The manifold ways in which the light is reflected to us

November 17

November 17, 2015

November 17, 2018

The ground has remained frozen since the morning of the 12th. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

The polypody on the rock is much shrivelled by the late cold. The edges are curled up, and it is not nearly so fair as it was ten days ago. 

I see a small botrychium in the swampy wood west of river, opposite Emerson’s field, quite fresh, not at all injured. 

The musquash are more active since the cold weather. I see more of them about the river now, swimming back and forth across the river, and diving in the middle, where I lose them. They dive off the round-backed, black mossy stones, which, when small and slightly exposed, look much like themselves. In swimming show commonly three parts with water between. One sitting in the sun, as if for warmth, on the opposite shore to me looks quite reddish brown. They avail themselves of the edge of the ice now found along the sides of the river to feed on. 

Much Lycopodium complanatum did not shed pollen on the 3d, and the Lycopodium dendroideum var. obscurum sheds it only within a very few days  (was apparently in its prime yesterday). So it would seem that these lycopodiums, at least, which have their habitat on the forest floor and but lately attracted my attention there (since the withered leaves fell around them and revealed them by the contrast of their color and they emerged from obscurity), —it would seem that they at the same time attained to their prime, their flowering season. It was coincident with this prominence. 

Leaving my boat, I walk through the low wood west of Dove Rock, toward the scarlet oak. The very sunlight on the pale-brown bleached fields is an interesting object these cold days. I naturally look toward [it] as to a wood-fire. 

Not only different objects are presented to our attention at different seasons of the year, but we are in a frame of body and of mind to appreciate different objects at different seasons. I see one thing when it is cold and another when it is warm. 

Looking toward the sun now when an hour high, there being many small alders and birches between me and it for half a dozen rods, the light reflected from their with closely concentric lines, of which I see about one fourth, on account of the upward curve of the twigs on each side, and the light not being reflected to me at all from one side of the trees directly in front of me. The light is thus very pleasantly diffused. 

We are interested at this season by the manifold ways in which the light is reflected to us. 

Ascending a little knoll covered with sweet-fern, shortly after, the sun appearing but a point above the sweet-fern, its light was reflected from a dense mass of the bare downy twigs of this plant in a surprising manner which would not be believed if described. It was quite like the sunlight reflected from grass and weeds covered with hoar frost. Yet in an ordinary light these are but dark or dusky looking twigs with scarcely a noticeable downiness. Yet as I saw it, there was a perfect halo of light resting on the knoll as I moved to right or left. 

A myriad of surfaces are now prepared to reflect the light. This is one of the hundred silvery lights of November. The setting sun, too, is reflected from windows more brightly than at any other season. “November Lights" would be a theme for me. 

I am surprised to see a stake-driver fly up from the weeds within a stone’s throw of my boat’s place. It drops its excrement from thirty feet in the air, and this falling, one part being heavier than another, takes the form of a snake, and suggests that this may be the origin of some of the stories of this bird swallowing a snake or eel which passed through it.

Nature is moderate and loves degrees. 

Winter is not all white and sere. Some trees are evergreen to cheer us, and on the forest floor our eyes do not fall on sere brown leaves alone, but some evergreen shrubs are placed there to relieve the eye. Mountain laurel, lambkill, checkerberry, Wintergreen, etc., etc., etc., and a few evergreen ferns scattered about keep up the semblance of summer still. 

Aspidium spinulosum

As for the evergreen ferns, I see now —

• Common polypody (though shrivelled by cold where exposed). 
• Asplenium trichomanes. 
• A. ebeneum.  
• Aspidium spinulosum (?). large frond, small-fruited, in swamp southeast Brister’s Spring, on 16th. 
• A. cristatum (?), Grackle Swamp on the 15th, with oftener what I take to be the narrower and more open sterile frond. 
• A. marginale (common). 
• A. achrostichoides (terminal shield).

The first one and the last two are particularly handsome, the last especially, it has so thick a frond.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 17, 1853 

The polypody on the rock. See November 16, 1853 ("I now take notice of the green polypody on the rock. ") See alss A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Polypody, Marginal Shield Fern, Terminal Shield Fern

Not only different objects are presented to our attention at different seasons of the year, but we are in a frame of body and of mind to appreciate different objects at different seasons. See June 11, 1851 (“Hardly two nights are alike. . . .No one, to my knowledge, has observed the minute differences in the seasons.”); May 23, 1853 ( Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human mind.”;  October 26, 1857 (“The seasons and all their changes are in me. . . . My moods are thus periodical, not two days in my year alike.”); November 3, 1853 ("There are very few phenomena which can be described indifferently as occurring at different seasons of the year, for they will occur with some essential difference.”); May 6, 1854 ("I can be said to note the flower's fall only when I see in it the symbol of my own change. When I experience this, then the flower appears to me.”);   June 6, 1857 (“A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. . . . Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind. ”); August 7, 1853("The objects I behold correspond to my mood”);April 24, 1859  (" There is a season for everything, and we do not notice a given phenomenon except at that season, if, indeed, it can be called the same phenomenon at any other season....The moods and thoughts of man are revolving just as steadily and incessantly as nature's.”); see also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Moods and Seasons of the Mind.

The setting sun, too, is reflected from windows more brightly than at any other season. See November 13, 1858 ("Now for twinkling light reflected from unseen windows in the horizon in the early twilight”)

The hundred silvery lights of November. See November 17, 1859 (“How fair and memorable this prospect when you stand opposite to the sun, these November afternoons, and look over the red andromeda swamp”) See also October 25, 1858 (“Also I notice, when the sun is low, the light reflected from the parallel twigs of birches recently bare, etc., like the gleam from gossamer lines. This is another Novemberish phenomenon. Call these November Lights. Hers is a cool, silvery light.”); November 2, 1853( "We come home in the autumn twilight . . . — clear white light, which penetrates the woods”);  November 10, 1858 (""This a November phenomenon, — the silvery light reflected from a myriad of downy surfaces . . . A cool and silvery light is the prevailing one;); November 11, 1851 (" Every withered blade of grass and every dry weed, as well as pine-needle, reflects light. . . . the sun shines in upon the stems of trees which it has not shone on since spring.): November 11, 1853 ("Bracing cold, and exhilarating sunlight on russet and frosty fields.”); .November 14, 1853("The clear, white, leafless twilight of November"); November 15, 1859 ("I see several musquash-cabins off Hubbard Shore distinctly outlined as usual in the November light"); November 20, 1858 ("The glory of November is in its silvery, sparkling lights”)

Ascending a little knoll covered with sweet-fern, the sun appearing but a point above the sweet-fern .there was a perfect halo of light resting on the knoll as I moved to right or left. See December 7, 1857 (“I would rather sit at this table with the sweet-fern twigs between me and the sun than at the king’s.”)

I am surprised to see a stake-driver fly up. See September 20, 1855("The great bittern, as it flies off from near the rail road bridge, filthily drops its dirt and utters a low hoarse kwa kwa; then runs and hides in the grass, and I land and search within ten feet of it before it rises. “); and note to April, 25 1858 ("Goodwin says he heard a stake-driver several days ago.")

Nature is moderate and loves degrees. See June 14, 1851 ("How moderate, deliberate, is Nature!"); January 26, 1858 ("Nature loves gradation.")

As for the evergreen ferns, I see now —

• Common polypody  [Polypodium virginianum — rock polypody] (though shrivelled by cold where exposed)
• Asplenium trichomanes [maidenhair spleenwort].
• A. ebeneum [or Asplenium platyneuron – ebony spleenwort or brownstem spleenwort].
• Aspidium spinulosum (?) [or Dryopteris carthusiana or Polypodium spinulosum, –  spinulose shield fern, spinulose woodfern or toothed wood fern] large frond, small-fruited, in swamp southeast Brister’s Spring, on 16th.
• A. cristatum (?) [or Dryopteris cristata – crested wood fern], Grackle Swamp on the 15th, with oftener what I take to be the narrower and more open sterile frond.
• A. marginale (common) [or Dryopteris marginalis, – marginal shield fern or marginal wood fern]
• A. achrostichoides (terminal shield)[or Polystichum acrostichoides, – Christmas fern]

See September 30, 1859 ("Of the twenty-three ferns which I seem to know here, seven may be called evergreens."). See also August 30, 1853  ('I find at this time in fruit: (1) Polypodium vulgare,

. . .( 5 ) Asplenium Trichomanes ( dwarf spleenwort), also ( 6 ) A. ebeneum ( ebony spleenwort ),. . .(8) Dryopteris marginalis  marginal shield fern), (9) Polystichum acrostichoides (terminal shield fern). . . Nos . 1, 5 , 6 , and 8 common at Lee's Cliff . No.. . . 9 at Brister's Hill.")  See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Polypody, Marginal Shield Fern, Terminal Shield Fern; A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Aspidium spinulosum  & Aspidium cristatum; A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Evergreen Ferns, Part One: Maidenhair and Ebony Spleenwort

The last especially[ handsome], it has so thick a frond. See July 29, 1853 ("Brister's Hill. There are some beautiful glossy, firm ferns there, – Polytichum acrostichoides (?), shield fern. Nature made ferns for pure leaves, to show what she could do in that line.")

Note: Did HDT observe Dryopteris intermedia? Although intermediate woodfern (Dryopteris intermedia) a/k/a "evergreen woodfern" is a common evergreen fern, Henry's only reference to “intermediate fern" is likely a mistranscription of "interrupted fern" (Osmunda claytoniana. The Botanical Index to Thoreau's Journal. See May 13, 1860 (“The intermediate ferns and cinnamon, a foot and a half high, have just leafeted out.”) Compare May 12, 1858 ("The cinnamon and interrupted ferns are both about two feet high in some places."); May 23, 1860 (" Interrupted fern fruit probably a day or two, and cinnamon, say the same or just after."); May 26, 1855 ("Interrupted fern pollen the 23d; may have been a day or two. Cinnamon fern to-day.")

November 17.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November 17

November 17, 2015

The manifold ways

at this season that light is 

reflected to us.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The manifold ways in which the light is reflected to us

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-531117

It is wonderful what gradation and harmony there is in nature

November 13. 

8.30 A. M. — To Hill. 

I notice of late the darker green (livid ?) of the arbor vitae and other evergreens, the effect of cold. So they are never so purely bright a green as immediately after their fall. They are not perfectly ever-green. 

I hear go over, not far from the house, goldfinches, as I think, — their mewing note and ricochet flight, -— I think not redpolls, for I hear no rattling notes. Also hear a robin’s note. 

Last night was quite cold, and the ground is white with frost. Thus gradually, but steadily, winter approaches. First there is the bleached grass, then the frost, then snow, the fields growing more and more hoary. There is frost not only on all the withered grass and stubble, but it is particularly thick and white and handsome around the throat of every hole and chink in the earth’s surface, the congealed breath of the earth as it were, so that you would think at first it was the entry to some woodchuck’s, or squirrel’s, or mouse’s, retreat. But it is the great dormant earth gone into winter quarters here, the earth letting off steam after the summer’s work is over. 

As I stand on the hill at 9 A. M., it looks like snow; the sky is overcast; smokes go up thickly from the village, answering to the frost in the chinks; and there is a remarkable stillness, as if it were earlier, the effect of the colder weather merely, as it were stiffening things. Leaves, twigs, birds (except the chickadee, and its feeble note seems to enhance the stillness), and insects are hushed. The few tinkling sounds — the chopping, or the like — are heard far and distinctly. It is like the calm before a hurricane or an earthquake, this stillness which precedes the winter’s setting in. 


Larches now look dark or brownish yellow. Now, on the advent of much colder weather, the last Populus tremuliformis has lost its leaves, the sheltered dogwood is withered, and even the scarlet oak may be considered as extinguished, and the larch looks brown and nearly bare, and the few leaves left here and there on the indigenous shrubs named on the 9th are being rapidly killed by the same cause, and are falling. 

Now for twinkling light reflected from unseen windows in the horizon in the early twilight. 

One hickory at least (on the hill) has not lost its leaves yet, i. e., has a good many left. So they are a month falling. 

I see some feathers of a blue jay scattered along a wood-path, and at length come to the body of the bird. What a neat and delicately ornamented creature, finer than any work of art in a lady’s boudoir, with its soft light purplish-blue crest and its dark-blue or purplish secondaries (the narrow half) finely barred with dusky. It is the more glorious to live in Concord because the jay is so splendidly painted.

A large flock of geese go over just before night. 

After expecting snow all day, —'though we did not know but it would prove rain,—we looked out the window at 9 P. M. and saw the ground for the most part white with the first sugaring, which at first we could hardly tell from a mild moonlight, — only there was no moon. Thus it comes stealthily in the night and changes the whole aspect of the earth. 

Of course frozen ground, ice, and snow have now banished the few remaining skaters (if there were any ?), crickets, and water-bugs. 

It is wonderful what gradation and harmony there is in nature. The light reflected from bare twigs at this season — i. e., since they began to be bare, in the latter part of October — is not only like that from gossamer, but like that which will ere long be reflected from the ice that will incrust them. So the bleached herbage of the fields is like frost, and frost like snow, and one prepares for the other.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 13, 1858

I think not redpolls, for I hear no rattling notes. See November 13, 1852 ("When startled, they went off with a jingling sound somewhat like emptying a bag of coin. Is it the yellow redpoll?"); September 19, 1854 ("Did I see a returned yellow redpoll fly by? "); November 21, 1852 ("The commonest bird I see and hear nowadays is that little red crowned or fronted bird I described the 13th. I hear now more music from them. They have a mewing note which reminds me of a canary-bird. They make very good forerunners of winter. Is it not the {lesser redpoll}?”); December 11, 1855 ("Standing there, though in this bare November landscape, I am reminded of the incredible phenomenon of small birds in winter. ... The age of miracles is each moment thus returned. Now it is wild apples, now river reflections, now a flock of lesser redpolls.")


Now, on the advent of much colder weather, the last Populus tremuliformis has lost its leaves. See October 25, 1858 ("Aspens (tremuliformis) generally bare"); October 29, 1858 ("Am surprised to see, by the path to Baker Farm, a very tall and slender large Populus tremuliformis still thickly clothed with leaves which are merely yellowish greén."); November 10, 1853 ("There are still a few leaves on the large Populus tremuliformis, but they will be all gone in a day or two. They have turned quite yellow.")

Now for twinkling light reflected from unseen windows in the horizon in the early twilight. See November 17, 1858 ("The setting sun, too, is reflected from windows more brightly than at any other season. “November Lights" would be a theme for me. “)

A large flock of geese go over just before night. See November 8 , 1857 ("About 10 A.M. a long flock of geese are going over from northeast to southwest"); November 13, 1855 ("Seventy or eighty geese, in three harrows successively smaller, flying southwest—pretty well west—over the house. A completely overcast, occasionally drizzling forenoon. "); November 14, 1858 ('The principal flight of geese was November 8th, so that the bulk of them preceded this cold turn five days.") ; November 18, 1854 ("Sixty geese go over the Great Fields, in one waving line, broken from time to time by their crowding on each other and vainly endeavoring to form into a harrow, honking all the while.”); November 30, 1857 (“You first hear a faint honking from one or two in the northeast and think there are but few wandering there, but, looking up, see forty or fifty coming on in a more or less broken harrow, wedging their way southwest. . . . According to my calculation a thousand or fifteen hundred may have gone over Concord to-day. When they fly low and near, they look very black against the sky.”)

It is wonderful what gradation and harmony there is in nature. See Walden ("Nature has woven a natural selvage, and the eye rises by just gradations from the low shrubs of the shore to the highest trees. There are few traces of man's hand to be seen. The water laves the shore as it did a thousand years ago. A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature."): January 26, 1858 (" Nature loves gradation")

Nature loves gradation.

January 26. 

At the Doublechair
January 26, 2018

A warm rain from time to time. 

P. M. — To Clintonia Swamp down the brook. 

When it rains it is like an April shower. The brook is quite open, and there is no snow on the banks or fields. 

From time to time I see a trout glance, and sometimes, in an adjoining ditch, quite a school of other fishes, but I see no tortoises. In a ditch I see very light-colored and pretty large lizards moving about, and I suspect I may even have heard a frog drop into the water once or twice. 

I like to sit still under my umbrella and meditate in the woods in this warm rain. 

On the side-hill at the swamp, I see how the common horizontal birch fungus is formed. I see them in all stages and of all sizes on a dead Betula alba, both on the upper and under sides, but always facing the ground. At first you perceive the bark merely raised into a nub and perhaps begun to split, and, removing a piece of the bark, you [find] a fibrous whitish germ like a mildew in the bark, as it were of a fungus be neath, in the bark and decayed wood. Next you will see the fungus pushed out like a hernia, about the size as well as form of a pea. At first it is of a nearly uniform convex and homogeneous surface, above and below, but very soon, or while yet no larger than a pea,it begins to show a little horizontal flat disk, always on the under side, which you would not suspect with out examining it, and the upper surface already be gins to be water. So it goes on, pushing out through the bark further and further, spreading and flatting out more and more, till it has attained its growth, with a more or less elongated neck to its peninsula. The fungus as it grows fills the rent in the bark very closely, and the edges of the bark are recurved, lip-like. They commonly break off at the junction of the true bark with the wood, bringing away some of the woody fibre. Apparently the spongy decayed bark and wood is their soil. 

This is a lichen day. 

The white lichens, partly encircling aspens and maples, look as if a painter had touched their trunks with his brush as he passed. 

The yellow birch tree is peculiarly interesting. It might be described as a tree whose trunk or bole was covered with golden and silver shavings glued all over it and dangling in curls. The edges of the curls, like a line of breakers, form commonly diagonal lines up and down the tree, corresponding to the twist of the nerve or grain. 

Nature loves gradation. Trees do not spring abruptly from the earth. Mosses creep up over the insteps of the trees and endeavor to reclaim them. Hence the propriety of lacing over the instep. 

Is not the moccasin a more picturesque and fitter sort of shoe than ours in which to move amid the herbage? 

How protean is life! One may eat and drink and sleep and digest, and do the ordinary duties of a man, and have no excuse for sending for a doctor, and yet he may have reason to doubt if he is as truly alive or his life is as valuable and divine as that of an oyster. He may be the very best citizen in the town, and yet it shall occur to him to prick himself with a pin to see if he is alive. 

It is wonderful how quiet, harmless, and ineffective a living creature may be. No more energy may it have than a fungus that lifts the bark of a decaying tree. 

I raised last summer a squash which weighed 123 1/2 pounds. If it had fallen on me it would have made as deep and lasting an impression as most men do. I would just as lief know what it thinks about God as what most men think, or are said to think. In such a squash you have already got the bulk of a man. My man, perchance, when I have put such a question to him, opes his eyes for a moment, essays in vain to think, like a rusty firelock out of order, then calls for a plate of that same squash to eat and goes to sleep, as it is called, — and that is no great distance to go, surely. 

Melvin would have sworn he heard a bluebird the other day if it hadn’t been January. Some say that this particularly warm weather within a few days is the January thaw, but there is nothing to thaw. The sand-banks in the Deep Cut are as dry as in summer. 

Some men have a peculiar taste for bad words, mouthing and licking them into lumpish shapes like the bear her cubs,—words like “tribal” and “ornamentation,” which drag a dead tail after them. They will pick you out of a thousand the still-born words, the falsettos, the wing-clipped and lame words, as if only the false notes caught their ears. They cry encore to all the discords. 

The cocks crow in the yard, and the hens cackle and scratch, all this winter. Eggs must be plenty.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 26, 1858

I like to sit still under my umbrella and meditate in the woods in this warm rain. See May 30, 1857 (“Perhaps I could write meditations under a rock in a shower.”)  Also January 27, 1858 ("sit long at a time, still, and have your thoughts. . . .The part of you that is wettest is fullest of life, like the lichens. You discover evidences of immortality not known to divines. You cease to die. You detect some buds and sprouts of life. . . . And then the rain comes thicker and faster than before, thawing the remaining frost in the ground, detaining the migrating bird; and you turn your back to it, full of serene, contented thought, soothed by the steady dropping on the withered leaves, more at home for being abroad, more comfortable for being wet, , , ,You can not go home yet; you stay and sit in the rain. ")

Edges of the yellow birch curls, like a line of breakers, form commonly diagonal lines up and down the tree. See February 18, 1854 (“The curls of the yellow birch bark form more or less parallel straight lines up and down on all sides of the tree, like parted hair blown aside by the wind, or as when a vest bursts and blows open. ”)

 She takes me out  to see bear tracks.  We continue on straight up the mountain to our north east corner.. The snow is  a hard packed crust. The walking is easy everywhere in the woods as there is a smooth surface covering all imperfections. I am wearing studded boots

We stop at the double chair and sit. This is one of those blue sky days. Now in late afternoon we see the first quarter moon in the east

We bushwhack down off the mountain to the top of the rocky trail and then bushwhack straight up to the view. Nature is putting on another orange sunset way to the south. It seems to be setting right over Giant. 

I start to feel chilled. Even though the day seem to be in the 30s the temperature here is now 16°

We head north through the woods and then down to the under view Trail where it connects with the rocky trail. We feel the freedom to go anywhere on this crusty snow

Though we have our headlamps we do not pull them out as it gets dark. Jane suddenly exclaims what is that shadow – we realize we are now walking in the moonlight– Moon light and shadows the rest of the way home.

Moonlight and shadows.

Freedom to go anywhere 

on this crusty snow.

Zypx 20180126

Spring birding - A flurry of snow.

March 20

A flurry of snow at 7 A. M. I go to turn my boat up.

Four or five song sparrows are flitting along amid the willows by the waterside. Probably they came yesterday with the bluebirds. From distant trees and bushes I hear a faint tinkling te te te te te' and at last a full strain whose rhythm is whit whit whit, ter tche, tchear tche, deliberately sung, measuredly, while the falling snow is beginning to whiten the ground, —not discouraged by such a reception. 

The bluebird, too, is in the air, and I detect its blue back for a moment upon a picket. 

It is remarkable by what a gradation of days which we call pleasant and warm, beginning in the last of February, we come at last to real summer warmth. At first a sunny, calm, serene winter day is pronounced spring, or reminds us of it; and then the first pleasant spring day perhaps we walk with our greatcoat buttoned up and gloves on.

P. M. — Up Assabet. It soon clears off and proves a fair but windy day.  I notice havoc along the stream on making my first voyages on it.  

At my landing I hear the F. hyemalis, in company with a few tree sparrows. They take refuge from the cold wind, half a dozen in all, behind an arbor-vitae hedge, and there plume themselves with puffed-up feathers.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 20, 1855

Song sparrows are flitting along amid the willows by the waterside . . . I hear . . . at last a full strain whose rhythm is whit whit whit, ter tche, tchear tche, deliberately sung, measuredly, while the falling snow is beginning to whiten the ground. See March 11, 1854 ("They generally forthburst into sprayey song from the low trees along the river. The developing of their song is gradual but sure, like the expanding of a flower. This is the first song I have heard."); March 18, 1852 ("But this snow has not driven back the birds. I hear the song sparrow's simple strain, most genuine herald of the spring, and see flocks of chubby northern birds with the habit of snowbirds, passing north.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau , Signs of the Spring: the Song Sparrow Sings

The bluebird, too, is in the air, and I detect its blue back. See 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."); See alsoA Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau , Signs of the Spring: Listening for the Bluebird

At my landing I hear the F. hyemalis, in company with a few tree sparrows. They take refuge from the cold wind. See March 20, 1852 ("And now, within a day or two, I have noticed the chubby slate-colored snowbird (Fringilla hyemalis?) . . .It is cold as winter to-day, the ground still covered with snow"); March 20, 1859 ("I see under the east side of the house . . . quite a parcel of sparrows, chiefly F. hyemalis, two or three tree sparrows, and one song sparrow, quietly feeding together. "); See also March 15, 1854(" Pleasant morning, unexpectedly. Hear on the alders by the river the lill lill lill lill of the first F. hyemalis, mingled with song sparrows and tree sparrows."); March 23, 1854 ("Snows and rains a little. The birds in yard active now, — hyemalis, tree sparrow, and song sparrow. The hyemalis jingle easily distinguished. Hear all together on apple trees these days.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau , Signs of the Spring, the note of the dark-eyed junco going northward; A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau , the Tree Sparrow

It is remarkable by what a gradation of days which we call pleasant and warm . . . See April 26, 1860 ("What we should have called a warm day in March is a cold one at this date in April.”) 

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

 Song sparrows flitting

 along amid the willows 

by the waterside.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Spring birding - A flurry of snow.

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-55320