At the East India Marine Hall

September 24. 

What that singular spiny plant, otherwise like chenopodium, which I found on a wharf in Salem?

Saw at the East India Marine Hall a bay lynx killed in Danvers July 21st (I think in 1827); another killed in Lynnfield in March, 1832. These skins were, now at any rate, quite light dirty-whitish or white wolfish color, with small pale-brown spots. The animals much larger than I expected. 

Saw a large fossil turtle, some twenty inches in diameter, with the plates distinct, in a slate colored stone from western New York; also a sword in its scabbard, found in the road near Concord April 19, 1775, and supposed to have belonged to a British officer. 

Cape Ann, from Beverly round to Squam, is bristling with little capes, projecting from the main one and similar to it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 24, 1858

Saw at the East India Marine Hall a bay lynx killed in Danvers. See September 13, 1860 ("Five [lynx] I have heard of (and seen three) killed within some fifteen or eighteen miles of Concord within thirty years past.");  September 29, 1856 ("Dr. Reynolds told me the other day of a Canada lynx (?) killed in Andover,. . . thought to be one of a pair, the other being killed or seen in Derry.")  and note to February 15, 1858 (' Saw, at a menagerie, a Canada lynx, said to have been taken at the White Mountains.")

The vowel sound in the bleat of a sheep.

October 25.

Rain in night. 

P. M. – By boat to Battle-Ground. 

A rainy day and easterly wind, - an easterly storm.

October 25, 2023

I see flying very high over the meadow, from the east, eleven large birds, leisurely circling a little by the way, surveying the bare meadow. I think they must be fish hawks. 

I am amused to see that Varro tells us that the Latin e represents the vowel sound in the bleat of a sheep (Bee). If he had said in any word pronounced by the Romans we should be not the wiser, but we do not doubt that sheep bleat to-day as they did then. 

The fresh clamshells opened by the musquash begin to be conspicuous.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 25, 1857

I think they must be fish hawks. See October 9, 1853 ("Did we not see a fish hawk? "); November 6, 1854 ("Was that a fish hawk I saw flying over the Assabet, or a goshawk? "); November 17, 1854 ( I think it must have been a fish hawk which I saw ); November 21, 1850 ("I saw Fair Haven Pond with its island, and meadow between the island and the shore, and a strip of perfectly still and smooth water in the lee of the island, and two hawks, fish hawks perhaps, sailing over it.") See also  A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Osprey (Fish Hawk)

The fresh clamshells opened by the musquash begin to be conspicuous. See October 25, 1855 ("The muskrats must now prepare for winter in earnest. I see many places where they have left clamshells recently. ") see also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

https://tinyurl.com/HDT571025

May Training

alternate-leaf dogwood
May 27, 2017

May 27. 

P. M. — To Hill. 

I hear the sound of fife and drum the other side of the village, and am reminded that it is May Training. Some thirty young men are marching in the streets in two straight sections, with each a very heavy and warm cap for the season on his head and a bright red stripe down the legs of his pantaloons, and at their head march two with white stripes down their pants, one beating a drum, the other blowing a fife. 

I see them all standing in a row by the side of the street in front of their captain's residence, with a dozen or more ragged boys looking on, but presently they all remove to the opposite side, as it were with one consent, not being satisfied with their former position, which probably had its disadvantages. 

Thus they march and strut the better part of the day, going into the tavern two or three times, to abandon themselves to unconstrained positions out of sight, and at night they may be seen going home singly with swelling breasts. 

When I first saw them as I was ascending the Hill, they were going along the road to the Battle-Ground far away under the hill, a fifer and a drummer to keep each other company and spell one another. Ever and anon the drum sounded more hollowly loud and distinct, as if they had just emerged from a subterranean passage, though it was only from behind some barn, and following close behind I could see two platoons of awful black beavers, rising just above the wall, where the warriors were stirring up the dust of Winter Street, passing Ex-Captain Abel Heywood's house, probably with trailed arms. 

There might have been some jockey in their way, spending his elegant leisure teaching his horse to stand fire, or trying to run down an orphan boy. 

I also hear, borne down the river from time to time, regular reports of small arms from Sudbury or Wayland, where they are probably firing by platoons. 

May 27, 2017

Celtis occidentalis, perhaps yesterday. How the staminate flowers drop off, even before opening! 

I perceived that rare meadow fragrance on the 25th. Is it not the sweet-scented vernal grass? [Think not, but perceive that in any case.] I see what I have called such, now very common. 

The earliest thorn on hill, a day or more. 

Hemlock, apparently a day or two. 

Some butternut catkins; the leaves have been touched by frost. 

This is blossom week, beginning last Sunday (the 24th). 

At evening, the first bat.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 27, 1857

I perceived that rare meadow fragrance on the 25th. See May 27, 1856 ("Often perceived the meadow fragrance. . . .”);May 27, 1855 ("The meadow fragrance to-day.”)

Some butternut catkins . . .See May 24, 1855 (“Butternut pollen, apparently a day or two”).

This is blossom week. See May 27 1852 ("The road is white with the apple blossoms fallen off, as with snowflakes.”) and note to May 25, 1852 (It is blossom week with the apples.”).

At evening, the first bat. See May 9, 1853 (“The first bat goes suddenly zigzag overhead through the dusky air; comes out of the dusk and disappears into it.”)

The voice of the peepers is not so much of the earth earthy as of the air airy.

March 31. 

A very pleasant day. 

Spent a part of it in the garden preparing to set out fruit trees. It is agreeable once more to put a spade into the warm mould. The victory is ours at last, for we remain and take possession of the field. In this climate, in which we do not commonly bury our dead in the winter on account of the frozen ground, and find ourselves exposed on a hard bleak crust, the coming out of the frost and the first turning up of the soil with a spade or plow is an event of importance. 

P. M. — To Hill. 

As I rise the east side of the Hill, I hear the distant faint peep of hylodes and the tut tut of croaking frogs from the west of the Hill. 

How gradually and imperceptibly the peep of the hylodes mingles with and swells the volume of sound which makes the voice of awakening nature! If you do not listen carefully for its first note, you probably will not hear it, and, not having heard that, your ears become used to the sound, so that you will hardly notice it at last, however loud and universal. 

I hear it now faintly from through and over the bare gray twigs and the sheeny needles of an oak and pine wood and from over the russet fields beyond, and it is so intimately mingled with the murmur or roar of the wind as to be well-nigh inseparable from it. 

It leaves such a lasting trace on the ear’s memory that often I think I hear their peeping when I do not. It is a singularly emphatic and ear-piercing proclamation of animal life, when with a very few and slight exceptions vegetation is yet dormant. 

The dry croaking and tut tut of the frogs (a sound which ducks seem to imitate, a kind of quacking, —and they are both of the water!) is plainly enough down there in some pool in the woods, but the shrill peeping of the hylodes locates itself nowhere in particular, but seems to take its rise at an indefinite distance over wood and hill and pasture, from clefts or hollows in the March wind. It is a wind-born sound. 

[This must be the Rana halecina. Vide Apr. 3d, 1858.]

To-day both croakers and peepers are pretty numerously heard, and I hear one faint stertorous (bullfrog-like ??) sound on the river meadow. 

What an important part to us the little peeping hylodes acts, filling all our ears with sound in the spring afternoons and evenings, while the existence of the otter, our largest wild animal, is not betrayed to any of our senses (or at least not to more than one in a thousand)! 

The voice of the peepers is not so much of the earth earthy as of the air airy. It rises at once on the wind and is at home there, and we are incapable of tracing it further back. 

The earliest gooseberry in the garden begins to show a little green near at hand. 

An Irishman is digging a ditch for a foundation wall to a new shop where James Adams’s shop stood. He tells me that he dug up three cannon-balls just in the rear of the shop lying within a foot of each other and about eighteen inches beneath the surface. I saw one of them, which was about three and a half inches in diameter and somewhat eaten with rust on one side. These were probably thrown into the pond by the British on the 19th of April, 1775. Shattuck says that five hundred pounds of balls were thrown into the pond and wells. These may have been dropped out the back window. 

The tortoises now quite commonly lie out sunning on the sedge or the bank. As you float gently down the stream, you hear a slight rustling and, looking up, see the dark shining back of a picta sliding off some little bed of straw-colored coarse sedge which is upheld by the button-bushes or willows above the surrounding water. They are very wary and, as I go up the Assabet, will come rolling and sliding down a rod or two, though they appear to have but just climbed up to that height.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 31, 1857


The existence of the otter, our largest wild animal, is not betrayed to any of our senses (or at least not to more than one in a thousand)! See  April 6, 1855 ("it reminds me of an otter, which however I have never seen."); January 30, 1854 ("How retired an otter manages to live! He grows to be four feet long without any mortal getting a glimpse of him,"); February 20, 1855 (among the quadrupeds of Concord, the otter is "very rare."); the Natural History of Massachusetts (1842) ("The bear, wolf, lynx, wildcat, deer, beaver, and marten have disappeared ; the otter is rarely if ever seen here at present; and the mink is less common than formerly..")

As I rise the east side of the Hill, I hear the distant faint peep of hylodes and the tut tut of croaking frogs from the west of the Hill. Compare March 31, 1855 ("I listen in vain to hear a frog or a new bird as yet; only the frozen ground is melting a little deeper, and the water is trickling down the hills in some places.”)

There is just enough snow left from the big storm of the 15th to make good walking. We are out in a wet snow, almost rain, crossing the Kendall pond  coming out in the beautiful old woods and now head kitty corner straight down to the mountain. it is easy going downhill. The snow being just right. At the head of the stream that crosses our land  we go up a bank into a  hemlock woods on a steep knoll.  Looking down I see a deer. it  takes off and stops quite a distance away and takes off again before the dogs catch its scent and run off. Looking down I see our road and then  it is quite an experience to spot the house through the trees  from above just enough red color to make it visible And here we are high on a knoll never been here looking steeply down on the house The forest is full of large   hemlocks bigger than I can wrap my arms around the feeling of everything is new never been here before yet so close  I never knew the  deer runs  though these old trees standing on the mountain  high above the place where we live.

Everything is new

 never been here before yet

so close to the house.

20170331 zphx

Sailing downwind to Bedford line.

April 14. 

Monday. A raw, overcast morning. 

April 14, 2013

8 A. M. — Up Assabet. 

See one striped squirrel chasing another round and round the Island, with a faint squeak from time to time and a rustling of the dry leaves. They run quite near to the water.

Hear the flicker’s cackle on the old aspen, and his tapping sounds afar over the water. Their tapping resounds thus far, with this peculiar ring and distinctness, because it is a hollow tree they select to play on, as a drum or tambour. It is a hollow sound which rings distinct to a great distance, especially over water. 

I still find small turtle’s eggs on the surface entire, while looking for arrowheads by the Island. 

See from my window a fish hawk flying high west of the house, cutting off the bend between Willow Bay and the meadow, in front of the house, between one vernal lake and another. He suddenly wheels and, straightening out his long narrow wings, makes one circle high above the last meadow, as if he had caught a glimpse of a fish beneath, and then continues his course down the river. 

P. M. — Sail to Hill by Bedford line. 

Wind southwest and pretty strong; sky overcast; weather cool. 

Start up a fish hawk from near the swamp white oaks southwest of the Island, undoubtedly the one of the morning. I now see that this is a much darker bird, both above and beneath, than that bird of the 6th. It flies quite low, surveying the water, in an undulating, buoyant manner, like a marsh hawk, or still more a. nighthawk, with its long curved wings. He flies so low westward that I lose sight of him against the dark hill side and trees. 

The river is going down rapidly, yet the Hunt’s Bridge causeway is but just bare. 

The south side of Ponkawtasset looks much greener and more forward than any part of the town I have noticed. It is almost like another season there. They are already plowing there. 

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. 

There go a couple of ducks, which probably I have started, now scaling far away on motionless pinions, with a slight descent in their low flight, toward some new cove. Anon I scare up two black ducks which make one circle around me, reconnoitring and rising higher and higher, then go down the river. Is it they that so commonly practice this manoeuvre? 

Peter’s is now far behind on a forgotten shore. The boat moored beneath his hill is no longer visible, and the red russet hill which is my goal rises before me. 

I moor my boat to a tree at the base of this hill. The waves are breaking with violence on this shore, as on a sea-beach, and here is the first painted tortoise just east up by them and lying on his back amid the stones, in the most favorable position to display his bright-vermilion marks, as the waves still break over him. 

He makes no effort to turn himself back, probably being weary contending with the waves. A little further is another, also at the mercy of the waves, which greatly interfere with its staid and measured ways, its head helplessly wagging with every billow. Their scales are very clean and bright now. The only yellow I notice is about the head and upper part of the tail. The scales of the back are separated or bordered with a narrow greenish-yellow edging. 

Looking back over the meadow from the top of this hill, I see it regularly watered with foam-streaks from five to ten feet apart, extending quite across it in the direction of the wind. Washed up against this shore, I see the first dead sucker. 

You see nowadays on every side, on the meadow bottom, the miserable carcasses of the musquash stripped of their pelts. I saw one plunge from beneath the monument.*

There is much lumber—fencing-stuff, etc. —to be gathered now by those inclined. 

I see an elm-top at the Battle-Ground covered with blackbirds uttering their squeaks and split whistles, as if they had not got their voices yet, and a coarse, rasping tchuck or char, not in this case from a crow blackbird. 

Again I see the fish hawk, near the old place. He alights on the ground where there is a ridge covered with bushes, surrounded by water, but I scare him again, and he finally goes off northeast, flying high. He had apparently-stayed about that place all day fishing.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 14, 1856


The boat, tossed up by the rolling billows, keeps falling again on the waves with a chucking sound which is inspiriting. See April 10, 1852 ("It is pleasant, now that we are in the wind, to feel the chopping sound when the boat seems to fall upon the successive waves which it meets at right angles or in the eye of the wind.")

Hear the flicker’s cackle on the old aspen, and his tapping sounds afar over the water. See  March 11, 1859 (“But methinks the sound of the woodpecker tapping is as much a spring note as any these mornings; it echoes peculiarly in the air of a spring morning.”);  March 13, 1855 ("I hear the rapid tapping of the woodpecker from over the water."); March 15, 1854 ("I hear that peculiar, interesting loud hollow tapping of a woodpecker from over the water.")' March 18, 1853 ("The tapping of the woodpecker about this time.”); March 30, 1854 ("At the Island I see and hear this morning the cackle of a pigeon woodpecker at the hollow poplar; had heard him tapping distinctly from my boat's place."); April 27, 1856 ("The tapping of a woodpecker is made a more remarkable and emphatic sound by the hollowness of the trunk, the expanse of water which conducts the sound, and the morning hour at which I commonly hear it.”); May 9, 1860 ("The tapping of a woodpecker sounds distinct and hollow this still cloudy day. The water is smooth. ”). See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Woodpecker (flicker)

See from my window a fish hawk flying high . . .  He had apparently-stayed about that place all day fishing. See April 14, 1852 ("The streams break up; the ice goes to the sea. Then sails the fish hawk overhead, looking for his prey.")

The south side of Ponkawtasset looks much greener. See April 14, 1854 ("There is a general tinge of green now discernible through the russet on the bared meadows and the hills."); April 15, 1855 ("The reflections of the maples, of Ponkawtasset and the poplar hill, and the whole township in the southwest, are as perfect as I ever saw.") See also September 9, 1851 ("The distant meadows towards the north beyond Conant's Grove, full of fog, appear like a vast lake out of which rise Annursnack and Ponkawtasset like rounded islands."); January 30, 1860 ("Certain rounded hills . . .have a marked family likeness. . . they suggest a relation geologically. Such are, for instance, Nashoba, Annursnack, Nawshawtuct, and Ponkawtasset,"); November 1, 1858 ("The curving moraine forming the west side of Sleepy Hollow . . .is continued northward by itself almost to the river, and points plainly enough to Ponkawtasset Hill on the other side . . .and so the sloping cemetery lots on the west of Sleepy Hollow are related to the distant Ponkawtasset..")

April 14. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 14.

\

I steer down straight through

the Great Meadows with the wind

almost directly aft.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Sailing downwind to Bedford line.

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-560414

* the monument: The 1836 Battle Monument. 

The twenty-five-foot monument consists of four pieces of white granite cut from a single boulder placed on top of a granite foundation. 

Inset into the east face of the obelisk is a white marble slab inscribed with a brief account of the battle at the North Bridge. The text reads as follows:

HERE
On the 19th of April
1775
was made
the first forcible resistance
to British aggression
On the opposite Bank
stood the American Militia
Here stood the Invading Army
and on this spot
the first of the Enemy fell
in the War of that Revolution
which gave
Independence
to these United States
In gratitude to GOD
and
In the love of Freedom
this Monument
was erected

Emerson's poem, Concord Hymn, (“By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flags to April’s breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world,” ) was written for the dedication ceremony of July 4, 1837 

Two ducks on open water.

March 12

6.30 A. M. — To Andromeda Ponds. 

Lesser redpolls still. Elbridge Hayden saw a bluebird yesterday. 

P. M. — To Great Meadows. 

Comes out pleasant after a raw forenoon with a flurry of snow, already gone.

Two ducks in river, good size, white beneath with black heads, as they go over.  They first rise some distance down-stream, and fly by on high, reconnoitering me, and I first see them on wing; then settle a quarter of a mile above by a long slanting flight, at last opposite the swimming-elm below Flint’s. 

I come on up the bank with the sun in my face; start them again. Again they fly down-stream by me on high, turn and come round back by me again with outstretched heads, and go up to the Battle-Ground before they alight. 

Thus the river is no sooner fairly open than they are back again, — before I have got my boat launched, and long before the river has worn through Fair Haven Pond. 

I think I hear a quack or two. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 12, 1855

Lesser redpolls still. See  March 17, 1855 (" I hear the lesser redpolls yet. [the last]"): See also March 6, 1860 ("The linarias have been the most numerous birds the past winter."); March 10, 1856 ("Probably the woods have been so generally buried by the snow this winter that they [tree sparrows] have migrated further south.* There has not been one in the yard the past winter, nor a redpoll. I saw perhaps one redpoll in the town; that is all."); March 20, 1853 ("The redpolls are still numerous.'"); March 23, 1853 ("The birds which are merely migrating or tarrying here for a season are especially gregarious now, — the redpoll, Fringilla hyemalis, fox-colored sparrow, etc.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

Two ducks in river, good size, white beneath with black heads, as they go over. See March 12, 1859 ("See two ducks flying over Ministerial Swamp."); March 16, 1855 (“[S]care up two large ducks just above the bridge. . . . I think it the goosander or sheldrake.”); March 17, 1860 ("I see a large flock of sheldrakes, which have probably risen from the pond, flying with great force and rapidity over my head in the woods. Now I hear the whistling of their wings, and in a moment they are lost in the horizon. Like swift propellers of the air.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, Ducks Afar, Sailing on the Meadow and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake

They are back again, — before I have got my boat launched, and long before the river has worn through Fair Haven Pond. See  March 19, 1855 ("Launch my boat..Paddle to Fair Haven Pond.");  March 22, 1855 ("I cross Fair Haven Pond, including the river, on the ice, and probably can for three or four days yet.");  March 24, 1855 ("I crossed Fair Haven Pond yesterday, and could have crossed the channel there again."); March 26, 1860 (""Fair Haven Pond may be open by the 20th of March, as this year [1860], or not till April 13 as in '56, or twenty-three days later. ); March 31, 1855 ("Looking from the Cliffs I see that  Fair Haven Pond will open by day after to-morrow.");  April 4, 1855 ("I am surprised to find Fair Haven Pond not yet fully open. There is a large mass of ice in the eastern bay, which will hardly melt to morrow"); April 7, 1856 (""Launched my boat, through three rods of ice on the riverside, half of which froze last night.. . .  Surprised to find the river not broken up . . .. and as far as we can see, probably through Fair Haven Pond. .  . Yet we make our way with some difficulty, through a very narrow channel over the meadow and drawing our boat over the ice on the river, as far as foot of Fair Haven") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Boat in. Boat out. and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-Out

First open water –

two ducks on river before 

I have launched my boat.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Two ducks on open water.

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 © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-550312