Spring ephemera.

April 21.

Hepatica April 27, 2024

Pratt collects very handsome tufts of Hepatica triloba in flower at Melrose, and the bloodroot out also there.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 21, 1861

The bloodroot out at Melrose.  See April 22, 1860 ("I hear that the Viola ovata was found the 17th and the 20th, and the bloodroot in E. Emerson's garden the 20th.");  April 23, 1858 ("I receive to-day Sanguinaria Canadensis [bloodroot] from Brattleboro, well in bloom,")

bloodroot

The peculiar flight of a hawk thus fetches the year about.

April 22. 

April 22, 2019

Row to Fair Haven. Thermometer 56° or 54º. 

See shad-flies. 

Scare up woodcock on the shore by my boat's place, — the first I had seen. It was feeding within a couple of rods, but I had not seen or thought of it. When I made a loud and sharp sound driving in my rowlocks, it suddenly flew up. It is evident that we very often come quite near woodcocks and snipe thus concealed on the ground, without starting them and so without suspecting that they are near. These marsh birds, like the bittern, have this habit of keeping still and trusting to their resemblance to the ground. 

See now hen-hawks, a pair, soaring high as for pleasure, circling ever further and further away, as if it were midsummer. The peculiar flight of a hawk thus fetches the year about. I do not see it soar in this serene and leisurely manner very early in the season, methinks. 

The early luzula is almost in bloom; makes a show, with its budded head and its purplish and downy, silky leaves, on the warm margin of Clamshell Bank.

Two or three dandelions in bloom spot the ground there. 

Land at Lee's Cliff. 

The cassandra (water-brush) is well out, — how long? — and in one place we disturb great clouds of the little fuzzy gnats that were resting on the bushes, as we push up the shallow ditch there. 

The Ranunculus fascicularis is now in prime, rather than before. 

The columbine is hardly yet out. 

I hear that the Viola ovata was found the 17th and the 20th, and the bloodroot in E. Emerson's garden the 20th. 

J. B. Moore gave me some mineral which he found being thrown out of [a] drain that was dug between Knight's factory and his house. It appears to me to be red lead and quartz, and the lead is quite pure and marks very well, or freely, but is pretty dark.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 22, 1860

See shad-flies. See April 24, 1857 (“Sail to Ball's Hill. The water is at its height, higher than before this year. I see a few shad-flies on its surface.”); April 25, 1854  ("Many shad-flies in the air and alighting on my clothes."); April 28, 1859 ("See a shad-fly, one only, on water.,”); May 1, 1854 ("The water is strewn with myriads of wrecked shad-flies, erect on the surface, with their wings up like so many schooners all headed one way.”); May 1, 1858 (“Ephemerae quite common over the water.”); May 4, 1856 ("Shad-flies on the water, schooner-like.”); see also June 9, 1854 ("The air is now full of shad-flies, and there is an incessant sound made by the fishes leaping for their evening meal");June 8, 1856 (“my boat being by chance at the same place where it was in ’54, I noticed a great flight of ephemera”);  June 9, 1856 ("Again, about seven, the ephemera came out, in numbers as many as last night, now many of them coupled, even tripled; and the fishes leap as before.")

    

These marsh birds, like the bittern, have this habit of keeping still and trusting to their resemblance to the ground. See November 21, 1857 ("Just above the grape-hung birches, my attention was drawn to a singular-looking dry leaf or parcel of leaves on the shore about a rod off. Then I thought it might be the dry and yellowed skeleton of a bird with all its ribs; then the shell of a turtle, or possibly some large dry oak leaves peculiarly curved and cut; and then, all at once, I saw that it was a woodcock, perfectly still, with its head drawn in, standing on its great pink feet."); See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The American Woodcock

The peculiar flight of a hawk thus fetches the year about. See . April 22, 1852 ("See four hawks soaring high in the heavens over the Swamp Bridge Brook. At first saw three; said to myself there must be four, and found the fourth. Glad are they, no doubt, to be out after being confined by the storm"); February 16, 1859 ("The hen-hawk . . . loves to soar above the clouds. It has its own way and is beautiful.);  March 15, 1860 ("I get a very fair sight of it sailing overhead. What a perfectly regular and neat outline it presents! an easily recognized figure anywhere."); March 23, 1856 ("I spend a considerable portion of my time observing the habits of the wild animals, my brute neighbors. By their various movements and migrations they fetch the year about to me.")  See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Hen-Hawk

The early luzula is almost in bloom; makes a show, with its budded head and its purplish and downy, silky leaves. See April 30, 1859 ("Luzula campestris is almost out at Clamshell. Its now low purplish and silky-haired leaves are the blooming of moist ground and early meadow-edges.")

Two or three dandelions in bloom spot the ground there. See April 22, 1855 ("The grass is now become rapidly green by the sides of the road, promising dandelions and butter cups. "); 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.")

We disturb great clouds of the little fuzzy gnats that were resting on the bushes.  

See April 22, 1852 ("I see swarms of gnats in the air."); See also April 21, 1855 ("All the button-bushes, etc., etc., in and about the water are now swarming with those minute fuzzy gnats about an eighth of an inch long. The insect youth are on the wing. The whole shore resounds with their hum wherever we approach it, and they cover our boat and persons. They are in countless myriads the whole length of the river.") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ)

The Ranunculus fascicularis is now in prime, rather than before. See April 11, 1858 ("Crowfoot (Ranunculus fascicularis) at Lee's since the 6th, apparently a day or two before this.")

The columbine is hardly yet out. See April 18, 1856 (“Columbine, and already eaten by bees. Some with a hole in the side.”); April 30, 1855 (" Columbine just out; one anther sheds."); May 1, 1854 ("I think that the columbine cannot be said to have blossomed there [Lee's Cliff] before to-day, — the very earliest.”)

I hear that the Viola ovata was found the 17th and the 20th. See April 19, 1858 ("Viola ovata on bank above Lee's Cliff. Edith Emerson found them there yesterday.") See also 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.”). and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Violets

Catch two Rana palustris coupled.

April 23. 

Bloodroot
April 25,2014

I receive to-day Sanguinaria Canadensis [bloodroot] from Brattleboro, well in bloom, - how long?- in a large box full of mayflowers. 

The toads ring now by day, but not very loud nor generally. 

I see the large head apparently of a bullfrog, by the riverside. 

Many middle-sized frogs, apparently bull frogs, green above and more or less dark-spotted, with either yellow or white throats, sitting along the water's edge now. 

Catch two Rana palustris coupled. They jump together into the river. 

The male is two and a quarter inches long. This I find to be about an average-sized one of four or five that I distinguish. Above, pale-brown or fawn-brown (another, which I think is a male from the size and the equally bright yellow of the abdomen and inside of limbs, is dusky-brown, and next day both the males are of this color; so you must notice the change of color of frogs), with two rows of very oblong, two or three or more times as long as broad, squarish-ended dark-brown spots with a light-brown edge, the rear ones becoming smaller and roundish: also a similar row along each side, and, beneath it, a row of smaller roundish spots; as Storer says, a large roundish spot on the upper and inner side of each orbit and one on the top of the head before it; the throat and forward part of the belly, cream-colored; abdomen and inside of the limbs bright ochreous-yellow, part of which is seen in looking at the back of the frog. Tympanum slightly convex in middle. 

Rana Palustris

The female is about an eighth of an inch longer (another one is three quarters of an inch longer), beside being now fuller (probably of spawn). The pale brown, or fawn-brown, is more brassy or bronze-like and does not become darker next day. She has no very oblong squarish spots on back, but smaller and roundish ones and many fine dusky spots interspersed; is thickly dark spotted on sides. Throat and belly, white or pale cream-color; sides of abdomen only and inside of limbs, much paler yellow than the male; has no dark spots on orbits or on head in front (another specimen has). 

Saw a Viola blanda in a girl's hand.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 23, 1858

The toads ring now by day, but not very loud nor generally. See April 13, 1858 ("Hear the first toad in the rather cool rain."); April 18, 1855 ("In the evening hear far and wide the ring of toads,"); April 19, 1858 (" Perhaps I first hear them at night, though cooler, because it is still. ");April 20, 1860 ("It is a warm evening, and I hear toads ring distinctly for the first time"); April 23, 1861 ("Toads ring");. April 25, 1856 ("The toads have begun fairly to ring at noonday. . . The voice of the toad, the herald of warmer weather"); May 1, 1858 (" The toads are so numerous, some sitting on all sides, that their ring is a continuous sound throughout the day and night. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The ring of toads

See the large head apparently of a bullfrog, by the riverside. Many middle-sized frogs, apparently bull frogs, green above and more or less dark-spotted, with either yellow or white throats,  sitting along the water's edge now. Catch two Rana palustris coupled. See April 17, 1855 (“Yesterday I saw several larger frogs out. Perhaps some were small bullfrogs. That warmth brought them out on to the bank, and they jumped in before me. The general stirring of frogs. To-day I see a Rana palustris — I think the first — and a middling sized bullfrog, I think. ”); April 18, 1858 (" I suspect that all these frogs may be the R. fontinalis, and none of them bullfrogs.. . . I doubt if I have seen a bullfrog yet.”); April 27, 1856 (Apparently a small bullfrog by riverside, though it looks somewhat like a Rana fontinalis; also two or three (apparently) R. palustris in that well of Monroe’s, which have jumped in over the curb, perhaps.”);  May 1, 1858  ("I find many apparent young bullfrogs in the shaded pools on the Island Neck. Probably R. fontinalis.”);  May 1, 1858 ("I do not see a single R. halecina. What has become of the thousands with which the meadows swarmed a month ago? They have given place to the R. palustris. Only their spawn, mostly hatched and dissolving, remains, and I expect to detect the spawn of the palustris soon.").

Saw a Viola blanda in a girl's hand. See April 25, 1859 ("The Viola blanda are numerously open, say two days at least."); May 5, 1853 ("The Emerson children found blue and white violets May 1st at Hubbard's Close, probably Viola ovata and blanda; but I have not been able to find any yet.”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Violets