Observed the spiders at work at the head of Willow Bay.

September 26.

P. M. — To Clamshell by boat. 

climbing nightshade/bittersweet 

(Solanum dulcamara)

The Solanum dulcamara berries are another kind which grows in drooping clusters. I do not know any clusters more graceful and beautiful than these drooping cymes of scarlet or translucent cherry-colored elliptical berries with steel-blue (or lead?) purple pedicels (not peduncles) like those leaves on the tips of the branches. These in the water at the bend of the river are peculiarly handsome, they are so long an oval or ellipse. No berries, methinks, are so well spaced and agreeably arranged in their drooping cymes, — some what hexagonally like a honeycomb. Then what a variety of color! The peduncle and its branches are green, the pedicels and sepals only that rare steel-blue purple, and the berries a clear translucent cherry red. They hang more gracefully over the river's brim than any pendants in a lady's ear. The cymes are of irregular yet regular form, not too crowded, elegantly spaced. 

Yet they are considered poisonous! Not to look at, surely. Is it not a reproach that so much that is beautiful is poisonous to us? Not in a stiff, flat cyme, but in different stages above and around, finding ample room in space. But why should they not be poisonous? Would it not be in bad taste to eat these berries which are ready to feed another sense? 

A drooping berry should always be of an oval or pear shape. Nature not only produces good wares, but puts them up handsomely. Witness these pretty-colored and variously shaped skins in which her harvests, the seeds of her various plants, are now being packed away. I know in what bags she puts her nightshade seeds, her cranberries, viburnums, cornels, by their form and color, often by their fragrance; and thus a legion of consumers find them. 

The celtis berries are still green. 

The pontederia is fast shedding its seeds of late. I saw a parcel suddenly rise to the surface of their own accord, leaving the axis nearly bare. Many are long since bare. They float, at present, but probably sink at last. There are a great many floating amid the pads and in the wreck washed up, of these singular green spidery(?)-looking seeds. Probably they are the food of returning water-fowl. They are ripe, like the seeds of different lilies, at the time the fowl return from the north. 

I hear a frog or two, either palusiris or halecina, croak and work faintly, as in spring, along the side of the river. So it is with flowers, birds, and frogs a renewal of spring. 

Hearing a sharp phe-phe and again phe-phe-phe, I look round and see two (probably larger) yellow-legs, like pigeons, standing in the water by the bare, flat ammannia shore, their whole forms reflected in the water. They allow me to paddle past them, though on the alert. 

Heavy Haynes says he has seen one or two fish hawks within a day or two. Also that a boy caught a very large snapping turtle on the meadow a day or two ago. He once dug one up two or three feet deep in the meadow in winter when digging mud. He was rather dormant. Says he remembers a fish-house that stood by the river at Clamshell. 

Observed the spiders at work at the head of Willow Bay. Their fine lines are extended from one flag or bur-reed to another, even six or eight feet, perfectly parallel with the surface of the water and only a few inches above it. I see some, — though it requires a very favorable light to detect them, they are so fine, — blowing off perfectly straight horizontally over the water, only half a dozen inches above it, as much as seven feet, one end fastened to a reed, the other free. They look as stiff as spears, yet the free end waves back and forth horizontally in the air several feet. They work thus in calm and fine weather when the water is smooth. Yet they can run over the surface of the water readily. 

The savage in man is never quite eradicated. I have just read of a family in Vermont who, several of its members having died of consumption, just burned the lungs, heart, and liver of the last deceased, in order to prevent any more from having it. 

How feeble women, or rather ladies, are! They can not bear to be shined on, but generally carry a parasol to keep off the sun.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 26, 1859

The Solanum dulcamara berries are another kind which grows in drooping clusters. See September 4, 1859 ("Three or four plants are peculiar now for bearing plentifully their fruit in drooping cymes, viz. the elder berry and the silky cornel and the Viburnum Lentago and Solanum Dulcamara.")

But why should they not be poisonous? Would it not be in bad taste to eat these berries which are ready to feed another sense? See September 3, 1853 ("Now is the season for those comparatively rare but beautiful wild berries which are not food for man . [I]t is strange that we do not devote an hour in the year to gathering those which are beautiful to the eye. It behooves me to go a-berrying in this sense once a year at least.")

They are ripe, like the seeds of different lilies, at the time the fowl return from the north. See September 13, 1859 ("The pontederia spike is now generally turned downward beneath the water . . So, too, probably (for I do not see them) the yellow and white lilies are ripening their seeds in the water and mud beneath the surface.")

So it is with flowers, birds, and frogs a renewal of spring. See September 16, 1852 (“Some birds, like some flowers, begin to sing again in the fall.”); September 28, 1852 ("This is the commencement, then, of the second spring."):  October 23, 1853 ("Many phenomena remind me that now is to some extent a second spring, — not only the new-springing and blossoming of flowers, but the peeping of the hylodes for some time, and the faint warbling of their spring notes by many birds.") and note to October 10, 1856 ("Indian summer itself is a similar renewal of the year, with the faint warbling of birds and second blossoming of flowers.")

Hearing a sharp phe-phe and again phe-phe-phe, I look round and see two (probably larger) yellow-legs. See August 5, 1855 ("Hear a yellow-legs flying over,—phe' phe phe, phe' phe phe.”); September 14, 1854 ("A flock of thirteen tell tales, great yellow-legs, start up with their shrill whistle from the midst of the great Sudbury meadow, and away they sail in a flock. . .to alight in a more distant place.”);September 25, 1858 ("Melvin says . . . that he sometimes sees the larger yellow-legs here. Goodwin also"); October 20, 1859 ("Scare up a yellow-legs, apparently the larger, on the shore of Walden. It goes off with a sharp phe phe, phe phe.")

Observed the spiders at work at the head of Willow Bay. Their fine lines are extended from one flag or bur-reed to another, even six or eight feet, perfectly parallel with the surface of the water and only a few inches above it. Compare September 12, 1858 ("In Hubbard’s ditched meadow, this side his grove, I see a great many large spider’s webs stretched across the ditches, about two feet from bank to bank, though the thick woven part is ten or twelve inches. They are parallel, a few inches or a foot or more apart, and more or less vertical, and attached to a main cable stretched from bank to bank. They are the yellow-backed spider, commonly large and stout but of various sizes. I count sixty-four such webs there, and in each case the spider occupies the centre, head downward.")

What various kinds of ice there are!

January 26. 

P. M. — Over Cyanean Meadow on ice. 

These are remarkably warm and pleasant days. The water is going down, and the ice is rotting. 

I see some insects — those glow-worm-like ones — sunk half an inch or more into the ice by absorbed heat and yet quite alive in these little holes, in which they alternately freeze and thaw. 

At Willow Bay I see for many rods black soil a quarter of an inch deep, covering and concealing the ice (for several rods). This, I find, was blown some time ago from a plowed field twenty or more rods distant. This shows how much the sediment of the river may be increased by dust blown into it from the neighboring fields. 

Any ice begins immediately after it is formed to look dusty in the sun anywhere. 

This black soil is rapidly sinking to the bottom through the ice, by absorbing heat, and, water overflowing and freezing, it is left deep within thick ice. Or else, lying in wavelets on the ice, the surface becomes at last full of dark bottomed holes alternating with clear ice. 

The ice, having fairly begun to decompose, is very handsomely marked, more or less internally as it appears, with a sort of graphic character, or bird-tracks, very agreeable and varied. It appears to be the skeleton of the ice revealed, the original crystals (such as we see shoot on very thin ice just beginning) revealed by the rotting. 

Thus the peculiar knotty grain or knurliness of the ice is shown, — white marks on dark. These white waving lines within it look sometimes just like some white, shaggy wolf-skin. 

The meadow which makes up between Hubbard’s mainland and his swamp wood is very handsomely marked, or marbled, with alternate white and dark ice. The upper surface appears to be of one color and consistency, like a hard enamel, but very interesting white figures are seen through it. 

What various kinds of ice there are! 

This which lately formed so suddenly on the flooded meadows, from beneath which the water has in a great measure run out, letting it down, while a warm sun has shone on it, is perhaps the most interesting of any. It might be called graphic ice.

 It is a very pleasant and warm day, and when I came down to the river and looked off to Merrick’s pasture, the osiers there shone as brightly as in spring, showing that their brightness depends on the sun and air rather than the season.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 26, 1859

When I looked off to Merrick’s pasture, the osiers there shone as brightly as in spring, showing that their brightness depends on the sun and air rather than the season. See January 29, 1856 (“Another bright winter day.. . .The willow osiers of last year’s growth on the pollards in Shattuck’s row, Merrick’s pasture, from four to seven feet long, are perhaps as bright as in the spring, the lower half yellow, the upper red, ”); March 14, 1856 ("As I return by the old Merrick Bath Place, on the river,. . .the setting sun falls on the osier row toward the road and attracts my attention. They certainly look brighter now and from this point than I have noticed them before this year, — greenish and yellowish below and reddish above, — . . . it is, on the whole, perhaps the most springlike sight I have seen.”)

What various kinds of ice there are! See January 31, 1859 ("We do not commonly distinguish more than one kind of water in the river, but what various kinds of ice there are!")

Noticing where black willows grow.

August 15. 

P. M. —Down river to Abner Buttrick’s. 

Rain in the night and dog-day weather again, after two clear days. I do not like the name “dog-days.” Can we not have a new name for this season? It is the season of mould and mildew, and foggy, muggy, often rainy weather. 

The front-rank polygonum is apparently in prime, or perhaps not quite. 

Wild oats, apparently in prime. This is quite interesting and handsome, so tall and loose. The lower, spreading and loosely drooping, dangling or blown one side like a flag, staminate branches of its ample panicle are of a lively yellowish green, contrasting with the very distant upright pistillate branches, suggesting a spear with a small flag at the base of its head. It is our wild grain, unharvested.

The black willows are already being imbrowned. It must be the effect of the water, for we have had no drought. 

The smaller white maples are very generally turned a dull red, and their long row, seen against the fresh green of Ball’s Hill, is very surprising. The leaves evidently come to maturity or die sooner in water and wet weather. They are redder now than in autumn, and set off the landscape wonderfully. 

The Great Meadows are not a quarter shorn yet. 

The swamp white oaks, ash trees, etc., which stand along the shore have horizontal lines and furrows at different heights on their trunks, where the ice of past winters has rubbed against them. 

Might not the potamogeton be called waving weed?

I notice the black willows from my boat’s place to Abner Buttrick’s, to see where they grow, distinguishing ten places. In seven instances they are on the concave or female side distinctly. Then there is one clump just below mouth of Mill Brook on male side, one tree at Simmonds’s boat-house, male side, and one by oak on Heywood Shore. The principal are on the sand-bars or points formed along the concave side. Almost the only exceptions to their growing on the concave side exclusively are a few mouths of brooks and edges of swamps, where, apparently, there is an eddy or slow current. 

Similar was my observation on the Assabet as far up as Woodis Park. 

The localities I noticed to-day were: mouth of Mill Brook (and up it); sand-bar along shore just below, opposite; opposite Simmonds’s boat-house; one at boat-house; Hornbeam Cape; Flint’s meadow, along opposite boys’ bath-place; one by oak below bath place on south side; at meadow fence, south side; point of the diving ash; south side opposite bath-place by wall. 

Up Assabet the places were (the 13th): south side above Rock; Willow Swamp; Willow Bay (below Dove Rock); Willow Island; swift place, south side; mouth of Spencer Brook. 

Wars are not yet over. I hear one in the outskirts learning to drum every night; and think you there will be no field for him? He relies on his instincts. He is instinctively meeting a demand.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 15, 1858


Rain in the night and dog-day weather again. See August 15, 1854 ('A dog-day, comfortably cloudy and cool as well as still")

The smaller white maples are very generally turned a dull red, and set off the landscape wonderfully. The Great Meadows are not a quarter shorn yet. See August 6, 1854 ("The Great Meadows are for the most part shorn. . . .I see some smaller white maples turned a dull red, — crimsonish, — a slight blush on them. ")

I notice the black willows, distinguishing ten places. In seven instances they are on the concave or female side distinctly.  See note to 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. ") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Propogation of the Willow.

May day -- an unaccountable sweetness as of flowers in the air.

Rained some in the night; cloudy in the forenoon; clears up in the afternoon. 

P. M. — By boat with Sophia to Conantum, a maying. 

The water has gone down very fast and the grass has sprung up. There is a strong, fresh marsh scent wafted from the meadows, much like the salt marshes. We, sail with a smart wind from the northeast, yet it is warm enough. 

Horse-mint is seen springing up, and for two or three days at the bottom of the river and on shore. 

At Hill Shore the Anemone nemoralis to-morrow. See none wide open. 

The myrtle-bird is one of the commonest and tamest birds now. It catches insects like a pewee, darting off from its perch and returning to it, and sings something like a-chill chill, chill chill, chill chill, a-twear, twill twill twee, or it may be all tw — not loud; a little like the F. hyemalis, or more like pine warbler, —rapid, and more and more intense as it advances. 

There is an unaccountable sweetness as of flowers in the air, — a true May day. 

Raw and drizzling in the morning. The grackle still.

What various brilliant and evanescent colors on the surface of this agitated water, now, as we are crossing Willow Bay, looking toward the half-concealed sun over the foam-spotted flood! It reminds me of the sea. 

At Clamshell, the Viola blanda. I do not look for pollen. I find a clamshell five inches long (wanting one sixteenth) and more than two and a half inches broad and two inches thick. 

What that little dusky colored lichen on the ground at Clamshell end ditch, with a sort of triangular green fruit? or marchantia? 

The maples of Potter’s Swamp, seen now nearly half a mile off against the russet or reddish hillside, are a very dull scarlet, like Spanish brown, but one against a green pine wood is much brighter. 

Thalictrum anemonoides at Conant Cliff. Did not look for pollen. 

Why have the white pines at a distance that silvery look around their edges or thin parts? Is it owing to the wind showing the under sides of the needles? Methinks you do not see it in the winter. 

Went to Garfield’s for the hawk of yesterday. It was nailed to the barn in terrorem and as a trophy. He gave it to me with an egg. He called it the female, and probably was right, it was so large. He tried in vain to shoot the male, which I saw circling about just out of gunshot and screaming, while he robbed the nest. He climbed the tree when I was there yesterday afternoon, the tallest white pine or other tree in its neighborhood, over a swamp, and found two young, which he thought not more than a fortnight old,—with only down, at least no feathers,—and one addled egg, also three or four white-bellied or deer mouse (Mus leucopus), a perch, and a sucker, and a gray rabbit’s skin. He had seen squirrels, etc., in other nests. These fishes were now stale. I found the remains of a partridge under the tree. 

The reason I did not see my hawks at Well Meadow last year was that he found and broke up their nest there, containing five eggs.

The hawk measures exactly 22 1/2 inches in length and 4 feet 4 1/2 inches in alar extent, and weighs 3 1/4 pounds. The ends of closed wings almost two inches short of end of tail. The wing extends nearly two feet from the body, and is 10 3/4 inches wide; from flexure is 15 3/4 inches. [etc.]

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 1, 1855

There is an unaccountable sweetness as of flowers in the air, — a true May day. See May 6, 1855 ("that unaccountable fugacious fragrance, as of all flowers, bursting forth in air,. . .the general fragrance of the year.. . . It surpasses all particular fragrances."); May 16, 1854 ("The earth is all fragrant as one flower. ”) May 16, 1852 (“The whole earth is fragrant as a bouquet held to your nose. A fine, delicious fragrance, which will come to the senses only when it will.”).

Why have the white pines at a distance that silvery look around their edges or thin parts? See February 10, 1860 ("I see that Wheildon's pines are rocking and showing their silvery under sides as last spring, — their first awakening, as it were. ")February 25, 1860 ("I noticed yesterday the first conspicuous silvery sheen from the needles of the white pine waving in the wind."); April 29, 1852 ("The pines have an appearance they have not worn before, yet not easy to describe. The mottled sunlight and shade, seen looking into the woods, is more like summer.”);  May 18, 1852 ("the dark-green pines, wonderfully distinct, near and erect, with their distinct dark stems, spiring tops, regularly disposed branches, and silvery light on their needles.”). February, 5, 1852 ("The boughs, feathery boughs, of the white pines, tier above tier, reflect a silvery light against the darkness of the grove, as if both the silvery-lighted and greenish bough and the shadowy intervals of the shade behind belong to one tree.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons , White Pines

The scream of a hawk over Holden woods and swamp.

April 30.

Another, more still, cloudy, almost drizzling day, in which, as the last three, I wear a greatcoat. 



P. M. — To Lee’s Cliff. 

Privet begins to leaf. (Viburnum nudum and Lentago yesterday.) 

I observed yesterday that the barn swallows confined themselves to one place, about fifteen rods in diameter, in Willow Bay, about the sharp rock. They kept circling about and flying up the stream (the wind easterly), about six inches above the water, — it was cloudy and almost raining, — yet I could not perceive any insects there. 

Those myriads of little fuzzy gnats mentioned on the 21st and 28th must afford an abundance of food to insectivorous birds. Many new birds should have arrived about the 21st. There were plenty of myrtle-birds and yellow redpolls where the gnats were. 

The swallows were confined to this space when I passed up, and were still there when I returned, an hour and a half later. I saw them nowhere else. 

They uttered only a slight twitter from time to time and when they turned out for each other on meeting. Getting their meal seemed to be made a social affair. Pray, how long will they continue to circle thus without resting? 

The early willow by Hubbard’s Bridge has not begun to leaf. This would make it a different species from that by railroad, which has. 

Hear a short, rasping note, somewhat tweezer-bird like, I think from a yellow redpoll. Yellow dor bug. 

I hear from far the scream of a hawk circling over the Holden woods and swamp. This accounts for those two men with guns just entering it. What a dry, shrill, angry scream! I see the bird with my glass resting upon the topmost plume of a tall white pine. Its back, reflecting the light, looks white in patches; and now it circles again. 

It is a red-tailed hawk. The tips of its wings are curved upward as it sails. How it scolds at the men beneath! I see its open bill. It must have a nest there. 

Hark! there goes a gun, and down it tumbles from a rod or two above the wood. So I thought, but was mistaken. In the meanwhile, I learn that there is a nest there, and the gunners killed one this morning, which I examined. They are now getting the young. 

Above it was brown, but not at all reddish— brown except about head. Above perhaps I should thickly barred with darker, and also wings beneath. The tail of twelve reddish feathers, once black-barred near the end. The feet pale-yellow and very stout, with strong, sharp black claws. The head and neck were remarkably stout, and the beak short and curved from the base. Powerful neck and legs. The claws pricked me as I handled it. 

It measured one yard and three eighths plus from tip to tip, i.e. four feet and two inches. Some ferruginous on the neck; ends of wings nearly black. 

Columbine just out; one anther sheds. Also turritis will to-morrow apparently; many probably, if they had not been eaten. Crowfoot and saxifrage are now in prime at Lee’s; they yellow and whiten the ground.

I see a great many little piles of dirt made by the worms on Conantum pastures. 

The woodchuck has not so much what I should call a musky scent, but exactly that peculiar rank scent which I perceive in a menagerie. The musky at length becomes the regular wild-beast scent. 

Red-wing blackbirds now fly in large flocks, covering the tops of trees—willows, maples, apples, or oaks—like a black fruit, and keep up an incessant gurgling and whistling, — all for some purpose; what is it? 

White pines now show the effects of last year’s drought in our yard and on the Cliffs, the needles faded and turning red to an alarming extent. 

I now see many Juniperus repens berries of a handsome light blue above, being still green beneath, with three hoary pouting lips. 

The Garfields had found a burrow of young foxes. How old? 

I see the black feathers of a blackbird by the Miles Swamp side, and this single bright-scarlet one shows that it belonged to a red wing, which some hawk or quadruped devoured.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 30, 1855

It is a red-tailed hawk. See May 1, 1855 ("He [Garfield] climbed the tree when I was there yesterday afternoon, the tallest white pine or other tree in its neighborhood, over a swamp, and found two young, which he thought not more than a fortnight old,—with only down, at least no feathers,—and one addled egg, also three or four white-bellied or deer mouse (Mus leucopus), a perch, and a sucker, and a gray rabbit’s skin. . . . I found the remains of a partridge under the tree.”). See also March 2, 1856 ("I can hardly believe that hen-hawks may be beginning to build their nests now, yet their young were a fortnight old the last of April last year.”); March 15, 1860 ("These hawks, as usual, began to be common about the first of March, showing that they were returning from their winter quarters. . . . An easily recognized figure anywhere.”); March 23, 1859 (“. . .we saw a hen-hawk perch on the topmost plume of one of the tall pines at the head of the meadow. Soon another appeared, probably its mate, but we looked in vain for a nest there. It was a fine sight, their soaring above our heads, presenting a perfect outline and, as they came round, showing their rust-colored tails with a whitish rump, or, as they sailed away from us, that slight teetering or quivering motion of their dark-tipped wings seen edgewise, now on this side, now that, by which they balanced and directed themselves.”);  April 22, 1860 ("See now hen-hawks, a pair, soaring high as for pleasure, circling ever further and further away, as if it were midsummer. . . . I do not see it soar in this serene and leisurely manner very early in the season, methinks"); April 30, 1857 ("a pretty large hawk alighted on an oak close by us. It probably has a nest near by and was concerned for its young.”);  May 4, 1855 ("Red tail hawk young fourteen days old.").  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau ,The hen-hawk


Red-wing blackbirds now fly in large flocks, covering the tops of trees—willows, maples, apples, or oaks—like a black fruit. See March 16, 1860 ("They cover the apple trees like a black fruit.”); May 5, 1859 (" Red-wings fly in flocks yet.");  see also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Red-wing in Early Spring

Ducks on ice

"The parallelism produced
 by their necks and bodies
 steering the same way
 gives the idea of order."

March 21.

At sunrise to Clamshell Hill.

River skimmed over at Willow Bay last night. Think I should find ducks cornered up by the ice; they get behind this hill for shelter.  Look with glass and find  more than thirty black ducks asleep with their heads on their backs, motionless, and thin ice formed about them. 

There was an open space, eight or ten rods by one or two. At first all within a space of apparently less than a rod diameter. Soon one or two are moving about slowly. It is 6.30 a. m., the sun shining on them, but bitter cold.  How tough they are! 

I crawl on my stomach and get a near view of them, thirty rods off. At length they detect me and quack. Some get out upon the ice, and when I rise up all take to flight in a great straggling flock, which at a distance looks like crows, in no order.  Yet, when you see two or three  the parallelism produced by their necks and bodies steering the same way gives the idea of order. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 21, 1854

Look with glass and find more than thirty black ducks. See March 13, 1854 ("Bought a telescope to-day for eight dollars"); March 22, 1854 ("Scare up my flock of black ducks and count forty together."); March 22, 1858 ("About forty black ducks, pretty close together, sometimes apparently in close single lines.") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Black Duck

March 21.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 21

Thirty ducks asleep

with heads on backs, motionless -

ice forms about them.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ducks on ice

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 © 2009-2024

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