A Book of the Seasons: the Kingfisher

 

I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

A kingfisher flies

in the ricochet manner

across the water.

 April 10, 1859 

Its motions when on wing consist of a Series of flaps,

about five or six in number, followed by a direct glide,

without any apparent undulation.

It moves in the same way when flying closely over the water. 

If, in the course of such excursions, the bird passes over a small pool,

it suddenly checks itself in its career, poises itself in the air,

like a Sparrow Hawk or Kestril, and inspects the water beneath,

to discover whether there may be fishes in it suitable to its taste.

Should it find this to be the case, it continues poised for a few seconds,

dashes spirally headlong into the water, seizes a fish,

and alights on the nearest tree or stump,

where it swallows its prey in a moment . . .

It is not unusual to hear the hard, rapid, rattling notes of our Kingfisher,

even amongst the murmuring cascades of our higher mountains.

When the bird is found in such sequestered situations,

well may the angler be assured that trout is abundant. 

~ JJ Audubon

April 1. A kingfisher seen and heard. April 1, 1860

April 10.   See a kingfisher flying very low, in the ricochet manner, across the water.  April 10, 1859 

April 11. 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 11, 1856

April 15. 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 15, 1855

April 17. See several kingfishers.  April 17, 1858

April 22. The bluish band on the breast of the kingfisher leaves the pure white beneath in the form of a heart.   April 22, 1855

April 23.  A kingfisher with his crack, — cr-r-r-rack.  April 23, 1854

April 24. The kingfisher flies with a crack cr-r-r-ack and a limping or flitting flight from tree to tree before us, and finally, after a third of a mile, circles round to our rear. He sits rather low over the water. Now that he has come I suppose that the fishes on which he preys rise within reach. April 24, 1854

April 25. Saw the first kingfisher, and heard his most unmusical note. April 25, 1852

April 30. Hear a kingfisher at Goose Pond. April 30, 1857

May 10. 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.  May 10, 1854

June 6.   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. June 6, 1859

June 9. 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 9, 1854

June 12. 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 12, 1854

June 16.  Examined a kingfisher's nest, — though there is a slight doubt if I found the spot. It was formed singularly like that of the bank swallow, i. e. flat-elliptical, some eight inches, as I remember, in the - largest diameter, and located just like a swallow's, in a sand-bank, some twenty inches below the surface. Could feel nothing in it, but it may have been removed. Have an egg from this. June 16, 1859

July 22. Here is a kingfisher frequenting the Corner Brook Pond. They find out such places. July 22, 1852

June 25. I observe many kingfishers at Walden and on the Assabet, very few on the dark and muddy South Branch. June 25, 1854 

July 28. Heard a kingfisher, which had been hovering over the river, plunge forty rods off.  July 28, 1858

August 6. The kingfisher is seen hovering steadily over one spot, or hurrying away with a small fish in his mouth, sounding his alarum nevertheless. August 6, 1858

August 22.  A kingfisher, with his white collar, darted across the river and alighted on an oak. August 22, 1853

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau The Kingfisher

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-kingfisher

 

A day in a life. April 10

 

April 10.

 

 April 10, 1852 (“See ahead the waves running higher in the middle of the meadow, and here they get the full sweep of the wind and they break into whitecaps. ”). See April 10, 1856 ("I set out to sail, the wind northwest, but it is so strong, and I so feeble, that I gave it up. The waves dashed over into the boat and with their sprinkling wet me half through in a few moments.");April 14, 1856 ("I steer down straight through the Great Meadows, with the wind almost directly aft, feeling it more and more the farther I advance into them. They make a noble lake now. The boat, tossed up by the rolling billows, keeps falling again on the waves with a chucking sound which is inspiriting"); March 16, 1860 ("I make more boisterous and stormy voyages now than at any season. . . . I vastly increase my sphere and experience by a boat.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Sailing

April 10, 1853 (“The male red maple buds are about ready to open”). See April 1, 1860 ("The red maple buds are considerably expanded, and no doubt make a greater impression of redness.")

 April 10, 1854 (“The crimson stigmas of the white maple make handsome show”).. See March 29, 1853 ("The female flowers of the white maple, crimson stigmas from the same rounded masses of buds with the male, are now quite abundant. . . . The two sorts of flowers are not only on the same tree and the same twig and sometimes in the same bud, but also sometimes in the same little cup."); April 8, 1855 ("The crimson female stigmas also peeping forth. See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, White Maple Buds and Flowers

 April 10, 1855 (“As for the saxifrage, when I had given it up for to-day, having, after a long search in the warmest clefts and recesses, found only three or four buds which showed some white, I at length, on a still warmer shelf, found one flower partly expanded, and its common peduncle had shot up an inch”).. See April 8, 1858 ("At Lee's Cliff I find no saxifrage in bloom above the rock,. .. but on a few small warm shelves under the rocks the saxifrage makes already a pretty white edging along the edge of the grass sod [?] on the rocks; has got up three or four inches, and may have been out four or five days.") 

 April 10, 1855 (“At Lee’s the early sedge; one only sheds pollen. ”).See April 7, 1854 ("On the Cliff I find, after long and careful search, one sedge above the rocks, low amid the withered blades of last year, out, its little yellow beard amid the dry blades and few green ones, — the first herbaceous flowering I have detected. . . . It must have been so first either on the 5th or 6th.”)

 April 10, 1856 (“I set out to sail, the wind northwest, but it is so strong, and I so feeble, that I gave it up”).. . . . See April 10, 1852 ("We lay to in the lee of an island a little north of the bridge, where the surface is quite smooth, and the woods shelter us completely, while we hear the roar of the wind behind them, with an agreeable sense of protection, and see the white caps of the waves on either side.")

April 10, 1856 (“Our meadow looks as angry now as it ever can.”). See March 29, 1852 (“The water on the meadows looks very dark from the street. . . . There is more water and it is more ruffled at this season than at any other, and the waves look quite angry and black. ”) March 18, 1854 ("The white caps of the waves on the flooded meadow, seen from the window, are a rare and exciting spectacle, — such an angry face as our Concord meadows rarely exhibit.")

April 10, 1856 (“Went to look at the golden saxifrage in Hubbard’s Close .”)..  See April 12, 1855 ("Golden saxifrage out at Hubbard’s Close, -- one, at least, effete. It may have been the 10th.”); April 1, 1855 “(One of the earliest-looking plants in water is the golden saxifrage.”)[Golden-saxifrage (Chrysosplenium americanum), a native wetland and aquatic plant that frequents small streams and seepy areas in swamps and forests. The inconspicuous flowers are noticeable only for their eight brick-red anthers when it blooms in May.]

 April 10, 1859  (“Hear the first stuttering frog croak — probably halecina”)..:[Rana halecina (Lithobates pipiens)  – Northern Leopard Frog.] See   April 3, 1858 (“I stood perfectly still, and ere long they began to reappear one by one, and spread themselves out on the surface. They were the R. halecina. I could see very plainly the two very prominent yellow lines along the sides of the head and the large dark ocellated marks, even under water, on the thighs, etc. Gradually they begin to recover their voices, but it is hard to say at first which one of the dozen within twenty feet is speaking. . . .. Their note is a hard dry tut tut tut tut, not at all ringing like the toad’s, and produced with very little swelling or motion of the throat, but as much trembling of the whole body; and from time to time one makes that faint somewhat bullfrog-like er er er. Both these sounds, then, are made by one frog, and what I have formerly thought an early bullfrog note was this. This, I think, is the first frog sound I have heard from the river meadows or anywhere, except the croaking leaf-pool frogs and the hylodes. . . . This might be called the Day of the Snoring Frogs, or the Awakening of the Meadows. “); April 5, 1855 ("Hear from one half-flooded meadow that low, general, hard, stuttering tut tut tut of frogs,—the awakening of the meadow.”);  April 8, 1852 ("To-day I hear the croak of frogs in small pond-holes in the woods"); ; April 9, 1853 (“The whole meadow resounds, probably from one end of the river to the other, this evening, with this faint, stertorous breathing. It is the waking up of the meadows." );April 13, 1855 ("The small croaking frogs are now generally heard in all those stagnant ponds or pools in woods floored with leaves, which are mainly dried up in the summer.");  ; April 13, 1856 ("As I go by the Andromeda Ponds, I hear the tut tut of a few croaking frogs. . ."); April 15, 1855 ("That general tut tut tut tut, or snoring, of frogs on the shallow meadow heard first slightly the 5th. )

 April 10, 1859 (“This makes twenty-two days of windy weather.”) See April 6, 1859 ("For nineteen days, from the 19th of March to the 6th of April, both inclusive, we have had remarkably windy weather. For ten days of the nineteen the wind has been remarkably strong and violent . . .The last seven, including to-day, have all been windy, five of them remarkably so; wind from northwest."); April 8, 1859 ("We have had, most of the time, during this windy weather for a month past, when the wind was northwest, those peculiar brushy clouds which look as if a little snow or rain was falling in the northwest, but they prove to be wind chiefly.")

 April 10, 1860 (Cheney elm, many anthers shed pollen, probably 7th “”). See note to April 7, 1859 ("The Cheney elm looks as if it would shed pollen to-morrow,[no], and the Salix purpurea will perhaps within a week")

April 10, 1860 (“Salix purpurea apparently will not open for four or five days”).  See April 13, 1859  ("The Salix purpurea will hardly open for five days yet."); April 22, 1859 ("The Salix purpurea in prime, out probably three or four days; say 19th.")

 April 10, 1861 (“Purple finch”).  See  April 18, 1852 ("Observe all kinds of coincidences, as what kinds of birds come with what flowers."); April 7, 1859 ("The Cheney elm looks as if it would shed pollen to-morrow."); April 7, 1860 ("The purple finch, — if not before"); April 10, 1860 ("Cheney elm, many anthers shed pollen, probably 7th."); April 11, 1853 ("I hear the clear, loud whistle of a purple finch, somewhat like and nearly as loud as the robin, from the elm by Whiting's."); April 12, 1855 ("I hear a purple finch . . . on an elm, steadily warbling and uttering a sharp chip from time to time"); April 12, 1856 ("There suddenly flits before me . . . a splendid purple finch. Its glowing redness is revealed when it lifts its wings.");  April 13, 1852 ("The elm buds begin to show their blossoms."); April 15, 1856 ("The purple finch is singing on the elms about the house, together with the robins, whose strain its resembles, ending with a loud, shrill, ringing chili chilt chilt chilt."); April 15, 1854 ("The arrival of the purple finches appears to be coincident with the blossoming of the elm, on whose blossom it feeds"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Elms and the Purple Finch

 

Purple finch on schedule

April 10.

Purple finch.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 10, 1861

See  April 18, 1852 ("Observe all kinds of coincidences, as what kinds of birds come with what flowers."); April 7, 1859 ("The Cheney elm looks as if it would shed pollen to-morrow."); April 7, 1860 ("The purple finch, — if not before"); April 10, 1860 ("Cheney elm, many anthers shed pollen, probably 7th."); April 11, 1853 ("I hear the clear, loud whistle of a purple finch, somewhat like and nearly as loud as the robin, from the elm by Whiting's."); April 12, 1855 ("I hear a purple finch . . . on an elm, steadily warbling and uttering a sharp chip from time to time"); April 12, 1856 ("There suddenly flits before me . . . a splendid purple finch. Its glowing redness is revealed when it lifts its wings.");  April 13, 1852 ("The elm buds begin to show their blossoms."); April 15, 1856 ("The purple finch is singing on the elms about the house, together with the robins, whose strain its resembles, ending with a loud, shrill, ringing chili chilt chilt chilt."); April 15, 1854 ("The arrival of the purple finches appears to be coincident with the blossoming of the elm, on whose blossom it feeds"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Elms and the Purple Finch

The Cheney elm and the Salix purpurea

April 10 

Cheney elm, many anthers shed pollen, probably 7th. Some are killed. 

Salix purpurea apparently will not open for four or five days. 

2 P  M. — 44º and east wind (followed by some rain still the next day, as usual).

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 10, 1860


Cheney elm, many anthers shed pollen, probably 7th. See note to April 7, 1859 ("The Cheney elm looks as if it would shed pollen to-morrow,[no], and the Salix purpurea will perhaps within a week")

Salix purpurea apparently will not open for four or five days."); See April 13, 1859  ("The Salix purpurea will hardly open for five days yet."); April 20, 1860 ("The Salix purpurea in prime; began, say, 18th. "); April 22, 1859 ("The Salix purpurea in prime, out probably three or four days; say 19th."); May 3, 1858 ("Salix purpurea in Monroe's garden effete. Apparently blooms with our early willows; say 10th of April? ")

The twenty-two herbaceous flowers which I have known to be open before the first of May.

April 10. 

A calm day at last, the water almost smooth and now so low that I cannot cross the meadows. 

So ends the spring freshet (apparently), which began (not to include the winter one) March 8th and was at its height the 17th and 18th. It has lasted a month, and to-day, too, ends the windy spell. Since the 6th (q. v.) there have been two days, the 7th and 8th, of strong northwest wind, and one, the 9th, of very strong and yet colder and more northerly wind than before.

This makes twenty-two days of windy weather in all, reckoning only from the last still days (the 17th and 18th of March) and not including to-day. Of these, eleven days have been of very strong and cold northwest wind, the last, or yesterday, more northerly, — except the first, when the wind was southwest, — seven of strong wind and generally northwest, and four only of moderate wind. 

We had rain on the 18th, 22d, 24th, 25th, 29th of March, and 3d of April, and always with an easterly or southerly wind; or as often as the wind came from the east or south it brought rain, with generally considerable wind driving it, and it invariably cleared off cold with a wind from the northwest. 

The wind has regularly gone down with the sun, and risen again with it. It has been so strong as to interfere with all outdoor occupations. Yet I have not observed a single tree which was blown down by it. 

P. M. — Paddle to Well Meadow. 

I see some remarkable examples of meadow-crust floated off on the A. Wheeler meadow and above, densely covered with button-bushes and willows, etc. One sunk in five feet of water on a sandy shore, which I must examine again. 

I hear of a cinquefoil found in bloom on the 8th. It was in this sprout-land, where it was protected. 

This, with bluets, mouse-ear, and Viola ovata (of the herbaceous plants), I should call pasture flowers (among those of March and April). 

I might class the twenty-two herbaceous flowers which I have known to be open before the first of May thus: — 

• Garden flowers Chickweed and shepherd's-purse. 
• Meadow flowers Skunk-cabbage, caltha, chrysosplenium, dandelion, strawberry, Viola cucullata. Ranunculus repens (?). 
• Rock flowers Saxifrage, crowfoot, columbine, and tower-mustard. 
• Woodland flowers Epigaea, anemone, and thalictrum. 
• Pasture flowers Cinquefoil, bluets, mouse-ear, and Viola sagittata. 
• Water flowers Callitriche verna and nuphar. 

The woody plants — trees and shrubs — might be arranged under three heads, viz. : — 

Wet Land             Dry Land     Intermediate 
Alders, both (?)      Aspens            Elms 
White maple          Hazels           Red maple 
Most willows         Arbutus             Peach 
Sweet-gale        (?)Arbor-vitae       Abele 
Benzoin        Red cedar   Cultivated cherry Cassandra         Fir-balsam 
White alder [?]   (?) Sweet-fern 
Larch                   Shad-bush 
                          Salix humilis 
                          S. tristis 
                           S. rostrata 
                           Yew 


The hellebore buds [?] are quite conspicuous and interesting to-day, but not at all unrolled, though six or eight inches high. 

The Alnus serrulata appears to grow on drier land than the other sometimes. 

See a kingfisher flying very low, in the ricochet manner, across the water. 

Sheldrakes and gulls and black ducks still. 

Hear the first stuttering frog croak — probably halecina — in the last Cassandra Pond.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  April 10, 1859

The twenty-two herbaceous flowers which I have known to be open before the first of May. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Earliest Flower

This makes twenty-two days of windy weather. See April 6, 1859 ("For nineteen days, from the 19th of March to the 6th of April, both inclusive, we have had remarkably windy weather. For ten days of the nineteen the wind has been remarkably strong and violent . . .The last seven, including to-day, have all been windy, five of them remarkably so; wind from northwest."); April 8, 1859 ("We have had, most of the time, during this windy weather for a month past, when the wind was northwest, those peculiar brushy clouds which look as if a little snow or rain was falling in the northwest, but they prove to be wind chiefly.")

See a kingfisher flying very low, in the ricochet manner, across the water.  See  April 11, 1856 ("Does not its arrival mark some new movement in its finny prey?"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau The Kingfisher

Hear the first stuttering frog croak — probably halecina.:Rana halecina (Lithobates pipiens)  – Northern Leopard Frog. See   April 3, 1858 (“I stood perfectly still, and ere long they began to reappear one by one, and spread themselves out on the surface. They were the R. halecina. I could see very plainly the two very prominent yellow lines along the sides of the head and the large dark ocellated marks, even under water, on the thighs, etc. Gradually they begin to recover their voices, but it is hard to say at first which one of the dozen within twenty feet is speaking. . . .. Their note is a hard dry tut tut tut tut, not at all ringing like the toad’s, and produced with very little swelling or motion of the throat, but as much trembling of the whole body; and from time to time one makes that faint somewhat bullfrog-like er er er. Both these sounds, then, are made by one frog, and what I have formerly thought an early bullfrog note was this. This, I think, is the first frog sound I have heard from the river meadows or anywhere, except the croaking leaf-pool frogs and the hylodes. . . . This might be called the Day of the Snoring Frogs, or the Awakening of the Meadows. “); April 5, 1855 ("Hear from one half-flooded meadow that low, general, hard, stuttering tut tut tut of frogs,—the awakening of the meadow.”);  April 8, 1852 ("To-day I hear the croak of frogs in small pond-holes in the woods"); ; April 9, 1853 (“The whole meadow resounds, probably from one end of the river to the other, this evening, with this faint, stertorous breathing. It is the waking up of the meadows." );April 13, 1855 ("The small croaking frogs are now generally heard in all those stagnant ponds or pools in woods floored with leaves, which are mainly dried up in the summer.");  ; April 13, 1856 ("As I go by the Andromeda Ponds, I hear the tut tut of a few croaking frogs. . ."); April 15, 1855 ("That general tut tut tut tut, or snoring, of frogs on the shallow meadow heard first slightly the 5th. )

Ricketson's shanty

April 10. 

Friday. Rain. 

D. R.’s shanty is about half a dozen rods southwest of his house (which may be forty rods from the road), nearly between his house and barn; is twelve by fourteen feet, with seven-feet posts, with common pent roof. In building it, he directed the carpenter to use Western boards and timber, though some Eastern studs (spruce?) were inserted. He had already occupied a smaller shanty at “ Woodlee ” about a mile south. The roof is shingled and the sides made of matched boards and painted a light clay-color with chocolate (?) colored blinds. 

Within, it is not plastered and is open to the roof, showing the timbers and rafters and rough boards and cross-timbers overhead as if ready for plastering. 

The door is at the east end with a small window on each side of it; a similar window on each side the building, and one at the west end, the latter looking down the garden walk. In front of the last window is a small box stove with a funnel rising to a level with the plate, and there inserted in a small brick chimney which rests on planks. 

On the south side the room, against the stove, is a rude settle with a coarse cushion and pillow; on the opposite side, a large low desk, with some book-shelves above it; on the same side, by the window, a small table covered with books; and in the northeast corner, behind the door, an old-fashioned secretary, its pigeonholes stuffed with papers. 

On the opposite side as you enter, is place for fuel, which the boy leaves each morning, a place to hang greatcoats. There were two small pieces of carpet on the floor, and Ricketson or one of his guests swept out the shanty each morning. There was a small kitchen clock hanging in the southwest Corner and a map of Bristol County behind the settle. 

The west and northwest side is well-nigh covered with slips of paper, on which are written some sentence or paragraph from R.’s favorite books. I noticed, among the most characteristic, Dibdin’s “ Tom Tackle,” a translation of Anaereon’s “Cicada,” lines celebrating tobacco, Milton’s “How charming is divine philosophy,” etc., “Inveni requiem: Spes et Fortuna valete. Nil mihi vobiscum est: ludite nunc alios” (is it Petrarch?) (this is also over the door), “ Mors aequo pulsat,” etc., some lines of his own in memory of A. J. Downing, “Not to be in a hurry,” over the desk, and many other quotations celebrating retirement, country life, simplicity, humanity, sincerity, etc., etc., from Cowper and other English poets, and similar extracts from newspapers. 

There were also two or three advertisements, — one of a cattle-show exhibition, another warning not to kill birds contrary to law (he being one of the subscribers ready to enforce the act), advertisement of a steamboat on Lake Winnepiseogee, etc., cards of his business friends. The size of different brains from Hall’s Journal of Health, and “Take the world easy.” A sheet of blotted blotting—paper tacked up, and of Chinese character from a tea-chest. 

Also a few small pictures and pencil sketches, the latter commonly caricatures of his visitors or friends, as “ The Trojan ” (Charming) and “ Van Best.” I take the more notice of these particulars because his peculiarities are so commonly unaffected. He has long been accustomed to put these scraps on his walls and has a basketful somewhere, saved from the old shanty. Though there were some quotations which had no right there, I found all his peculiarities faithfully expressed, —his humanity, his fear of death, love of retirement, simplicity, etc. 

The more characteristic books were Bordley’s “ Husbandry,” Drake’s “Indians,” Barber’s “Historical Collections,” Zimmermann on Solitude, Bigelow’s “Plants of Boston, etc.,” Farmer’s “Register of the First Settlers of New England,” Marshall’s “Garden ing,” Nicol’s “ Gardener,” John Woolman. “The Mod ern Horse Doctor,” Downing‘s “Fruits, etc.,” “The Farmer’s Library,” “Walden,” Dymond’s Essays, Job Scott’s Journal, Morton’s Memorial, Bailey’s Diction ary, Downing’s “Landscape Gardening, etc.,” “The Task,” Nuttall’s Ornithology, Morse’s Gazetteer, “The Domestic Practice of Hydropathy,” “ John Buncle,” Dwight’s Travels, Virgil, Young’s “Night Thoughts,” “ History of Plymouth,” and other “ Shanty Books.” 

There was an old gun, hardly safe to fire, said to be loaded with an inextractable charge, and also an old sword over the door, also a tin sign “D. Ricketson’s a small crumpled horn there. I counted more than twenty rustic canes scattered about, a dozen (or fifteen pipes of various patterns, mostly the common,, two spy glasses, an open paper of tobacco, an Indian’s jaw dug up, a stuffed blue jay and pine grosbeak, and a. rude Indian stone hatchet, etc., etc.

There was a box with fifteen or twenty knives, mostly very large and old: fashioned jack-knives, kept for curiosity, occasionally given away to a boy or friend. A large book full of pencil sketches to be inspected by whomsoever, containing countless sketches of his friends and acquaintances and himself and of wayfaring men whom he had met, Quakers, etc., etc., and now and then a vessel under full sail or an old-fashioned house, sketched on a peculiar pea-green paper. 

A pail of water stands behind the door, with a peculiar tin cup for drinking made in France.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, April 10, 1857

A Book of the Seasons: April 10.

April 10

April 10, 2026

Saxifrage flowers –

pure, trustful, white – amid its 

reddish cup of leaves.  

April 10, 1853

April 10, 2025

April 9, 2026

Earliest flowers
bloom when most have not begun
to think of flowers.
April 10, 1855

April 10, 2017

At Lee’s the early sedge; one only sheds pollen. The saxifrage there to-morrow; one flower is partly expanded . . . As for the early sedge, who would think of looking for a flower of any kind in those dry tufts whose withered blades almost entirely conceal the springing green ones? I patiently examined one tuft after another, higher and higher up the rocky hill, till at last I found one little yellow spike low in the grass which shed its pollen on my finger.  As for the saxifrage, when I had given it up for to-day, having, after a long search in the warmest clefts and recesses, found only three or four buds which showed some white, I at length, on a still warmer shelf, found one flower partly expanded, and its common peduncle had shot up an inch. These few earliest flowers in these situations have the same sort of interest with the arctic flora, for they are remote and unobserved and often surrounded with snow, and most have not begun to think of flowers yet. Early on the morning of the 8th I paddled up the' Assabet looking for the first flowers of the white maple and alder. I held on to the low curving twigs of the maple where the stream ran swiftly, the round clusters of its bursting flower-buds spotting the sky above me, and on a close inspection found a few which (as I have said) must have blossomed the day before. I also paddled slowly along the riverside looking closely at the alder catkins and shaking the most loose, till at length I came to a bush which had been weighed down by the ice and whose stem curved downward, passing through the water. and on this was one looser and more yellowish catkin, which, as I have said, on a close examination showed some effete anthers near the peduncle. The morning of the 6th, when I found the skunk cabbage out, it was so cold I suffered from numbed fingers, having left my gloves behind. Since April came in, however, you have needed gloves only in the morning. Under some high bare bank sloping to the south on the edge of a meadow, where many springs, issuing from the bank, melt the snow early, — there you find the first skunk-cabbage in bloom.  April 10, 1855

*****

April 10, 2019

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  the Earliest Flower

 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 © 2009-2016

This remarkable winter disappears at last.

April 10

Fast-Day. — 

Some fields are dried sufficiently for the games of ball with which this season is commonly ushered in. I associate this day, when I can remember it, with games of baseball played over behind the hills in the russet fields toward Sleepy Hollow, where the snow was just melted and dried up, and also with the uncertainty I always experienced whether the shops would be shut, whether we should have an ordinary dinner, an extraordinary one, or none at all, and whether there would be more than one service at the meeting-house. This last uncertainty old folks share with me. 

This is a windy day, drying up the fields; the first we have had for a long time. 

Therien describes to me the diagonal notch he used to cut in maples and birches (not having heard of boring) and the half-round spout, cut out of chestnut or other straight-grained wood with a half-round chisel, sharped and driven into a new-moon cut made by the same tool partly sidewise to the tree. This evidently injured the trees more than the auger. 

He says they used to boil the birch down to a syrup, and he thought that the black birch would run more than any tree. 

P. M. —I set out to sail, the wind northwest, but it is so strong, and I so feeble, that I gave it up. The waves dashed over into the boat and with their sprinkling wet me half through in a few moments. Our meadow looks as angry now as it ever can.

I reach my port, and go to Trillium Wood to get yellow birch sap. 

The Deep Cut is full of dust. 

This wind, unlike yesterday’s, has a decidedly cold vein in it. The ditch by Trillium Wood is strewn with yellowish hemlock leaves, which are still falling. 

In the still warmer and broader continuation of this ditch, south of the wood, in the southwest recess, I see three or four frogs jump in, some probably large Rana palustris, others quite small. They are in before I see them plainly, and bury themselves in the mud before I can distinguish them clearly. They were evidently sitting in the sun by that leafy ditch in that still and warm nook. Let them beware of marsh hawks. 

I saw also four yellow-spot tortoises paddling about under the leaves on the bottom there. Once they were all together. This ditch is commonly dry in the summer. 

The yellow birch sap runs very fast. I set three spouts in a tree one foot in diameter, and hung on a quart pail; then went to look at the golden saxifrage in Hubbard’s Close. When I came back, the pail was running over. This was about 3 P. M. 

Each spout dropped about as fast as my pulse, but when I left, at 4 P. M., it was not dropping so fast.

The red maples here do not run at all now, nor did they yesterday. Yet one up the Assabet did yesterday. Apparently the early maples have ceased to run. 

We may now say that the ground is bare, though we still see a few patches or banks of snow on the hillsides at a distance, especially on the northeast sides of hills. You see much more snow looking west than looking east. 

Thus does this remarkable winter disappear at last. 

Here and there its veteran snow-banks spot the russet landscapes. In the shade of walls and north hillsides and cool hollows in the woods, it is panting its life away. I look with more than usual respect, if not with regret, on its last dissolving traces. 

Is not that a jungermannia which so adorns the golden epidermis of the yellow birch with its fine fingers? 

I boil down about two quarts of this yellow birch sap to two teaspoonfuls of a smart-tasting syrup. I stopped there; else should have boiled it all away. A slightly medicinal taste, yet not disagreeable to me. It yields but little sugar, then.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 10, 1856

I set out to sail, the wind northwest, but it is so strong, and I so feeble, that I gave it up. . . . See April 10, 1852 ("We lay to in the lee of an island a little north of the bridge, where the surface is quite smooth, and the woods shelter us completely, while we hear the roar of the wind behind them, with an agreeable sense of protection, and see the white caps of the waves on either side.") See also A Book of the Seasons  by Henry Thoreau, A Season for Sailing

Our meadow looks as angry now as it ever can. See March 29, 1852 (“The water on the meadows looks very dark from the street. . . . There is more water and it is more ruffled at this season than at any other, and the waves look quite angry and black. ”) March 18, 1854 ("The white caps of the waves on the flooded meadow, seen from the window, are a rare and exciting spectacle, — such an angry face as our Concord meadows rarely exhibit."); 

Went to look at the golden saxifrage in Hubbard’s Close. See April 12, 1855 ("Golden saxifrage out at Hubbard’s Close, -- one, at least, effete. It may have been the 10th.”); April 1, 1855 “(One of the earliest-looking plants in water is the golden saxifrage.”) [Golden-saxifrage (Chrysosplenium americanum), a native wetland and aquatic plant that frequents small streams and seepy areas in swamps and forests. The inconspicuous flowers are noticeable only for their eight brick-red anthers when it blooms in May.]

Thus does this remarkable winter disappear at last.  See Donald Sutherland, The Long, Hard Winter of 1855-56 ("The Winter of 1855-56 was the coldest winter of the 1850s.")

 I look with respect –

this remarkable winter 

disappears at last.