The Bullfrog in Spring

The bullfrog belongs to summer.

That season which is bounded on the north,

 on the spring side at least, by the trump of the bullfrog.

 

April 17. To-day I see . . . and a middling sized bullfrog, I think. April 17, 1855   

April 18. 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 18, 1858

April 23. I see the large head apparently of a bullfrog, by the riverside. April 23, 1858

April 27. Apparently a small bullfrog by riverside, though it looks somewhat like a Rana fontinalis. April 27, 1856

May 1. 1 find many apparent young bullfrogs in the shaded pools on the Island Neck. Probably R. fontinalis.”May 1, 1858  (

May 2.  I doubt if I have heard any sound from a bullfrog in river yet. May 2, 1858

May 10.   I hear in several places the low dumping notes of awakened bullfrogs, what I call their pebbly notes, as if they were cracking pebbles in their mouths; not the plump dont dont or ker dont, but kerdle dont dont. As if they sat round mumbling pebbles. 

     At length, near Ball's Hill, I hear the first regular bullfrog's trump. Some fainter ones far off are very like the looing of cows. This sound, heard low and far off over meadows when the warmer hours have come, grandly inaugurates the summer. I perspire with rowing in my thick coat and wish I had worn a thin one. This trumpeter, marching or leaping in the van of advancing summer, whom I now hear coming on over the green meadows, seems to say, “Take off your coat, take off your coat, take off your coat!” He says, “Here comes a gale that I can breathe. This is some thing like; this is what I call summer.”

    I see three or four of them sitting silent in one warm meadow bay. Evidently their breeding-season now begins. But they are soon silent as yet, and it is only an occasional and transient trump that you hear. 

That season which is bounded on the north, on the spring side at least, by the trump of the bullfrog. This note is like the first colored petals within the calyx of a flower. It conducts us toward the germ of the flower summer. He knows no winter. I hear in his tone the rumors of summer heats. By this note he reassures the season. Not till the air is of that quality that it can support this sound does he emit it. It requires a certain sonorousness. 

    The van is led by the croaking wood frog and the little peeping hylodes, and at last comes this pursy trumpeter, the air growing more and more genial, and even sultry, as well as sonorous. As soon as Nature is ready for him to play his part, she awakens him with a warmer, perchance a sultry, breath and excites him to sound his trombone. It reminds me at once of tepid waters and of bathing. His trump is to the ear what the yellow lily or spatter-dock is to the eye. He swears by the powers of mud. 

    It is enough for the day to have heard only the first half-trump of an early awakened one from far in some warm meadow bay. It is a certain revelation and anticipation of the livelong summer to come. It gives leave to the corn to grow and to the heavens to thunder and lighten. It gives leave to the invalid to take the air. Our climate is now as tropical as any. It says, Put out your fires and sit in the fire which the sun has kindled. I hear from some far meadow bay, across the Great Meadows, the half-sounded trump of a bullfrog this warm morning. 

    It is like the tap of a drum when human legions are mustering. It reminds me that summer is now in earnest mustering her forces, and that ere long I shall see their waving plumes and glancing armor and hear the full bands and steady tread. The bullfrog is earth's trumpeter, at the head of the terrene band. He replies to the sky with answering thunder. May 10, 1858

May 25. I hear the first troonk of a bullfrog. May 25, 1852

May 25.  Heard the first regular bullfrog’s trump on the 18th; none since. May 25, 1855

June 1. The hylodes are no longer heard. The bullfrogs begin to trump.  June 1, 1853

June 4.  The bullfrog now begins to be heard at night regularly; has taken the place of the hylodes. June 4, 1853

June 6. From time to time, at mid-afternoon, is heard the trump of a bullfrog, like a Triton's horn. June 6, 1854

June 7.  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? . . . 

    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? June 7, 1858

June 8. At the last small pond near Well Meadow, a frog, apparently a small bullfrog, on the shore enveloped by a swarm of small, almost invisible insects, some resting on him, attracted perhaps by the slime which shone on him. He appears to endure the persecution like a philosopher. June 8, 1853 

June 8. I perceive distinctly to-day that there is no articular line along the sides of the back of the bullfrog, but that there is one along the back of that bullfrog-like, smaller, widely dispersed and early frog. June 8, 1858 

June 9. So there is an evening for the toads and another for the bullfrogs.  June 9, 1853

June 13. The different frogs mark the seasons pretty well,- the peeping hyla, the dreaming frog, and the bullfrog . I believe that all may be heard at last occasionally together. The bullfrog belongs to summer. June 13, 1851

June 15. The bullfrogs now commonly trump at night, and the mosquitoes are now really troublesome. For some time I have not heard toads by day, and the hylodes appear to have done. . . . A new season begun. June 15, 1860

June 16.  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.

June 16, 1860

June 25. I notice an apparent female bullfrog, with a lustrous greenish (not yellow) throat. June 25, 1858

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Bullfrog in Spring

 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 © 2009-2022

The midsummer night's moon.

July 20.

 

July 20, 2012

To Nawshawtuct at moonrise with Sophia, by boat.

Moon apparently fulled yesterday.

A low mist in crusts the meadow, -- not so perceptible when we are on the water. Now we row through a thin low mist about as high as one's head, now we come to a place where there is no mist on the river or meadow, apparently where a slight wind stirs.

The gentle susurrus from the leaves of the trees on shore is very enlivening, as if Nature were freshening, awakening to some enterprise. There is but little wind, but its sound, incessantly stirring the leaves at a little distance along the shore, heard not seen, is very inspiriting. It is like an everlasting dawn or awakening of nature to some great purpose.

As we go up the hill we smell the sweet briar.

The trees are now heavy, dark masses without tracery, not as in spring or early in June; but I forgot to say that the moon was at first eclipsed by a vast black bank of cloud in the east horizon, which seemed to rise faster than it, and threatened to obscure it all the night.

But suddenly she rose above it, and when, a few moments after, we thought to look again for the threatening cloud-bank, it had vanished, or a mere filmy outline could be faintly traced beneath her.

It was the eclipse of her light behind it that made this evil look so huge and threatening, but now she had triumphed over it and eclipsed it with her light.

It had vanished, like an ugly dream.

So is it ever with evils triumphed over, which we have put behind us.

What was at first a huge dark cloud in the east which threatened to eclipse the moon the livelong night is now suddenly become a filmy vapor, not easy to be detected in the sky, lit by her rays.

She comes on thus, magnifying her dangers by her light, at first displaying, revealing them in all their hugeness and blackness, exaggerating, then casting them behind her into the light concealed.

She goes on her way triumphing through the clear sky like a moon which was threatened by dark clouds at her rising but rose above them. That black, impenetrable bank which threatened to be the ruin of all our hopes is now a filmy dash of vapor with a faint-purplish tinge, far in the orient sky.

From the hilltop we see a few distant lights in farmhouses down below, hard to tell where they are, yet better revealing where they are than the sun does.  But cottage lights are not conspicuous now as in the autumn.

As we looked, a bird flew across the disk of the moon.

Saw two skunks carrying their tails about some rocks. Singular that, of all the animated creation, chiefly these skunks should be abroad in this moonlight.

This is the midsummer night's moon.

We have come round the east side of the hill to see the moon from amid the trees. I like best to see its light falling far in amid the trees and along the ground before me, while itself is hidden behind them or one side.

It is cool, methinks with a peculiar coolness, as it were from the luxuriance of the foliage, as never in June. At any rate we have had no such sultry nights this month as in June.

There is a greater contrast between night and day now, reminding me that even in Hindostan they freeze ice in shallow vessels at night in summer (?).

There is a mist very generally dispersed, which gives a certain mellowness to the light, a wavingness apparently, a creaminess.

Yet the light of the moon is a cold, almost frosty light, white on the ground.

There are a few fireflies about. Green, their light looks sometimes, and crickets are heard.

You are pretty sure also to hear some human music, vocal or instrumental, far or near.

The masses of the trees and bushes would be called black, if our knowledge that they are leaves did not make us call them dark - green.

Here is the Pycnanthemum lanceolatum near the boat's place, which I scent in the dark. It has been out some days, for some flowers are quite withered.

I hear from the copses or bushes along the shore, returning, a faint everlasting fine song from some small cricket, or rather locust, which it required the stillness of night to reveal.

A bat hovers about us.

How oily smooth the water in this moonlight! And the apparent depth where stars are reflected frightens Sophia.

These Yankee houses and gardens seen rising beyond this oily moonlit water, on whose surface the circling insects are like sparks of fire, are like Italian dwellings on the shores of Italian lakes.

When we have left the boat and the river, we are surprised, looking back from the bank, to see that the water is wholly concealed under a white mist, though it was scarcely perceptible when we were in its midst.

The few bullfrogs are the chief music.

I do not know but walnuts are peculiarly handsome by moonlight, -- seeing the moon rising through them, and the form of their leaves.

I felt some nuts. They have already their size and that bracing, aromatic scent.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 20, 1853

The moon was at first eclipsed by a vast black bank of cloud in the east horizon, which threatened to obscure it all the night  See June 1, 1852 ("The moving clouds are the drama of the moonlight nights")

Singular that, of all the animated creation, chiefly these skunks should be abroad in this moonlight. See June 20, 1853 (“ The moon full. . . . Saw a little skunk coming up the river-bank in the woods at the White Oak.”); July 12, 1851 ("I see a skunk on Bear Garden Hill stealing noiselessly away from me, while the moon shines over the pitch pines")

There are a few fireflies about. See July 20, 1852 ("The stars are few and distant; the fireflies fewer still.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fireflies

You are pretty sure also to hear some human music, vocal or instrumental, far or near. See June 14, 1851 ("How sweet and encouraging it is to hear the sound of some artificial music from the midst of woods or from the top of a hill at night, borne on the breeze from some distant farmhouse, — the human voice or a flute!"); July 12, 1851 ("I hear a human voice,"); August 5, 1851 ("I hear now from Bear Garden Hill — I rarely walk by moonlight without hearing — the sound of a flute, or a horn, or a human voice")

The stake-driver is at it in his favorite meadow.

 

June 20. 


7 P. M. – To Hubbard Bathing-Place.

The blue-eyed grass is shut up. When does it open?

Some blue flags are quite a red purple, — dark wine color.

Identified the Iris prismatica, Boston iris, with linear leaves and round stem.

The stake-driver is at it in his favorite meadow.

I followed the sound. At last I got within two rods, it seeming always to recede and drawing you like a will-o '-the-wisp further away into the meadows.

When thus near, I heard some lower sounds at the beginning, much more like striking on a stump or a stake, a dry hard sound; and then followed the gurgling, pumping notes, fit to come from a meadow.

This was just within the blueberry and Pyrus arbutifolia (choke-berry) bushes, and when the bird flew up alarmed, I went to the place, but could see no water, which makes me doubt if water is necessary to it in making the sound. Perhaps it thrusts its bill so deep as to reach the water where it is dry on the surface.

It sounds the more like wood chopping or pumping, because you seem to hear the echo of the stroke or the reverse motion of the pump handle.

I hear them morning and evening. After the warm weather has come, both morning and evening you hear the bittern pumping in the fens.

It does not sound loud near at hand, and it is remarkable that it should be heard so far. Perhaps it is pitched on a favorable key. Is it not a call to its mate? Methinks that in the resemblance of this note to rural sounds, to sounds made by farmers, the protection, the security, of the bird is designed.

Minott says: “I call them belcher-squelchers. They go slug-toot, slug-toot, slug-toot.”

Dry fields have now a reddish tinge from the seeds of the grass.

Lying with my window open, these warm, even sultry nights, I hear the sonorously musical trump of the bullfrogs from time to time, from some distant shore of the river, as if the world were given up to them. By those villagers who live on the street they are never seen and rarely heard by day, but in the quiet sultry nights their notes ring from one end of the town to another.

It is as if you had waked up in the infernal regions. I do not know for a time in what world I am. It affects my morals, and all questions take a new aspect from this sound.

At night bullfrogs lie on the pads and answer to one another all over North America; undoubtedly there is an incessant and uninterrupted chain of sound, troomp, troomp, troomp, from the Atlantic to the Pacific (vide if they reach so far west), further than Britain's morning gun.

It is the snoring music of nature at night. When you wake thus at midnight and hear this sonorous trump from far in the horizon, you need not go to Dante for an idea of the infernal regions. It requires the night air, this sound.

How allied to a pad in place, in color, --for his greenish back is the leaf and his yellow throat the flower, in form, with his sesquipedality of belly! (And other, white-bellied frogs are white lilies. Through the summer he lies on the pads, or with his head out, and in the winter buries himself at their roots (?).The bull paddock! His eyes like the buds of the Nuphar Kalmiana.

Methinks his skin would stand water without shrinking forever. Gloves made of it for rainy weather, for trout-fishers !

Frogs appear slow to make up their minds, but then they act precipitately. As long as they are here, they are here, and express no intention of removing; but the idea of removing fills them instantaneously, as nature, abhorring, fills a vacuum. Now they are fixed and imperturbable like the Sphinx, and now they go off with short, squatty leaps over the spatter-dock, on the irruption of the least idea. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 20, 1852

The stake-driver is at it in his favorite meadow. See  April 24, 1854 (" As I stand still listening on the frosty sleepers at Wood's crossing by the lupines, I hear the loud and distinct pump-a-gor of a stake-driver. ”);. May 9, 1853 ("The pump-like note of a stake-driver from the fenny place across the Lee meadow. "); June 15, 1851 ("The sound of the stake-driver at a distance, — like that made by a man pumping in a neighboring farmyard, watering his cattle, or like chopping wood before his door on a frosty morning, and I can imagine like driving a stake in a meadow. The pumper. . . .before I was further off than I thought, so now I was nearer than I thought"); October 26, 1858 ("[Minott] says that some call the stake-driver “'belcher squelcher,” and some, “wollerkertoot.” I used to call them “pump-er-gor’. ” Some say “slug-toot.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau American Bittern (the Stake-Diver)

At night bullfrogs lie on the pads and answer to one another all over North America; undoubtedly there is an incessant and uninterrupted chain of sound, troomp, troomp, troomp, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. See June 20, 1853 ("The bullfrogs begin about 8.30. They lie at their length on the surface amid the pads."); See also November 10, 1860 ("I can realize how this country appeared when it was discovered - a full-grown oak forest stretching uninterrupted for miles, consisting of sturdy trees from one to three and even four feet in diameter, whose interlacing branches form a complete and uninterrupted canopy.")

June 20. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 20

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

An evening for poets to describe.

June 14.

Saturday.

Full moon last night.

Set out on a walk to Conantum at 7 P. M. A serene evening, the sun going down behind clouds, a few white or slightly shaded piles of clouds floating in the eastern sky, but a broad, clear, mellow cope left for the moon to rise into. An evening for poets to describe.

Met a man driving home his cow from pasture and stopping to chat with his neighbor; then a boy, who had set down his pail in the road to stone a bird most perseveringly, whom I heard afterward behind me telling his pail to be quiet in a tone of assumed anger, because it squeaked under his arm.

As I proceed along the back road I hear the lark still singing in the meadow, and the bobolink, and the gold robin on the elms, and the swallows twittering about the barns.

A small bird chasing a crow high in the air, who is going home at night.

All nature is in an expectant attitude.

Before Goodwin's house, at the opening of the Sudbury road, the swallows are diving at a tortoise-shell cat, who curvets and frisks rather awkwardly, as if she did not know whether to be scared or not.

And now, having proceeded a little way down this road, the sun having buried himself in the low cloud in the west and hung out his crimson curtains,  I hear, while sitting by the wall, the sound of the stake-driver at a distance, — like that made by a man pumping in a neighboring farmyard, watering his cattle, or like chopping wood before his door on a frosty morning, and I can imagine like driving a stake in a meadow.

The pumper.

I immediately went in search of the bird, but, after going a third of a mile, it did not sound much nearer, and the two parts of the sound did not appear to proceed from the same place.  What is the peculiarity of these sounds which penetrate so far on the keynote of nature? At last I got near to the brook in the meadow behind Hubbard's wood, but I could not tell if were further or nearer than that. When I got within half a dozen rods of the brook, it ceased, and I heard it no I suppose that I scared it.  As before I was further off than I thought, so now I was nearer than I thought.  It is not easy to understand how so small a creature can make so loud a sound by merely sucking in or throwing out water with pump-like lungs.

As yet no moon, but downy piles of cloud scattered here and there in the expectant sky.

Saw a blue flag blossom in the meadow while waiting for the stake-driver. 

It was a sound as of gulping water.

Where my path crosses the brook in the meadow there is a singularly sweet scent in the heavy air bathing the brakes, where the brakes grow, — the fragrance of the earth, as if the dew were a distillation of the fragrant essences of nature.

When I reach the road, the farmer going home from town invites me to ride in his high set wagon, not thinking why I walk, nor can I shortly explain. He remarks on the coolness of the weather.

The angelica is budded, a handsome luxuriant plant.

And now my senses are captivated again by a sweet fragrance as I enter the embowered willow causeway, and I know not if it be from a particular plant or all together, — sweet-scented vernal grass or sweet-briar.

Now the sun is fairly gone, I hear the dreaming frog, [toad?] and the whip-poor-will from some darker wood, — it is not far from eight,— and the cuckoo. The song sparrows sing quite briskly among the willows, as if it were spring again, and the blackbird's harsher note resounds over the meadows, and the veery's comes up from the wood.

Fishes are dimpling the surface of the river, seizing the insects which alight.

A solitary fisherman in his boat inhabits the scene.

As I rose the hill beyond the bridge, I found myself in a cool, fragrant, dewy, up-country, mountain morning air, a new region. When I had issued from the willows on to the bridge, it was like coming out of night into twilight, the river reflected so much light.)

The moon was now seen rising over Fair Haven and at the same time reflected in the river, pale and white like a silvery cloud, barred with a cloud, not promising how it will shine anon.

Now I meet an acquaintance coming from a remote field in his hay-rigging, with a jag of wood; who reins up to show me how large a woodchuck he has killed, which he found eating his clover. But now he must drive on, for behind comes a boy taking up the whole road with a huge roller drawn by a horse, which goes lumbering and bouncing along, getting out of the way of night,— while the sun has gone the other way, — and making such a noise as if it had the contents of a tinker's shop in its bowels, and rolls the whole road smooth like a newly sown grain-field.

In Conant's orchard I hear the faint cricket-like song of a sparrow saying its vespers, as if it were a link between the cricket and the bird. The robin sings now, though the moon shines silverly, and the veery jingles its trill.

I hear the fresh and refreshing sound of falling water, as I have heard it in New Hampshire. It is a sound we do not commonly hear.

I see that the whiteweed is in blossom, which, as I had not walked by day for some time, I had not seen before.

How moderate, deliberate, is Nature! How gradually the shades of night gather and deepen, giving man ample leisure to bid farewell to-day, conclude his day's affairs, and prepare for slumber!

The twilight seems out of proportion to the length of the day. Perchance it saves our eyes.

Now for some hours the farmers have been getting home. Since the alarm about mad dogs a couple of years ago there are comparatively few left to bark at the traveller and bay the moon. All nature is abandoned to me.

You feel yourself — your body, your legs, — more at night, for there is less beside to be distinctly known, and hence perhaps you think yourself more tired than you are.

I see indistinctly oxen asleep in the fields, silent in majestic slumber, like the sphinx, — statuesque, Egyptian, reclining. What solid rest! How their heads are supported! 

A sparrow or a cricket makes more noise.

From Conant's summit I hear as many as fifteen whip poor-wills — or whip-or-I-wills — at once, the succeeding cluck sounding strangely foreign, like a hewer at work elsewhere.

The moon is accumulating yellow light and triumphing over the clouds, but still the west is suffused here and there with a slight red tinge, marking the path of the day. Though inexperienced ones might call it night, it is not yet.

Dark, heavy clouds lie along the western horizon, exhibiting the forms of animals and men, while the moon is behind a cloud. Why do we detect these forms so readily? — whales or giants reclining, busts of heroes, Michael-Angelic.

There is the gallery of statuary, the picture gallery of man, — not a board upon an Italian's head, but these dark figures along the horizon, the board some Titan carries on his head. What firm and heavy outlines for such soft and light material!

How sweet and encouraging it is to hear the sound of some artificial music from the midst of woods or from the top of a hill at night, borne on the breeze from some distant farmhouse, — the human voice or a flute! That is a civilization one can endure, worth having. I could go about the world listening for the strains of music: Men use this gift but sparingly, methinks.

What should we think of a bird which had the gift of song but used it only once in a dozen years, like the tree which blossoms only once in a century?

Now the dorbug comes humming by, the first I have heard this year.

In three months it will be the Harvest Moon. I cannot easily believe it. Why not call this the Traveller's Moon?  It would be as true to call the last (the May) the Planter's Moon as it is to call September's the Harvest Moon, for the farmers use one about as little as the other.

Perhaps this is the Whip-poor-will's Moon.

The bullfrog now, which I have not heard before, this evening.

It is nearly nine.

They are much less common and their note more intermittent than that of the dreamers.

I scared up a bird on a low bush, perchance on its nest. It is rare that you start them at night from such places.

Peabody says that the nighthawk retires to rest about the time the whip-poor-will begins its song. The whip poor-will begins now at 7.30. I hear the nighthawk after 9 o'clock.

He says it flies low in the evening, but it also flies high, as it must needs do to make the booming sound.

I hear the lowing of cows occasionally, and the barking of dogs.

The pond by moonlight, which may make the object in a walk, suggests little to be said.

Where there was only one firefly in a dozen rods, I hastily ran to one which had crawled up to the top of a grass head and exhibited its light, and instantly another sailed in to it, showing its light also; but my presence made them extinguish their lights. The latter retreated, and the former crawled slowly down the stem.

It appeared to me that the first was a female who thus revealed her place to the male, who was also making known his neighborhood as he hovered about, both showing their lights that they might come together.  It was like a mistress who had climbed to the turrets of her castle and exhibited there a blazing taper for a signal, while her lover had displayed his light on the plain. If perchance she might have any lovers abroad.

Not much before 10 o'clock does the moonlight night begin.

When man is asleep and day fairly forgotten, then is the beauty of moonlight seen over lonely pastures where cattle are silently feeding.

Then let me walk in a diversified country, of hill and dale, with heavy woods one side, and copses and scattered trees and bushes enough to give me shadows.

Returning, a mist is on the river. The river is taken into the womb of Nature again.

Now is the clover month, but haying is not yet begun.

Evening. — Went to Nawshawtuct by North Branch. 

Overtaken by a slight shower. The same increased fragrance from the ground-sweet-fern, etc.-as in the night, and for the like reason probably.

The houstonias still blossom freshly, as I believe they continue to do all summer.

The fever-root in blossom; pictured in Bigelow's “Medical Botany."

Triosteum perfoliatum, near the top of Hill, under the wall, looks somewhat like a milkweed.

The Viburnum dentatum, very regularly toothed, just ready to blossom; sometimes called arrow-wood.

Nature seems not [to] have designed that man should be much abroad by night, and in the moon proportioned the light fitly. By the faintness and rareness of the light compared with that of the sun, she expresses her intention with regard to him.



H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 14, 1851

I hear, while sitting by the wall, the sound of the stake-driver at a distance,. . . .  The pumper. See April 24, 1854 ("I hear the loud and distinct pump-a-gor of a stake-driver. Thus he announces himself.”); May 9, 1853 ("The pump-like note of a stake-driver from the fenny place across the Lee meadow."); May 20, 1856 ("See and hear a stake-driver in the swamp. It took one short pull at its pump and stopped."); October 26, 1858 ("[Minott] says that some call the stake-driver “'belcher squelcher,” and some, “wollerkertoot. ” I used to call them “pump-er-gor’. ” Some say “slug-toot.”)

And now my senses are captivated again by a sweet fragrance as I enter the embowered willow causeway, and I know not if it be from a particular plant or all together. See June 20, 1853 ("Walking amid the bushes and the ferns just after moonrise, I am refreshed with many sweet scents which I cannot trace to their source.")

Fishes are dimpling the surface of the river, seizing the insects which alight. See June 9, 1854 ("The fishes continue to leap by moonlight. A full moon."); June 2, 1860 ("Water-bugs dimple the surface now quite across the river, in the moonlight, for it is a full moon.")

The moon was now seen rising and at the same time reflected in the river, pale and white like a silvery cloud. See June 30, 1852 ("Moon nearly full; rose a little before sunset. . . . At first a mere white cloud,"); April 30, 1852 ("Then when I turned, I saw in the east, just over the woods, the modest, pale, cloud-like moon, two thirds full, looking spirit-like on these daylight scenes.")  See also May 28, 1853 ("Last night in the dark [the lupines]were all a pale, whitish color like the moon by day — a mere dull luminousness, as if they reflected light absorbed by day. ")

The moon is accumulating yellow light and triumphing over the clouds. See June 1, 1852 ("You can never foretell the fate of the moon, -- whether she will prevail over or be obscured by the clouds half an hour hence. The traveller's sympathy with the moon makes the drama of the shifting clouds interesting.")

The painted tortoises are nowadays laying their eggs.

June 6.

Tuesday.

I perceive the sweetness of the locust blossoms fifteen or twenty rods off as I go down the street.

P. M. – To Assabet Bathing-Place and return by stone bridge.

I see now great baggy light-green puffs on the panicled andromeda, some with a reddish side, two or three inches through.

The Stellaria longifolia has been out, apparently, a day or two.

A slender rush, flowered at the top, at bathing-place, some time.

The painted tortoises are nowadays laying their eggs. I see where they have just been digging in the sand or gravel in a hundred places on the southerly sides of hills and banks near the river, but they have laid their eggs in very few. I find none whole.

Here is one which has made its hole with the hind part of its shell and its tail apparently, and the ground is wet under it. They make a great deal of water at these times, apparently to soften the earth or to give it consistency, or both.

They are remarkably circumspect, and it is difficult to see one working. They stop instantly and draw in their heads, and do not move till you are out of sight, and then probably try a new place.

They have dabbled in the sand and left the marks of their tails all around.

The black oaks, birches, etc., etc., are covered with ephemeræ of various sizes and colors, with one, two, three, or no streamers, ready to take wing at evening, i.e. about seven. I am covered with them and much incommoded.

There is garlic by the wall, not yet out.

The air over the river meadows is saturated with sweetness, but I look round in vain on the yellowish sensitive fern and the reddish eupatorium springing up.

From time to time, at mid-afternoon, is heard the trump of a bullfrog, like a Triton's horn.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 6, 1854

The Stellaria longifolia has been out, apparently, a day or two. See June 6, 1859 ("Stellaria longifolia, at Well Meadow Head, how long?") See also June 8, 1856 ("Stellaria longrfolia opposite Barbarea Shore not yet out")

The painted tortoises are nowadays laying their eggs. See  June 6, 1858 ("See three or four Emys insculpta about, making their holes in the gravelly bank south of Assabet Bath"); June 6, 1855 ("I see a yellow-spotted tortoise twenty rods from river, and a painted one four rods from it which has just made a hole for her eggs.");  June 7, 1854 ("Yesterday I saw the painted and the wood tortoise out."); June 10, 1857 ("A wood tortoise making a hole for her eggs just like a picta's hole.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle (Emys picta); A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wood Turtlw (Emys insculpta);  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow-Spotted Turtle (Emys guttata)

The black oaks, birches, etc., etc., are covered with ephemeræ of various sizes and colors, with one, two, three, or no streamers, ready to take wing at evening, i.e. about seven. See June 2, 1854 "The whole atmosphere over the river was full of shad-flies.") . . .It was a great flight of ephemera"); 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, ... and the fishes leap as before.")

From time to time, at mid-afternoon, is heard the trump of a bullfrog, like a Triton's horn. See May 10, 1858 (" I hear the first regular bullfrog's trump. . . . This sound, heard low and far off over meadows when the warmer hours have come, grandly inaugurates the summer."); May 25, 1855 ("Heard the first regular bullfrog’s trump on the 18th; none since."); June 1, 1853 ("The hylodes are no longer heard. The bullfrogs begin to trump.”); June 4, 1853 ("The bullfrog now begins to be heard at night regularly; has taken the place of the hylodes."); June 13, 1851 ("The different frogs mark the seasons pretty well,- the peeping hyla, the dreaming frog, and the bullfrog . . . The bullfrog belongs to summer."); June 15, 1860 ("The bullfrogs now commonly trump at night, and the mosquitoes are now really troublesome.”)

From time to time, at

mid-afternoon, is heard the 

trump of a bullfrog

The different moods or degrees of wildness and poetry of which the song of birds is the keynote

May 11.


5 A. M. -- In the morning and evening waters are still and smooth, and dimpled by innate currents only, not disturbed by foreign winds and currents of the air, and reflect more light than at noonday.

P. M. – To Corner Spring via Hubbard's Bathing Place.

The buck-bean is budded, but hard to find now.

The Viola lanceolata is now abundant thereabouts, me thinks larger and quite as fragrant (which is not saying much) as the blanda. How long has it been open? 

May 11, 2019

It is a warm afternoon, and great numbers of painted and spotted tortoises are lying in the sun in the meadow.

I notice that the thin scales are peeling off of one of the painted and curled up more than half an inch at the edges, and others look as if they had just lost them, the dividing-line being of a dull cream color.

Has this lying in the sun anything to do with it? 

I nearly stepped upon a song sparrow and a striped snake at the same time. The bird fluttered away almost as if detained. I thought it was a case of charming, without doubt, and should think so still if I had not found her nest with five eggs there, which will account for her being so near the snake that was about to devour her.

The amelanchier has a sickish fragrance.

It must be the myrtle-bird which is now so common in Hubbard's Meadow Woods or Swamp, with a note somewhat like a yellow bird's, striped olive-yellow and black on back or shoulders, light or white beneath, black dim; restless bird; sharp head.

The catbird has a squeaking and split note with some clear whistles.

The late pipes (limosum?), now nearly a foot high, are very handsome, like Oriental work, their encircled columns of some precious wood or gem, or like small bamboos, from Oriental jungles. Very much like art.

The gold-thread, apparently for a day or two, though few flowers compared with buds; not at once referred to its leaf, so distant on its thread-like peduncle.

The water-saxifrage also for a day or two in some places, on its tall, straight stem, rising from its whorl of leaves.

Sorrel now fairly out in some places. I will put it under May 8th.

A high blueberry by Potter's heater piece.

A yellow lily.

The red-eye at the spring; quite a woodland note.

The different moods or degrees of wildness and poetry of which the song of birds is the keynote. The wood thrush Mr. Barnum never hired nor can, though he could bribe Jenny Lind and put her into his cage.

How many little birds of the warbler family are busy now about the opening buds, while I sit by the spring! They are almost as much a part of the tree as its blossoms and leaves. They come and give it voice.  Its twigs feel with pleasure their little feet clasping them.

I hear the distant drumming of a partridge. Its beat, however distant and low, falls still with a remarkably forcible, almost painful, impulse on the ear, like veritable little drumsticks on our tympanum, as if it were a throbbing or fluttering in our veins or brows or the chambers of the ear, and belonging to ourselves, — as if it were produced by some little insect which had made its way up into the passages of the ear, so penetrating is it. It is as palpable to the ear as the sharpest note of a fife.

Of course, that bird can drum with its wings on a log which can go off with such a powerful whir, beating the air. I have seen a thoroughly frightened hen and cockerel fly almost as powerfully, but neither can sustain it long. Beginning slowly and deliberately, the partridge's beat sounds faster and faster from far away under the boughs and through the aisles of the wood until it becomes a regular roll, but is speedily concluded. 

How many things shall we not see and be and do, when we walk there where the partridge drums! 

As I stand by the river in the truly warm sun, I hear the low trump of a bullfrog, but half sounded, - doubting if it be really July, some bassoon sounds, as it were the tuning that precedes the summer's orchestra; and all is silent again.

How the air is saturated with sweetness on causeways these willowy days! The willow alone of trees as yet makes light, often rounded masses of verdure in large trees, stage above stage. But oftenest they are cut down at the height of four or five feet and spread out thence.

There appear to be most clouds in the horizon on (one) of these days of drifting downy clouds, because, when we look that way, more fall within our field of view, but when we look upward, overhead we see the true proportion of clear blue.

The mountains are something solid which is blue, a terra firma in the heavens; but in the heavens there is nothing but the air.

Blue is the color of the day, and the sky is blue by night as well as by day, because it knows no night.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 11, 1853

May 11, See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 11

It is a warm afternoon, and great numbers of painted and spotted tortoises are lying in the sun in the meadow. See May 10, 1857 ("Now the Emys picta lie out in great numbers, this suddenly warm weather.")

I nearly stepped upon a song sparrow so near a snake that was about to devour her. See May 19, 1856 ("Saw a small striped snake in the act of swallowing a Rana palustris . . .. The snake, being frightened, released his hold, and the frog hopped off to the water. ")

The different moods or degrees of wildness and poetry of which the song of birds is the keynote. See May 11, 1854 ("The true poet will ever live aloof from society, wild to it, as the finest singer is the wood thrush, a forest bird.")

 How many little birds of the warbler family are busy now about the opening buds . . .  They are almost as much a part of the tree as its blossoms and leaves. They come and give it voice. See May 7, 1852 ("For now, before the leaves, they begin to people the trees in this warm weather."); (May 15, 1859 (“Now, when the warblers begin to come in numbers with the leafing of the trees, the woods are so open that you can easily see them. ”);May 15, 1860 ("Deciduous woods now swarm with migrating warblers, especially about swamps.”);May 18, 1856 ("The swamp is all alive with warblers about the hoary expanding buds of oaks, maples, etc., and amid the pine and spruce."); May 23, 1857("This is the time and place to hear the new-arriving warblers, the first fine days after the May storm. When the leaves generally are just fairly expanding,")

It must be the myrtle-bird which is now so common in Hubbard's Meadow Woods or Swamp. See May 1, 1855 ("The myrtle-bird is one of the commonest and tamest birds now. It catches insects like a pewee, darting off from its perch and returning to it, and sings something like a-chill chill, chill chill, chill chill, a-twear, twill twill twee,"); May 4, 1855 ("Myrtle-birds numerous, and sing their tea lee, tea lee in morning"); May 7, 1852 (" One or more little warblers in the woods this morning are new to the season, myrtlebirds among them.")

Beginning slowly and deliberately, the partridge's beat sounds faster and faster from far away under the boughs and through the aisles of the wood until it becomes a regular roll.  See April 19, 1860 ("You will hear at first a single beat or two far apart and have time to say, "There is a partridge," so distinct and deliberate is it often, before it becomes a rapid roll.");April 25, 1854 ("The first partridge drums in one or two places, as if the earth's pulse now beat audibly with the increased flow of life. It slightly flutters all Nature and makes her heart palpitate.")

The sky is blue by night as well as by day. See note to January 21, 1853 (''The blueness of the sky at night — the color it wears by day — is an everlasting surprise to me.")

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

The contents of creatures' stomachs

April 16. 

Horace Mann says that he killed a bullfrog in Walden Pond which had swallowed and contained a common striped snake which measured one foot and eight inches in length.

Says he saw two blue herons (?) go over a fortnight ago.

He brought me some days ago the contents of a stake driver's stomach or crop. It is apparently a perch (?), some seven inches long originally, with three or four pebble-shaped, compact masses of the fur of some very small quadruped, as a meadow mouse, some one fourth inch thick by three fourths in diameter, also several wing-cases of black beetles such as I see on the meadow flood.

He brought me also some time ago the contents of a black duck's crop (killed at Goose Pond), -- green gobbets of fine grass (?) or weeds (?), apparently from the bottom of the pond (just then begun to spring up), but I have not yet examined these out of the bottle.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 16, 1861

Horace Mann says that he killed a bullfrog which had swallowed and contained a common striped snake. See May 19, 1856 ("Saw a small striped snake in the act of swallowing a Rana palustris, within three feet of the water. The snake, being frightened, released his hold, and the frog hopped off to the water. ")

Says he saw two blue herons go over.  See April 14, 1859 ("You have not seen our weedy river, you do not know the significance of its weedy bars, until you have seen the blue heron wading and pluming itself on it"); April 15, 1855 ("We have a fine view of a blue heron, standing erect and open to view on a meadow island, by the great swamp south of the bridge."); April 29, 1854 ("I meet a blue heron flying slowly down stream. He flaps slowly and heavily, his long, level, straight and sharp bill projecting forward, then his keel-like neck doubled up, and finally his legs thrust out straight behind.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Blue Heron and April 16, 1855 ("At sunset, the mountains, after this our warmest day as yet, have a peculiar soft mantle of blue haze, pale blue as a blue heron.")

This is the most sultry night we have had.

June 20

Monday. 4 A.M.— No fog; sky mostly over cast; drought continues.

I heard the robin first (before the chip-bird) this morning. Heard the chip-bird last evening just after sunset.

10 A.M.– To Assabet Bathing-Place.

I see wood tortoises in the path; one feels full of eggs.

Those great greenish-white puffs on the panicled andromeda are now decaying.

On the swamp-pink they are solid.

The pitchers of the comandra seeds are conspicuous.

Meadow-sweet out, probably yesterday. It is an agreeable, unpretending flower.

Some of the stone nests are a foot above the water now, but uninjured. I can find nothing in them.

The bosky bank shows bright roses from its green recesses; the small white flowers of the panicled andromeda; beneath, yellow lilies.

Found two lilies open in the very shallow inlet of the meadow. Exquisitely beautiful, and unlike anything else that we have, is the first white lily just expanded in some shallow lagoon where the water is leaving it, – perfectly fresh and pure, before the insects have discovered it.

How admirable its purity! how innocently sweet its fragrance!

How significant that the rich, black mud of our dead stream produces the water-lily, — out of that fertile slime springs this spotless purity!

It is remarkable that those flowers which are most emblematical of purity should grow in the mud.

There is also the exquisite beauty of the small sagittaria, which I find out, maybe a day or two, — three transparent crystalline white petals with a yellow eye and as many small purplish calyx-leaves, four or five inches above the same mud.

Coming home at twelve, I see that the white lilies are nearly shut.

The river has been some days full with weeds which drape and trail from my oars — I am now on foot — (the potamogeton), as if it were Charon’s boat, and this a funeral procession down the Cocytus.

8 P.M.— Up North River to Nawshawtuct. The moon full.

June 20, 2020

Perhaps there is no more beautiful scene than that on the North River seen from the rock this side the hemlocks.

As we look up-stream, we see a crescent-shaped lake completely embosomed in the forest.

There is nothing to be seen but the smooth black mirror of the water, on which there is now the slightest discernible bluish mist, a foot high, and thick set alders and willows and the green woods without an interstice sloping steeply upward from its very sur face, like the sides of a bowl.

The river is here for half a mile completely shut in by the forest.

One hemlock, which the current has undermined, has fallen over till it lies parallel with the water, a foot or two above it and reaching two thirds across the stream, its extremity curving upward to the light, now dead.

Here it has been a year or two, and it has only taken the place of others which have successively fallen in and been carried away by the stream. One lies now cast up on the shore.

Some wild roses, so pale now in the twilight that they look exactly like great blackberry blossoms. I think these would look so at midday.

Saw a little skunk coming up the river-bank in the woods at the White Oak, a funny little fellow, about  six inches long and nearly as broad. It faced me and actually compelled me to retreat before it for five minutes. Perhaps I was between it and its hole.

Its broad black tail, tipped with white, was erect like a kitten’s. It had what looked like a broad white band drawn tight across its forehead or top-head, from which two lines of white ran down, one on each side of its back, and there was a narrow white line down its snout.

It raised its back, sometimes ran a few feet forward, sometimes backward, and repeatedly turned its tail to me, prepared to discharge its fluid like the old. Such was its instinct.

And all the while it kept up a fine grunting like a little pig or a squirrel. It reminded me that the red squirrel, the woodchuck, and the skunk all make a similar sound.

Now there are young rabbits, skunks, and probably woodchucks.

Walking amid the bushes and the ferns just after moonrise, I am refreshed with many sweet scents which I cannot trace to their source.

How the trees shoot!

The tops of young pines toward the moon are covered with fine shoots some eighteen inches long. Will they grow much more this year?

There is a peculiarly soft, creamy light round the moon, now it is low in the sky.

The bullfrogs begin about 8.30.

They lie at their length on the surface amid the pads.

I touched one’s nose with my finger, and he only gave a sudden froggish belch and moved a foot or two off.

How hard to imitate their note exactly, — its sonorousness. Here, close by, it is like er er ough, er er er ough, with a sonorous trump which these letters do not suggest.

On our return, having reached the reach by Merrick’s pasture, we get the best view of the moon in the southeast, reflected in the water, on account of the length of the reach.

The creamy light about it is also perfectly reflected; the path of insects on the surface between us and the moon is lit up like fire.

The leafy-columned elms, planted by the river at foot of Prichard’s field, are exceedingly beautiful, the moon being behind them, and I see that they are not too near together, though sometimes hardly a rod apart, their branches crossing and interlacing. Their trunks look like columns of a portico wreathed with evergreens on the evening of an illumination for some great festival.

They are the more rich, because in this creamy light you cannot distinguish the trunk from the verdure that drapes it.

This is the most sultry night we have had.

All windows and doors are open in the village and scarcely a lamp is lit.

I pass many families sitting in their yards.

The shadows of the trees and houses are too extended, now that the moon is low in the heavens, to show the richest tracery.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, June 20, 1853

I see wood tortoises in the path; one feels full of eggs. See June 23, 1858 ("Take two eggs out of the oviduct of an E. insculpta, just run over in the road. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Wood Turtle (Emys insculpta) 

Coming home at twelve, I see that the white lilies are nearly shut. See July 1, 1852 ("After eating our luncheon I can not find one open anywhere for the rest of the day."); July 11, 1852 ("It is a sufficient reason for walking in the forenoon sometimes that some flowers shut up at noon and do not open again during the day"); July 17, 1854 ("I think that I could tell when it was 12 o'clock within half an hour by the lilies.")

Perhaps there is no more beautiful scene than that on the North River seen from the rock this side the hemlocks. See March 29, 1853 ("A pleasant short voyage is that to the Leaning Hemlocks on the Assabet, just round the Island under Nawshawtuct Hill. The river here has in the course of ages gullied into the hill, at a curve, making a high and steep bank, on which a few hemlocks grow and overhang the deep, eddying basin. For as long as I can remember, one or more of these has always been slanting over the stream at various angles, being undermined by it, until one after another, from year to year, they fall in and are swept away.") See also A Book of the Seasons,by Henry Thoreau, at the Leaning Hemlocks and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now.

I touched one’s nose with my finger. See April 18, 1858 ("Perchance you may now scratch its nose with your finger and examine it to your heart's content, for it is become as imperturbable as it was shy before. You conquer them by superior patience and immovableness; not by quickness, but by slowness; not by heat, but by coldness")

The moon full . . . low in the sky. See July 12, 1851 ("The moon shines over the pitch pines, which send long shadows down the hill. ); August 8, 1851 ("The woods and the separate trees cast longer shadows than by day, for the moon goes lower in her course at this season."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June Moonlight

June 20. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 20

A slight bluish mist

over the smooth black water

mirror of green woods.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, This is the most sultry night we have had

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