In Ricketson’s shanty.

April 3.

In Ricketson’s shanty. 

R. has seen white bellied swallows more than a week. I walk down the side of the river and see Walton’s ice-boat left on the bank.

Hear R. describing to Alcott his bachelor uncle James Thornton. 

When he awakes in the morning he lights the fire in his stove (all prepared) with a match on the end of a stick, without getting up. When he gets up he first attends to his ablutions, being personally very clean, cuts off a head of tobacco to clean his teeth with, eats a hearty breakfast, sometimes, it was said, even buttering his sausages. Then he goes to a relative’s store and reads the Tribune till dinner, sitting in a corner with his back to those who enter. Goes to his boarding—house and dines, eats an apple or two, and then in the afternoon frequently goes about the solution of some mathematical problem (having once been a schoolmaster), which often employs him a week.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 3, 1857


Daniel Ricketson. See Mapping Thoreau Country

Walton’s ice-boat left on the bank. Walton Ricketson:  Daniel's son. See June 28, 1856 ("Walton was named from I. Walton, the angler . . ."); September 29, 1855 (" R.’s sons Arthur and Walton were just returning from tautog-fishing in Buzzard’s Bay . . .")

April 3. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 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 © 2009-2022

The back fins, very long and sharp, projected two or three inches above water.

July 1

P. M. — Paddled on the Acushnet. 

Passed through some schools of fishes which were rippling the surface about us in midstream. 

The back fins, very long and sharp, projected two or three inches above water. Walton said afterward that they were menhaden.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 1, 1856

Schools of fishes rippling the surface about us in midstream. See July 9, 1855 (“The surface of the ocean is rippled by fishes, mostly menhaden, far and wide, in countless myriads, such the populousness of the sea.”)

July 1. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, July 1 

Menhaden back fins, 

very long and sharp, project

above the water.  

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Menhaden back fins

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 ©  2009-2026

Two arrowheads amid oyster and clam shells by a rock at the head of the creek.

June 28. 

Lamium amplexicaule still out behind R.’s shanty. 

I pick up two arrowheads amid oyster and clam shells by a rock at the head of the creek opposite R.’s. One was of peculiar form, quite blunt and small, of quartz, apparently to knock over small game without breaking the skin. 

(P. M. — I paddle up the Acushnet, about a mile above the paper-mill, as far as the ruined mill, in Walton’s skiff with Arthur R. (Walton was named from I. Walton, the angler, and Arthur from Dana’s hero in “Sun not set yet,” etc.) 

I never saw such an abundance of peltandra as borders that sluggish and narrow stream, in bunches alternating with pickerel-weed; leaves of very various forms and sizes.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 28, 1856


Lamium amplexicaule (henbit dead-nettle).

Peltandra virginica (green arrow-arum).

The eggs of a downy woodpecker laid in a bluebird’s nest?

June 23. 

To New Bedford with Ricketson.

In R.’s mowing, apparently lucerne, out some days.

His son Walton showed me one of four perfectly white eggs taken from a hole in an apple tree eight feet from ground. I examined the hole. He had seen a bluebird there, and I saw a blue feather in it and apparently a bluebird’s nest. Were not these the eggs of a downy woodpecker laid in a bluebird’s nest? They were all gone now.

Bay-wings sang morning and evening about R.’s house, often sitting on a bean-pole and dropping down and running and singing on the bare ground amid the potatoes. Its note somewhat like Come, here here, there there, —— quick quick quick (fast), — or I ’m gone. 

Prinos laevigatus common and just begun to bloom behind R’s house.

H. D.  Thoreau, Journal, June 23, 1856

White eggs taken from a hole in an apple tree eight feet from ground. . . the eggs of a downy woodpecker laid in a bluebird’s nest?  Compare July 12, 1856 ("Apparently a bluebird's egg in a woodpecker's hole in an apple tree, second brood, just laid.”) See June 20, 1856 ("Walking under an apple tree in the little Baker Farm peach orchard, . . .saw a hole in an upright dead bough, some fifteen feet from ground. . . . the nest of a downy woodpecker”).  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Downy Woodpecker

Its note somewhat like Come, here here, there there, —— quick quick quick (fast), — or I ’m gone.  See May 12, 1857 (" I hear from across the fields the note of the bay-wing, Come here here there there quick quick quick or I'm gone . . . and it instantly translates me from the sphere of my work and repairs all the world that we jointly inhabit. It reminds me of so many country afternoons and evenings when this bird's strain was heard far over the fields, as I pursued it from field to field. . . As the bay-wing sang many a thousand years ago, so sang he to-night. "). Compare April 13, 1856 ("I hear a bay-wing on the railroad fence sing, the rhythm somewhat like, char char (or here here), che che, chip chip chip (fast), chitter chitter chitter chit (very fast and jingling), tchea tchea (jinglingly). It has another strain, considerably different, but a second also sings the above.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  the Bay-Wing Sparrow

The tautog or blackfish, Tautoga onitis, for dinner

September 29.

Go to Daniel Ricketson’s, New Bedford.

September 29, 2015

At Natural History Library saw Dr. Cabot, who says that he has heard either the hermit, or else the olivaceous, thrush sing,—very like a wood thrush, but softer. Is sure that the hermit thrush sometimes breeds hereabouts.

Get out at Tarkiln Hill, or Head of the River Station, three miles this side of New Bedford. Recognized an old Dutch barn. 

R.’s sons Arthur and Walton were just returning from tautog-fishing in Buzzard’s Bay, and I tasted one at supper. Singularly curved from snout to tail.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 29, 1855

Go to Daniel Ricketson’s, New Bedford. Thoreau wrote to Blake: "I have just got a letter from Ricketson, urging me to come to New Bedford, which possibly I may do. He says I can wear my old clothes there." Letters to Blake, September 26, 1855. See also , e.g. December 26, 1854 ("I walk in the woods with R. It is wonderfully warm and pleasant, and the cockerels crow just as in a spring day at home. I feel the winter breaking up in me; if I were home I would try to write poetry."); June 23,, 1856 ("To New Bedford with Ricketson . . .Bay-wings sang morning and evening about R.’s house,")

At Natural History Library . . . HDT needed brushing up on his thrushes, See May 22, 1852 ("On my way to Plymouth, looked at Audubon in the State-House. The female (and male?) wood thrush spotted the whole length of belly; the hermit thrush not so.”); See also May 7, 1852 ("A wood [sic] thrush which. . .betrayed himself by moving, like a large sparrow with ruffled feathers, and quirking his tail like a pewee, on a low branch.”); April 18, 1854 (Was surprised to see a wagtail thrush, the golden-crowned, at the Assabet Spring, which inquisitively followed me along the shore over the snow, hopping quite near. I should say this was the golden-crowned thrush without doubt, though I saw none of the gold, if this and several more which I saw had not kept close to the water. May possibly be the aquaticus. Have a jerk of the forked tail”); April 21, 1855 ("At Cliffs, I hear at a distance a wood [sic] thrush. It affects us as a part of our unfallen selve..”); May 4, 1855 ("Several larger thrushes on low limbs and on ground, with a dark eye (not the white around it of the wood thrush) and, I think, the nankeen spot on the secondaries. A hermit thrush?); Compare April 24, 1856 ("Returning, in the low wood just this side the first Second Division Brook, near the meadow, see a brown bird flit, and behold my hermit thrush, with one companion, flitting silently through the birches. I saw the fox-color on his tail-coverts, as well as the brown streaks on the breast. Both kept up a constant jerking of the tail as they sat on their perches.")

Rickertson and New Bedford... See Mapping Thoreau Country