People do not remember so great a flood.

April 23.

The water has risen one and a half inches at six this morning since last night. It is now, then, eight and a half inches above the iron truss, i. e. the horizontal part of it. There is absolutely no passing, in carriages or otherwise, over Hubbard's and the Red Bridge roads, and over none of the bridges for foot- travellers. Throughout this part of the country most people do not remember so great a flood, but, judging from some accounts, it was probably as high here thirty-five years ago. 

The willow catkins have made but little progress for a week. They have suffered from the cold rain and wind, and are partly blasted. 

It is a pleasant sight, among the pleasantest, at this season, to see the at first reddish anthers of the sterile catkins of our earliest willow bursting forth on their upper sides like rays of sunshine from amidst the downy fog, turning a more and more lively yellow as the pollen appears, – like a flash of sulphur. It is like the sun bursting out of a downy cloud or mists.

I hear this morning, in the pine woods above the railroad bridge, for the first time, that delicious cool-sounding wetter-wetter-wetter-wetter-wet’ from that small bird (pine warbler ?) in the tops of the pines. I associate it with the cool, moist, evergreen spring woods. 

The wood pewee [?} on an elm sings now peer-r-weet peer-r-weet, peer-wee’. It is not the simple peer-r-wet peer-r-wee' that I heard at first. Will it not change next to that more tender strain? 

Vegetation starts when the earth's axis is sufficiently inclined; i. e. it follows the sun. Insects and all the smaller animals (as well as many larger) follow vegetation. The fishes, the small fry, start probably for this reason; worms come out of the trees; buffaloes finally seek new pastures; water-bugs appear on the water, etc., etc. Next, the large fish and fish hawks, etc., follow the small fry; flycatchers follow the insects and worms. (The granivorous birds, who can depend on the supplies of dry seeds of last year, are to some extent independent of the seasons, and can remain through the winter or come early in the spring, and they furnish food for a few birds of prey at that season.) Indians follow the buffaloes; trout, suckers, etc., follow the water-bugs, etc.; reptiles follow vegetation, insects, and worms; birds of prey, the fly- catchers, etc. Man follows all, and all follow the sun.

The greater or less abundance of food determines migrations. If the buds are deceived and suffer from frost, then are the birds. The great necessary of life for the brute creation is food; next, perhaps, shelter, i.e. a suitable climate; thirdly, perhaps, security from foes.

The storm may be said to have fairly ended last night. I observed yesterday that it was drier in most fields, pastures, and even meadows that were not reached by the flood, immediately after this remarkable fall of water than at the beginning. The condition of the fields has been steadily improving for walkers. I think one reason is that there was some frost in the ground which the rain melted, so that the ground soaked up the water. But no doubt it goes to prove dryness of our sandy soil and absence of springs. 

At 6 P. M. the water has fallen an inch and a half.

Heard the pigeon woodpecker today, that long-continued unmusical note, somewhat like a robin's, heard afar, yet pleasant to hear because associated with a more advanced stage of the season. 

Saw the Fringilla hyemalis to-day, lingering still.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 23, 1852

The water has risen one and a half inches at six this morning since last night.  See April 22, 1852 ("This makes five stormy days. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday . . . The water at 6 P. M. is one and a half inches higher than in the morning , i.e. seven inches above the iron truss.") See also April 22, 1856 ("These rain-storms -- this is the third day of one -- characterize the season."); April 22, 1857 ("The river higher than before and rising."); April 22, 1859 ("This afternoon there is an east wind, and a rain-storm accordingly beginning, the eighth of the kind with this wind."); April 22, 1861 ("It was high water again about a week ago.")

People do not remember so great a flood, but, judging from some accounts, it was probably as high here thirty-five years ago. See August 25, 1856 ("I was suggesting yesterday, as I have often before, that the town should provide a stone monument to be placed in the river . . . to record each high or low stage of the water. Now, when we have a remarkable freshet, we cannot tell surely whether it is higher than the one thirty or sixty years ago or not. ")

The at first reddish anthers of the sterile catkins of our earliest willow bursting forth on their upper sides like rays of sunshine See April 12, 1852 ("Saw the first blossoms (bright-yellow stamens or pistils) on the willow catkins to-day . . . The yellow blossom appears first on one side of the ament and is the most of bright and sunny color the spring has shown, the most decidedly flower-like that I have seen. . . It is fit that this almost earliest spring flower should be yellow, the color of the sun."); April 16, 1852 ("That large early swamp (?) willow catkin (the sterile blossom) opens on one side like a tinge of golden sunlight, the yellow anthers bursting through the down that invests the scales.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding 

In the pine woods above the railroad bridge, for the first time, that delicious cool-sounding wetter-wetter-wetter-wetter-wet’ from that small bird. See April 11, 1856 ("And hear in the old place, the pitch pine grove on the bank by the river, the pleasant ringing note of the pine warbler. Its a-che, vitter vitter, vitter vitter, vitter vitter, vitter vitter, vet rings through the open pine grove very rapidly. I also heard it at the old place by the railroad, as I came along. It is remarkable that I have so often heard it first in these two localities"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pine Warbler

Will it not change next to that more tender strain?  See note to April 14, 1852 ("I do not hear those peculiar tender die-away notes from the pewee yet. Is it another pewee, or a later note?")

All follow the sun. See September 13, 1852 ("How earnestly and rapidly each creature, each flower, is fulfilling its part while its day lasts! . . . As the planet in its orbit and around its axis, so do the seasons . . . The plant waits a whole year, and then blossoms the instant it is ready and the earth is ready for it, without the conception of delay.”);  March 18, 1856 (“Two little water-bugs . . . here they are, in the first open and smooth water, governed by the altitude of the sun.”); April 24, 1854 ("The summer approaches by almost insensibly increasing lieferungs of heat, each awakening some new bird or quadruped or reptile. Each creature awaits with confidence its proper degree of heat"); April 26, 1854 ("The buds start, then the insects, then the birds."); September 18, 1852 ("In the forenoons I move into a chamber on the east side of the house, and so follow the sun round.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: the new warmth of the sun and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, As the Seasons Revolve

Heard the pigeon woodpecker today. See  April 23, 1855 ("Saw two pigeon woodpeckers approach and, I think, put their bills together and utter that o-week, o-week.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Woodpecker (flicker)

April 23. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 23

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, People do not remember so great a flood

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

A yellowbird's nest; four eggs, developed

June 5. 

Sunday. P. M. — To Ball's Hill. 

Cat-briar in flower, how long? 

Allium not out. 

See several ducks, I think both summer and black. 

A yellowbird's nest; four eggs, developed. 

Pigeon woodpecker's nest in a hollow black willow over river; six eggs, almost hatched. 

The new white maple leaves look reddish, and at a distance brown, as if they had not put out yet.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 5, 1859

Allium not out. See June 7, 1857 ("Garlic . . . not yet out"); June 14, 1853 ("The Allium Canadense in Tarbell's meadow. Wild meadow garlic, with its head of bulbs and a few flower- buds, not yet").

Several ducks, both summer and black. See June 4, 1856 (“Found, on a hummock in the open swamp, in the midst of bushes, at the foot of a pitch pine, a nest about ten inches over, made of dry sedge and moss. I think it must have been a duck’s nest.”)

A yellowbird's nest; four eggs, developed. See  June 7, 1855 ("A yellowbird’s nest on a willow bough against a twig, ten feet high, four eggs."); June 9, 1855 ("A yellowbird’s nest eight feet from ground in crotch of a very slender maple"); June 9, 1856 ("A yellowbird’s nest in a poplar on Hubbard’s Bridge; four fresh eggs; ten feet high, three rods beyond fence.")

Pigeon woodpecker's nest in a hollow black willow over river; six eggs, almost hatched. See June 10, 1856 ("In a hollow apple tree, hole eighteen inches deep, young pigeon woodpeckers, large and well feathered.");  June 13, 1855 ("C. finds a pigeon woodpecker’s nest in an apple tree, five of those pearly eggs, about six feet from the ground."); June 13, 1858 ("In the great apple tree front of the Miles house I hear young pigeon woodpeckers")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Woodpecker (flicker).

. 

Thus these four species of birds have all come in one day.

March 17.

Hear the first bluebird. 

P. M. —To the Hill. 

A remarkably warm and pleasant day with a south or southwest wind, but still very bad walking, the frost coming out and the snow that was left going off. 

The air is full of bluebirds. I hear them far and near on all sides of the hill, warbling in the tree-tops, though I do not distinctly see them. 

I stand by the wall at the east base of the hill, looking over the alder meadow, lately cut off. I am peculiarly attracted by its red-brown maze, seen in this bright sun and mild southwest wind. It has expression in it as a familiar freckled face. Methinks it is about waking up, though it still slumbers. 

See the still, smooth pools of water in its midst, almost free from ice. I seem to hear the sound of the water soaking into it, — as it were its voice. We must not expect it to blow warm long at a time. Even to-day, methinks, there are cool veins in the air, as if some puffs came over snow and ice and others not, like the meat which consisted alternately of a streak of fat and a streak of lean. 

I sit on the bank at the Hemlocks and watch the great white cakes of ice going swiftly by. Now one strikes a rock and swings round in an eddy. They bear on them the wrecks and refuse of the shore where they were formed. 

Even the shade is agreeable to-day. You hear the buzzing of a fly from time to time, and see the black speck zigzag by. 

Ah! there is the note of the first flicker, a prolonged, monotonous wick-wick-wick-wick-wick-wick, etc., or, if you please, quick-quick, heard far over and through the dry leaves. But how that single sound peoples and enriches all the woods and fields! They are no longer the same woods and fields that they were. This note really quickens what was dead. It seems to put a life into withered grass and leaves and bare twigs, and henceforth the days shall not be as they have been. 

It is as when a family, your neighbors, return to an empty house after a long absence, and you hear the cheerful hum of voices and the laughter of children, and see the smoke from the kitchen fire. The doors are thrown open, and children go screaming through the hall. So the flicker dashes through the aisles of the grove, throws up a window here and cackles out it, and then there, airing the house. 

It makes its voice ring up-stairs and down-stairs, and so, as it were, fits it for its habitation and ours, and takes possession.  It is as good as a housewarming to all nature. Now I hear and see him louder and nearer on the top of the long-armed white oak, sitting very upright, as is their wont, as it were calling for some of his kind that may also have arrived. 

As usual, I have seen for some weeks on the ice these peculiar (perla?) insects with long wings and two tails. 

The withered vegetation, seed-vessels of all kinds, etc., are peculiarly handsome now, having been remarkably well preserved the past winter on account of the absence of snow. 

How indulgent is Nature, to give to a few common plants, like checkerberry, this aromatic flavor to relieve the general insipidity! Perhaps I am most sensible of the presence of these plants when the ground is first drying at this season and they come fairly out. Also mouse-ear and pyrola. 

Sitting under the handsome scarlet oak beyond the hill, I hear a faint note far in the wood which reminds me of the robin. Again I hear it; it is he, — an occasional peep. These notes of the earliest birds seem to invite forth vegetation. No doubt the plants concealed in the earth hear them and rejoice. They wait for this assurance. 

Now I hear, when passing the south side of the hill, or first when threading the maple swamp far west of it, the tchuck tchuck of a blackbird, and after, a distinct conqueree. So it is a red-wing? 

Thus these four species of birds have all come in one day, no doubt to almost all parts of the town.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 17, 1858

Hear the firat bluebird though I do not distinctly see them. See  March 26, 1860 ("The bluebird may be seen February 24, as in '50, '57, and '60, or not till March 24, as in '56, — say twenty-eight days”);  March 17, 1857 (" This morning it is fair, and I hear the note of the woodpecker on the elms (that early note) and the bluebird again.”); March 18, 1858 (“ I see this afternoon as many as a dozen bluebirds on the warm side of a wood. ”); March 19, 1855 ("I hear my first bluebird, somewhere about Cheney’s trees by the river. I hear him out of the blue deeps, but do not yet see his blue body. He comes with a warble.”)

Ah! there is the note of the first flicker, a prolonged, monotonous wick-wick-wick-wick-wick-wick, etc., or, if you please, quick-quick, heard far over and through the dry leaves. See  April 8, 1855 ("Hear and see a pigeon woodpecker, something like week-up week-up."): April 22, 1856 ("Joins his mate on a tree and utters the wooing note o-week o-week, etc"); . April 23, 1855 ("Saw two pigeon woodpeckers approach and, I think, put their bills together and utter that o-week, o-week"); Compare March 17, 1857 (“I notice that woodpecker-like whar-whar-whar-whar-whar-whar, earliest spring sound. “); February 18, 1857 ("When I step out into the yard I hear that earliest spring note from some bird, perhaps a pigeon woodpecker . . ., the rapid whar whar, whar whar, whar whar, which I have so often heard before any other note.”); February 17, 1855 (" Can it be a jay? or a pigeon woodpecker? Is it not the earliest springward note of a bird?”); and March 5, 1859 ("Going down-town this forenoon, I heard a white-bellied nuthatch on an elm within twenty feet, uttering peculiar notes and more like a song than I remember to have heard from it.. . .It was something like to-what what what what what, rapidly repeated, and not the usual gnah gnah; and this instant it occurs to me that this may be that earliest spring note which I hear, and have referred to a woodpecker! . . .It is the spring note of the nuthatch"). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Woodpecker (flicker)

I am most sensible of the presence of these plants when the ground is first drying at this season. See March 10, 1855 ("Those reddening leaves, as the checkerberry, lambkill, etc., etc., which at the beginning of winter were greenish, are now a deeper red, when the snow goes off.”) 

I hear a faint note far in the wood which reminds me of the robin. See See March 8, 1855 ("I hear the hasty, shuffling, as if frightened, note of a robin from a dense birch wood, —. . . This sound reminds me of rainy, misty April days in past years."); March 12, 1854 ("I hear my first robin peep distinctly at a distance. No singing yet.”); March 14, 1854 ("Count over forty robins with my glass in the meadow north of Sleepy Hollow, in the grass and on the snow.“); March 18, 1857 ("I now again hear the song sparrow’s tinkle along the riverside, probably to be heard for a day or two, and a robin, which also has been heard a day or two.”); March 18, 1858 (“The robin does not come singing, but utters a somewhat anxious or inquisitive peep at first.”)

The tchuck tchuck of a blackbird, and after, a distinct conqueree. See March 6, 1854 ("Hear and see the first blackbird, flying east over the Deep Cut, with a tchuck, tchuck, and finally a split whistle."); March 14, 1852 ("I see a flock of blackbirds and hear their conqueree."); March 17, 1860 ("How handsome a flock of red-wings,"); March 19, 1855 (" I hear at last the tchuck tchuck of a blackbird and, looking up, see him flying high over the river southwesterly in great haste to reach somewhere."); March 22, 1855 ("[T]he blackbirds already sing o-gurgle ee-e-e from time to time on the top of a willow or elm or maple, but oftener a sharp, shrill whistle or a tchuck.”)

Thus these four species of birds have all come in one day, See March 18, 1858 ("How much more habitable a few birds make the fields! ")

I hear a faint note 

far in the wood which reminds 

me of the robin.

A painted tortoise laying her eggs ten feet from the wheel-track on the Marlborough road.

June 10

8 A. M. — Getting lily pads opposite Badger’s.

Already the pads are much eaten before they are grown, and underneath, on the under side of almost every one, are the eggs of various species of insect, some so minute as to escape detection at first, in close, flat, straight-sided nests. 

The yellow lily and kalmiana are abundantly out. The under sides of the pads, their stems, and the Ranunculus Purshii and other water-plants are thickly covered and defiled with the sloughs, perhaps of those little fuzzy gnats (in their first state) which have so swarmed over the river. It is quite difficult to clean your specimens of them. 

June 10, 2016

P. M. — To Dugan Desert.

Cornus alternifolia a day or two, up railroad; maybe longer elsewhere. 

Spergularia rubra by railroad, it having been dug up last year, and so delayed. 

The cuckoo of June 5th has deserted her nest, and I find the fragments of egg-shells in it; probably because I found it. 

Oxalis freshly out: how long? Apparently but two or three days. 

I find some linnaea well out, after all, within a rod of the top of the hill, apparently two or three days. If it flowered more abundantly, probably it would be earlier. 

Chewink’s nest with four young in the dry sprout-land of Loring’s thick wood that was, under a completely overarching tuft of dry sedge grass. 

I hear the huckleberry-bird now add to its usual strain a-tea tea tea tea tea. 

A painted tortoise laying her eggs ten feet from the wheel-track on the Marlborough road. She paused at first, but I sat down within two feet, and she soon resumed her work. Had excavated a hollow about five inches wide and six long in the moistened sand, and cautiously, with long intervals, she continued her work, resting always on the same spot her fore feet, and never looking round, her eye shut all but a narrow slit. 

Whenever I moved, perhaps to brush off a mosquito, she paused. A wagon approached, rumbling afar off, and then there was a pause, till it had passed and long, long after, a tedious, naturlangsam pause of the slow-blooded creature, a sacrifice of time such as those animals are up to which slumber half a year and live for centuries. 

It was twenty minutes before I discovered that she was not making the hole but filling it up slowly, having laid her eggs. She drew the moistened sand under herself, scraping it along from behind with both feet brought together, the claws turned inward. In the long pauses the ants troubled her (as mosquitoes me) by running over her eyes, which made her snap or dart out her head suddenly, striking the shell. She did not dance on the sand, nor finish covering the hollow quite so carefully as the one observed last year. 

She went off suddenly (and quickly at first), with a slow but sure instinct through the wood toward the swamp.

The clustered blackberry of Dugan Desert not yet out, nor apparently for two or three days. 

Sweet Viburnum apparently two or three days at most, by Warren Miles’s, Nut Meadow Pond. 

In a hollow apple tree, hole eighteen inches deep, young pigeon woodpeckers, large and well feathered. They utter their squeaking hiss whenever I cover the hole with my hand, apparently taking it for the approach of the mother. A strong, rank fetid smell issues from the hole. 

Ripe strawberries, even in a meadow on sand thrown out of a ditch, hard at first to detect amid the red radical leaves. The flower-buds of late there have now that rank smell. 

Lambkill out, at Clamshell. 

The Cratoegus Crus-Galli is out of bloom. 

Arenaria serpyllifolia is out of bloom at Clamshell.

Side-flowering sandwort abundantly out this side of Dugan Spring. 

Solanum well out, by Wood’s Bridge.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 10, 1856

I find some linnaea well out. See June 1, 1855 ("I find the Linnaea borealis."); June 4, 1855 ("The Linnæa borealis has grown an inch"); June 6, 1853 ("The linnæa just out."); and  note to June 9, 1851 ("Gathered the Linnæa borealis.")

The one [laying painted tortoise] observed last year.  See June 18, 1855 ("after a slight pause it proceeds in its work, directly under and within eighteen inches of my face.”). See also June 10, 1858 (“See a painted turtle digging her nest in the road at 5.45 P. M.”) and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Painted Turtle (Emys Picta)

Sweet Viburnum apparently two or three days at most. See June 10, 1854 ("The Viburnum lentago is just out of bloom now that the V. nudum is fairly begun.”); June 10, 1857 (“At R.W.E.'s a viburnum, apparently nudum var. cassinoides (?)”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Viburnums

Warren Miles's, Nut Meadow Pond. See May 7, 1856 ("The brook below is full of fishes,--suckers, pouts, eels, trouts,-- endeavoring to get up, but his dam prevents."); April 28, 1856 ("I began to survey the meadow there early, . . .but a great stream of water was already rushing down the brook, and it almost rose over our boots in the meadow before we had done.”); April 25, 1856 ("Warren Miles had caught three more snapping turtles since yesterday, at his mill, . . . These turtles have been disturbed or revealed by his operations.”); April 24 1856 (Warren Miles at his new mill tells me eels can’t get above his mill now, in the spring.”); February 28, 1856 ("Miles is repairing the damage done at his new mill by the dam giving way.”)

Ripe strawberries . . . hard at first to detect amid the red radical leaves.  See June 14, 1859 ("Early strawberries begin to be common. The lower leaves of the plant are red, concealing the fruit."); June 15, 1853 ("Strawberries in the meadow now ready for the picker. They lie deep at the roots of the grass in the shade. You spread aside the tall grass, and deep down in little cavities by the roots of the grass you find this rich fruit.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau: Strawberries

Lambkill out, at Clamshell. See June 9, 1855 ("Lambkill out."); June 10, 1855 ("The Kalmia glauca is done before the lambkill is begun here"); June 13, 1854 ("How beautiful the solid cylinders of the lamb-kill now just before sunset.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia)

Side-flowering sandwort abundantly out this side of Dugan Spring. See May 26, 1853 ("Side-flowering sandwort is abundant, for some time, by wall of Lee's field near Garfield's."); June 3, 1859 ("Arenaria lateriflora well out, how long? "); June 5, 1855 ("Side-flowering sandwort apparently three days out in Clamshell flat meadow."); June 6, 1852 ("The side-flowering sandwort, an inconspicuous white flower like a chickweed.");  June 13, 1858 ("Arenaria lateriflora, how long?")

June 10. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 10

Ripe strawberries hard

at first to detect amid the

red radical leaves.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A painted tortoise laying her eggs

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 © 2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560610

At the Hemlocks I see a rock which has been moved into the river.

April 27. 

P. M. -- Up Assabet. 

I find none of Monroe’s larch buds shedding pollen, but the anthers look crimson and yellow, and the female flowers are now fully expanded and very pretty, but small. I think it will first scatter pollen to-morrow.

Apparently a small bullfrog by riverside, though it looks somewhat like a Rana fontinalis; also two or three (apparently) R. palustris in that well of Monroe’s, which have jumped in over the curb, perhaps. 

I see quite a number of tortoises out sunning, just on the edge of the Hosmer meadow, which is rapidly becoming bare. Their backs shine from afar in the sun. Also one Emys insculpta out higher up. 

From close by I hear a red-wing’s clear, loud whistle, — not squeak (which I think may be confined to the grackle). It is like pte'-a pte’-a, or perhaps without the p.

The tapping of a woodpecker is made a more remarkable and emphatic sound by the hollowness of the trunk, the expanse of water which conducts the sound, and the morning hour at which I commonly hear it. I think that the pigeon woodpeckers must be building, they frequent the old aspen now so much.

At the Hemlocks I see a rock which has been moved since last fall seven or eight feet into the river, though the ground is but little descending. The rock is about five and a half feet by three by one. 

I see a rather large devil’s-needle coursing over the low osiers in Pinxter Swamp. Is it not early for one?

The white birch which I tapped in V. palmata Swamp still runs; and the holes are full of, and the base of the tree covered with, a singular sour-tasted, rather hard—crusted white (not pink) froth, and a great many of those flat beetles (?), lightning-bug—like, and flies, etc., are sucking it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 27, 1856

I find none of Monroe’s larch buds shedding pollen, but the anthers look crimson and yellow, and the female flowers are now fully expanded and very pretty, but small. See April 22, 1856 ("Monroe’s larches by river will apparently shed pollen soon. The staminate flowers look forward, but the pistil late scarcely show any red"); April 29, 1855 (“A few of the cones within reach on F. Monroe’s larches shed pollen; say, then, yesterday The crimson female flowers are now handsome but small); April 29, 1856 ("Monroe’s larch staminate buds have now erected and separated their anthers, and they look somewhat withered, as if they had shed a part of their pollen. If so, they began yesterday. ”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Larch

Apparently a small bullfrog by riverside, though it looks somewhat like a Rana fontinalis. See May 1, 1858 (“I find many apparent young bullfrogs in the shaded pools on the Island Neck. Probably R. fontinalis.”) and note to May 6, 1858 (Frogs of Massachusetts)

From close by I hear a red-wing’s clear, loud whistle. See March 19, 1858 ("By the river, see distinctly red-wings and hear their conqueree. They are not associated with grackles. They are an age before their cousins, have attained to clearness and liquidity. They are officers, epauletted; the others are rank and file. I distinguish one even by its flight, hovering slowly from tree-top to tree-top, as if ready to utter its liquid notes. Their whistle is very clear and sharp, while the grackle's is ragged and split."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Red-wing in Spring

The tapping of a woodpecker is made a more remarkable and emphatic sound by the hollowness of the trunk, the expanse of water which conducts the sound, and the morning hour at which I commonly hear it.  See. March 15, 1854 ("I hear that peculiar, interesting loud hollow tapping of a woodpecker from over the water"); March 29, 1853 ("On approaching the Island, I am surprised to hear the scolding, cackle-like note of the pigeon woodpecker, a prolonged loud sound somewhat like one note of the robin. This was the tapper, on the old hollow aspen which the small woodpeckers so much frequent. Unless the latter make exactly the same sound with the former, then the pigeon woodpecker has come!! ");   March 30, 1854  ("At the Island I see and hear this morning the cackle of a pigeon woodpecker at the hollow poplar; had heard him tapping distinctly from my boat's place, 1/4+ of a mile");  April 14, 1856  ("Hear the flicker’s cackle on the old aspen, and his tapping sounds afar over the water. Their tapping resounds thus far, with this peculiar ring and distinctness, because it is a hollow tree they select to play on, as a drum or tambour. It is a hollow sound which rings distinct to a great distance, especially over water.");  May 9, 1860 ("The tapping of a woodpecker sounds distinct and hollow this still cloudy day.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Woodpecker (flicker) and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring, the tapping of the woodpecker

At the Hemlocks I see a rock which has been moved. See  Aprll 1, 1852  ("There are many larger hemlocks covering the steep side-hill forming the bank of the Assabet, where they are successively undermined by the water, . . . and almost every year one falls in and is washed away. The place is known as the " Leaning Hemlocks.”); March 24, 1855 ("Passing up the Assabet, by the Hemlocks, where there has been a slide and some rocks have slid down into the river, I think I see how rocks come to be found in the midst of rivers."): See also  A Book of the Seasons, at the Leaning Hemlocks

I see a rather large devil’s-needle . . . Is it not early for one? See April 29, 1856 ("I see great devil’s-needles whiz by, coupled. "); May 18, 1855 ("See  Large devil’s-needle.");  May 23, 1856 ("A large devil’s—needle goes by after sundown."); May 30, 1860 ("Saw some devil’s-needles (the first) about the 25th.");  June 6, 1852  ( First devil's-needles in the air,."); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Devil's-needle

Sailing downwind to Bedford line.

April 14. 

Monday. A raw, overcast morning. 

April 14, 2013

8 A. M. — Up Assabet. 

See one striped squirrel chasing another round and round the Island, with a faint squeak from time to time and a rustling of the dry leaves. They run quite near to the water.

Hear the flicker’s cackle on the old aspen, and his tapping sounds afar over the water. Their tapping resounds thus far, with this peculiar ring and distinctness, because it is a hollow tree they select to play on, as a drum or tambour. It is a hollow sound which rings distinct to a great distance, especially over water. 

I still find small turtle’s eggs on the surface entire, while looking for arrowheads by the Island. 

See from my window a fish hawk flying high west of the house, cutting off the bend between Willow Bay and the meadow, in front of the house, between one vernal lake and another. He suddenly wheels and, straightening out his long narrow wings, makes one circle high above the last meadow, as if he had caught a glimpse of a fish beneath, and then continues his course down the river. 

P. M. — Sail to Hill by Bedford line. 

Wind southwest and pretty strong; sky overcast; weather cool. 

Start up a fish hawk from near the swamp white oaks southwest of the Island, undoubtedly the one of the morning. I now see that this is a much darker bird, both above and beneath, than that bird of the 6th. It flies quite low, surveying the water, in an undulating, buoyant manner, like a marsh hawk, or still more a. nighthawk, with its long curved wings. He flies so low westward that I lose sight of him against the dark hill side and trees. 

The river is going down rapidly, yet the Hunt’s Bridge causeway is but just bare. 

The south side of Ponkawtasset looks much greener and more forward than any part of the town I have noticed. It is almost like another season there. They are already plowing there. 

I steer down straight through the Great Meadows, with the wind almost directly aft, feeling it more and more the farther I advance into them. They make a noble lake now. The boat, tossed up by the rolling billows, keeps falling again on the waves with a chucking sound which is inspiriting. 

There go a couple of ducks, which probably I have started, now scaling far away on motionless pinions, with a slight descent in their low flight, toward some new cove. Anon I scare up two black ducks which make one circle around me, reconnoitring and rising higher and higher, then go down the river. Is it they that so commonly practice this manoeuvre? 

Peter’s is now far behind on a forgotten shore. The boat moored beneath his hill is no longer visible, and the red russet hill which is my goal rises before me. 

I moor my boat to a tree at the base of this hill. The waves are breaking with violence on this shore, as on a sea-beach, and here is the first painted tortoise just east up by them and lying on his back amid the stones, in the most favorable position to display his bright-vermilion marks, as the waves still break over him. 

He makes no effort to turn himself back, probably being weary contending with the waves. A little further is another, also at the mercy of the waves, which greatly interfere with its staid and measured ways, its head helplessly wagging with every billow. Their scales are very clean and bright now. The only yellow I notice is about the head and upper part of the tail. The scales of the back are separated or bordered with a narrow greenish-yellow edging. 

Looking back over the meadow from the top of this hill, I see it regularly watered with foam-streaks from five to ten feet apart, extending quite across it in the direction of the wind. Washed up against this shore, I see the first dead sucker. 

You see nowadays on every side, on the meadow bottom, the miserable carcasses of the musquash stripped of their pelts. I saw one plunge from beneath the monument.*

There is much lumber—fencing-stuff, etc. —to be gathered now by those inclined. 

I see an elm-top at the Battle-Ground covered with blackbirds uttering their squeaks and split whistles, as if they had not got their voices yet, and a coarse, rasping tchuck or char, not in this case from a crow blackbird. 

Again I see the fish hawk, near the old place. He alights on the ground where there is a ridge covered with bushes, surrounded by water, but I scare him again, and he finally goes off northeast, flying high. He had apparently-stayed about that place all day fishing.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 14, 1856


The boat, tossed up by the rolling billows, keeps falling again on the waves with a chucking sound which is inspiriting. See April 10, 1852 ("It is pleasant, now that we are in the wind, to feel the chopping sound when the boat seems to fall upon the successive waves which it meets at right angles or in the eye of the wind.")

Hear the flicker’s cackle on the old aspen, and his tapping sounds afar over the water. See  March 11, 1859 (“But methinks the sound of the woodpecker tapping is as much a spring note as any these mornings; it echoes peculiarly in the air of a spring morning.”);  March 13, 1855 ("I hear the rapid tapping of the woodpecker from over the water."); March 15, 1854 ("I hear that peculiar, interesting loud hollow tapping of a woodpecker from over the water.")' March 18, 1853 ("The tapping of the woodpecker about this time.”); March 30, 1854 ("At the Island I see and hear this morning the cackle of a pigeon woodpecker at the hollow poplar; had heard him tapping distinctly from my boat's place."); April 27, 1856 ("The tapping of a woodpecker is made a more remarkable and emphatic sound by the hollowness of the trunk, the expanse of water which conducts the sound, and the morning hour at which I commonly hear it.”); May 9, 1860 ("The tapping of a woodpecker sounds distinct and hollow this still cloudy day. The water is smooth. ”). See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Woodpecker (flicker)

See from my window a fish hawk flying high . . .  He had apparently-stayed about that place all day fishing. See April 14, 1852 ("The streams break up; the ice goes to the sea. Then sails the fish hawk overhead, looking for his prey.")

The south side of Ponkawtasset looks much greener. See April 14, 1854 ("There is a general tinge of green now discernible through the russet on the bared meadows and the hills."); April 15, 1855 ("The reflections of the maples, of Ponkawtasset and the poplar hill, and the whole township in the southwest, are as perfect as I ever saw.") See also September 9, 1851 ("The distant meadows towards the north beyond Conant's Grove, full of fog, appear like a vast lake out of which rise Annursnack and Ponkawtasset like rounded islands."); January 30, 1860 ("Certain rounded hills . . .have a marked family likeness. . . they suggest a relation geologically. Such are, for instance, Nashoba, Annursnack, Nawshawtuct, and Ponkawtasset,"); November 1, 1858 ("The curving moraine forming the west side of Sleepy Hollow . . .is continued northward by itself almost to the river, and points plainly enough to Ponkawtasset Hill on the other side . . .and so the sloping cemetery lots on the west of Sleepy Hollow are related to the distant Ponkawtasset..")

April 14. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 14.

\

I steer down straight through

the Great Meadows with the wind

almost directly aft.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Sailing downwind to Bedford line.

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-560414

* the monument: The 1836 Battle Monument. 

The twenty-five-foot monument consists of four pieces of white granite cut from a single boulder placed on top of a granite foundation. 

Inset into the east face of the obelisk is a white marble slab inscribed with a brief account of the battle at the North Bridge. The text reads as follows:

HERE
On the 19th of April
1775
was made
the first forcible resistance
to British aggression
On the opposite Bank
stood the American Militia
Here stood the Invading Army
and on this spot
the first of the Enemy fell
in the War of that Revolution
which gave
Independence
to these United States
In gratitude to GOD
and
In the love of Freedom
this Monument
was erected

Emerson's poem, Concord Hymn, (“By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flags to April’s breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world,” ) was written for the dedication ceremony of July 4, 1837 

Dog day weather begins.

July 22.

I hear that many of those balls have been found at Flint’s Pond within a few days. 

See small flocks of red-wings, young and old, now, over the willows. 

The pigeon woodpeckers have flown.

Dog day weather begins.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 22, 1855

Many of those balls have been found at Flint’s Pond See June 19, 1853 ("No grass balls yet."); July 24, 1856 ("I find, at the shallow stone wharf shore, three balls in good condition, walking about half the length of that shore. Methinks it was about a week earlier than this that they were found last year.")
See small flocks of red-wings, young and old, now. See July 13, 1856 (“See quite a large flock of chattering red-wings, the flight of first broods.”); July 29, 1859 (“See large flocks of red-wings now, the young grown.”)

Dog day weather begins. See July 22, 1860 ("First locust heard.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Locust, Dogdayish Days

July 22. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 22

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