The water is frozen in the pitcher-plant leaf.

November 16. 

9 a. m. — Sail up river to Lee's Bridge. 

Colder weather and very windy, but still no snow. A very little ice along the edges of the river, which does not all melt before night. 

Muskrat-houses completed. Interesting objects looking down a river-reach at this season, and our river should not be represented without one or two of these cones. They are quite conspicuous half a mile distant, and are of too much importance to be omitted in the river landscape. 

I still see the drowned white lily pads showing their red sides. 

On the meadow side the water is very much soiled by the dashing of the waves. 

I see one duck. 

The pines on shore look very cold, reflecting a silvery light. 

The waves run high, with white caps, and communicate a pleasant motion to the boat. 

At Lee's Cliff the Cerastium viscosum. 

We sailed up Well Meadow Brook. The water is singularly grayey, clear and cold. The bottom of the brook showing great nuphar roots, like its ribs, with some budding leaves. 

Returning, landed at Holden's Spruce Swamp. 

The water is frozen in the pitcher-plant leaf.

The swamp-pink and blueberry buds attract.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 16, 1852

Muskrat-houses completed.See  October 16, 1859 (“When I get to Willow Bay I see the new musquash-houses erected, conspicuous on the now nearly leafless shores. To me this is an important and suggestive sight, as, perchance, in some countries new haystacks in the yards; as to the Esquimaux the erection of winter houses.”); November 11, 1855 ("The bricks of which the muskrat builds his house are little masses or wads of the dead weedy rubbish on the muddy bottom, which it probably takes up with its mouth. It consists of various kinds of weeds, now agglutinated together by the slime and dried confervae threads, utricularia, hornwort, etc., — a streaming, tuft-like wad. The building of these cabins appears to be coincident with the commencement of their clam diet, for now their vegetable food, excepting roots, is cut off.”)

The pines on shore look very cold, reflecting a silvery light. See . November 11, 1851 (“There is a cold, silvery light on the white pines as I go through J.P. Brown's field near Jenny Dugan's. Every withered blade of grass and every dry weed, as well as pine-needle, reflects light”) December 3, 1856 (“The silvery needles of the pine straining the light.")

The water is frozen in the pitcher-plant leaf. See November 11, 1858 (“In the meadows the pitcher-plants are bright-red. ”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

The swamp-pink and blueberry buds attract. See November 5, 1855 ("Swamp-pink buds now begin to show.”); November 6, 1853 (“The remarkable roundish, plump red buds of the high blueberry.”);  December 1, 1852 (“At this season I observe the form of the buds which are prepared for spring,- the large bright yellowish and reddish buds of the swamp-pink, the already downy ones of the Populus tremuloides and the willows, the red ones of the blueberry”)

A kingfisher's nest, six or seven feet deep in the bank.

June 6.

June 6, 2019

P. M. — To Well Meadow. 

Yellow wood-sorrel out. Umbelled thesium, how long? 

Red avens, how long? 

Stellaria longifolia, at Well Meadow Head, how long? 

Cardamine rhomboidea has green seed.

Hear of a kingfisher's nest, just found in a sand bank behind Abner Buttrick's, with six fresh eggs, of which I have one. The boy said it was six or seven feet deep in the bank.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 6, 1859

Stellaria longifolia, at Well Meadow Head, how long? See June 6, 1854 ("The Stellaria longifolia has been out, apparently, a day or two."); See also June 8, 1856 ("Stellaria longrfolia opposite Barbarea Shore not yet out")

Hear of a kingfisher's nest, just found in a sand bank. See June 16, 1859  ("Examined a kingfisher's nest, — though there is a slight doubt if I found the spot. . . .Could feel nothing in it, but it may have been removed. Have an egg from this.”). See also  April 10, 1859 ("See a kingfisher flying very low, in the ricochet manner, across the water. "); April 11, 1856 ("Saw a kingfisher on a tree over the water. Does not its arrival mark some new movement in its finny prey? He is the bright buoy that betrays it!"); April 15, 1855 ("See and hear a kingfisher—do they not come with the smooth waters of April? — hurrying over the meadow as if on urgent business.”); April 17, 1858 ("See several kingfishers"); April 22, 1855 ("The bluish band on the breast of the kingfisher leaves the pure white beneath in the form of a heart"); April 23, 1854 (“A kingfisher with his crack, — cr-r-r-rack.”); April 24, 1854 ("The kingfisher flies with a crack cr-r-r-ack and a limping or flitting flight from tree to tree before us ”); May 10, 1854 ("Above the railroad bridge I see a kingfisher twice sustain himself in one place, about forty feet above the meadow, by a rapid motion of his wings, somewhat like a devil's-needle, not progressing an inch, apparently over a fish.”); June 9, 1854 ("The air is now full of shad-flies, and there is an incessant sound made by the fishes leaping for their evening meal, . . .Meanwhile the kingfishers are on the lookout for the fishes as they rise. I see one dive in the twilight and go off uttering his cr-r-ack, cr-r-rack. "); June 12, 1854 ("Scare a kingfisher on a bough over Walden. As he flies off, he hovers two or three times thirty or forty feet above the pond, and at last dives and apparently catches a fish, with which he flies off low over the water to a tree."); June 25, 1854 ("I observe many kingfishers at Walden and on the Assabet, very few on the dark and muddy South Branch.”); July 28, 1858 ("Heard a kingfisher, which had been hovering over the river, plunge forty rods off. "); August 6, 1858 ("The kingfisher is seen hovering steadily over one spot, or hurrying away with a small fish in his mouth, sounding his alarum nevertheless. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The Kingfisher

Caterpillars of the mourning cloak / a promethea moth emerges.

July 5. 

July 5, 2017

A. M. — To Lee's Cliff by boat. 

Potentilla arguta abundantly out. 

Partridges big as quails. 

At Clamshell I found three arrowheads and a small Indian chisel for my guests. 

Rogers determined the rate of the boat's progress by observing by his second-hand how long the boat was going its length past a pad, calling the boat's length so much. 

For some days I have seen great numbers of blackish spiny caterpillars stripping the black willows, some full-grown on June 30th and some now not more than three quarters of an inch long. Are they the caterpillars of the Vanessa Antiopa? [Yes; according to Harris's description, they are.] 

When looking at a blackbird's nest I pricked my hand smartly on them several times; in fact the nest was pretty well protected by this chevaux-de-frise. 

That new ravine at Clamshell is so enlarged that bank swallows already use its sides, and I feel some young there. 

After leaving my companions at the Lee Bridge road, I push up Well Meadow Brook a few rods, through the weeds. I see by the commotion that great numbers of fishes fled before me and concealed themselves amid the weeds or in the mud. The mud is all stirred up by them. Some ran partly ashore.

Higher up, when I leave the boat and walk up the brook on the quaking shore, I find a bay and pool connected with the brook all alive with them, and observe two or three caught partly high and dry by their heedless haste, in a shallow and very weedy place. These are young pickerel two or three inches long. I suspect that all, or the greater part, are pickerel, and that they commonly breed in such still weedy basins in deep muddy meadows. 

Comara palustris apparently in prime. 

A phoebe's nest with four eggs half hatched, at stone bridge. 

There has been, amid the chips where a wood-pile stood, in our yard, a bumblebee's nest for ten days or more. Near it there was what I should have called a mouse's nest of withered grass, but this was mainly of different material and perhaps was made by the bee. It was a little heap two inches high, six long, and four wide, made of old withered grass and small bits of rags, brown paper, cotton-wool, strings, lint, and whole feathers, with a small half-closed hole at one end, at which the [bee] buzzed and showed himself if you touched the nest. I saw the cat putting out her paw there and starting back, and to-day I find the remains, apparently, of the bee dead at the entrance. On opening, I find nothing in the nest.

There came out this morning, apparently from one of those hard stem-wound cocoons on a black birch in my window, a moth whose wings are spread four and a quarter inches, and it is about an inch and three quarters long. It is black, wings and body, with two short, broad feathery antennae. The wings all have a clay-colored border behind, with a distinct black waving line down the middle of it, and, about midway the wings, a less distinct clay-colored line. Near the point of each forward wing, a round black spot or eye, with a bluish crescent within its forward edge, and beyond this spot, a purple tinge with a short whitish waving line continued through it from the crescent. The rear wings have a row of oblong roundish black spots along the clay-colored border, within the black line. There is a very faint light line on the fore wings on each side of the head. Beneath, on wings and body, dark purplish brown takes the place of the black above. It is rather handsomer and higher-colored beneath than above. There is a very small light or clay-colored triangular spot near the middle of wing beneath; also a row of brown spots on a white band along each side of the body. 

This is evidently the male Attacus Promethea. The rich purplish brown beneath — a sort of chocolate purple — makes the figure of a smaller moth of different form. 

The cocoon, about an inch long, is surrounded by the now pale withered leaf of the birch, which is wrapped almost quite around it and extends beneath, and it is very hard and firm, the light silk being wound thickly about the petiole, and also, afterward, the twig itself for half an inch or more both above and beneath the petiole. Sometimes there is no real petiole for a core, but the silky sheath can be slid up and down the twig.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 5, 1857

Partridges big as quails. See July 5, 1856  ("Young partridges . . .as big as robins")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

At Clamshell I found three arrowheads and a small Indian chisel for my guests. See July 5, 1854 ("On Lupine Knoll pick up a dark-colored spear-head three and a half inches long, lying on the bare sand; so hot that I can not long hold it tight in my hand."); May 25, 1856 ("I found five arrowheads at Clamshell Hill.")

The caterpillars of the Vanessa Antiopa.  See  March 21, 1853 (" On the warm, dry cliff, looking south over Beaver Pond, I am surprised to see a large butterfly, black with buff-edged wings, so tender a creature to be out so early, and, when alighted, opening and shutting its wings. What does it do these frosty nights? Its chrysalis must have hung in some sunny nook of the rocks. Born to be food for some early bird."); April 11, 1853 ("Dr. Harris says that that early black-winged, buff-edged butterfly is the Vanessa Antiopa, and is introduced from Europe, and is sometimes found in this state alive in winter."); October 1, 1860.(Water was prepared for ice, and C. saw the first Vanessa Antiopa since spring."); November 1,1860 ("The butterflies are out again, — probably some new broods. I see the common yellow and two Vanessa Antiopa,") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Buff-edged Butterfly


A phoebe's nest with four eggs half hatched, at stone bridge. See  June 20, 1856 ("Five young phoebes in a nest . . .just ready to fly."); June 25, 1855 ("A phoebe’s nest, with two birds ready to fly."); June 29, 1857 ("At Lee's Cliff, a phoebe has built her nest, and it now has five eggs in it, nearly fresh") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Phoebe

The cocoon, about an inch long, is surrounded by the now pale withered leaf of the birch. See January 19, 1854 ("The A. Promethea is the only moth whose cocoon has a fastening wound round the petiole of the leaf, and round the shoot, the leaf partly folded round it."); February 19, 1854 ("The light ash-colored cocoons of the A. Promethea, with the withered and faded leaves wrapped around them so artfully and admirably secured by fine silk wound round the leaf-stalk and the twig."); May 17, 1857 (" Two cocoons of apparently the Attacus Promethea on a small black birch, the silk wound round the leaf stalk.")

What is there in music that it should so stir our deeps? / The deer mouse will be printing on the snow of Well Meadow.

January 15. 

January 15, 2017

P. M. — To Fair Haven Pond and across to railroad. 

As I passed the south shed at the depot, observed what I thought a tree sparrow on the wood in the shed, a mere roof open at the side, under which several men were at that time employed sawing wood with a horse power. Looking closer, I saw, to my surprise, that it must be a song sparrow, it having the usual marks on its breast and no bright-chestnut crown. The snow is nine or ten inches deep, and it appeared to have taken refuge in this shed, where was much bare ground exposed by removing the wood. When I advanced, instead of flying away, it concealed itself in the wood, just as it often dodges behind a wall.

What is there in music that it should so stir our deeps? We are all ordinarily in a state of desperation; such is our life; ofttimes it drives us to suicide. To how many, perhaps to most, life is barely tolerable, and if it were not for the fear of death or of dying, what a multitude would immediately commit suicide! But let us hear a strain of music, we are at once advertised of a life which no man had told us of, which no preacher preaches. 

Suppose I try to describe faithfully the prospect which a strain of music exhibits to me. 

The field of my life becomes a boundless plain, glorious to tread, with no death nor disappointment at the end of it. All meanness and trivialness disappear. I become adequate to any deed. No particulars survive this expansion; persons do not survive it. In the light of this strain there is no thou nor I. We are actually lifted above ourselves.

The tracks of the mice near the head of Well Meadow were particularly interesting. There was a level surface of pure snow there, unbroken by bushes or grass, about four rods across, and here were nine tracks of mice running across it from the bushes on this side to those on the other, the tracks quite near together but repeatedly crossing each other at very acute angles, but each particular course was generally quite direct. The snow was so light that only one distinct track was made by all four of the feet, five or six inches apart, but the tail left a very distinct mark. 

A single track, thus stretching away almost straight, sometimes half a dozen rods, over unspotted snow, is very handsome, like a chain of a new pattern; and then they suggest an airy lightness in the body that impressed them. Though there may have been but one or two here, the tracks suggesting quite a little company that had gone gadding over to their neighbors under the opposite bush. 

Such is the delicacy of the impression on the surface of the lightest snow, where other creatures sink, and night, too, being the season when these tracks are made, they remind me of a fairy revel. It is almost as good as if the actors were here. I can easily imagine all the rest. Hopping is expressed by the tracks themselves. 

Yet I should like much to see by broad daylight a company of these revellers hopping over the snow. There is a still life in America that is little observed or dreamed of. Here were possible auditors and critics which the lecturer at the Lyceum last night did not think of. How snug they are somewhere under the snow now, not to be thought of, if it were not for these pretty tracks! 

And for a week, or fortnight even, of pretty still weather the tracks will remain, to tell of the nocturnal adventures of a tiny mouse who was not beneath the notice of the Lord. 

So it was so many thousands of years before Gutenberg invented printing with his types, and so it will be so many thousands of years after his types are forgotten, perchance.  The deer mouse will be printing on the snow of Well Meadow to be read by a new race of men. 

Cold as the weather is and has been, almost all the brook is open in the meadow there, an artery of black water in the midst of the snow, and there are many sink-holes, where the water is exposed at the bottom of a dimple in the snow. Indeed, in some places these little black spots are distributed very thickly, the snow in swells covering the intervening tussocks.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 15, 1857



Looking closer, I saw, to my surprise, that it must be a song sparrow, taken refuge in this shed. January 22, 1857 ("Minott tells me that Sam Barrett told him once when he went to mill that a song sparrow took up its quarters in his grist-mill and stayed there all winter."); January 28, 1857 (“Am again surprised to see a song sparrow sitting for hours on our wood-pile in the yard, in the midst of snow in the yard.”)

What is there in music that it should so stir our deeps? See  January 13, 1857 ("one thrumming a guitar . . . reminds me of moments that I have lived. . . .”); May 19, 1856 ("I am always thus affected when I hear in the fields any singing or instrumental music at the end of the day. “);April19, 1856 ("Was awakened in the night to a strain of music dying away, — passing travellers singing. My being was so expanded and infinitely and divinely related for a brief season that I saw how unexhausted, how almost wholly unimproved, was man’s capacity for a divine life. “); May 23, 1854("There was a time when the beauty and the music were all within, and I sat and listened to my thoughts, and there was a song in them. I sat for hours on rocks and wrestled with the melody which possessed me. I sat and listened by the hour to a positive though faint and distant music . . .. When I walked with a joy which knew not its own origin.”); December 31, 1853 ("I hear very distinctly from the railroad causeway the whistle of the locomotive on the Lowell road. I hear it, and I realize and see clearly what at other times I only dimly remember. . . . It, as it were, takes me out of my body and gives me the freedom of all bodies and all nature. . . . The contact of sound with a human ear whose hearing is pure and unimpaired is coincident with an ecstasy.”); August 3, 1852 (" At the east window. — A temperate noon. I hear a cricket creak in the shade; also the sound of a distant piano. . . . At length the melody steals into my being. I know not when it began to occupy me. By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody, my fancy and imagination are excited to an inconceivable degree.”); June 22, 1851 ("The world is a musical instrument. The very touch affords an exquisite pleasure. I awake to its music with the calmness of a lake when there is not a breath of wind. . . .And without effort our depths are revealed to ourselves.”);  July 16, 1851("This earth was the most glorious musical instrument, and I was audience to its strains. To have such sweet impressions made on us, such ecstasies begotten of the breezes ! I can remember how I was astonished. I said to myself, — I said to others, — " There comes into my mind such an indescribable, infinite, all-absorbing, divine, heavenly pleasure, a sense of elevation and expansion, and [I] have had nought to do with it. I perceive that I am dealt with by superior powers.1 This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence which I have not procured myself.”)

The tracks suggesting quite a little company that had gone gadding over to their neighbors under the opposite bush. See January 31, 1856 (“The tracks of the mice suggest extensive hopping in the night and going a-gadding.”); December 27, 1857 ("Mice have been abroad in the night. We are almost ready to believe that they have been shut up in the earth all the rest of the year because we have not seen their tracks.”)

The bee tree felled

February 25

P. M. — To Walden and Fair Haven. 

The only bare ground is the railroad track, where the snow is thin. The crust still bears, and I leave the railroad at Andromeda Ponds and go through on crust to Fair Haven. 

Am surprised to see some little minnows only an inch long in an open place in Well Meadow Brook. 

As I stand there, see that they have just felled my bee tree, the hemlock. The chopper even now stands at its foot. I go over and see him cut into the cavity by my direction. He breaks a piece out of his axe as big as my nail against a hemlock knot in the meanwhile. There is no comb within. 

They have just been cutting wood at Bittern Cliff. The sweet syrup is out on the ends of the hickory logs there.

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

The crust still bears, and I leave the railroad at Andromeda Ponds and go through on crust to Fair Haven. See February 8, 1856 ("Yesterday’s snow turning to rain, which froze as it fell, there is now . . . a thin crust over all the snow."); February 12, 1856 ("The snow or crust and cold weather began December 26th, and not till February 7th was there any considerable relenting, when it rained a little . . .and no serious thaw till the 11th, or yesterday."); February 13, 1856 ("Avery firm and thick, uneven crust, on which I go in any direction."); February 14, 1856 ("I can now walk on the crust in every direction at the Andromeda Swamp;");  February 28, 1856 ("I go on the crust which we have had since the 13th,")

Am surprised to see some little minnows only an inch long. See March 18, 1856 ("Within the brook I see quite a school of little minnows, an inch long . . . Notwithstanding the backwardness of the season, all the town still under deep snow and ice, here they are, in the first open and smooth water, governed by the altitude of the sun.");  March 19, 1856 ("No sooner is some opening made in the river, a square rod in area, where some brook or rill empties in, than the fishes apparently begin to seek it for light and warmth . . . They are seen to ripple the water, darting out as you approach. ")See also March 9, 1854 ("I detect the trout minnows not an inch long by their quick motions or quirks, soon concealing themselves.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Ripples made by Fishes

Felled my bee tree. See September 30, 1852 ("Custom gives the first finder of the nest a right to the honey and to cut down the tree "); February 10, 1852 ("I saw yesterday on the snow on the ice, on the south side of Fair Haven Pond, some hundreds of honey-bees, dead and sunk half an inch below the crust. They had evidently come forth from their hive (perhaps in a large hemlock on the bank close by), and had fallen on the snow chilled to death. Their bodies extended from the tree to about three rods from it toward the pond. Pratt says he would advise me to remove the dead bees, lest somebody else should be led to discover their retreat, and I may get five dollars for the swarm, and perhaps a good deal of honey.");  March 4, 1852 (" I cut my initials on the bee tree")

February 25. See  Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 25

Well Meadow Brook–

am surprised to see minnows

in an open place. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The bee tree felled

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

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