A new season has arrived: heat, fireflies; mosquitoes; trumping bullfrogs

June 7. 

P. M. — To Walden. 

June 7, 2018
 (Avesong)

Warm weather has suddenly come, beginning yesterday. To-day it is yet warmer, 87° at 3 P. M., compelling me to put on a thin coat, and I see that a new season has arrived.

 June shadows are moving over waving grass-fields, the crickets chirp uninterruptedly, and I perceive the agreeable acid scent of high blueberry bushes in bloom. The trees having leaved out, you notice their rounded tops, suggesting shade. 

The nighthawk sparks and booms over arid hillsides and sprout-lands. 

It is evidence enough against crows and hawks and owls, proving their propensity to rob birds’ nests of eggs and young, that smaller birds pursue them so often. You do not need the testimony of so many farmers' boys when you can see and hear the small birds daily crying “Thief and murder” after these spoilers. 

What does it signify, the kingbird, black bird, swallow, etc., etc., pursuing a crow? They say plainly enough, “I know you of old, you villain; you want to devour my eggs or young. I have often caught you at it, and I’ll publish you now.” And probably the crow pursuing the fish hawk and eagle proves that the latter sometimes devour their young. 

The Salix tristis is now generally going or gone to seed.

Oxalis violacea in garden.

I see toads copulating and toad-spawn freshly laid in the Wyman meadow at Walden. 

Utricularia vulgaris out there. 

The water colored or dusted with the pollen of the pitch pine. 

As I was wading in this Wyman meadow, looking for bullfrog-spawn, I saw a hole at the bottom, where it was six or eight inches deep, by the side of a mass of mud and weeds which rose just to the surface three or four feet from the shore. It was about five inches in diameter, with some sand at the mouth, just like a musquash's hole. As I stood there within two feet, a pout put her head out, as if to see who was there, and directly came forth and disappeared under the target-weed; but as I stood perfectly still, waiting for the water which I had disturbed to settle about the hole, she circled round and round several times be tween me and the hole, cautiously, stealthily approaching the entrance but as often withdrawing, and at last mustered courage to enter it.

I then noticed another similar hole in the same mass, two or three feet from this. I thrust my arm into the first, running it in and downward about fifteen inches. It was a little more than a foot long and enlarged somewhat at the end, the bottom, also, being about a foot beneath the surface, — for it slanted downward, – but I felt nothing within; I only felt a pretty regular and rounded apartment with firm walls of weedy or fibrous mud. 

I then thrust my arm into the other hole, which was longer and deeper, but at first discovered nothing; but, trying again, I found that I had not reached the end, for it turned a little and descended more than I supposed. Here I felt a similar apartment or enlargement, some six inches in diameter horizontally but not quite so high nor nearly so wide at its throat.

 Here, to my surprise, I felt something soft, like a gelatinous mass of spawn, but, feeling a little further, felt the horns of a pout. I deliberately took hold of her by the head and lifted her out of the hole and the water, having run my arm in two thirds its length. She offered not the slightest resistance from first to last, even when I held her out of water before my face, and only darted away suddenly when I dropped her in the water. 

The entrance to her apartment was so narrow that she could hardly have escaped if I had tried to prevent her. Putting in my arm again, I felt, under where she had been, a flattish mass of ova, several inches in diameter, resting on the mud, and took out some. Feeling again in the first hole, I found as much more there. Though I had been stepping round and over the second nest for several minutes, I had not scared the pout.

 The ova of the first nest already contained white wiggling young. I saw no motion in the others. The ova in each case were dull-yellowish and the size of small buckshot. These nests did not communicate with each other and had no other outlet.

 Pouts, then, make their nests in shallow mud-holes or bays, in masses of weedy mud, or probably in the muddy bank; and the old pout hovers over the spawn or keeps guard at the entrance. Where do the Walden pouts breed when they have not access to this meadow?

 The first pout, whose eggs were most developed, was the largest and had some slight wounds on the back. The other may have been the male in the act of fertilizing the ova.

 I sit in my boat in the twilight by the edge of the river. Toads are now in full blast along the river. Some sit quite out at the edge of the pads, and hold up their heads so high when they ring, and make such a large bubble, that they look as if they would tumble over backward.

 Bullfrogs now are in full blast. I do not hear other frogs; their notes are probably drowned. I perceive that this generally is the rhythm of the bullfrog; er|er-r er-r-r| (growing fuller and fuller and more tremendous) and then doubling, er, er er, err er, er, er er, er, er and finally er, er, er, er er, er, er, er. Or I might write it oorar oorar oorar oorar-hah oorar-hah hah oorar hah hah hah.

Some of these great males are yellow or quite yellowish over the whole back. Are not the females oftenest white-throated?

 What lungs, what health, what terrenity (if not serenity) it suggests! 

At length I hear the faint stertoration of a Rana palustris (if not halecina).

Seeing a large head, with its prominent eyes, projecting above the middle of the river, I found it was a bullfrog coming across. It swam under water a  rod or two, and then came up to see where it was, or its way. It is thus they cross when sounds or sights attract them to more desirable shores. Probably they prefer the night for such excursions, for fear of large pickerel, etc.

 I thought its throat was not yellow nor baggy. Was it not the female attracted by the note of the male?

 Fireflies pretty numerous over the river, though we have had no thunder-showers of late.

 Mosquitoes quite troublesome here.

 The ledum is a very good plant to bloom in a pitcher, lasting a week or more.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 7, 1858


87° at 3 P. M and i see that a new season has arrived. . . .Fireflies pretty numerous over the river, though we have had no thunder-showers of late. Mosquitoes quite troublesome here. See  June 7, 1854 ("[M]osquitoes are very troublesome in the woods. . . .This muggy evening I see fireflies, the first I have seen"); See also June 16, 1860 ("It appears to me that these phenomena occur simultaneously, say June 12th, viz.: -

• Heat about. 85° at 2 P.M.
• Hylodes cease to peep.
• Purring frogs (Rana palustris) cease.
• Lightning-bugs first seen.
• Bullfrogs trump generally.
• Mosquitoes begin to be really troublesome.
• Afternoon thunder-showers almost regular.
• Sleep with open window.
• Turtles fairly and generally begun to lay.")

See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Fireflies, winged sparks of fire!

The nighthawk sparks and booms over arid hillsides and sprout-lands. See June 7, 1853 ("Visit my nighthawk on her nest. . . . The sight of this creature sitting on its eggs impresses me with the venerableness of the globe.");  See also  May 25, 1852 ("First nighthawks squeak and boom")  and also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,, the Nighthawk

Oxalis violacea in garden. See June 7, 2057 ("Pratt has got the . . . Oxalis violacea, which he says began about last Sunday, or May 31st, larger and handsomer than the yellow, though it blossoms but sparingly.")

June 7. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, June 7

I sit in my boat

in the twilight by the

edge of the river.

At length I hear the 

faint stertoration of a 

Rana palustris

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 © 2009-2021

Hillsides about Walden begin to wear autumnal tints in the cooler air.

October 3. 

The white pines are now getting to be pretty generally parti-colored, the lower yellowing needles ready to fall. 

The sumachs are generally crimson (darker than scarlet), and young trees and bushes by the water and meadows are generally beginning to glow red and yellow. 

Especially the hillsides about Walden begin to wear these autumnal tints in the cooler air. These lit leaves, this glowing, bright-tinted shrubbery, is in singular harmony with the dry, stony shore of this cool and deep well. 

The frost keeps off remarkably. I have seen none, though I hear that there was some two or three mornings ago. 

I detect the crotalaria behind the Wyman site, by hearing the now rattling seeds in its pods as I go through the grass, like the trinkets about an Indian's leggins, or a rattlesnake.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 3, 1856

The white pines . . .parti-colored, the lower yellowing needles ready to fall. See October 3, 1852 ("The pine fall, i.e. change, is commenced, and the trees are mottled green and yellowish."); October 3, 1858 ("White pines fairly begin to change.")  See also November 9, 1850 (" I expect to find that it is only for a few weeks in the fall after the new leaves have done growing that there are any yellow and falling, — that there is a season when we may say the old pine leaves are now yellow, and again, they are fallen."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The October Pine Fall

Especially the hillsides about Walden begin to wear these autumnal tints in the cooler air. See October 1, 1852 ("The young and tender trees begin to assume the autumnal tints more generally,"); October 1, 1854 ("The young black birches about Walden, next the south shore, are now commonly clear pale yellow, very distinct at distance, like bright-yellow white birches, so slender amid the dense growth of oaks and evergreens on the steep shores. ");  October 3, 1858 ("About the pond I see maples of all their tints, and black birches (on the southwest side) clear pale yellow; and on the peak young chestnut clumps and walnuts are considerably yellowed.")

The frost keeps off remarkably . . . Compare October 1, 1860 ("Remarkable frost and ice this morning . . . I do not remember such cold at this season.").

I detect the crotalaria . . . by hearing the now rattling seeds in its pods . See August 1, 1856 ("Crotalaria . . .out, and some pods fully grown."); October 3, 1858 ("As I go through the Cut, I discover a new locality for the crotalaria, being attracted by the pretty blue-black pods")

Adapting to cold.

January 11.

P. M. —-To Walden. 

Cold as the weather has been for some days, it is melting a little on the south side of houses to-day for the first time for quite a number of days, though the 9th was the coldest day thus far, the thermometer hardly going above zero during the day. 

Yet when ever I have been to Walden, as January 4th, 8th, and to-day, I have found much water under the snow above the ice, though there is but about five inches, both snow and water, above the ice. January 4th was the coldest day that I have been there, and yet I slumped through the snow into water, which evidently was prevented from freezing at once by the snow. 

I think that you may find water on the ice thus at any time, however cold, and however soon it may freeze. 

Probably some of the overflow I noticed on the river a few days ago was owing to the weight of the snow, as there has been no thaw. 

Observed that the smooth sumachs about the north side of the Wyman meadow had been visited by partridges and a great many of the still crimson berries were strewn on the snow. There they had eaten them, perched on the twigs. Elsewhere they had tracked the snow from bush to bush, visiting almost every bush and leaving their traces. 

The mice, also, had run from the base of one sumach to that of another on all sides, though there was no entrance to the ground there.  Probably they had climbed the stems for berries. Most of the bunches now hang half broken off, by time, etc.

The sunsets, I think, are now particularly interesting. The colors of the west seem more than usually warm, perhaps by contrast with this simple snow-clad earth over which we look and the clear cold sky,— a sober but extensive redness, almost every night passing into a dun. There is nothing to distract our attention from it. 

Monroe, who left his lines in Walden on the 8th, cut them out to-day, but he got no fish, though all his bait were gone. 

To-day I burn the first stick of the wood which I bought and did not get from the river. What I have still left of the river wood, added to what of it I reserve for other uses, would last me a week longer. 

Animals that live on such cheap food as buds and leaves and bark and wood, like partridges and rabbits and wild mice, never need apprehend a famine. 

I have not done wondering at that voracity of the pickerel, —three fresh perch and part of another in its maw! If there are a thousand pickerel in the pond, and they eat but one meal a day, there go a thousand perch or shiners for you out of this small pond. One year would require 365,000! not distinguishing frogs. Can it be so? The fishermen tell me that when they catch the most, the fish are fullest.

It is commonly said that fishes are long-lived on account of the equable temperature of their element. The temperature of the body of Walden may perhaps range from 85° - perhaps at bottom much less - down to 32°, or 53°, while that of the air ranges from 100° down to - 28°, or 128°, more than twice as much. 

Yet how large a portion of animal life becomes dormant or migrates in the winter! And on those that remain with us there is an increase of fur, and probably of down, corresponding to the increased cold. If there is no corresponding thickening of the integument or scales of fishes on the approach of winter, they would seem to enjoy no advantage over land animals. Beside their thick coats, most land animals seek some comparatively warm and sheltered place in which to sleep, but where do the fishes resort? 

They may sink to the bottom, but it is scarcely so warm there as at the bottom of a gray rabbit’s or a fox’s burrow. Yet the fish is a tender animal in respect to cold. Pull him out in the coldest weather, and he at once becomes encased in ice and as stiff as a stake, and a fox (?)  stands at his ease on the ice devouring him. 

Frogs, which, perchance, are equally tender, and must come to the air occasionally, are therefore compelled to go into the mud and become dormant. They may be said to live there in a southern climate.

Even the tough mud turtle possesses a southern constitution. He would snap in vain, and soon cease snapping, at the northwest wind when the thermometer is at 25° below zero. Wild mice and spiders and snow-fleas would be his superiors.

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, January 11, 1856

The sunsets, I think, are now particularly interesting. See January 11, 1852 ("The glory of these afternoons, though the sky may be mostly overcast, is in the ineffably clear blue, or else pale greenish-yellow, patches of sky in the west just before sunset.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Sunsets

I have not done wondering at that voracity of the pickerel, —three fresh perch and part of another in its maw. See January 6, 1856 ("Frank Morton has brought home, and I opened, that pickerel of the 4th. . . . I find in its gullet, or paunch, or maw (the long white bag), three young perch, one of them six inches long, and the tail of a fourth. . . .This is what you may call voracity. ")   See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 11

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 ©  2009-2023

To Walden

July 26. 

I see a bream swimming about in that smaller pool by Walden in Hubbard's Wood, though entirely cut off from the pond now. So they may be well off in the Wyman meadow or Pout's Nest.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 26, 1860

I see a bream swimming about in that smaller pool by Walden in Hubbard's Wood. See June 21, 1854 ("In the little meadow pool, or bay, in Hubbard's shore, I see two old pouts tending their countless young close to the shore. . . . I think also that I see the young breams in schools hovering over their nests while the old are still protecting them.")

In November, 1858 Thoreau had discovered a new species of bream in Walden pond. See November 26, 1858 (" a great many minnows about one inch long . . . shaped like bream, but had the transverse bars of perch.”); November 27, 1858 ("I got seventeen more of those little bream of yesterday. “);November 30, 1858 (“How wild it makes the pond and the township to find a new fish in it!”)

So they may be well off in the Wyman meadow or Pout's Nest. ["Pout’s Nest": HDT's name for Wyman's Meadow near Walden. Place Names of Henry David Thoreau in Concord,] Complare June 7, 1858 ("Pouts, then, make their nests in shallow mud-holes or bays, in masses of weedy mud, or probably in the muddy bank; and the old pout hovers over the spawn or keeps guard at the entrance. Where do the Walden pouts breed when they have not access to this meadow?")

July 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 26

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 © 2009-2021