A Book of the Seasons, Signs of the Spring: the grackle arrives

No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of the spring. 

Henry Thoreau, March 17, 1857

Above railroad bridge

see a small flock of grackles 

on the willow-row. 

March 8, 1860

February 23.   I have seen signs of the spring.  February 23, 1857

March 6. Hear and see the first blackbird, flying east over the Deep Cut, with a tchuck, tchuck, and finally a split whistle. March 6, 1854 

March 8. See a small flock of grackles on the willow-row above railroad bridge. How they sit and make a business of chattering! for it cannot be called singing, and no improvement from age to age perhaps. Yet, as nature is a becoming, their notes may become melodious at last. At length, on my very near approach, they fit suspiciously away, uttering a few subdued notes as they hurry off. 

This is the first flock of blackbirds I have chanced to see, though Channing saw one the 6th. I suspect that I have seen only grackles as yet.  March 8, 1860

March 9.  C. also saw a skater-insect on the 7th, and a single blackbird flying over Cassandra Ponds, which he thought a grackle. March 9, 1859

March 13.  Probably grackles have been seen some days. I think I saw them on the 11th? March 13, 1859

March 14. I see a large flock of grackles searching for food along the water's edge, just below Dr. Bartlett's. Some wade in the water. They are within a dozen rods of me and the road. It must be something just washed up that they are searching for, for the water has just risen and is still rising fast. Is it not insects and worms washed out of the grass? and perhaps the snails? When a grackle sings, it is as if his mouth were full of cotton, which he was trying to spit out.  March 14, 1859

March 18. The blackbird — probably grackle this time —wings his way direct above the swamp northward, with a regular tchuck, carrier haste, calling the summer months along, like a hen her chickens.  March 18, 1858

March 19.  Met Channing and walked on with him to what we will call Grackle Swamp . . . In the swamp, see grackles, four or five, with the light ring about eye, — their bead eyes. They utter only those ineffectual split notes, no conqueree . . . By the river, see distinctly red-wings and hear their conqueree. They are not associated with grackles . . .Their whistle is very clear and sharp, while the grackle's is ragged and split. March 19, 1858

March 21.  A crow blackbird. March 21, 1859

March 29.  It would be worth the while to attend more to the different notes of the blackbirds. Methinks I may have seen the female red-wing within a day or two; or what are these purely black ones without the red shoulder? It is pleasant to see them scattered about on the drying meadow. The red-wings will stand close to the water’s edge, looking larger than usual, with their red shoulders very distinct and handsome in that position, and sing okolee, or bob-y-lee, or what-not. Others, on the tops of trees over your head, out of a fuzzy beginning spit forth a clear, shrill whistle incessantly, for what purpose I don’t know. Others, on the elms over the water, utter still another note, each time lifting their wings slightly. Others are flying across the stream with a loud char-r, char-r. March 29, 1853

March 29.  When I have put my boat in its harbor, I hear that sign-squeaking blackbird, and, looking up, see half a dozen on the top of the elm at the foot of Whiting’s lot. They are not red-wings, and by their size they make me think of crow blackbirds, yet on the whole I think them grackles (?). Possibly those I heard on the 18th were the same?? Does the red-wing ever make a noise like a rusty sign?  March 29, 1857

March 29. Nearly as warm and pleasant as yesterday. I see what I suppose is the female rusty grackle; black body with green reflections and purplish-brown head and neck, but I notice no light iris.  March 29, 1858

*****

So I came in and

shut the door and passed my first

spring night in the woods.

Walden, Spring

*****

See also Signs of the Spring:

• A Change in the Air
• A Sunny Nook in Spring
• Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding
• Braided Ripples of Melting Snow Shine in the Ruts
• Bright Blue Water
• Buzzing Flies
• Ducks Afar, Sailing on the Meadow
• Frogs, and Turtles Stirring
• Greening Grasses and Sedges
• Insects and Worms Come Forth and are Active
• Listening for the Bluebird
• March is famous for its Winds
• Mosses Bright Green
• Perla-like Insects Appear
• Red Maple Sap Flows
• Ripples made by Fishes
• The Anxious Peep of the Early Robin
• The Crowing of Cocks, the Cawing of crows
• The Eaves Begin to Run
• The Gobbling of Turkeys
• The Grackle Arrives
• The Hawks of March
• The Note of the Dark-eyed Junco Going Northward
• The Red-Wing Arrives
• The Skunk Cabbage Blooms
• The Softened Air of these Warm February Days
• The Song Sparrow Sings
• The Spring Note of the Chickadee
• The Spring Note of the Nuthatch
• The Striped Squirrel Comes Out
• The Water-bug (Gyrinus)
• Walking without Gloves
• Woodpeckers Tapping

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,

Signs of the Spring: the grackle arrives

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 ©  2009-2023

There is something of spring in all seasons.

March 8.

2.30 P. M. — 50°. To Cliffs and Walden.

See a small flock of grackles on the willow-row above railroad bridge. How they sit and make a business of chattering! for it cannot be called singing, and no improvement from age to age perhaps. Yet, as nature is a becoming, their notes may become melodious at last. At length, on my very near approach, they fit suspiciously away, uttering a few subdued notes as they hurry off. 

This is the first flock of blackbirds I have chanced to see, though Channing saw one the 6th. I suspect that I have seen only grackles as yet.

I saw, in Monroe's well by the edge of the river, the other day, a dozen frogs, chiefly shad frogs, which had been dead a good while. It may be that they get into that sort of spring-hole in the fall to hibernate, but for some reason die; or perhaps they are always jumping into it in the summer, but at that season are devoured by some animal before they infest the water.

Now and for some days I see farmers walking about their fields, knocking to pieces and distributing the cow dung left there in the fall, that so, with the aid of the spring rains, they fertilize a larger surface and more equally.

To say nothing of fungi, lichens, mosses, and other cryptogamous plants, you cannot say that vegetation absolutely ceases at any season in this latitude; for there is grass in some warm exposures and in springy places, always growing more or less, and willow catkins expanding and peeping out a little further every warm day from the very beginning of winter, and the skunk cabbage buds being developed and actually flowering sometimes in the winter, and the sap flowing [in] the maples in midwinter in some days, perhaps some cress growing a little (?), certainly some pads, and various naturalized garden weeds steadily growing if not blooming, and apple buds sometimes expanding. Thus much of vegetable life or motion or growth is to be detected every winter.

There is something of spring in all seasons. There is a large class which is evergreen in its radical leaves, which make such a show as soon as the snow goes off that many take them to be new growth of the spring. At the pool on the south side of Hubbard's Grove, I notice that the crowfoot, i. e. buttercup, leaves which are at the bottom of the water stand up and are much more advanced than those two feet off in the air, for there they receive warmth from the sun, while they are sheltered from cold winds. 

Nowadays we separate the warmth of the sun from the cold of the wind and observe that the cold does not pervade all places, but being due to strong northwest winds, if we get into some sunny and sheltered nook where they do not penetrate, we quite forget how cold it is elsewhere. 

In some respects our spring, in its beginning, fluctuates a whole month, so far as it respects ice and snow, walking, sleighing, etc., etc.; for some years winter may be said to end about the first of March, and other years it may extend into April.

That willow-clump by railroad at Walden looks really silvery. 

I see there that moles have worked for several days. There are several piles on the grass, some quite fresh and some made before the last rain. One is as wide as a bushel-basket and six inches high; contains a peck at least. When I carefully remove this dirt, I cannot see, and can scarcely detect by feeling, any looseness in the sod beneath where the mole came to the surface and discharged all this dirt. I do feel it, to be sure, but it is scarcely perceptible to my fingers. The mole must have filled up this doorway very densely with earth, perhaps for its protection.

Those small green balls in the Pout's-Nest — and in the river, etc. — are evidently the buds by which the Utricularia vulgaris are propagated. I find them attached to the root as well as adrift.

I noticed a very curious phenomenon in this pond. It is melted for two or three rods around the open side, and in many places partly filled with a very slender thread-like spike-rush (apparently Eleocharis tenuis?) which is matted more or less horizontally and floating, and is much bleached being killed. In this fine matting I noticed perfectly straight or even cuts a rod or more in length,just as if one had severed this mass of fine rush as it lay [?] with some exceeding sharp instrument. However, you could not do it with a scythe, though you might with scissors, if it were ruled. It is as if you were to cover a floor with very fine flaccid grass and tread it to one inch in thickness, and then cut this web straight across. The fact is, this floating matting (it also rests partly on soft mud) was not cut at all, but pulled apart on a straight line, producing the exact appearance of a cut, as if you were to pull a piece of felt apart by a force on each side and yet leave the edge as straight as if it had been cut. It had been frozen in, and when the ice cracked it was in an instant thus pulled apart, without further disturbing the relative position of the fibres. I first conjectured this, and then saw the evidence of it for, glancing my eye along such a cut, which ran at right angles with the shore, I saw that it exactly corresponded at its termination to an old crack in the ice which was still unmelted and which continued its course exactly. This in the ice had been filled and cemented so as to look like a white seam. Would this account for such a crack being continued into the meadow itself, as I have noticed?

I meet some Indians just camped on Brister's Hill. As usual, they are chiefly concerned to find where black ash grows, for their baskets. This is what they set about to ascertain as soon as they arrive in any strange neighborhood.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 8, 1860


See a small flock of grackles on the willow-row above railroad bridge. How they sit and make a business of chattering! See March 9, 1859 ("C. also saw a skater-insect on the 7th, and a single blackbird flying over Cassandra Ponds, which he thought a grackle."); March 13, 1859 ("Probably grackles have been seen some days. I think I saw them on the 11th?"): March 14, 1859 ("I see a large flock of grackles searching for food along the water's edge, just below Dr. Bartlett's. Some wade in the water. They are within a dozen rods of me and the road.It must be something just washed up that they are searching for, for the water has just risen and is still rising fast.. . .When a grackle sings, it is as if his mouth were full of cotton, which he was trying to spit out"); March 18, 1858 ("Each new year is a surprise to us.We find that we had virtually forgotten the note of each bird, and when we hear it again it is remembered like a dream, reminding us of a previous state of existence... . The blackbird — probably grackle this time —wings his way direct above the swamp northward, with a regular tchuck, carrier haste, calling the summer months along,"); March 19, 1858 ("Met Channing and walked on with him to what we will call Grackle Swamp. . .In the swamp, see grackles, four or five, with the light ring about eye, — their bead eyes. They utter only those ineffectual split notes, no conqueree"); March 29, 1858 ("I see what I suppose is the female rusty grackle; black body with green reflections and purplish-brown head and neck, but I notice no light iris"); March 29, 1857 ("When I have put my boat in its harbor, I hear that sign-squeaking blackbird, and, looking up, see half a dozen on the top of the elm at the foot of Whiting’s lot. . .on the whole I think them grackles (?). Possibly those I heard on the 18th were the same ?? Does the red-wing ever make a noise like a rusty sign?")

I saw, in Monroe's well by the edge of the river, the other day, a dozen frogs, chiefly shad frogs, which had been dead a good while. See February 26, 1856 ("I see at bottom of the mill brook, below Emerson’s, two dead frogs. The brook has part way yet a snowy bridge over it. Were they left by a mink, or killed by cold and ice? ")

At the pool on the south side of Hubbard's Grove, I notice that the crowfoot, i. e. buttercup, leaves which are at the bottom of the water stand up and are much more advanced. See November 8, 1858 (The now more noticeable green radical leaves of the buttercup in the russet pastures remind me of the early spring to come, of which they will offer the first evidence. ""); January 9, 1853 ("On the face of the Cliff the crowfoot buds lie unexpanded just beneath the surface. I dig one up with a stick, and, pulling it to pieces, I find deep in the centre of the plant, just beneath the ground, surrounded by all the tender leaves that are to precede it, the blossom-bud, about half is big as the head of a pin, perfectly white. There it patiently sits, or slumbers, how full of faith, informed of a spring which the world has never seen.”); February 18, 1857 ("The snow is nearly all gone, and it is so warm and springlike that I walk over to the hill, listening for spring birds. The roads are beginning to be settled. I step excited over the moist mossy ground, dotted with the green stars of thistles, crowfoot, etc., the outsides of which are withered."); February 23, 1860 ("I walk over the moist Nawshawtuct hillside and see the green radical leaves of the buttercup"); February 28, 1857 ("At the Cliff, the tower-mustard, early crowfoot, and perhaps buttercup appear to have started of late.")


Nowadays we separate the warmth of the sun from the cold of the wind and observe that the cold does not pervade all 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."); April 26, 1857 ("How well adapted we are to our climate! In the winter we sit by fires in the house; in spring and fall, in sunny and sheltered nooks; in the summer, in shady and cool groves, or over water where the breeze circulates."); May 10, 1857 ("But now at last I do not go seeking the warm, sunny, and sheltered coves; the strong wind is enlivening and agreeable.”) May 22, 1854 (“I rest in the orchard, doubtful whether to sit in shade or sun.”); May 22, 1857 ("Is it not summer when we do not go seeking sunny and sheltered places, but also love the wind and shade? "); October 26, 1852 ("At this season we seek warm sunny lees and hillsides "); November 18, 1857 ("Now, as in the spring, we rejoice in sheltered and sunny places.")

That willow-clump by railroad at Walden looks really silvery. See  March 7, 1855 ("Methinks the buds of the early willows, the willows of the railroad bank, show more of the silvery down than ten days ago")

Blackbird singing all alone.

September 20. 

P. M. — To White Pond. 

The button-bushes by the river are generally overrun with the mikania. This is married to the button-bush as much as the vine to the elm, and more. I suspect that the button-bushes and black willows have been as ripe as ever they get to be. 

I get quite near to a blackbird on an apple tree, singing with the grackle note very earnestly and not minding me. He is all alone. Has a (rustyish) brown head and shoulders and the rest black. I think it is a grackle. 

Where are the red-wings now? I have not seen nor heard one for a long time. 

Is this a grackle come from its northern breeding-place?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 20, 1859



I suspect that the button-bushes and black willows have been as ripe as ever they get to be. See July 9, 1859 ("The button-bush and black willow generally grow together, especially on the brink of the stagnant parts of the river."); August 15, 1854 ("The button-bush is now nearly altogether out of bloom, so that it is too late to see the river's brink in its perfection. It must be seen between the blooming of the mikania and the going out of bloom of the button bush, before you feel this sense of lateness in the year.");August 15, 1858 (“The black willows are already being imbrowned."); August 22, 1858 ("As for the beauty of the river’s brim: now that the mikania begins to prevail the button-bush has done . . . and the willows are already some what crisped and imbrowned , , , So perhaps I should say that the brim of the river was in its prime about the 1st of August this year"); September 24, 1854 (The button-bushes, which before had attained only a dull mixed yellow, are suddenly bitten, wither, and turn brown, all but the protected parts. . . . The button-bushes thus withered suddenly paint with a rich brown the river’s brim. "); October 4, 1857 ("The button-bushes are generally greenish-yellow now; only the highest and most exposed points brown and crisp in some places. The black willow, rising above them, is crisped yellowish-brown, so that the general aspect of the river's brim now is a modest or sober ripe yellowish-brown"); See also  October 8, 1858 ("The button-bushes and black willows are rapidly losing leaves, and the shore begins to look Novemberish"); October 10, 1858 ("November has already come to the river with the fall of the black willow and the button-bush, . . . letting in the autumn light to the water")

A blackbird on an apple tree, singing with the grackle note.  See September 20, 1854 ("See to-day quite a flock of what I think must be rusty grackles about the willows and button-bushes."); September 20, 1855 ("See blackbirds (grackle or red-wing or crow blackbird?)"); October 14, 1857 ("I see a large flock of grackles, probably young birds, quite near me on William Wheeler's apple trees, pruning themselves and trying to sing."); October 28, 1857 ("On a black willow, a single grackle with the bright iris")

Where are the red-wings now? See July 29, 1859 ("See large flocks of red-wings now, the young grown."); August 12, 1853 ("You now see and hear no red-wings along the river as in spring."); August 16, 1859 ("A large flock of red-wings goes tchucking over"); September 4, 1859 ("Where are the robins and red-wing blackbirds of late?"); October 16, 1858 (" I have not seen red-wings [for] a long while."); October 29, 1859 (''Also a flock of blackbirds fly eastward over my head from the top of an oak, either red-wings or grackles"); November 14, 1855 ("Two red-wing blackbirds alight on a black willow.")

Is this a grackle come from its northern breeding-place? See September 30, 1858 ("A large flock of grackles amid the willows by the riverside, or chiefly concealed low in the button bushes . . .These are the first I have seen, and now for some time, I think, the red wings have been gone. These are the first arrivers from the north where they breed."); October 16, 1858 See a large flock of grackles . . . [T]hese birds, which went so much further north to breed, are still arriving from those distant regions, fetching the year about."); 

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.")

A beautiful law of distribution.

April 22. 

The Salix purpurea in prime, out probably three or four days; say 19th. 

Arbor-vitae, how long? 

P. M. — In a fine rain, around Walden. 

I go by a Populus grandidentata on the eastern sand slope of the Deep Cut just after entering, whose aments (which apparently here began to shed pollen yesterday) in scattered clusters at the ends of the bare twigs, but just begun to shed their pollen, not hanging loose and straight yet, but curved, are a very rich crimson, like some ripe fruit, as mulberries, seen against the sand. I cannot represent the number in a single cluster, but they are much the handsomest now before the crimson anthers have burst, and are all the more remarkable for the very open and bare habit of the tree. 

When setting the pines at Walden the last three days,

I was sung to by the field sparrow.

For music I heard their jingle from time to time.

That the music the pines were set to, and

I have no doubt they will build many a nest

under their shelter. 

It would seem as if such a field as this —

a dry open or half-open pasture in the woods,

with small pines scattered in it —

was well-nigh, if not quite, abandoned to

this one alone among the sparrows. 

The surface of the earth is portioned out among them.

By a beautiful law of distribution,

one creature does not too much interfere with another.

          I do not hear the song sparrow here. 

As the pines gradually increase,

and a wood-lot is formed,

these birds will withdraw to new pastures,

and the thrushes, etc., will take their place. 

[S]o my pines were established

by the song of the field sparrow.

They commonly place their nests here

under the shelter of a little pine in the field. 

As I planted there, wandering thoughts visited me, which I have now forgotten. My senses were busily suggesting them, though I was unconscious of their origin. 

E. g., I first consciously found myself entertaining the thought of a carriage on the road, and directly after I was aware that I heard it. No doubt I had heard it before, or rather my ears had, but I was quite unconscious of it, — it was not a fact of my then state of existence; yet such was the force of habit, it affected my thoughts nevertheless, so double, if not treble, even, are we. 

Sometimes the senses bring us information quicker than we can receive it. Perhaps these thoughts which run in ruts by themselves while we are engaged in some routine may be called automatic. 

I distinctly entertained the idea of a carriage, without the slightest suspicion how it had originated or been suggested to my mind. I have no doubt at all that my ears had heard it, but my mind, just then preoccupied, had refused to attend to it. 

This suggests that most, if not all, indeed, of our ideas may be due to some sort of sensuous impression of which we may or may not be conscious. 

This afternoon there is an east wind, and a rain-storm accordingly beginning, the eighth of the kind with this wind. 

I still see a large flock of grackles. 

Within a few days I pricked my fingers smartly against the sharp, stiff points of some sedge coming up. At Heywood's meadow, by the railroad, this sedge, rising green and dense with yellow tips above the withered clumps, is very striking, suggesting heat, even a blaze, there. 

Scare up partridges feeding about the green springy places under the edge of hills. See them skim or scale away for forty rods along and upward to the woods, into which they swiftly scale, dodging to right and left and avoiding the twigs, yet without once flapping the wings after having launched themselves.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 22, 1859

I go by a Populus grandidentata on the eastern sand slope of the Deep Cut  whose aments are a very rich crimson. See April 3, 1853 ("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");  April 8, 1853 ("The male Populus grandidentata . . .shows some of its red anthers long before it opens. There is a female on the left, on Warren's Path at Deep Cut.") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Big-toothed Aspen

A field as this — a dry open or half-open pasture in the woods, with small pines scattered in it — [is]abandoned to this one alone among the sparrows. See  April 19, 1860 ("Hear the field sparrow sing on his dry upland, it being a warm day, and see the small blue butterfly hovering over the dry leaves.") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Field Sparrow

Our ideas may be due to some sort of sensuous impression of which we may or may not be conscious. Compare November 18, 1851 ("The chopper who works in the woods all day for many weeks or months at a time becomes intimately acquainted with them in his way. He is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. He really forgets himself, forgets to observe, and at night he dreams of the swamp, its phenomena and events. Not so the naturalist; enough of his unconscious life does not pass there.")

At Heywood's meadow, by the railroad, this sedge, rising green and dense with yellow tips above the withered clumps, is very striking. See June 19, 1859 ("The prevailing sedge of Heywood Meadow by Bartlett Hill-side, that which showed yellow tops in the spring, is the Carex stricta. On this the musquash there commonly makes its stools. A tall slender sedge with conspicuous brown staminate spikes") See also April 22, 1852 ("The early sedge (Carex marginata) grows on the side of the Cliffs in little tufts with small yellow blossoms, i. e. with yellow anthers, low in the grass.") and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Sedges in Early Spring

This afternoon there is an east wind, and a rain-storm accordingly beginning, the eighth of the kind with this wind. See April 22, 1852 ("It still rains. The water is over the road at Flint's Bridge . . . This makes five stormy days. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday."); April 22, 1856 ("It has rained two days and nights, and now the sun breaks out, but the wind is still easterly, and the storm probably is not over . . . These rain-storms -- this is the third day of one -- characterize 'the season, and belong rather to winter than to summer.")

Scare up partridges feeding about the green springy places under the edge of hills. See April 22, 1852 ("Our dog sends off a partridge with a whir, far across the open field and the river, like a winged bullet. ") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge.

First sounds of awakened nature in the spring.

April 17. 

April 17, 2019

Sunday. P. M. — Up Assabet. 

The river, which had got down on the 10th so that I could not cross the meadows, is up again on account of snow and rain, so that I push with difficulty straight to Mantatuket's Rock, but, I believe, is already falling. 

Many grackles and robins are feeding on those strips of meadow just laid bare.

It is still rather cold and windy, and I listen for new birds under the lee of the Rock woods in vain; but I hear the hum of bees on a willow there, and this fine susurrus makes the weather seem warmer than it is. At the same time I hear the low stuttering of the Rana halecina from the Hunt meadow (call it the Winthrop meadow).

How pleasing and soothing are some of the first and least audible sounds of awakened nature in the spring, as this first humming of bees, etc., and the stuttering of frogs! They cannot be called musical, — are no more even than a noise, so slight that we can endure it. But it is in part an expression of happiness, an ode that is sung and whose burden fills the air. It reminds me of the increased genialness of nature. 

The air which was so lately void and silent begins to resound as it were with the breathing of a myriad fellow-creatures, and even the unhappy man, on the principle that misery loves company, is soothed by this infinite din of neighbors.

I have listened for the notes of various birds, and now, in this faint hum of bees, I hear as it were the first twittering of the bird Summer. Go ten feet that way, to where the northwest wind comes round the hill, and you hear only the dead mechanical sound of the blast and your thoughts recur to winter, but stand as much this way in the sun and in the lee of this bush, and your charmed ears may hear this faint susurrus weaving the web of summer. The notes of birds are interrupted, but the hum of insects is incessant.

I suppose that the motion of the wings of the small tipulidae which have swarmed for some weeks produced a humming appreciated by some ears. Perhaps the phoebe heard and was charmed by it. Thus gradually the spaces of the air are filled. Nature has taken equal care to cushion our ears on this finest sound and to inspire us with the strains of the wood thrush and poet. We may say that each gnat is made to vibrate its wings for man's fruition. 

In short, we hear but little music in the world which charms us more than this sound produced by the vibration of an insect's wing and in some still and sunny nook in spring.

 A wood tortoise on bank; first seen, water so high.

I heard lately the voice of a hound hunting by itself. What an awful sound to the denizens of the wood! That relentless, voracious, demonic cry, like the voice of a fiend! At hearing of which, the fox, hare, marmot, etc., tremble for their young and themselves, imagining the worst. This, however, is the sound which the lords of creation love to accompany and follow, with their bugles and "mellow horns" conveying a similar dread to the hearers instead of whispering peace to the hare's palpitating breast.

 A partridge drums.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 17, 1859

I hear the hum of bees on a willow there, and this fine susurrus makes the weather seem warmer than it is. See April 17, 1852 ("I smelt the willow catkins to-day, tender and innocent after this rude winter . . . A mild, sweet, vernal scent . . . attractive to bees"); April 17, 1855 (“The second sallow catkin (or any willow) I have seen in blossom . . . but find already a bee curved close on each half-opened catkin, intoxicated with its early sweet,. . .So quickly and surely does a bee find the earliest flower . . . No matter what pains you take, probably —undoubtedly—an insect will have found the first flower before you”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bees

How pleasing and soothing are some of the first and least audible sounds of awakened nature in spring. See April 3, 1858 ("There is no pause to the hum of the bees all this warm day. It is a very simple but pleasing and soothing sound, this susurrus, thus early in the spring.”); . 


In the lee of this bush, and your charmed ears may hear this faint susurrus weaving the web of summer. See April 6, 1854 ("Maples resound with the hum of honey-bees, and you see thousands of them about the flowers against the sky. This susurrus carries me forward some months toward summer -- like a summer's dream.")

The meadow ice is rapidly breaking up.

March 14.

P. M. — To Hunt house.

I thought from the above drawing that the original door must have been in the middle of the old part and not at one end, and that I should detect it in the manner in which the studs were set in. I really did so and found some other traces of the old door (where I have dotted it) when I got there. 

Some of the chalk- marks which have been preserved under the casing of the timbers so long have been completely washed off in yesterday's rain, as the frame stood bare. Also read in chalk on a chamber floor joist (which had been plastered over beneath) "enfine Brown," so many s. and d., and what most read for "Feb 1666," but, being written over a rough knot, it is doubtful.

"Hides 3." 

Saw E. Hosmer take up the cellar stairs.

They are of white oak, in form like one half of a squared white oak log sawed diagonally. These lie flat on their broadest sides on the slanting earth, resting near each end on a horse, which is a white oak stick with the bark on, hewed on the upper side and sunk in the earth, and they are fastened to this by two pins of wood placed as I have indicated.

I judge by my eye that the house is fifteen feet high to the eaves. The posts are remarkably sawn and hewn away on account of the projection of the upper story, so that they are more than twice as large above as below, thus:  the corner posts being cut on two sides or more  than half away (six inches off them) below the second story. 

The chimney was laid in clay. "T. B." were perhaps the initials of Thomas Brown; also "I. [?] H. D." 



The cowslip in pitcher has fairly blossomed to-day.

I see a large flock of grackles searching for food along the water's edge, just below Dr. Bartlett's. Some wade in the water. They are within a dozen rods of me and the road.

It must be something just washed up that they are searching for, for the water has just risen and is still rising fast. Is it not insects and worms washed out of the grass? and perhaps the snails ?

When a grackle sings, it is as if his mouth were full of cotton, which he was trying to spit out. 

The river is still rising. It is open [?] and generally over the meadows. 

The meadow ice is rapidly breaking up. Great cakes half a dozen rods long are drifted down against the bridges. There is a strong current on the meadow, not only north along the causeway, but south along the north end of the causeway, the water thus rushing both ways toward the only outlet at the bridge. 

This is proved by great cakes of ice floating swiftly along parallel with the causeway, but in opposite directions, to meet at the bridge. They are there soon broken up by the current after they strike the abutments. 

I see a large cake eight feet wide and ten inches thick, just broken off, carried under the bridge in a vertical position and wholly under water, such is the pressure there. This shows to what an extent the causeways and bridges act as dams to the flood.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 14, 1859

The cowslip in pitcher has fairly blossomed to-day. See March 5, 1859 ("The cowslip there Well Meadow] is very prominently flower-budded, lifting its yellow flower-buds above water in one place. The leaves are quite inconspicuous when they first come up, being rolled up tightly.");  March 24, 1855 ("It is too cold to think of those signs of spring which I find recorded under this date last year. The earliest signs of spring in vegetation noticed thus far are the maple sap, the willow catkins, grass on south banks, and perhaps cowslip in sheltered places") ;  March 26, 1857 ("The buds of the cowslip are very yellow, and the plant is not observed a rod off, it lies so low and close to the surface of the water in the meadow. It may bloom and wither there several times before villagers discover or suspect it"); March 27, 1855 ("Am surprised to see the cowslip so forward, showing so much green, in E. Hubbard’s Swamp, in the brook, where it is sheltered from the winds. The already expanded leaves rise above the water. If this is a spring growth, it is the most forward herb I have seen"); April 8, 1856 ("There, in that slow, muddy brook near the head of Well Meadow, within a few rods of its source, where it winds amid the alders, which shelter the plants somewhat, while they are open enough now to admit the sun, I find two cowslips in full bloom, shedding pollen")

The bright catkins of the willow are the springing most generally observed

March 13.

The Hunt House

7 a. m. — F. hyemalis in yard. 

Going down railroad, listening intentionally, I hear, far through the notes of song sparrows (which are very numerous), the song of one or two larks. 

Also hearing a coarse chuck, I look up and see four blackbirds, whose size and long tails betray them crow blackbirds.  

Also I hear, I am pretty sure, the cackle of a pigeon woodpecker. 

The bright catkins of the willow are the springing most generally observed. 

P. M. — To Great Fields. 

Water rising still. Winter-freshet ice on meadows still more lifted up and partly broken in some places. The broad light artery of the river (and some meadows, too) very fair in the distance from Peter's. 

Talking with Garfield to-day about his trapping, he said that mink brought three dollars and a quarter, a remarkably high price, and asked if I had seen any. 

I said that I commonly saw two or three in a year. 

He said that he had not seen one alive for eight or ten years. 

"But you trap them?"

 "O yes," he said. "I catch thirty or forty dollars' worth every winter." 

This suggests how little a trapper may see of his game. 

Garfield caught a skunk lately.

In some meadows I see a great many dead spiders on the ice, where apparently it has been overflowed — or rather it was the heavy rain, methinks — when they had no retreat. 

Hear a ground squirrel's sharp chirrup, which makes you start, it is so sudden; but he is probably earthed again, for I do not see him. 

On the northeast part of the Great Fields, I find the broken shell of a Cistudo Blandingii, on very dry soil. This is the fifth, then, I have seen in the town. All the rest were three in the Great Meadows (one of them in a ditch) and one within a rod or two of Beck Stow's Swamp. 

It is remarkable that the spots where I find most arrowheads, etc., being light, dry soil, — as the Great Fields, Clamshell Hill, etc., — are among the first to be bare of snow, and the frost gets out there first. It is very curiously and particularly true, for the only parts of the northeast section of the Great Fields which are so dry that I do not slump there are those small in area, where perfectly bare patches of sand occur, and there, singularly enough, the arrowheads are particularly common. 

Indeed, in some cases I find them only on such bare spots a rod or two in extent where a single wigwam might have stood, and not half a dozen rods off in any direction. Yet the difference of level may not be more than a foot, — if there is any. It is as if the Indians had selected precisely the driest spots on the whole plain, with a view to their advantage at this season. If you were going to pitch a tent to-night on the Great Fields, you would inevitably pitch on one of these spots, or else lie down in water or mud or on ice. It is as if they had chosen the site of their wigwams at this very season of the year. 

I see a small flock of blackbirds flying over, some rising, others falling, yet all advancing together, one flock but many birds, some silent, others tchucking, — incessant alternation. This harmonious movement as in a dance, this agreeing to differ, makes the charm of the spectacle to me. One bird looks fractional, naked, like a single thread or ravelling from the web to which it belongs. Alternation! Alternation! Heaven and hell ! Here again in the flight of a bird, its ricochet motion, is that undulation observed in so many materials, as in the mackerel sky. 

If men were to be destroyed and the books they have written [were to] be transmitted to a new race of creatures, in a new world, what kind of record would be found in them of so remarkable a phenomenon as the rainbow? 

I cannot easily forget the beauty of those terrestrial browns in the rain yesterday. The withered grass was not of that very pale hoary brown that it is to-day, now that it is dry and lifeless, but, being perfectly saturated and dripping with the rain, the whole hillside seemed to reflect a certain yellowish light, so that you looked around for the sun in the midst of the storm. All the yellow and red and leather-color in the fawn-colored weeds was more intense than at any other season. The withered ferns which fell last fall — pin weeds, sarothra, etc. — were actually a glowing brown for the same reason, being all dripping wet. 

The cladonias crowning the knolls had visibly expanded and erected themselves, though seen twenty rods off, and the knolls appeared swelling and bursting as with yeast. 

All these hues of brown were most beautifully blended, so that the earth appeared covered with the softest and most harmoniously spotted and tinted tawny fur coat of any animal. The very bare sand slopes, with only here and there a thin crusting of mosses, was [sic] a richer color than ever it is. 

In short, in these early spring rains, the withered herbage, thus saturated, and reflecting its brightest withered tint, seems in a certain degree to have revived, and sympathizes with the fresh greenish or yellowish or brownish lichens in its midst, which also seem to have withered. It seemed to me — and I think it may be the truth — that the abundant moisture, bringing out the highest color in the brown surface of the earth, generated a certain degree of light, which, when the rain held up a little, reminded you of the sun shining through a thick mist.

Oak leaves which have sunk deep into the ice now are seen to be handsomely spotted with black (of fungi or lichens?), which spots are rarely perceived in dry weather. 

All that vegetable life which loves a superfluity of moisture is now rampant, cold though it is, compared with summer. 

Radical leaves are as bright as ever they are. 

The barrenest surfaces, perhaps, are the most interesting in such weather as yesterday, when the most terrene colors are seen. 

The wet earth and sand, and especially subsoil, are very invigorating sights. 

The Hunt house, to draw from memory, — though I have given its measures within two years in my Journal, — looked like this : 

This is only generally correct, without a scale.

Probably grackles have been seen some days. I think I saw them on the 11th? Garfield says he saw black ducks yesterday.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 13, 1859

The bright catkins of the willow are the springing most generally observed. See March 2, 1859 ("Go and measure to what length the silvery willow catkins have crept out beyond their scales, if you would know what time o' the year it is by Nature's clock"); March 10, 1853 (“Methinks the first obvious evidence of spring is the pushing out of the swamp willow catkins"); March 20, 1858 (“How handsome the willow catkins! Those wonderfully bright silvery buttons, so regularly disposed in oval schools in the air, or, if you please, along the seams which their twigs make, in all degrees of forwardness, from the faintest, tiniest speck of silver, just peeping from beneath the black scales, to lusty pussies which have thrown off their scaly coats and show some redness at base on a close inspection.”) March 20, 1858 (“How handsome the willow catkins! Those wonderfully bright silvery buttons, so regularly disposed in oval schools in the air, or, if you please, along the seams which their twigs make, in all degrees of forwardness, from the faintest, tiniest speck of silver, just peeping from beneath the black scales, to lusty pussies which have thrown off their scaly coats and show some redness at base on a close inspection.”)

Garfield to-day said that mink brought three dollars and a quarter, See March 15, 1855 ("He [Farmer] sells about a hundred mink skins in a year. . . .He says (I think) a mink’s skin is worth two dollars!”)


The Hunt house, to draw from memory. See February 17, 1857 ("To the old Hunt house. . . .The rear part has a wholly oak frame, while the front is pine."); February 9, 1858 ("The stairs of the old back part are white pine or spruce, each the half of a square log; those of the cellar in front, oak, of the same form."); March 11, 1859 ("To Hunt house. I go to get one more sight of the old house which Hosmer is pulling down, but I am too late to see much of it.")