Summer yellowbird on the opening Salix alba.

May 2. 

Summer yellowbird on the opening Salix alba. 

Chimney swallows and the bank or else cliff ditto. 

Small pewee? 

Our earliest gooseberry in garden has bloomed. 

What is that pondweed-like plant floating in a pool near Breed's, with a slender stem and linear leaves and a small whorl of minute leaves on the surface, and nutlets in the axils of the leaves, along the stem, as if now out of bloom? [Callitriche verna.] 

Missouri currant.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 2, 1853

Summer yellowbird on the opening Salix alba. See May 2, 1860 ("Salix alba apparently yesterday.")  See also   May 7, 1852 ("The first summer yellowbirds on the willow causeway. The birds come not singly, as the earliest, but all at once, i. e. many yellowbirds all over town. Now I remember the yellowbird comes when the willows begin to leave out. "); May 10, 1858 (" For some days the Salix alba have shown their yellow wreaths here and there, suggesting the coming of the yellowbird, and now they are alive with them."); May 10, 1853 ("At this season the traveller passes through a golden gate on causeways where these willows are planted, as if he were approaching the entrance to Fairyland; and there will surely be found the yellowbird, and already from a distance is heard his note, a tche tche tche tcha tchar tcha, — ah, willow, willow.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Summer Yellowbird also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Willows on the Causeway

Small pewee? See May 2, 1859 ("Small pewee and young lackey caterpillars.") See also  May 3, 1854 ("What I have called the small pewee on the willow by my boat, — quite small, uttering a short tchevet from time to time.") and note to May 3, 1855 ("Small pewee; tchevet, with a jerk of the head."); May 7, 1852 ("And the small pewee on the willows also.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the "Small Pewee"

Our earliest gooseberry in garden has bloomed. See April 1, 1860 ("Our gooseberry begins to show a little green, but not our currant"); April 3, 1853 ("The Missouri currant is perhaps more advanced than the early gooseberry in our garden."); April 30, 1852  ("At Saw Mill Run the swamp gooseberry is partly leaved out. This, . . .methinks is the earliest shrub or tree that shows leaves. [The Missouri currant in gardens is equally forward; the cultivated gooseberry nearly so.]") May 4, 1860 ("Currant out a day or two at least, and our first gooseberry a day later.")


Missouri currant. See May 4, 1858 ("The Missouri currant, probably to-day."); May 5, 1855 ("Missouri currant look as if they would bloom to-morrow.”);

I saw bluets whitening the fields,

May 7.

May 7, 2020
Saxifrage
See .May 5, 1860 ("She has just woven in, or laid on the edge, a fresh sprig of saxifrage in flower. . . . Think how many pewees must have built under the eaves of this cliff since pewees were created and this cliff itself built!!”)

River one eighth of an inch lower than yesterday. 

Chimney swallow. 

Catbird sings. 

Hear the white throat sparrow’s peabody note in gardens. 

Canada plum in full bloom, or say in prime. Also common plum in full bloom? 

It is very hazy, as yesterday, and I smell smoke. 

P. M. – To Assabet stone bridge. 

Find in the road beyond the Wheeler cottages a little round, evidently last year’s, painted turtle. Has no yellow spots, but already little red spots on the edges of the sides. The sternum a sort of orange or pinkish red. 

This warm weather, I see many new beetles and other insects. 

Ribes florida by bridge (flower). 

Cultivated cherry flowered yesterday at least, not yet ours. 

Myrtle-bird. 

Met old Mr. Conant with his eye and half the side of his face black and blue, looking very badly. He said he had been jerked down on to the barn-floor by a calf some three weeks old which he was trying to lead. The strength of calves is remarkable. I saw one who had some difficulty in pulling along a calf not a week old. With their four feet they have a good hold on the earth. The last one was sucking a cow that had sore teats, and every time it bunted, the cow kicked energetically, raking the calf’s head and legs, but he stood close against the cow’s belly and never budged in spite of all her kicks, though a man would have jumped out of the way. Who taught the calf to bunt? 

I saw bluets whitening the fields yesterday a quarter of a mile off. They are to the sere brown grass what the shad-bush is now to the brown and bare sprout lands or young woods. 

When planting potatoes the other day, I found small ones that had been left in the ground, perfectly sound!

H. D. Thoreau. Journal, May 7, 1860

Hear the white throat sparrow’s peabody note in gardens. See May 7, 1854 ("A white-throated sparrow still (in woods)."). See also and compare  April 19,1855 ("Hear the tull-lull of the white-throated sparrow in street”); May 3, 1859 (" Hear the te-e-e of a white-throat sparrow. "); May 4, 1855 ("See more white-throated sparrows than any other bird to-day in various parts of our walk, generally feeding in numbers on the ground in open dry fields and meadows next to woods, then flitting through the woods. Hear only that sharp, lisping chip from them."); May 6, 1859 ("Hear the tea-lee of the white-throat sparrow."). Note also  June 21, 1858 ("What I call the myrtle-bird’s is the white-throat sparrow’s note") and see May 5, 1857 ('Hear the tull-lull of a myrtle-bird (very commonly heard for three or four days after");  May 6, 1858 ("I heard a myrtle-bird's tull-lull yesterday, and that somebody else heard it four or five days ago.")

Canada plum in full bloom. Also common plum in full bloom? See May 5, 1855 ("Canada plum and cultivated cherry and Missouri currant look as if they would bloom to-morrow.”);  May 10, 1855 ("Canada plum opens petals to-day and leafs. Domestic plum only leafs.”).

It is very hazy, as yesterday, and I smell smoke. See May 7, 1856 ("To-day and yesterday the sunlight is peculiarly yellow, on account of the smoky haze. I notice its peculiar yellowness, almost orange, even when, coming through a knot-hole in a dark room, it falls on the opposite wall. ")
Find in the road a little round painted turtle. Has no yellow spots, but already little red spots on the edges of the sides. The sternum a sort of orange or pinkish red. See June 15, 1854 ("A young painted tortoise on the surface of the water, as big as a quarter of a dollar, with a reddish or orange sternum . . . was red beneath."). See also  May 7, 1858 ("The male yellow spotted and also wood turtle have very distinctly depressed sternums, but not so the male Emys picta that I have noticed.").

I saw bluets whitening the fields yesterday a quarter of a mile off. See May 21, 1855 ("Bluets whiten the fields, and violets are now perhaps in prime.")

What the shad-bush is now. See May 7, 1853 ("The delicate cherry-like leaf, transparent red, of the shad-bush is now interesting, especially in the sun. ) See also May 6, 1860 ("The Amelanchier Botryapium in flower now spots the brown sprout-land hillside on the southeast side, across the pond, very interestingly. . . .They are the more interesting for coming thus between the fall of the oak leaves and the expanding of other shrubs and trees. Some of the larger, near at hand, are very light and elegant masses of white bloom. The white-fingered flower of the sprout-lands."). May 15, 1858("The shad-bush in bloom is now conspicuous, its white flags on all sides. Is it not the most massy and conspicuous of any wild plant now in bloom?")

I measure the rapidity of the river's current.

July 25. 

July 25, 2019

The Rice boy brings me what he thought a snipe's egg, recently taken from a nest in the Sudbury meadows. It is of the form of a rail's egg, but is not whitish like mine, but olive-colored with dark-brown spots. Is it the sora rail? 

He has also a little egg, as he says taken out of a thrasher's nest, apparently one third grown. 

Flagg says that the chimney swallow is sometimes abroad "the greater part of the night;" is informed by Fowler that the rose-breasted grosbeak often sings in the light of the moon. 

P. M. — Water three and a half inches above summer level. 

I measure the rapidity of the river's current. At my boat's place behind Channing's, a bottle sunk low in the water floats one hundred feet in five minutes; one hundred feet higher up, in four and a half minutes. (I think the last the most correct.) It came out a rod and a half ahead of two chips.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 25, 1859

Olive-colored with dark-brown spots. Is it the sora rail? See note to December 7, 1858 ("The rail’s egg (of Concord, which I have seen) . . . Is it the sora rail’s (of which there is no egg in this collection)?")

Water three and a half inches above summer level. See July 9, 1859 ("July 9th, water is eleven and a half inches above summer level.")

Hotter still than the last two days, — 90° and more.

May 8

Sunday. Hotter still than the last two days, — 90° and more. 

Summer yellowbird. 

C. sees a chimney swallow. 

Indeed, several new birds have come, and many new insects, with the expanding leafets. Catbird. 

The swollen leaf -buds of the white pine — and yet more the pitch pine — look whitish, and show life in the tree. 

Go on the river. 

The sweet flags, both pads, and equisetum and pontederia are suddenly becoming conspicuous, also the Arum peltandrum. 

Grackles here yet. 

Tree-toad is heard. 

Apple trees begin to make a show with their green. 

See two great devil's-needles go by coupled, the foremost blue, the second brown. 

Hear a dor-bug in the house at evening.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 8, 1859


Summer yellowbird. Indeed, several new birds have come, and many new insects, with the expanding leafets. See . May 8, 1854 (“Hear a yellowbird in the direction of the willows. Its note coarsely represented by che-che-che-char-char- char”); May 8, 1857 ("The ring of toads, the note of the yellowbird, the rich warble of the red-wing, the thrasher on the hillside, the robin's evening song, the woodpecker tapping some dead tree across the water "); May 10, 1858 (" For some days the Salix alba have shown their yellow wreaths here and there, suggesting the coming of the yellowbird, and now they are alive with them.")

Several new birds have come, and many new insects, with the expanding leafets. Catbird. See April 18, 1852 (I would make a chart of our life,  know why just this circle of creatures completes the world, what kinds of birds come with what flowers.) May 8, 1857 ("From amid the alders, etc., I hear the mew of the catbird and the yorrick of Wilson's thrush.")

Dense pearly masses of flowers covered with bees and butterflies.

August 23. 

P. M. — To Walden. 

I see a bed of Antennaria margaritacea, now in its prime, by the railroad, and very handsome. It has fallen outward on all sides ray-wise, and rests on the ground, forming perfectly regular circle, four feet in diameter and fifteen inches high, with a dark ash- colored centre, twenty inches in diameter, composed of the stems, then a wide circumference, one foot or more broad, of dense pearly masses of flowers covered with bees and butterflies. This is as regular as a wheel. So fair and pure and abundant. 

Elder-berries, now looking purple, are weighing down the bushes along fences by their abundance. 

White goldenrod, not long commonly. 

Decodon getting stale at Second Andromeda Pond. Often the end has rooted itself, and the whole forms a loop four feet long and twenty or more inches high in the middle, with numerous branches, making it rather troublesome to wade through. Where the stems bend down and rest on the water, they swell to several times their usual size and acquire that thick, soft bark, and put forth numerous roots; not the extreme point, but a space just short of it, while that starts up again. 

On R. W. E.'s hillside by railroad, burnt over by the engine in the spring, the erechthites has shot up abundantly, very tall and straight, some six or seven feet high. 

Those singular crowded and wrinkled dry galls, red and cream-color mingled, on white oak shrubs, with their grubs in them.

On the west side of Emerson's Cliff, I notice many Gerardia pedicularia out. A bee is hovering about one bush. The flowers are not yet open, and if they were, perhaps he could not enter. He proceeds at once, head downwards, to the base of the tube, extracts the sweet there, and departs. Examining, I find that every flower has a small hole pierced through the tube, commonly through calyx and all, opposite the nectary. This does not hinder its opening. 

The Rape of the Flower! The bee knew where the sweet lay, and was unscrupulous in his mode of obtaining it. A certain violence tolerated by nature. 

Now for high blackberries, though the low are gone. At the Lincoln bound hollow, Walden, there is a dense bed of the Rubus hispidus, matting the ground seven or eight inches deep, and full of the small black fruit, now in its prime. It is especially abundant where the vines lie over a stump. Has a peculiar, hardly agreeable acid. 

On this Lespedeza Stuvei, a green locust an inch and three quarters long. 

The scent of decaying fungi in woods is quite offensive now in many places, like carrion even. I see many red ones eaten more or less in the paths, nibbled out on the edges. 

7 p. m. — The river has risen four inches since last night and now is one inch above the wall, and there is a little current there. Probably, then, the Assabet has begun to fall, — if this has not risen higher than that. 

J. Farmer says that he found that the gummed twig of a chimney swallow's nest, though it burned when held in a flame, went out immediately when taken out of it, and he thinks it owing to a peculiarity in the gum, rendering the twig partly fire-proof, so that they cannot be ignited by the sparks in a chimney. I suggested that these swallows had originally built in hollow trees, but it would be interesting to ascertain whether they constructed their nests in the same way and of the same material then.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 23, 1856


I see a bed of Antennaria margaritacea, now in its prime, by the railroad, and very handsome. See August 23, 1858 (“I see dense patches of the pearly everlasting, maintaining their ground in the midst of dense green sweet-fern, a striking contrast of snow-white and green.”); July 17, 1852 ("The Antennaria margaritacea, pearly everlasting, is out")

Elder-berries, now looking purple, are weighing down the bushes See August 22, 1852 ("The elder bushes are weighed down with fruit partially turned, and are still in bloom at the extremities of their twigs.");  August 29, 1854 ("The cymes of elder-berries, black with fruit, are now conspicuous."); August 29, 1859 ("Elder-berry clusters swell and become heavy and therefore droop, bending the bushes down, just in proportion as they ripen. Hence you see the green cymes perfectly erect, the half-ripe drooping, and the perfectly ripe hanging straight down on the same bush.")

The Rape of the Flower! See October 19, 1852 ("I see that the bees have gnawed round holes in [fringed gentian] sides to come at the nectar.")

A green locust an inch and three quarters long. See August 21, 1853 ("Saw one of those light-green locusts about three quarters of an inch long on a currant leaf in the garden. "); August 27, 1860 ("See one of the shrilling green alder locusts on the under side of a grape leaf. Its body is about three quarters of an inch or less in length; antennae and all, two inches. “); September 6, 1857 ("I see one of those peculiarly green locusts with long and slender legs on a grass stem, which are often concealed by their color.")

The scent of decaying fungi in woods is quite offensive now . . .See September 10, 1854 ("Last year, for the last three weeks of August, the woods were filled with the strong musty scent of decaying fungi, but this year I have seen very few fungi and have not noticed that odor at all . . ."); August 14, 1853 ("there are countless great fungi of various forms and colors, the produce of the warm rains and muggy weather . . . and for most of my walk the air is tainted with a musty, carrion like odor, in some places very offensive"); August 16, 1853 ("Yesterday also in the Marlborough woods, perceived everywhere that offensive mustiness of decaying fungi. ")

The gummed twig of a chimney swallow's nest . . See July 29, 1856 ("Pratt gave me a chimney swallow's nest. . . firmly fastened together by a very conspicuous whitish semi-transparent glue,. . ."

A chimney swallow’s nest.

July 29

Rhexia. Probably would be earlier if not mowed down.

What I have called Hieracium Gronovii, with three cauline leaves and without veins, has achenia like H . venosum; so I will give it up. Its radical leaves are very hairy beneath, especially along midrib. 

Another smart rain, with lightning. 

Pratt gave me a chimney swallow's nest, which he says fell down Wesson's chimney with young in it two or three days ago. As it comes to me, it is in the form of the segment of the circumference of a sphere whose diameter is three and a half inches, the segment being two plus wide, one side, of course, longer than the other. It bears a little soot on the inner side. It may have been placed against a slanting part of the chimney, or perhaps some of the outer edge is broken off. 

It is composed wholly of stout twigs, one to two inches long, one sixteenth to one eighth inch diameter, held quasi cob-fashion, so as to form a sort of basketwork one third to one half inch thick, without any lining, at least in this, but very open to the air. These twigs, which are quite knubby, seem to be of the apple, elm, and the like, and are firmly fastened together by a very conspicuous whitish semi-transparent glue, which is laid on pretty copiously, sometimes extending continuously one inch. 

It reminds me of the edible nests of the Chinese swallow. Who knows but their edibleness is due to a similar glue secreted by the bird and used still more profusely in building its nests? 

The chimney swallow is said to break off the twigs as it flies. 

Pratt says he one day walked out with Wesson, with their rifles, as far as Hunt's Bridge. Looking down stream, he saw a swallow sitting on a bush very far off, at which he took aim and fired with ball. He was surprised to see that he had touched the swallow, for it flew directly across the river toward Simon Brown's barn, always descending toward the earth or water, not being able to maintain itself; but what surprised him most was to see a second swallow come flying be hind and repeatedly strike the other with all his force beneath, so as to toss him up as often as he approached the ground and enable him to continue his flight, and thus he continued to do till they were out of sight. 

Pratt said he resolved that he would never fire at a swallow again. 

Looked at a Sharp's rifle, a Colt's revolver, a Maynard's, and a Thurber's revolver. The last fires fastest (by a steady pull), but not so smartly, and is not much esteemed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 29, 1856

Rhexia. Probably would be earlier if not mowed down. See July 29, 1853 ("About these times some hundreds of men with freshly sharpened scythes make an irruption into my garden when in its rankest condition, and clip my herbs all as close as they can,"); September 18, 1854 ("Fringed gentian . . .that has been cut off by the mowers, . . . may after all be earlier.")  See also July 18, 1852 ("The petals of the rhexia have a beautiful clear purple with a violet tinge."); August 1, 1856 (" They make a splendid show, these brilliant rose-colored patches . . Yet few ever see them in this perfection, unless the haymaker who levels them, or the birds that fly over the meadow.") and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Rhexia Virginica (meadow-beauty)

What I have called Hieracium Gronovii , has achenia like H . venosum; so I will give it up. See October 23, 1853  ("Is it Gronovii or veiny-leaved?") and note to July 17, 1853 ("I think we have no Hieracium Gronoviis")

July 29. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 29

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

On the migration of swallows.

August 5. 

4 A. M. — On river to see swallows. They are all gone; yet Fay saw them there last night after we passed. Probably they started very early. 

I asked Minott if he ever saw swallows migrating, not telling him what I had seen, and he said that he used to get up and go out to mow very early in the morning on his meadow, as early as he could see to strike, and once, at that hour, hearing a noise, he looked up and could just distinguish high overhead fifty thousand swallows. He thought it was in the latter part of August. 

What I saw is like what White says of the swallows, in the autumn, roosting “every night in the osier beds of the aits” of the river Thames; and his editor, Jesse, says, “Swallows in countless numbers still assemble every autumn on the willows growing on the aits of the river Thames.” And Jardine, in his notes to Wilson, says that a clergyman of Rotherham describes in an anonymous pamphlet their assembling (in the words of the pamphlet) “at the willow ground, on the banks of the canal, preparatory to their migration,” early in September, 1815, daily increasing in numbers until there were tens of thousands. 

As I was paddling back at 6 A. M., saw, nearly half a mile off, a blue heron standing erect on the topmost twig of the great buttonwood on the street in front of Mr. Prichard’s house, while perhaps all within were abed and asleep. Little did they think of it, and how they were presided over. He looked at first like a spiring twig against the sky, till you saw him flap his wings. Presently he launched off and flew away over Mrs. Brooks’s house. 

It seems that I used to tie a regular granny’s knot in my shoe-strings, and I learned of myself —rediscovered—to tie a true square knot, or what sailors sometimes call a reef-knot. It needed to be as secure as a reef-knot in any gale, to withstand the wringing and twisting I gave it in my walks. 

The common small violet lespedeza out, elliptic leaved, one inch long. The small white spreading polygala, twenty rods behind Wyman site, some time. Very common this year. 

It is the wet season, and there is a luxuriant dark foliage. Hear a yellow-legs flying over,—phe' phe phe, phe' phe phe. 

8 P. M. — On river to see swallows. 

At this hour the robins fly to high, thick oaks (as this swamp white oak) to roost for the night. 

The wings of the chimney swallows flying near me make a whistling sound like a duck’s. Is not this peculiar among the swallows? They flutter much for want of tail. 

I see martins about. Now many swallows in the twilight, after circling eight feet high, come back two or three hundred feet high and then go down the river.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  August 5, 1855

Yellow-legs. See May 31, 1854 ( "It acts the part of a telltale." "watchful, but not timid, ... while it stands on the lookout ... wades in the water to the middle of its yellow legs; goes off with a loud and sharp phe phe phe phe. ..."); September 14, 1854 ("A flock of thirteen tell tales, great yellow-legs, start up with their shrill whistle from the midst of the great Sudbury meadow, and away they sail in a flock...").

August 5. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 5

 

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