To my great surprise the saxifrage is in bloom.

April 3. 

Saturday.


Nothing is more saddening than an ineffectual and proud intercourse with those of whom we expect sympathy and encouragement. I repeatedly find myself drawn toward certain persons but to be disappointed. No concessions which are not radical are the least satisfaction. By myself I can live and thrive, but in the society of incompatible friends I starve. To cultivate their society is to cherish a sore which can only be healed by abandoning them. I can not trust my neighbors whom I know any more than I can trust the law of gravitation and jump off the Cliffs. 

The last two Tribunes I have not looked at. I have no time to read newspapers. If you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events which make the news transpire, — thinner than the paper on which it is printed, — then these things will fill the world for you; but if you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them. 

No fields are so barren to me as the men of whom I expect everything but get nothing. In their neighborhood I experience a painful yearning for society, which cannot be satisfied, for the hate is greater than the love. 

P. M. – To Cliffs. 

At Hayden's I hear hylas on two keys or notes. Heard one after the other, it might be mistaken for the varied note of one. 

The little croakers, too, are very lively there. I get close to them and witness a great commotion and half hopping, half swimming, about, with their heads out, apparently in pursuit of each other, — perhaps thirty or forty within a few square yards and fifteen or twenty within one yard. There is not only the incessant lively croaking of many together, as usually heard, but a lower, hoarser, squirming, screwing kind of croak, perhaps from the other sex. As I approach nearer, they disperse and bury themselves in the grass at the bottom; only one or two remain outstretched on the surface, and, at another step, these, too, conceal themselves. 

Looking up the river yesterday, in a direction opposite to the sun, not long before it set, the water was of a rich, dark blue — while looking at it in a direction diagonal to this, i. e. northeast, it was nearly slate-colored. 

To my great surprise the saxifrage is in bloom. It was, as it were, by mere accident that I found it. I had not observed any particular forwardness in it, when, happening to look under a projecting rock in a little nook on the south side of a stump, I spied one little plant which had opened three or four blossoms high up the Cliff. 

Evidently you must look very sharp and faithfully to find the first flower, such is the advantage of position, and when you have postponed a flower for a week and are turning away, a little further search may reveal it.

Some flowers, perhaps, have advantages one year which they have not the next. This spring, as well as the past winter, has been remarkably free from snow, and this reason, and the plant being hardy withal, may account for its early blossoming.

With what skill it secures moisture and heat, growing commonly in a little bed of moss which keeps it moist, and lying low in some cleft of the rock! The sunniest and most sheltered exposures possible it secures. This faced the southeast, was nearly a foot under the eaves of the rock, of buds in the least above the level of its projecting, calyx-like leaves. It was shelter within shelter. The blasts sweep over it. Ready to shoot upward when it shall be warm. The leaves of those which have been more exposed are turned red. It is a very pretty, snug plant with its notched leaves, one of the neatest and prettiest leaves seen now. 

A blackberry vine which lay over the rock was beginning to leave out, as much or more than the gooseberry in the garden, such was the reflected heat. The Missouri currant is perhaps more advanced than the early gooseberry in our garden. 

The female Populus tremuliformis catkins, narrower and at present more red and somewhat less downy than the male, west side of railroad at Deep Cut, quite as forward as the male in this situation. 

The male P. grandidentata's a little further west are nearly out.

I should have noticed the fact that the pistillate flower of the hazel peeps forth gradually.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 3, 1853

I hear hylas on two keys or notes. Heard one after the other, it might be mistaken for the varied note of one. See March 31, 1857 (" As I rise the east side of the Hill, I hear the distant faint peep of hylodes . . ..  How gradually and imperceptibly the peep of the hylodes mingles with and swells the volume of sound which makes the voice of awakening nature! If you do not listen carefully for its first note, you probably will not hear it, and, not having heard that, your ears become used to the sound, so that you will hardly notice it at last, however loud and universal.. . . The shrill peeping of the hylodes locates itself nowhere in particular.");  April 1, 1860 (" I hear the first hylodes by chance, but no doubt they have been heard some time. "); April 2, 1852 ("I hear a solitary hyla for the first time."); 

The little croakers, too, are very lively there. See March 26, 1860 ("The wood frog may be heard March 15, as this year, or not till April 13, as in ’56, — twenty-nine days."); March 31, 1857 ("The dry croaking and tut tut of the frogs (a sound which ducks seem to imitate, a kind of quacking, —and they are both of the water!) is plainly enough down there in some pool in the woods, but the shrill peeping of the hylodes locates itself nowhere in particular."); April 4, 1857 (“Caught a croaking frog in some smooth water in the railroad gutter. Above it was a uniform (perhaps olive?) brown, without green, and a yellowish line along the edge of the lower jaws. . . What frog can it be?”); April 8, 1852 ("To-day I hear the croak of frogs in small pond-holes in the woods,"); April 13, 1855 ("The small croaking frogs are now generally heard in all those stagnant ponds or pools in woods floored with leaves, which are mainly dried up in the summer.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica)

 Looking up the river yesterday, in a direction opposite to the sun, not long before it set, the water was of a rich, dark blue. See  April 4, 1855 ("All the earth is bright; the very pines glisten, and the water is a bright blue."); April 5, 1856 ("We overlook the bright-blue flood alternating with fields of ice (we being on the same side with the sun). The first sight of the blue water in the spring is exhilarating. "); April 9, 1856  ("The water on the meadows now, looking with the sun, is a far deeper and more exciting blue than the heavens. "); April 9, 1859 ("For three weeks past, when I have looked northward toward the flooded meadows they have looked dark-blue or blackish." See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blue Waters in Spring

 

To my great surprise the saxifrage is in bloom. under a projecting rock. See April 6, 1858 ("At Lee's Cliff I find no saxifrage in bloom above the rock . . .but on a few small warm shelves under the rocks the saxifrage makes already a pretty white edging.");  April 10, 1855 ("As for the saxifrage, when I had given it up for to-day, having, after a long search in the warmest clefts and recesses, found only three or four buds which showed some white, I at length, on a still warmer shelf, found one flower partly expanded, and its common peduncle had shot up an inch.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  the Saxifrage in Spring (Saxifraga vernalis)

You must look very sharp and faithfully to find the first flower. See April 17, 1855 ("undoubtedly an insect will have found the first flower before you"); April 2, 1856 ("It will take you half a lifetime to find out where to look for the earliest flower"); February 28, 1857 ("It takes several years' faithful search to learn where to look for the earliest flowers.")  See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Earliest Flower, 

The female Populus tremuliformis catkins, narrower and at present more red and somewhat less downy than the male See March 29, 1853 ("The catkins of the Populus tremuloides are just beginning to open, — to curl over and downward like caterpillars")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aspens

April 3. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 3

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

No doubt on almost every such warm bank now you will find a snake lying out.

April 2.

P. M. – To yew and R. W. E.'s Cliff. 

April 2, 2018

At Hubbard’s Grove I see a woodchuck. He waddles to his hole and then puts out his gray nose within thirty feet to reconnoitre.

It is too windy, and the surface of the croaker pool is too much ruffled, for any of the croakers to be lying out, but I notice a large mass of their spawn there well advanced.

At the first little sluiceway just beyond, I catch a large Rana halecina, which puffs itself up considerably, as if it might be full of spawn. I must look there for its spawn. It is rather sluggish; cannot jump much yet. It allows me to stroke it and at length take it up in my hand, squatting still in it.

Who would believe that out of these dry and withered banks will come violets, lupines, etc., in profusion?

At the spring on the west side of Fair Haven Hill, I startle a striped snake. It is a large one with a white stripe down the dorsal ridge between two broad black ones, and on each side the last a buff one, and then blotchy brown sides, darker toward tail; beneath, greenish-yellow. This snake generally has a pinkish cast.

There is another, evidently the same species but not half so large, with its neck lying affectionately across the first, — I may have separated them by my approach, – which, seen by itself, you might have thought a distinct species. The dorsal line in this one is bright-yellow, though not so bright as the lateral ones, and the yellow about the head; also the black is more glossy, and this snake has no pink cast.

No doubt on almost every such warm bank now you will find a snake lying out. The first notice I had of them was a slight rustling in the leaves, as if made by a squirrel, though I did not see them for five minutes after. The biggest at length dropped straight down into a hole, within a foot of where he lay. They allowed me to lift their heads with a stick four or five inches without stirring, nor did they mind the flies that alighted on them, looking steadily at me without the slightest motion of head, body, or eyes, as if they were of marble; and as you looked hard at them, you continually forgot that they were real and not imaginary.

The hazel has just begun to shed pollen here, perhaps yesterday in some other places. This loosening and elongating of its catkins is a sufficiently pleasing sight, in dry and warm hollows on the hillsides. It is an unexpected evidence of life in so dry a shrub.

On the side of Fair Haven Hill I go looking for bay wings, turning my glass to each sparrow on a rock or tree. At last I see one, which flies right up straight from a rock eighty [or] one hundred feet and warbles a peculiar long and pleasant strain, after the manner of the skylark, methinks, and close by I see another, apparently a bay-wing, though I do not see its white in tail, and it utters while sitting the same subdued, rather peculiar strain.

See how those black ducks, swimming in pairs far off on the river, are disturbed by our appearance, swimming away in alarm, and now, when we advance again, they rise and fly up-stream and about, uttering regularly a crack cr-r-rack of alarm, even for five or ten minutes, as they circle about, long after we have lost sight of them. Now we hear it on this side, now on that.

The yew shows its bundles of anthers plainly, as if it might open in four or five days.

Just as I get home, I think I see crow blackbirds about a willow by the river.

It is not important that the poet should say some particular thing, but should speak in harmony with nature. The tone and pitch of his voice is the main thing. It appears to me that the wisest philosophers that I know are as foolish as Sancho Panza dreaming of his Island. Considering the ends they propose and the obstructions in their path, they are even. One philosopher is feeble enough alone, but observe how each multiplies his difficulties, – by how many unnecessary links he allies himself to the existing state of things. He girds himself for his enterprise with fasting and prayer, and then, instead of pressing forward like a light-armed soldier, with the fewest possible hindrances, he at once hooks himself on to some immovable institution, as a family, the very rottenest of them all, and begins to sing and scratch gravel towards his objects. Why, it is as much as the strongest man can do decently to bury his friends and relations without making a new world of it. But if the philosopher is as foolish as Sancho Panza, he is also as wise, and nothing so truly makes a thing so or so as thinking it so.

Approaching the side of a wood on which were some pines, this afternoon, I heard the note of the pine warbler, calling the pines to life, though I did not see it. It has probably been here as long as I said before.

Returning, I saw a sparrow-like bird flit by in an orchard, and, turning my glass upon it, was surprised by its burning yellow. This higher color in birds surprises us like an increase of warmth in the day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 2, 1858

A woodchuck waddles to his hole and then puts out his gray nose. See April 2, 1856 ("A woodchuck has been out under the Cliff, and patted the sand, cleared out the entrance to his burrow.”)

A bay wing warbles a peculiar long and pleasant strain. Close by I see another, and it utters while sitting the same subdued, rather peculiar strain. See  April 13, 1856 (“I hear a bay-wing on the railroad fence sing, the rhythm somewhat like, char char (or here here), che che, chip chip chip (fast), chitter chitter chitter chit (very fast and jingling), tchea tchea (jinglingly). It has another strain, considerably different, but a second also sings the above. Two on different posts are steadily singing the same, as if contending with each other, notwithstanding the cold wind”); See also April 8, 1859 (“ See the first bay-wing hopping and flitting along the railroad bank, but hear no note as yet.”); April 12, 1857 (“I think I hear the bay-wing here.”); April 13, 1855(“See a sparrow without marks on throat or breast, running peculiarly in the dry grass in the open field beyond, and hear its song, and then see its white feathers in tail; the bay-wing”);  April 15, 1859 (“The bay-wing now sings — the first I have been able to hear”). See April 13, 1854 ("Did I see a bay-wing?"); May 12, 1857 ("As the bay-wing sang many thousand years ago, so sang he to-night.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bay-Wing Sparrow

It is not important that the poet should say some particular thing, but should speak in harmony with nature. See  May 23, 1853 (“The poet must bring to Nature the smooth mirror in which she is to be reflected.”)

Approaching the side of a wood on which were some pines, this afternoon, I heard the note of the pine warbler, calling the pines to life, though I did not see it. See April 2, 1853 ("The edge of the wood is not a plane surface, but has depth. Hear and see what I call the pine warbler, --vetter vetter vetter vetter vet, -- the cool woodland sound.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Pine Warbler

An early frog, peculiar to pools and small ponds in the woods and fields.

March 30. 

March 30, 2018

P. M. – To my boat at Cardinal Shore and thence to Lee's Cliff. 

Another fine afternoon, warmer than before, I think. I walk in the fields now without slumping in the thawing ground, or there are but few soft places, and the distant sand-banks look dry and warm. 

The frogs are now heard leaping into the ditches on your approach, bullfrog under my boat. 

Approaching carefully the little pool south of Hubbard's Grove, I see the dimples where the croakers which were on the surface have dived, and I see two or three still spread out on the surface, in the sun. They are very wary, and instantly dive to the bottom on your approach and bury themselves in the weeds or mud. The water is quite smooth, and it is very warm here, just under the edge of the wood, but I do not hear any croaking. Later, in a pool behind Lee's Cliff, I hear them, – the waking up of the leafy pools. The last was a pool amid the blue berry and huckleberry and a few little pines. I do not remember that I ever hear this frog in the river or ponds. They seem to be an early frog, peculiar to pools and small ponds in the woods and fields. 

I notice, scampering over this water, two or three brown spiders, middling-sized. They appear to be the ones which have spun this gossamer. 

There is at the bottom of this pool much of the ludwigia, that evergreen weed seen in winter at the bottom of pools and ditches. Methinks those peculiar bulbs, some of which I see near it, are of this plant.

 Landing at Bittern Cliff, I went round through the woods to get sight of ducks on the pond. Creeping down through the woods, I reached the rocks, and saw fifteen or twenty sheldrakes scattered about. The full plumaged males, conspicuously black and white and often swimming in pairs, appeared to be the most wary, keeping furthest out. Others, with much less white and duller black, were very busily fishing just north the inlet of the pond, where there is about three feet of water, and others still playing and preening themselves. 

These ducks, whose tame representatives are so sluggish and deliberate in their motions, were full of activity. A party of these ducks fishing and playing is a very lively scene. On one side, for instance, you will see a party of eight or ten busily diving and most of the time under water, not rising high when they come up, and soon plunging again. The whole surface will be in commotion there, though no ducks may be seen. I saw one come up with a large fish, whereupon all the rest, as they successively came to the surface, gave chase to it, while it held its prey over the water in its bill, and they pursued with a great rush and clatter a dozen or more rods over the surface, making a great furrow in the water, but, there being some trees in the way, I could not see the issue. 

I saw seven or eight all dive together as with one consent, remaining under half a minute or more. On another side you see a party which seem to be playing and pluming themselves. They will run and dive and come up and dive again every three or four feet, occasionally one pursuing an other; will flutter in the water, making it fly, or erect themselves at full length on the surface like a penguin, and flap their wings. This party make an incessant noise. Again you will see some steadily tacking this way or that in the middle of the pond, and often they rest there asleep with their heads in their backs. They readily cross the pond, swimming from this side to that.

While I am watching the ducks, a mosquito is endeavoring to sting me. 

At dusk I hear two flocks of geese go over.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 30, 1858

Approaching carefully the little pool south of Hubbard's Grove, I see the dimples where the croakers which were on the surface have dived. Later, in a pool behind Lee's Cliff, I hear them, – the waking up of the leafy pools. See March 26, 1860 ("The wood frog may be heard March 15, as this year, or not till April 13, as in’56, — twenty-nine days."); March 15, 1860 ("Am surprised to hear, from the pool behind Lee's Cliff, the croaking of the wood frog. . . . How suddenly they awake! yesterday, as it were, asleep and dormant, to-day as lively as ever they are. The awakening of the leafy woodland pools.."); March 23, 1859 ("I hear a single croak from a wood frog. . . . Thus we sit on that rock, hear the first wood frog's croak"); March 24, 1859 (" Can you ever be sure that you have heard the very first wood frog in the township croak?"); March 26, 1857 ("As I go through the woods by Andromeda Ponds, though it is rather cool and windy in exposed places, I hear a faint, stertorous croak from a frog in the open swamp; at first one faint note only, which I could not be sure that I had heard, but, after listening long, one or two more suddenly croaked in confirmation of my faith, and all was silent again."); March 27, 1853 ("Tried to see the faint-croaking frogs at J. P. Brown's Pond in the woods. They are remarkably timid and shy; had their noses and eyes out, croaking, but all ceased, dove, and concealed themselves, before I got within a rod of the shore."); March 28, 1858 ("Coming home, I hear the croaking frogs in the pool on the south side of Hubbard’s Grove. It is sufficiently warm for them at last."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica)

Now in the woods there is still snow but many open places running with water in the trails. My old snowshoe tracks are elevated. The streams are rushing. There is no difficulty going anywhere. No out of breath. We go to the view via under view trail and up the shortcut. It being too windy from the west we go to the double chair. I had not been here in the several weeks since the big snows. The red maples are showing their buds We hear and see crows usually in pairs coursing overhead.

Down the mountain trail there are spots where it is bare earth. Quite different to be walking on this solid ground. The snow is rain-saturated mushy and easy walking although there is some sliding.

On the other side of the middle pond a tree has a root growing perpendicularly out of the trunk about two or 3 feet up making a nice seat. Probably was a seedling on a tip up that is now gone.Above the cliff trail that woodpecker tree is now fallen over. The top half of the cliff trail is easy --no longer any snow. We spend good time sawing  branches and eventually saw our way through the pine that blocks the trail along the cliff. A long walk staying out almost ’til 8. (And it is light this late ) zphx 20180330

When one kind of life goes, another comes. The same warm and placid day calls out men and butterflies.

March 28
P. M. — To Cliffs.

After a cloudy morning, a warm and pleasant afternoon. I hear that a few geese were seen this morning.

Israel Rice says that he heard two brown thrashers sing this morning! Is sure because he has kept the bird in a cage. I can’t believe it.

I go down the railroad, turning off in the cut. I notice the hazel stigmas in the warm hollow on the right there, just beginning to peep forth. This is an unobserved but very pretty and interesting evidence of the progress of the season. I should not have noticed it if I had not carefully examined the fertile buds. It is like a crimson star first dimly detected in the twilight. The warmth of the day, in this sunny hollow above the withered sedge, has caused the stigmas to show their lips through their scaly shield. They do not project more than the thirtieth of an inch, some not the sixtieth. The staminate catkins are also considerably loosened. Just as the turtles put forth their heads, so these put forth their stigmas in the spring. How many accurate thermometers there are on every hill and in every valley: Measure the length of the hazel stigmas, and you can tell how much warmth there has been this spring. How fitly and exactly any season of the year may be described by indicating the condition of some flower! 

I go by the springs toward the epigaea. 

It is a fine warm day with a slight haziness. It is pleasant to sit outdoors now, and, it being Sunday, neighbors walk about or stand talking in the sun, looking at and scratching the dry earth, which they are glad to see and smell again. 

In the sunny epigaea wood I start up two Vanessa Antiopa, which flutter about over the dry leaves be fore, and are evidently attracted toward me, settling at last within a few feet. The same warm and placid day calls out men and butterflies. 

It is surprising that men can be divided into those who lead an indoor and those who lead an outdoor life, as if birds and quadrupeds were to be divided into those that lived a within nest or burrow life and [those] that lived without their nests and holes chiefly. How many of our troubles are house-bred! He lives an out door life; i.e., he is not squatted behind the shield of a door, he does not keep himself tubbed. It is such a questionable phrase as an “honest man,” or the “naked eye,” as if the eye which is not covered with a spy glass should properly be called naked.

From Wheeler's plowed field on the top of Fair Haven Hill, I look toward Fair Haven Pond, now quite smooth. There is not a duck nor a gull to be seen on it. I can hardly believe that it was so alive with them yesterday. Apparently they improve this warm and pleasant day, with little or no wind, to continue their journey northward. The strong and cold northwest wind of about a week past has probably detained them. Knowing that the meadows and ponds were swarming with ducks yesterday, you go forth this particularly pleasant and still day to see them at your leisure, but find that they are all gone. No doubt there are some left, and many more will soon come with the April rains. It is a wild life that is associated with stormy and blustering weather. When the invalid comes forth on his cane, and misses improve the pleasant air to look for signs of vegetation, that wild life has withdrawn itself. 

But when one kind of life goes, another comes. This plowed land on the top of the hill — and all other fields as far as I observe — is covered with cobwebs, which every few inches are stretched from root to root or clod to clod, gleaming and waving in the sun, the light flashing along them as they wave in the wind. How much insect life and activity connected with this peculiar state of the atmosphere these imply! Yet I do not notice a spider. Small cottony films are continually settling down or blown along through the air. [A gossamer day. I see them also for a week after.] Does not this gossamer answer to that of the fall? They must have sprung to with one consent last night or this morning and bent new cables to the clods and stubble all over this part of the world. 

The little fuzzy gnats, too, are in swarms in the air, peopling that uncrowded space. They are not confined by any fence. Already the distant forest is streaked with lines of thicker and whiter haze over the successive valleys. 

Walden is open. When? On the 20th it was pretty solid. C. sees a very little ice in it to-day, but probably it gets entirely free to-night.

Fair Haven Pond is open.

[This and Flint's and Walden all open together this year, the latter was so thinly frozen! (For C. says Flint's and Walden were each a third open on the 25th.)]

Sitting on the top of the Cliffs, I look through my glass at the smooth river and see the long forked ripple made by a musquash swimming along over the  meadow. While I sit on these warm rocks, turning my glass toward the mountains, I can see the sun reflected from the rocks on Monadnock, and I know that it would be pleasant to be there too to-day as well as here. I see, too, warm and cosy seats on the rocks, where the flies are buzzing, and probably some walker is enjoying the prospect. 

From this hilltop I overlook, again bare of snow, putting on a warm, hazy spring face, this seemingly concave circle of earth, in the midst of which I was born and dwell, which in the northwest and southeast has a more distant blue rim to it, as it were of more costly manufacture. On ascending the hill next his home, every man finds that he dwells in a shallow concavity whose sheltering walls are the convex surface of the earth, beyond which he cannot see. I see those familiar features, that large type, with which all my life is associated, unchanged. 

Cleaning out the spring on the west side of Fair Haven Hill, I find a small frog, apparently a bullfrog, just come forth, which must have wintered in the mud there. There is very little mud, however, and the rill never runs more than four or five rods before it is soaked up, and the whole spring often dries up in the summer. It seems, then, that two or three frogs, the sole inhabitants of so small a spring, will bury them selves at its head. A few frogs will be buried at the puniest spring-head. 

Coming home, I hear the croaking frogs in the pool on the south side of Hubbard’s Grove. It is sufficiently warm for them at last. 

Near the sand path above Potter's mud-hole I find what I should call twenty and more mud turtles’ eggs close together, which appear to have been dug from a hole close by last year. They are all broken or cracked and more or less indented and depressed, and they look remarkably like my pigeon's egg fungi, a dirty white covered thickly with a pure white roughness, which through a glass is seen to be oftenest in the form of minute but regular rosettes of a very pure white substance. If these are turtles' eggs, –and there is no stem mark of a fungus, – it is remarkable that they should thus come to resemble so closely another natural product, the fungus.

The first lark of the 23d sailed through the meadow with that peculiar prolonged chipping or twittering sound, perhaps sharp clucking.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 28, 1858

I start up two Vanessa Antiopa, which flutter about over the dry leaves before, and are evidently attracted toward me, settling at last within a few feet. See March 28, 1857 ("The broad buff edge of the Vanessa Antiopa’s wings harmonizes with the russet ground it flutters over, and as it stands concealed in the winter, with its wings folded above its back, in a cleft in the rocks, the gray brown under side of its wings prevents its being distinguished from the rocks themselves.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Buff-edged Butterfly

Coming home, I hear the croaking frogs in the pool on the south side of Hubbard’s Grove. It is sufficiently warm for them at last. See March 26, 1860 ("The wood frog may be heard March 15, as this year, or not till April 13, as in’56, — twenty-nine days."); March 15, 1860 ("Am surprised to hear, from the pool behind Lee's Cliff, the croaking of the wood frog. . . . How suddenly they awake! yesterday, as it were, asleep and dormant, to-day as lively as ever they are. The awakening of the leafy woodland pools.."); March 23, 1859 ("I hear a single croak from a wood frog. . . . Thus we sit on that rock, hear the first wood frog's croak"); March 24, 1859 (" Can you ever be sure that you have heard the very first wood frog in the township croak? "); March 26, 1857 ("As I go through the woods by Andromeda Ponds, though it is rather cool and windy in exposed places, I hear a faint, stertorous croak from a frog in the open swamp; at first one faint note only, which I could not be sure that I had heard, but, after listening long, one or two more suddenly croaked in confirmation of my faith, and all was silent again"); March 27, 1853 ("Tried to see the faint-croaking frogs at J. P. Brown's Pond in the woods. They are remarkably timid and shy; had their noses and eyes out, croaking, but all ceased, dove, and concealed themselves, before I got within a rod of the shore."); March 30, 1858 ("Later, in a pool behind Lee's Cliff, I hear them, – the waking up of the leafy pools. . . . I do not remember that I ever hear this frog in the river or ponds. They seem to be an early frog, peculiar to pools and small ponds in the woods and fields.")

I hear the croaking frogs

April 5. 

Sunday. 

Arthur R. has been decking a new Vineyard boat which he has bought, and making a curb about the open part.  

P. M. —-Walked round by the ruins of the factory. See in many places the withered leaves of the aletris in rather low ground, about the still standing withered stems. It was well called husk-root by the squaw. 

Arthur says that he just counted, at 9.30 P. M., twenty toads that had hopped out from under the wall on to the sidewalk near the house. This, then, is apparently the way with the toads. They very early hop out from under walls on to sidewalks in the warmer nights, long before they are heard to ring, and are often frozen and then crushed there. Probably single ones ring earlier than I supposed. 

I hear the croaking frogs at 9.30 P. M., also the speed speed over R.’s meadow, which I once referred to the snipe, but R. says is the woodcock, whose other strain he has already heard.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 5, 1857



See in many places the withered leaves of the aletris . . . See June 26, 1856 (I had been expecting to find the aletris about New Bedford . . ."')

Frozen toads. . . .Probably single ones ring earlier than I supposed. See April 5, 1860 ("I hear, a very faint distant ring of toads, which, though I walk and walk all the afternoon, I never come nearer to.");See also  April 2, 1857 ("On the sidewalk in Cambridge I see a toad, which apparently hopped out from under a fence last evening, frozen quite hard in a sitting posture.");  April 6, 1860 ("A toad has been seen dead on the sidewalk, flattened.")

I hear the croaking frogs. See March 31, 1857 ("The dry croaking and tut tut of the frogs (a sound which ducks seem to imitate, a kind of quacking...) is plainly enough down there in some pool in the woods, but the shrill peeping of the hylodes locates itself nowhere in particular. . ."); April 8, 1852 ("To-day I hear the croak of frogs in small pond-holes in the woods,");  April 13, 1855 ("The small croaking frogs are now generally heard in all those stagnant ponds or pools in woods floored with leaves, which are mainly dried up in the summer.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica)

I hear the speed speed over R.’s meadow, which I once referred to the snipe, but R. says is the woodcock. See April 5, 1855 ("Scare up a snipe close to the water’s edge ") See also March 28, 1854 ("See this afternoon either a snipe or a woodcock."); I. April 22, 1860 ("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.") and A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The American Woodcock

Croaking frogs and peepers.

c

April 13

P. M. — To Second Division cowslips. 

A fair day, but a cool wind still, from the snow covered country in the northwest. It is, however, pleasant to sit in the sun in sheltered places. 

The small croaking frogs are now generally heard in all those stagnant ponds or pools in woods floored with leaves, which are mainly dried up in the summer. At first, perhaps, you hear but one or two dry croaks, but, if you sit patiently, you may hear quite a concert of them at last. — er-wah er-wah er-wah, with a nasal twang and twist. — and see them dimpling the surface here and there by their movements. But if you approach the pond-side,.they suddenly cease. 

We, hear them at J. P. Brown’s Pond, which is edged with ice still on the north. The water must be smooth and the weather pretty warm. 

There is still some icy snow in hollows under the north sides of woods. 

I see the feathers, apparently of a fox-colored sparrow, completely covering a stump, where some creature has devoured it. 

At a great ant-hill, the common half red, half-black ants are stirring, apparently clearing out rubbish from their nest. 

Great quantities of odoriferous sweetgale seed are collected with the scum at the outlet of Nut Meadow, for they float. The Alnus incana blossoms begin generally to show. The serrulata will undoubtedly blossom to-morrow in some places. 

The pine on the Marlborough road which I saw from my window has been sawed down the past winter. I try to count its circles; count sixty-one from centre to sap, but there the pitch conceals the rest completely. I guess there were fifteen more, at least. The tree was probably quite eighty years old. It was about two and a quarter feet in diameter. 

The common hazel just out. It is perhaps the prettiest flower of the shrubs that have opened. A little bunch of (in this case) half a dozen catkins, one and three quarters inches long, trembling in the wind, shedding golden pollen on the hand, and, close by, as many minute, but clear crystalline crimson stars at the end of a bare and seemingly dead twig. 

For two or three days in my walks, I had given the hazel catkins a fillip with my finger under their chins to see if they were in bloom, but in vain; but here, on the warm south side of a wood, I find one bunch fully out and completely relaxed. They know when to trust themselves to the weather. 

At the same time I hear through the wood the sharp peep of the first hylodes I have chanced to hear. 

Many cowslip buds show a little yellow, but they will not open there for two or three days. The road is paved with solid ice there. 

Returning by the steep side-hill just south of Holden’s wood-lot and some dozen or fourteen rods west of the open land, I saw, amid the rattlesnake-plantain leaves, what I suspect to be the Polygala paucifolia, -- some very beautiful oval leaves of a dull green (green turned dark) above, but beneath -- and a great many showed the under side -- a clear and brilliant purple (or lake?), growing and looking like checkerberry leaves, but more flaccid. It is three or four inches high, with the oval and revolute leaves at top and a few remote small bract-like leaves on the (three-sided) stern. This polygala is sometimes called flowering wintergreen, and, indeed, it is not only an evergreen but somewhat pyrola-like to the eye. 

See a sparrow without marks on throat or breast, running peculiarly in the dry grass in the open field beyond, and hear its song, and then see its white feathers in tail; the baywing. 

A small willow by the roadside beyond William Wheeler’s, to-morrow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 13, 1855

A fair day, but a cool wind still, from the snow covered country in the northwest. It is, however, pleasant to sit in the sun in sheltered places. See April 8, 1859 (" Cold as it is, and has been for several weeks, in all exposed places, I find it unexpectedly warm in perfectly sheltered places where the sun shines. And so it always is in April. The cold wind from the northwest seems distinct and separable from the air here warmed by the sun.")

Stars at the end of a seemingly bare twig. See March 27, 1853 ("So minute that only an observer of nature, or one who looked for them, would notice it.”); April 11, 1856 (You thread your way amid the rustling oak leaves on some warm hillside sloping to the south, detecting no growth as yet . . . when, glancing along the dry stems, in the midst of all this dryness, you detect the crimson stigmas of the hazel, like little stars peeping forth, and perchance a few catkins are dangling loosely in the zephyr and sprinkling their pollen on the dry leaves beneath); April 24,1852 (""Observed the interesting light-crimson star-like flowers of the hazel, the catkins being now more yellowish.) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: the Hazel

Here, on the warm south side of a wood, I find one bunch fully out and completely relaxed. They know when to trust themselves to the weather. See May 7, 1854 ("Flowers are self-registering indicators of fairweather. I remember how I waited for the hazel catkins to become relaxed and shed their pollen, but they delayed, till at last there came a pleasanter and warmer day and I took off my greatcoat while surveying in the woods, and then, when I went to dinner at noon, hazel catkins in full flower were dangling from the banks by the roadside and yellowed my clothes with their pollen.”)

The small croaking frogs are now generally heard in all those stagnant ponds or pools in woods floored with leaves, which are mainly dried up in the summer. See March 31, 1857 ("The dry croaking and tut tut of the frogs (a sound which ducks seem to imitate, a kind of quacking...) is plainly enough down there in some pool in the woods, but the shrill peeping of the hylodes locates itself nowhere in particular."); April 8, 1852 ("To-day I hear the croak of frogs in small pond-holes in the woods, and see dimples on the surface, which I suppose that they make, for when I approach they are silent and the dimples are no longer seen. They are very shy.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica)

At the same time I hear through the wood the sharp peep of the first hylodes I have chanced to hear. See  March 23, 1859 ("We hear the peep of one hylodes somewhere in this sheltered recess in the woods. And afterward, on the Lee side, I hear a single croak from a wood frog,");  March 31, 1855 ("I go listening for the croak of the first frog, or peep of a hylodes.");  April 18, 1855 ("Hylodes are peeping in a distant pool.") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The first frogs to begin calling

Still a cool wind but

pleasant to sit in the sun

in sheltered places.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Croaking frogs and peepers.

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

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Half an hour standing perfectly still to hear the frogs croak.

March 27.

Tried to see the faint-croaking frogs at J. P. Brown's Pond in the woods. They are remarkably timid and shy; had their noses and eyes out, croaking, but all ceased, dove, and concealed themselves, before I got within a rod of the shore. Stood perfectly still amid the bushes on the shore, before one showed himself; finally five or six, and all eyed me, gradually approached me within three feet to reconnoitre, and, though I waited about half an hour, would not utter a sound nor take their eyes off me, - were plainly affected by curiosity. 

Dark brown and some, perhaps, dark green, about two inches long; had their noses and eyes out when they croaked. If described at all, must be either young of Rana pipiens or the R. palustris.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal , March 27, 1853

March 28. My Aunt Maria asked me to read the life of Dr. Chalmers, which however I did not promise to do. Yesterday, Sunday, she was heard through the partition shouting to my Aunt Jane, who is deaf, "Think of it! He stood half an hour to-day to hear the frogs croak, and he wouldn't read the life of Chalmers."

See also April 8, 1852: "To-day I hear the croak of frogs in small pond-holes in the woods, and see dimples on the surface, which I suppose that they make, for when I approach they are silent and the dimples are no longer seen."

May 9, 1860:  “We sit by the shore of Goose Pond. … After sitting there a little while, I count noses of twenty frogs. It is a still, cloudy, thoughtful day.”

And July 17, 1854: "I watch them [white lillies] for an hour and a half."

To-day I hear the croak of frogs

April 8. 

To-day I hear the croak of frogs in small pond-holes in the woods, and see dimples on the surface, which I suppose that they make, for when I approach they are silent and the dimples are no longer seen. They are very shy. 

I notice the alder, the A. serrulata, in blossom, its reddish-brown catkins now lengthened and loose.

I see a light, of fishermen, I suppose, spearing to night on the river, though half the ground is covered with snow.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 8, 1852


To-day I hear the croak of frogs in small pond-holes in the woods. See April 8, 1855  ("Hear at a distance in the sprout-lands the croaks of frogs from some shallow pool.")

I notice the alder, the A. serrulata, in blossom. See April 8, 1855 ( I"Though I have looked widely, I have not found the alder out before. “); April 8, 1859 ("The Alnus serrulata is evidently in its prime considerably later than the incana, for those of the former which I notice to-day have scarcely begun, while the latter chance to be done. The fertile flowers are an interesting bright crimson in the sun. “). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Alders