C. says he heard a yellow-legs yesterday.

May 14. 

Saturday. 

Surveying for Damon. 

Rhodora out, says C. 

Yorrick heard the 12th. 

Did I hear a bobolink this morning? 

C. says he heard a yellow-legs yesterday. 

Bought a black sucker (?), just speared at the factory dam, fifteen inches long, blacker than I am used to, I think; at any rate a very good fish to eat, as I proved, while the other common sucker there is said not to be. This had very conspicuous corrugations on the lips. I suspect that their other one is the horned chub. They have speared the former a long time there, and it is getting late for them. 

Vernal grass quite common at Willis Spring now.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 14, 1859

Surveying for Damon. See May 6, 1859 ("Surveying for Willis & Damon at the factory [and] behind Willis's house on the shore of the mill-pond")

Rhodora out, says C. See  May 18, 1855 ("Rhodora; probably some yesterday."); May 18, 1856 ("The rhodora there [Kalmia Swamp] maybe to-morrow. Elsewhere I find it (on Hubbard’s meadow) to-day. "); May 18, 1857 ("Pratt says he saw the first rhodora . . . out yesterday"); May 17, 1858 ("Rhodora at Clamshell well out.")

Yorrick heard the 12th. See May 10, 1858 (" Hear in various woods the yorrick note of the veery.")
C. says he heard a yellow-legs yesterday. See May 18, 1855 ("See the yellow-legs feeding on shore. Legs not bright-yellow. Goes off with the usual whistle; also utters a long monotonous call as it is standing on the shore, not so whistling. Am inclined to think it the lesser yellow-legs (though I think the only one we see). Yet its bill appears quite two inches long. Is it curved up? "). Compare May 31, 1854 ( "See a greater telltale, and this is the only one I have seen probably. . .It acts the part of a telltale." "watchful, but not timid, ... while it stands on the lookout ... wades in the water to the middle of its yellow legs; goes off with a loud and sharp phe phe phe phe. ...")

Vernal grass quite common at Willis Spring now. See May 14, 1858 ("Look at White Avens Shore. See what I call vernal grass in bloom in many places. “)

So we get a late start on our walk which starts out as a short walk to the lower view but we press on this time down the rope trail and around on the logging road to the fort. I wear my rubber boots because it has been raining a lot lately so I can wade the stream here in the dark.The moon is past its first quarter and we haven’t seen it in days. But behind the clouds it is providing light and I notice shadows on the forest floor. Actually I notice  the shadows on the forest floor then turn around and see the moon through the clouds. The sky also is providing light enough to see the new leaflets silhouetted against it. It is spring and I’m happy to have spent more time on a daily basis here in the woods. I’m not thinking my blood pressure  on the trail. The moonlight and shadows of the new leaves already  in the canopy are pushing me to compose a haiku as we walk out.To avoid the wetness we go up to the base of the lower vies and then by the Lonepine Cliff Trail. I get hallucinations walking in the dark that I am in a bed of small leafy plants. The forest floor looks mottled dark and light but it is just after-images in my retina. In any event we  make it back without a headlamp and it is 10 PM.

Even behind clouds

tonight's moon casts shadows

on the forest floor.

Turning ‘round I see

a mist of leaflets

silhouetted against the sky.

Zphx20190514

Young red maples suddenly bursting into leaf are very conspicuous now in the woods,

May 6. 

Surveying for Willis & Damon at the factory. 

Hear the tea-lee of the white-throat sparrow. 

It is suddenly very warm and oppressive, especially in the woods with thick clothing. 

Viola pedata begins to be common about white pine woods there.

While surveying this forenoon behind Willis's house on the shore of the mill-pond, I saw remarkable swarms of that little fuzzy gnat (Tipulidae). Hot as it was, — oppressively so, — they were collected in the hollows in the meadow, apparently to be out of the way of the little breeze that there was, and in many such places in the meadow, within a rod of the water, the ground was perfectly concealed by them. Nay, much more than that. I saw one shallow hollow some three feet across which was completely filled with them, all in motion but resting one upon another, to the depth, as I found by measurement with a stick, of more than an inch, — a living mass of insect life. There were a hundred of these basins full of them, and I then discovered that what I had mistaken for some black dye on the wet shore was the bodies of those that were drowned and washed up, blackening the shore in patches for many feet together like so much mud. We were also troubled by getting them into our mouths and throats and eyes. 

This insect resembles the plate of the Chironomus plumosus ("Library of Entertaining Knowledge, Insect Transformations," page 305), also the Corethra plumicornis (page 287), both of which live at first in the water, like the mosquito. 

Young red maples suddenly bursting into leaf are very conspicuous now in the woods, among the most prominent of all shrubs or trees. The sprouts are reddish. 

Hear yellow-throat vireo, and probably some new warblers. 

See the strong-scented wood ants in a stump. 

Black suckers, so called, are being speared at the factory bridge.

This is about the last of the very dry leaves in the woods, for soon the ground will be shaded by expanded green leaves. It is quite hazy, if not smoky, and I smell smoke in the air, this hot day. 

My assistants, being accustomed to work indoors in the factory, are quite overcome by this sudden heat. The old leaves and earth are driest now, just before the new leaves expand and when the heat is greatest. 

I see the black traces of many a recent fire in the woods, especially in young woods. At evening I hear the first sultry buzz of a fly in my chamber, telling of sultry nights to come.

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

Viola pedata begins to be common about white pine woods there. See May 10, 1858 ("How much expression there is in the Viola pedata! I do not know on the whole but it is the handsomest of them all, it is so large and grows in such large masses.") See also  May 5, 1853 ("The Emerson children found blue and white violets May 1st at Hubbard's Close, probably Viola ovata and blanda; but I have not been able to find any yet."); May 5, 1859  ("V. pedata and lanceolata rarer yet, or not seen.")  May 6, 1852 (“The first Viola blanda (sweet-scented white), in the moist ground by this spring.”);  May 6, 1855 ("Viola lanceolata, yesterday at least. . . .Two or three rods this side of John Hosmer’s pitch pines, beyond Clamshell, some white Viola ovata, some with a faint bluish tinge. ")// Also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Violets

I saw remarkable swarms of that little fuzzy gnat (Tipulidae). See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Fuzzy Gnat

Young red maples suddenly bursting into leaf are very conspicuous now in the woods. Compare May 6, 1855 ("The young sugar maples leafing are more conspicuous now than any maples.”) . See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Spring Leaf-Out

Hear yellow-throat vireo, and probably some new warblers. See May 6, 1852 ("Hear the first warbling vireo this morning on the elms. This almost makes a summer.”); May 7, 1852 ("One or more little warblers in the woods this morning are new to the season, . . .The first wave of summer from the south.”)


An evening hike it’s been a perfectly blue sky  and puffy white clouds day we hear the first tree frog of the season somewhere past the junction. I stop and cut a hop hornbeam there, dispose of the top over the bank and leave the trunk along one of the trails. I see there the sedge flowering for the first time. The spring beauties are out in profusion and  I smell them now the sweet smell of spring. They’re everywhere in the woods but seemingly thriving more so in the paths The sun is still a couple of hours high, but quite a bit north right in front of the view. We sit long enough for the sky below the clouds to have an orangey peach tint. There seems to be an oven bird trying to sing. We go down past the middle pond and approaching the top of  middle ridge I hear the first wood thrush. We spend a long time listening. It sings in groups of four  phrases which it repeats. One -- after the throat clearing – starts with  a bursting  high note.  More trail cleaning on a spur trail on the way out and home at dusk to feed the dogs. 20190586: tree frog wood thrush oven bird black-throated green spring beauties