Early flowers, leaves and birds.

 

May 1. 

May 1, 2021

 Sunday.

A cold northwest wind.

Now, on my return to Concord, I am struck by the increased greenness of the country, or landscape.

I find that since I left Concord, April 11th, there have blossomed here, probably nearly in the following order, these plants, including those I saw in Haverhill: 

• dandelion, 
• field horse-tail, 
• Antennaria plantaginifolia, 
• sweet-gale, 
• epigæa, 
• Populus grandidentata, 
• Salix tristis, 
• Viola ovata (Ellen Emerson found it April 20th), 
• Potentilla Canadensis, 
• comptonia, 
• Thalictrum anemonoides, 
• Anemone nemorosa, 
• V. blanda, 
• P. balsamifera, 
• Aquilegia Canadensis, 
• Hedyotiscærulea, 
• andromeda, 
• Fragaria Virginiana (?) (distinguished from the other species in fruit),
• Salix alba, 
• benzoin, 
• Amelanchier Canadensis var. Botryapium.

Peach, cultivated cherry, and the following apparently just begun: 

• Viola pedata, 
• Ostrya Virginica, 
• V. cucullata (Ellen Emerson says she saw it the 30th ult.; it is to be looked for at Depot Field Brook).

And Rumex Acetosella shows red and is eight inches high on Columbine Cliff.

The expanding leaves of the sugar maples now make small crosses against the sky.

Other conspicuous green leaves are 

• the gooseberry, 
• currant, 
• elder, 
• the willows just beginning,
•  and alder, 
• and apple trees 
• and high blackberry, 
• amelanchier, 
• meadow-sweet,
•  beside many herbaceous plants.

Drosera (round leaved) leaves now.

Sedge-grass (early sedge) very abundant still.

The Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum is just ready to bloom and also the vacillans nearly.

These things observed on way To Cliffs.

The oak leaves on the plain are fallen.

The colors are now: 

• light blue above (where is my cyanometer? Saussure invented one, and Humboldt used it in his travels); 
• landscape russet and greenish,
•  spotted with fawn-colored plowed lands, 
• with green pine and gray or reddish oak woods intermixed, and 
• dark-blue or slate-colored water here and there.

It is greenest in the meadows and where water has lately stood, and a strong, invigorating scent comes up from the fresh meadows.

It is like the greenness of an apple faintly or dimly appearing through the russet.

A phoebe's nest and one cream-colored white egg at the spring-house; nest of mud, lined with grass and edged with hypnum.

Channing has seen a robin's nest and eggs.

I hear a black and white creeper at the Cliffs, and a chewink.

The shrub oaks are well budded.

The young ivy leaves are red on Cliffs.

Oaks and hickory buds just ready to open.

How aromatic the balm-of-Gilead buds now! 

The large woolly ferns and others stand up a foot on banks.

The skunk-cabbage leaves green the warm, springy meads.

Was it not the black and yellow or spotted warbler I saw by the Corner Spring? [Vide May 10th.] Apparently black, brown striped, with a yellow rump and also yellow wing, shoulders, and sides of breast, with a large black spot on breast; size of phæbe nearly; note somewhat like yellowbird. Yet I think it much too dark for the myrtle-bird.

Columbine Cliff a place to look for early rue anemones and nemorosa and dandelions.

The columbines have been out some days.

How ornamental to these dark-colored perpendicular cliffs, nodding from the clefts and shelves! 

The barn swallow is about.

Have we the Viola lanceolata?  [Yes. Vide Hubbard's] 

Is not the Botryapium our earliest variety of amelanchier, and what difference in the fruit? 

Channing says he has heard the wood thrush, brown thrasher, and stake-driver (?), since I have been gone.

This and last page for birds which I find come in the interval.

Did I not see the oven-bird yesterday?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 1, 1853

I find that since I left Concord, April 11th, there have blossomed here.  See April 8, 1859 ("The earliest peculiarly woodland herbaceous flowers are epigaea, anemone, thalictrum, and — by the first of May — Viola pedata.")

Dandelion: See April 18, 1860 ("Melvin has seen a dandelion in bloom."); April 29, 1857 ("I commonly meet with the earliest dandelion set in the midst of some liquid green patch. It seems a sudden and decided progress in the season.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Dandelion in Spring

Sweet-gale.  See  April 22, 1855 ("The blossoms of the sweet-gale are now on fire over the brooks, contorted like caterpillars.")

Epigæa. See April 9, 1853 ("The epigæa will not be out for some days."); see also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Epigaea

Populus grandidentata. See April 8, 1853 ("The male Populus grandidentata appears to open very gradually, beginning sooner than I supposed. It shows some of its red anthers long before it opens. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Big-toothed Aspen

Early violets: Viola ovata (Ellen Emerson found it April 20th), V. cucullata (Ellen Emerson says she saw it the 30th ult.; it is to be looked for at Depot Field Brook). See  April 19, 1858 ("Viola ovata on bank above Lee's Cliff. Edith Emerson found them there yesterday.");. April 23, 1858 (" Saw a Viola blanda in a girl's hand");   May 5, 1859  ("V. blanda and cucullata are. . .rather rare; V. pedata and lanceolata rarer yet, or not seen");  May 9, 1852 ("The first Viola pedata ");  May 20, 1852 ("The Viola ovata is of a deep purple blue, is darkest and has most of the red in it; the V. pedata is smooth and pale-blue, delicately tinged with purple reflections; the cucullata is more decidedly blue, slaty-blue, and darkly striated."); May 19, 1858 (“There appears to be quite a variety in the colors of the Viola cucullata. Some dark-blue, if not lilac (?), some with a very dark blue centre and whitish circumference, others dark-blue within and dark without, others all very pale blue.”); May 16, 1852 (“I observe some very pale blue Viola cuculata in the meadows. ”); May 31, 1858 (“I saw . . . to-day a white V. cucullata. ”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

Saussure invented one, and Humboldt used it in his travels. See May 4, 1853 ("He used Saussure's cyanometer even to measure the color of the sea.")

A phoebe's nest and one cream-colored white egg. See June 20, 1856 (" A phoebe nest, second time, with four cream-white eggs. . . . The second brood in the same nest.")

Was it not the black and yellow or spotted warbler I saw by the Corner Spring? . . . I think it much too dark for the myrtle-bird. See May 4, 1853 ("The myrtle-bird, which makes me think the more that I saw the black and yellow warbler on Sunday."); May 10, 1853 ("I hear , and have for a week , in the woods , the note of one or more small birds somewhat like a yellow bird's . What is it ? Is it the redstart ? I now see one of these . The first I have distinguished . And now I feel pretty certain that my black and yellow warbler of May 1st was this."); May 29, 1855 ("females of the redstart, described by Wilson, — very different from the full-plumaged black males. ")

American Redstart

Did I not see the oven-bird yesterday? See May 1, 1852 ("I think I heard an oven-bird just now, - wicher wicher whicher wich. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Oven-bird

A familiar warbler not recognized for some years.

May 30. 

See bird’s nest on an apple by roadside, seven feet high; one egg. Cherry-bird on a cherry; also pecking at the apple blossoms. 

Buttonwood flowers now effete; fertile flowers were not brown on the 24th, but were the 28th; say, then, about the 26th. 

Lepidium virginicum, roadside bank at Minott’s.

The myrica, bayberry, plucked on the 23d, now first sheds pollen in house, the leaf being but little more expanded on the flowering shoot. Gray says, “ somewhat preceding the flowers.” The catkins about a quarter of an inch long, erect, sterile, oval, on the sides of last year’s twigs. 

P. M. — Up railroad. 

A strong west wind and much haze. Silvery potentilla, four or five days at least. 

In the thick of the wood between railroad and Turnpike, hear the evergreen forest note, and see probably the bird, — black throat, greenish-yellow or yellowish-green head and back, light-slate (?) wings with two white bars. Is it not the black-throated green warbler? 

I find close by a small fresh egg on the forest floor, with a slight perforation, white (with perhaps a tinge of flesh-color (?) when full), and brown spots and black marks at the larger end. In Brewer’s synopsis the egg of the black throat is described as “light flesh-color with purple spots.” But these spots are not purple. I could find no nest. 

Senecio in open meadows, say yesterday. 

See a small black snake run along securely through thin bushes (alders and willows) three or four feet from the ground, passing intervals of two feet easily,—very readily and gracefully, —ascending or descending. 

Cornus Canadensis out, how long? 

Green lice from birches (?) get on my clothes. 

Is it not summer now when the creak of the crickets begins to be general? 

Poison-dogwood has grown three or four inches at ends of last year’s shoots, which are three to six feet from ground. 

Black & Yellow Warbler

or

Magnolia Warbler

(Sylvia maculosa) 

Hear a familiar warbler not recognized for some years, in the thick copse in Dennis’s Swamp, south of railroad; considerably yellowbird-like (the note) — tshe tshe tshar tshar tchit, tchit tit te vet. It has apparently a yellow head, bluish or slaty wings with two white bars, tail even, wings dusky at tips, legs light, bill dark, beneath all bright-yellow, remarkably striped lengthwise with dusky, more or less dark in different specimens. Can it be the S. maculosa, or black and yellow warbler, seen formerly? I did not see the black - —— nor indeed the back at all well. It may have been a female, not described by Wilson. Frequents the tops of trees. 

Ladies’ slipper, apparently.

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

In the thick of the wood between railroad and Turnpike, hear the evergreen forest note, and see probably the bird  See May 11, 1854 ("Hear the evergreen-forest note"); June 1, 1854 ("Hear my evergreen-forest note, sounding rather raspingly as usual, where there are large oaks and pines mingled. It is very difficult to discover now that the leaves are grown, as it frequents the tops of the trees. But I get a glimpse of its black throat and, I think, yellow head "); May 6, 1855 (“the er er twe, ter ter twe, evergreen-forest note”); May 7, 1856 ("I hear the evergreen-forest note close by; and hear and see many myrtle-birds, at the same time that I hear what I have called the black and white creeper’s note. Have I ever confounded them?”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Black-throated Green Warbler

Can it be the S. maculosa, or black and yellow warbler? See May 22, 1860 ("C. . . . appears , by his account , to have seen the Sylvia maculosa . "); July 25, 1860 ("He has the Sylvia maculosa , shot near his house . Bluish - ash above , I believe , head or crown the same , yellow throat and beneath , with many blackish spots and marks [ ? ] on sides and breast , and white spots on inner vanes of tail - feathers , the tail being blackish .")

Ladies’ slipper, apparently. See note to May 30, 1856 ("The lady’s-slipper in pitch pine wood-side.”)

May 30 See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 30

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