I see a few sparrows, probably tree sparrows, in the yard. 

March 14, 2022

P. M. — To Andromeda Ponds. At one of the holes under the stump of March 7th, caught a Mus leucopus (deer mouse). So this was the kind, undoubtedly, that fed on the moss.  It is in very good condition; extreme length six and a half, tail three inches. It is a less reddish brown on the sides and cheeks than my whole skin, and a darker brown above, mixed with a little reddish; no yellow tinge on breast.  Some whiskers, as usual, are white, others black, and I count the “six tubercles on each palm.” 

There are no tracks about the stump, for they are not abroad by day, i.e. since the last of this snow, but probably there will be tracks to-morrow morning. Thus it is generally. If it ceases snowing in the morning, you see few, if any, tracks in your walk, but the next morning many.

It is the first and last snows - especially the last -  that blind us most, when the sun is most powerful and our eyes are unused to them. 

I observe the tracks of sparrows leading to every little sprig of blue-curls amid the other weeds which (its seemingly empty pitchers) rises above the snow. There seems, however, to be a little seed left in them. This, then, is reason enough why these withered stems still stand, – that they may raise these granaries above the snow for the use of the snowbirds. 

That ice of February has destroyed almost the whole of Charles Hubbard’s young red maple swamp in front of the Hollowell place. Full an acre of thrifty young maples, as well as alders and birches four to ‘seven feet high, is completely destroyed, being pulled and broken down (broken near the ground) as the ice sank after the water went down. It is all flat, and looks at a little distance as if one had gone through with a bush-whack and done his work faithfully. 

R. Rice tells me that a great many young white pines in a swamp of his in Sudbury have been barked, the bark rubbed down several inches completely bare by the ice. 

Thus the river from time to time asserts its authority over its swamps to a great distance.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 14, 1855

Winter back again in prospect, and I see a few sparrows, probably tree sparrows, in the yard.  See February 9, 1855 ("Tree sparrows, two or three only at once, come into the yard, the first I have distinguished this winter.   I was so sure this storm would bring snowbirds into the yard that I went to the window at ten to look for them, and there they were."); April 10, 1854 ("How sure a rain is to bring the tree sparrows into the yard, to sing sweetly, canary-like!"); April 27, 1855 ("I hear the sweet warble of a tree sparrow in the yard."); May 4, 1855 ("See no gulls, nor F. hyemalis nor tree sparrows now."); May 5, 1854 ("Have not observed a tree sparrow for four or five days.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Tree Sparrow

At one of the holes under the stump of March 7th, caught a Mus leucopus (deer mouse). See March 7, 1855 ("Saw, about a hemlock stump on the hillside north of the largest Andromeda Pond, very abundant droppings of some kind of mice, on that common green moss . . . They must have fed very extensively on this moss the past winter."); February 20, 1855 ("It [Mus leucopus ] is a very pretty and neat little animal for a mouse, with its wholesome reddish - brown sides distinctly bounding on its pure white belly, neat white feet , large slate - colored ears which suggest circumspection and timidity, — ready to earth itself on the least sound of danger, long tail, and numerous whiskers.) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

These granaries above the snow for the use of the snowbirds. See December 4, 1856 ("How many thousand acres are there now of pitchered blue-curls and ragged wormwood rising above the shallow snow?  The granary of the birds."); December 14, 1851 ("The now dry and empty but clean-washed cups of the blue-curls spot the half snow-covered grain-fields. Where lately was a delicate blue flower, now all the winter are held up these dry chalices!"); December 14, 1852 ("The dried chalices of the Rhexia Virginica stand above the snow, and the cups of the blue-curls."); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Blue-Curls

Rice tells me that a great many young white pines in a swamp of his in Sudbury have been barked. See March 14, 1857 ("The maples, apple trees, etc., have been barked by the ice,")

March 14. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 14

Three inches of snow,

winter again in prospect –

sparrows in the yard.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Late snows blind us most.

 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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-550314

A Spring day.

April 2.

The sun is up. The water on the meadows is perfectly smooth and placid, reflecting the hills and clouds and trees. The air is full of the notes of birds, - song sparrows, red-wings, robins (singing a strain), bluebirds, - and I hear also a lark, - as if all the earth had burst forth into song. The influence of this April morning has reached them, for they live out-of-doors all the night, and there is no danger that they will oversleep themselves such a morning.

For a long distance, as we paddle up the river, we hear the two-stanza'd lay of the pewee on the shore, - pee-wet, pee-wee, etc. Those are the two obvious facts to eye and ear, the river and the pewee.

We hardly set out to return, when the water looked sober and rainy. There was more appearance of rain in the water than in the sky, - April weather look. And soon we saw the dimples of drops on the surface . The clouds, the showers, and the breaking away now in the west, all belong to the summer side of the year and remind me of long-past days.

We land in a steady rain and walk inland by R. Rice's barn, regardless of the storm, toward White Pond. At last the drops fall wider apart, and we pause in a sandy field near the Great Road of the Corner, where it was agreeably retired and sandy, drinking up the rain. The rain was soothing, so still and sober, gently beating against and amusing our thoughts, swelling the brooks. 

The robin now peeps with scared note in the heavy overcast air, among the apple trees. The hour is favorable to thought.

The rain now turns to snow with large flakes, so soft many cohere in the air as they fall. They make us white as millers and wet us through. I hear a solitary hyla for the first time. At Hubbard's Bridge, count eight ducks going over. Looking up, the flakes are black against the sky. And now the ground begins to whiten.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 2, 1852

The air is full of the notes of birds, - song sparrows, red-wings, robins (singing a strain) See  April 2, 1854("I heard something which reminded me of the song of the robin in rainy days in past springs. ") April 2, 1856 ("Robins are peeping and flitting about. Am surprised to hear one sing regularly their morning strain,”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring

It appears to me that, to one standing on the heights of philosophy, mankind and the works of man will have sunk out of sight altogether; that man is altogether too much insisted on. The poet says the proper study of mankind is man. I say, study to forget all that; take wider views of the universe. That is the egotism of the race.   In order to avoid delusions, I would fain let man go by and behold a universe in which man is but as a grain of sand. It is a test I would apply to my companion, — can he forget man?  What is the village, city, State, nation, aye the civilized world, that it should concern a man so much?  I do not value any view of the universe into which man and the institutions of man enter very largely and absorb much of the attention. Man is but the place where I stand, and the prospect hence is infinite. It is not a chamber of mirrors which reflect me.  When I reflect, I find that there is other than me.  The universe is larger than enough for man's abode. Man is a past phenomenon to philosophy.   ~ April 2, 1852