The river is but a long chain of flooded meadows.

April 7. 

April 7, 2020

6 A. M. — I did not notice any bees on the willows I looked at yesterday, though so many on the cabbage. 

The white-bellied swallows advertise themselves this morning, dashing up the street, and two have already come to disturb the bluebirds at our box. 

Saw and heard this morning, on a small elm and the wall by Badger’s, a sparrow (? ), seemingly somewhat slaty-brown and lighter beneath, whose note began loud and clear, twee-tooai, etc., etc., ending much like the field sparrow. Was it a female F. hyemalis? Or a field, or a swamp, sparrow? Saw no white in tail. 

Also saw a small, plain, warbler-like bird for a moment, which I did not recognize. 

10 A. M. — Down river in boat to Bedford, with C. 

A windy, but clear, sunny day; cold wind from north west. 

Notice a white maple with almost all the staminate flowers above or on the top, most of the stamens now withered, before the red maple has blossomed. Another maple, all or nearly all female. The staminiferous flowers look light yellowish, the female dark crimson. These white maples flower branches droop quite low, striking the head of the rower, and curve gracefully upward at the ends. 

Another sucker, the counterpart of the one I saw the other day, tail gone, but not purpled snout, being fresher. Is it the work of a gull or of the spearer? Do not the suckers chiefly attract the gulls at this season? 

River has risen from last rains, and we cross the Great Meadows, scaring up many ducks at a great distance, some partly white, some apparently black, some brownish (?). 

It is Fast-Day, and many gunners are about the shore, which makes them shy. I never cross the meadow at this season without seeing ducks. 

That is probably a marsh hawk, flying low over the water and then skirting the meadow’s copsy edge, when abreast, from its apparently triangular wings, reminding me of a smaller gull. Saw more afterward. 

A hawk above Ball’s Hill which, though with a distinct white rump, I think was not the harrier but sharp-shinned, from its broadish, mothlike form, light and slightly spotted beneath, with head bent downward, watching for prey. 

A great gull, though it is so fair and the wind northwest, fishing over the flooded meadow. He slowly circles round and hovers with flapping wings in the air over particular spots, repeatedly returning there and sailing quite low over the water, with long, narrow, pointed wings, trembling throughout their length. 

Hawks much about water at this season. 

If you make the least correct observation of nature this year, you will have occasion to repeat it with illustrations the next, and the season and life itself is prolonged. 

I am surprised to see how much in warm places the high blueberry buds are started, some reddish, some greenish, earlier now than any gooseberries I have noticed. 

Several painted tortoises; no doubt have been out a long time. 

Walk in and about Tarbell’s Swamp. Heard in two distinct places a slight, more prolonged croak, somewhat like the toad. This? Or a frog? It is a warmer sound than I have heard yet, as if dreaming outdoors were possible. 

Many spotted tortoises are basking amid the dry leaves in the sun, along the side of a still, warm ditch cut through the swamp. They make a great rustling a rod ahead, as they make haste through the leaves to tumble into the water. 

The flower-buds of the andromeda here are ready to open, almost. Yet three or four rods off from all this, on the edge of the swamp, under a north hillside, is a long strip of ice five inches thick for ten or twelve rods. 

The first striped snake crawling off through leaves in the sun. 

Crossed to Bedford side to see where [they] had been digging out ( probably ) a woodchuck. 

How handsome the river from those hills! The river southwest over the Great Meadows a sheet of sparkling molten silver, with broad lagoons parted from it by curving lines of low bushes; to the right or northward now, at 2 or 3 P. M., a dark blue, with small smooth, light edgings, firm plating, under the lee of the shore. 

Fly like bees buzzing about, close to the dry, barren hill side. 

The only large catkins I notice along the river side are on the recent yellow-green shoots from the stump of what looks like the ordinary early swamp willow, which is common, — nearby almost wholly grayish and stinted and scarcely opening yet. 

Small bee-like wasps (?) and flies are numerous on them, not flying when you stand never so close. 

A large leech in the water, serpentine this wise, as the snake is not. 

Approach near to Simon Brown’s ducks, on river. They are continually bobbing their heads under water in a shallow part of the meadow, more under water than above. I infer that the wild employ themselves likewise. You are most struck with the apparent ease with which they glide away, - not seeing the motion of their feet, - as by their wills. 

As we stand on Nawshawtuct at 5 P. M., looking over the meadows, I doubt if there is a town more adorned by its river than ours. Now the sun is low in the west, the northeasterly water is of a peculiarly ethereal light blue, more beautiful than the sky, and this broad water with innumerable bays and inlets running up into the land on either side and often divided by bridges and causeways, as if it were the very essence and richness of the heavens distilled and poured over the earth, contrasting with the clear russet land and the paler sky from which it has been subtracted, — nothing can be more elysian. Is not the blue more ethereal when the sun is at this angle? The river is but a long chain of flooded meadows.

I think our most distant extensive low horizon must be that northeast from this hill over Ball’s Hill, — to what town is it? It is down the river valley, partly at least toward the Merrimack, as it should be. 

What is that plant with a whorl of four, five, or six reddish cornel-like leaves, seven or eight inches from the ground, with the minute relics of small dried flowers left, and a large pink (?) bud now springing, just beneath the leaves? [Large cornel (Canadensis).] It is a true evergreen, for, it dries soon in the house, as if kept fresh by the root.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 7, 1853

If you make the least correct observation of nature this year, you will have occasion to repeat it with illustrations the next, and the season and life itself is prolonged. See August 24, 1852 (“The year is but a succession of days, and I see that I could assign some office to each da ywhich, summed up, would be the history of the year,”); October 26, 1853 ("You only need to make a faithful record of an average summer day's experience and summer mood, and read it in the winter, and it will carry you back to more than that summer day alone could show.")

The white-bellied swallows advertise themselves this morning, dashing up the street. See April 8, 1856 ("The white bellied swallows have paid us twittering visits the last three mornings. You must rush out quickly to see them,"); April 15, 1855 ("Many martins (with white—bellied swallows) are skimming and twittering above the water,"); April 15, 1856 ("The white-bellied swallows are circling about and twittering above the apple trees and walnuts on the hillside."); April 15, 1859 ("I see and hear white-bellied swallows as they are zigzagging through the air with their loud and lively notes")

Another sucker, the counterpart of the one I saw the other day, tail gone, but not purpled snout, being fresher. See April 4, 1853 (“Saw a sucker washed to the shore at Lee's Bridge, its tail gone, large fins standing out, purplish on top of head and snout”). See also May 23, 1854 ("How many springs shall I continue to see the common sucker (Catostomus Bostoniensis) floating dead on our river!”); and note to March 28, 1857 ("When I realize that the mortality of suckers in the spring is as old a phenomenon, perchance, as the race of suckers itself, I contemplate it with serenity and joy even, as one of the signs of spring.”)

The river is but a long chain of flooded meadows. See  April 16, 1852 ("A succession of bays it is, a chain of lakes.”); February 3, 1855 (“ It is all the way of one character, — a meadow river, or dead stream,—Musketicook,—the abode of muskrats, pickerel, etc., crossed within these dozen miles each way, —or thirty in all, —by some twenty low wooden bridges, connected with the mainland by willowy causeways. Thus the long, shallow lakes divided into reaches.”); July 30, 1859 (“It is a mere string of lakes which have not made up their minds to be rivers.”)

Many spotted tortoises are basking amid the dry leaves in the sun, along the side of a still, warm ditch. See April 7, 1856 ("See a yellow-spotted tortoise in a ditch."); See also February 23, 1857 ("See two yellow-spotted tortoises in the ditch south of Trillium Wood. . . .In your latest spring they still look incredibly strange when first seen, and not like cohabitants and contemporaries of yours. What mean these turtles, these coins of the muddy mint issued in early spring? The bright spots on their backs are vain unless I behold them. The spots seem brighter than ever when first beheld in the spring, as does the bark of the willow."); March 26, 1860 ("The yellow-spotted tortoise may be seen February 23, as in '57, or not till March 28, as in '55, — thirty-three days") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow-Spotted Turtle (Emys guttata)

The duck most common and most identified with the stream at this season.

March 24. 

Cold and rather blustering again, with flurries of snow. 

March 24, 2020

The boatman, when the chain of his boat has been broken with a stone by some scamp, and he cannot easily transport his boat to the blacksmith's to have it mended, gets the latter to bend him a very stout iron wire in the form of an S, then, hooking this to the two broken ends and setting it upright on a rock, he hammers it down till it rests on itself in the form of an 8, which is very difficult to pry open. 

2 P. M. — About 39. To Copan. 

I see a male frog hawk beating a hedge, scarcely rising more than two feet from the ground for half a mile, quite below the level of the wall within it. How unlike the hen-hawk in this! 

They are real wind-clouds this afternoon; have an electric, fibry look. Sometimes it is a flurry of snow falling, no doubt. Peculiar cold and windy cumuli are mixed with them, not black like a thunder cloud, but cold dark slate with very bright white crowns and prominences. 

I find on Indian ground, as to-day on the Great Fields, very regular oval stones like large pebbles, sometimes five or six inches long, water-worn, of course, and brought hither by the Indians. They commonly show marks of having been used as hammers. Often in fields where there is not a stone of that kind in place for a mile or more. 

From Holbrook's clearing I see five large dark-colored ducks, probably black ducks, far away on the meadow, with heads erect, necks stretched, on the alert, only one in water. Indeed, there is very little water on the meadows. For length of neck those most wary look much like geese. They appear quite large and heavy. They probably find some sweet grass, etc., where the water has just receded. 

There are half a dozen gulls on the water near. They are the large white birds of the meadow, the whitest we have. As they so commonly stand above water on a piece of meadow, they are so much the more conspicuous. They are very conspicuous to my naked eye a mile off, or as soon as I come in sight of the meadow, but I do not detect the sheldrakes around them till I use my glass, for the latter are not only less conspicuously white, but, as they are fishing, sink very low in the water. Three of the gulls stand together on a piece of meadow, and two or three more are standing solitary half immersed, and now and then one or two circle slowly about their companions. 

The sheldrakes appear to be the most native to the river, briskly moving along up and down the side of the stream or the meadow, three-fourths immersed and with heads under water, like cutters collecting the revenue of the river bays, or like pirate crafts peculiar the stream. They come the earliest and seem to be most at home. The water is so low that all these birds are collected near the Holt. 

The inhabitants of the village, poultry fanciers, perchance, though they be, [know not] these active and vigorous wild fowl (the sheldrakes) pursuing their finny prey ceaselessly within a mile of them, in March and April. Probably from the hen-yard fence with a good glass you can see them at it. 

They are as much at home on the water as the pickerel is within it. Their serrated bill reminds me of a pickerel's snout. You see a long row of these schooners, black above with a white stripe beneath, rapidly gliding along, and occasionally one rises erect on the surface and flaps its wings, showing its white lower parts  They are the duck most common and most identified with the stream at this season. They appear to get their food wholly within the water. Less like our domestic ducks. 

I saw two red squirrels in an apple tree, which were rather small, had simply the tops of their backs red and the sides and beneath gray! 

Fox-colored sparrows go flitting past with a faint, sharp chip, amid some oaks. 

According to a table in the "American Almanac" for ’49, page 84, made at Cambridge, from May, '47, to May, '48, the monthly mean force of the wind . . . March, April, and May were equal, and were inferior to July and June; for quantity of clouds March and May were equal, and were preceded by December, November, September, January, June, and August. 

For depth of rain, September stood first, and March ninth, succeeded only by May, October, and April. 

The wind's force was observed at sunrise, 9 A. M., 3 P. M., and 9 P. M., and in March the greatest force was at 3 P. M., the least at 9 P. M. So, for the whole year the greatest force was at 3 P. M., but the least at sunrise and 9 P. M. both alike. 

The clouds were observed at the same time, and in March there was the greatest quantity at 9 P. M. and the least at sunrise, but for the year the greatest quantity at 3 P. M. and the least at sunrise and 9 A. M. alike. 

At Mendon, Mass., for the whole year 1847 alone (i. e. a different January, February, March, and April from the last) it stood, for force of wind,. . . March , July , September , November , and December were equal, and were inferior to April , June , August , and October; and for clouds March was sixth . 

The wind's force for March was greatest at 9 A. M. and 3 P. M., which were equal; but for the year greatest at 9 A. M. and least at sunrise. 

For March there was the greatest quantity of clouds at 9 A. M., but for the year at both sunrise and 9 A. M. 

In the last table eight points of the wind were noticed viz. northwest, north, northeast, east, southeast, south, southwest, west. During the year the wind was southwest 130 days, northwest 87, northeast 59, south 33, west 29, east 14, southeast 10, north 3 days.

In March it was northwest 9 days, southwest 8, northeast 5, south 4, west 3, north 2.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 24, 1860

They are real wind-clouds this afternoon; have an electric, fibry look. Peculiar cold and windy cumuli are mixed with them. See March 4, 1860 ("Very strong and gusty northwest wind, with electric-looking wind-clouds");   March 22, 1858 ("I see those peculiar spring clouds, scattered cumuli with dark level bases. No doubt the season is to be detected by the aspect of the clouds no less than by that of the earth."); March 23, 1860 ("Small dark-based cumuli spring clouds, mostly in rows parallel with the horizon.").

I see a male frog hawk beating a hedge, scarcely rising more than two feet from the ground for half a mile. See March 27, 1855 ("See my frog hawk. (C. saw it about a week ago.) It is the hen-harrier, i.e. marsh hawk, male. Slate-colored; beating the bush; black tips to wings and white rump") See Also Henry Thoreau, A Book of the Seasons, The Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)

They are the duck most common and most identified with the stream at this season. See  February 27, 1860 ("This is the first bird of the spring that I have seen or heard of."); and note to March 16, 1860  ("Saw a flock of sheldrakes a hundred rods off, on the Great Meadows, mostly males with a few females, all intent on fishing. ") See also Henry Thoreau, A Book of the Seasons, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

March 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 24

Cold and blustering

again with flurries of snow--

cold dark slate wind-clouds.

March 24, 1860

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Cold and rather blustering again

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

Large waves are not so easily formed on account of friction.

April 28.

April 28, 2019

8.30 a. m. — Row to Carlisle Bridge with Blake and Brown. 

See black ducks and sheldrakes still. 

The first myrtle-bird that I have noticed. 

A small hawk, perhaps pigeon hawk. 

A gull. 

Sit on Ball's Hill. The water partly over the Great Meadows. The wind is northeast, and at the western base of the hill we are quite sheltered; yet the waves run quite high there and still further up the river, — waves raised by the wind beyond the hill, — while there are very slight waves or ripples over the meadow south of the hill, which is much more exposed, evidently because the water is shallow there and large waves are not so easily formed on account of friction. 

S. Higginson brought me the arbutus in bloom on the 26th, one twig only out. 

See a shad-fly, one only, on water. 

A little snake, size of little brown snake, on pine hill, but uniformly grayish above as far as I could see. 

E. Emerson's Salamandra dorsalis has just lost its skin.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 28, 1859


The first myrtle-bird that I have noticed. See April 28, 1855 ( ("There are a great many myrtle-birds here, — they have been quite common for a week.");  April 28, 1858 (“I see the myrtle-bird in the same sunny place, south of the Island woods, as formerly.”)

Ball’s Hill. See March 16, 1859 (“As we look over the lively, tossing blue waves for a mile or more eastward and northward, our eyes fall on these shining russet hills, and Ball's Hill appears in this strong light at the verge of this undulating blue plain, like some glorious newly created island of the spring, just sprung up from the bottom in the midst of the blue waters. ”)

See a shad-fly, one only, on water. See April 24, 1857 (“Sail to Ball's Hill. The water is at its height, higher than before this year. I see a few shad-flies on its surface.”). Compare May 1, 1854 ("The water is strewn with myriads of wrecked shad-flies, erect on the surface, with their wings up like so many schooners all headed one way.”)

A little snake, size of little brown snake, on pine hill, but uniformly grayish above. See October 29, 1857  (“I see evidently what Storer calls the little brown snake (Coluber ordinatus). . . . Above it is pale-brown, with a still lighter brown stripe running down the middle of the back”)

E. Emerson's Salamandra dorsalis has just lost its skin. See April 18, 1859 (“Ed. Emerson shows me his aquarium.. . .Two salamanders, . . . One some four inches long, with a carinated and waved (crenated) edged tail as well as light-vermilion spots on the back, evidently the Salamandra dorsalis. (This I suspect is what I called S. symmetrica last fall.) (This is pale-brown above.)”); December 5, 1858 (“How singularly ornamented is that salamander! Its brightest side, its yellow belly, sprinkled with fine dark spots, is turned downward. Its back is indeed ornamented with two rows of bright vermilion spots, but these can only be detected on the very closest inspection.”); December 3, 1858 ("brown (not dark-brown) above and yellow with small dark spots beneath, and the same spots on the sides of the tail; a row of very minute vermilion spots, not detected but on a close examination, on each side of the back; the tail is waved on the edge (upper edge, at least); has a pretty, bright eye. Its tail, though narrower, reminds me of the pollywog.")

April heat.

April 13. 

April 13,  2019

A little snow fell on the 11th with the rain, and on some very warm banks, the south sides of houses and hills, the grass looked quite green by contrast in spots. 

The streets are strewn with the bud-scales of the elm, which they, opening, have lost off, and their tops present a rich brown already. 

I hear a purple finch on one, and did I not hear a martin's rich warble also? [Probably a white-bellied swallow.] 

The birds are not so early now as I should have expected. Were they not deterred from coming north by the very strong and cold northwest wind, notwithstanding that the ground has been bare so long? 

The Salix purpurea will hardly open for five days yet.

2 P. M. — Paddle to Ball's Hill and sail back. 

I see the small botrychium fresh and yellow still, so it is as much an evergreen as any fern. 

It is pleasant and pretty warm. To-day is the awakening of the meadows now partly bare. I hear the stuttering note of probably the Rana halecina (see one by shore) come up from all the Great Meadow, especially the sedgy parts, or where the grass was not cut last year and now just peeps above the surface. 

There is something soothing and suggestive of halcyon days in this low but universal breeding-note of the frog. Methinks it is a more unmistakable evidence of warmer weather — of the warmest we have at this date — than almost anything else. The hylodes and wood frogs are other degrees on the thermometer of the season, indicating that the weather has attained a higher temperature than before and winter fairly ended, but this note marks what you may call April heat (or spring heat). 

I see no ducks on the meadows to-day, perhaps be cause there is so much less water and it is so fair.

Saw a great bird flying rather low and circling more or less over the Great Meadows, which I at first thought was a fish hawk, having a fair sight of it from Ball's Hill, but with my glass I saw that it was a gull, but, I should say, wholly slate-color and dark at that, — though there may have been small spots which made no impression of another color. It was at least as large, maybe larger than the herring gull. Was it the saddle back gull ? 

Is that a potamogeton, or a pontederia, or a sium, coming up so thickly now on the bottom of the river near the shore, especially on a grassy bottom, with two little roundish leafets becoming spatulate, and a seed triangular and pointed with one side more flat than the others ?

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

The streets are strewn with the bud-scales of the elm, which they, opening, have lost off, and their tops present a rich brown already. See April 13, 1852 ("The elm buds begin to show their blossoms."); April 21, 1858 (“The puddles have dried off along the road and left thick deposits or water-lines of the dark-purple anthers of the elm, coloring the ground like sawdust. You could collect great quantities of them.”)   See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Elms and the Purple Finch

To-day is the awakening of the meadows. See April 13, 1854 ("Heard now, at 5.30 P.M., that faint bullfrog like note from the meadows, er- er-er. "); April 13, 1856 ("As I go by the Andromeda Ponds, I hear the tut tut of a few croaking frogs, and at Well Meadow I hear once or twice a prolonged stertorous sound, as from river meadows a little later usually, which is undoubtedly made by a different frog from the first."); See also  April 3, 1858 (" This might be called the Day of the Snoring Frogs, or the Awakening of the Meadows.");  April 5, 1855 (“Hear from one half-flooded meadow that low, general, hard, stuttering tut tut tut of frogs,—the awakening of the meadow.”); April 9, 1853 (“The whole meadow resounds, probably from one end of the river to the other, this evening, with this faint, stertorous breathing. It is the waking up of the meadows.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Leopard Frog (Rana Halecina) in Spring

The twenty-two herbaceous flowers which I have known to be open before the first of May.

April 10. 

A calm day at last, the water almost smooth and now so low that I cannot cross the meadows. 

So ends the spring freshet (apparently), which began (not to include the winter one) March 8th and was at its height the 17th and 18th. It has lasted a month, and to-day, too, ends the windy spell. Since the 6th (q. v.) there have been two days, the 7th and 8th, of strong northwest wind, and one, the 9th, of very strong and yet colder and more northerly wind than before.

This makes twenty-two days of windy weather in all, reckoning only from the last still days (the 17th and 18th of March) and not including to-day. Of these, eleven days have been of very strong and cold northwest wind, the last, or yesterday, more northerly, — except the first, when the wind was southwest, — seven of strong wind and generally northwest, and four only of moderate wind. 

We had rain on the 18th, 22d, 24th, 25th, 29th of March, and 3d of April, and always with an easterly or southerly wind; or as often as the wind came from the east or south it brought rain, with generally considerable wind driving it, and it invariably cleared off cold with a wind from the northwest. 

The wind has regularly gone down with the sun, and risen again with it. It has been so strong as to interfere with all outdoor occupations. Yet I have not observed a single tree which was blown down by it. 

P. M. — Paddle to Well Meadow. 

I see some remarkable examples of meadow-crust floated off on the A. Wheeler meadow and above, densely covered with button-bushes and willows, etc. One sunk in five feet of water on a sandy shore, which I must examine again. 

I hear of a cinquefoil found in bloom on the 8th. It was in this sprout-land, where it was protected. 

This, with bluets, mouse-ear, and Viola ovata (of the herbaceous plants), I should call pasture flowers (among those of March and April). 

I might class the twenty-two herbaceous flowers which I have known to be open before the first of May thus: — 

• Garden flowers Chickweed and shepherd's-purse. 
• Meadow flowers Skunk-cabbage, caltha, chrysosplenium, dandelion, strawberry, Viola cucullata. Ranunculus repens (?). 
• Rock flowers Saxifrage, crowfoot, columbine, and tower-mustard. 
• Woodland flowers Epigaea, anemone, and thalictrum. 
• Pasture flowers Cinquefoil, bluets, mouse-ear, and Viola sagittata. 
• Water flowers Callitriche verna and nuphar. 

The woody plants — trees and shrubs — might be arranged under three heads, viz. : — 

Wet Land             Dry Land     Intermediate 
Alders, both (?)      Aspens            Elms 
White maple          Hazels           Red maple 
Most willows         Arbutus             Peach 
Sweet-gale        (?)Arbor-vitae       Abele 
Benzoin        Red cedar   Cultivated cherry Cassandra         Fir-balsam 
White alder [?]   (?) Sweet-fern 
Larch                   Shad-bush 
                          Salix humilis 
                          S. tristis 
                           S. rostrata 
                           Yew 


The hellebore buds [?] are quite conspicuous and interesting to-day, but not at all unrolled, though six or eight inches high. 

The Alnus serrulata appears to grow on drier land than the other sometimes. 

See a kingfisher flying very low, in the ricochet manner, across the water. 

Sheldrakes and gulls and black ducks still. 

Hear the first stuttering frog croak — probably halecina — in the last Cassandra Pond.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  April 10, 1859

The twenty-two herbaceous flowers which I have known to be open before the first of May. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Earliest Flower

This makes twenty-two days of windy weather. See April 6, 1859 ("For nineteen days, from the 19th of March to the 6th of April, both inclusive, we have had remarkably windy weather. For ten days of the nineteen the wind has been remarkably strong and violent . . .The last seven, including to-day, have all been windy, five of them remarkably so; wind from northwest."); April 8, 1859 ("We have had, most of the time, during this windy weather for a month past, when the wind was northwest, those peculiar brushy clouds which look as if a little snow or rain was falling in the northwest, but they prove to be wind chiefly.")

See a kingfisher flying very low, in the ricochet manner, across the water.  See  April 11, 1856 ("Does not its arrival mark some new movement in its finny prey?"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau The Kingfisher

Hear the first stuttering frog croak — probably halecina.:Rana halecina (Lithobates pipiens)  – Northern Leopard Frog. See   April 3, 1858 (“I stood perfectly still, and ere long they began to reappear one by one, and spread themselves out on the surface. They were the R. halecina. I could see very plainly the two very prominent yellow lines along the sides of the head and the large dark ocellated marks, even under water, on the thighs, etc. Gradually they begin to recover their voices, but it is hard to say at first which one of the dozen within twenty feet is speaking. . . .. Their note is a hard dry tut tut tut tut, not at all ringing like the toad’s, and produced with very little swelling or motion of the throat, but as much trembling of the whole body; and from time to time one makes that faint somewhat bullfrog-like er er er. Both these sounds, then, are made by one frog, and what I have formerly thought an early bullfrog note was this. This, I think, is the first frog sound I have heard from the river meadows or anywhere, except the croaking leaf-pool frogs and the hylodes. . . . This might be called the Day of the Snoring Frogs, or the Awakening of the Meadows. “); April 5, 1855 ("Hear from one half-flooded meadow that low, general, hard, stuttering tut tut tut of frogs,—the awakening of the meadow.”);  April 8, 1852 ("To-day I hear the croak of frogs in small pond-holes in the woods"); ; April 9, 1853 (“The whole meadow resounds, probably from one end of the river to the other, this evening, with this faint, stertorous breathing. It is the waking up of the meadows." );April 13, 1855 ("The small croaking frogs are now generally heard in all those stagnant ponds or pools in woods floored with leaves, which are mainly dried up in the summer.");  ; April 13, 1856 ("As I go by the Andromeda Ponds, I hear the tut tut of a few croaking frogs. . ."); April 15, 1855 ("That general tut tut tut tut, or snoring, of frogs on the shallow meadow heard first slightly the 5th. )

Seven indigenous flowers which begin to bloom in March,

March 27. 

7 a. m. — Was that the Alauda, shore lark (?), which flew up from the corn-field beyond Texas house, and dashed off so swiftly with a peculiar note, — a small flock of them? 

P. M. — Sail from Cardinal Shore up Otter Bay, close to Deacon Farrar's. I see a gull flying over Fair Haven Pond which appears to have a much duskier body beneath than the common near by, though about the same size. Can it be another species? 

The wind is so nearly west to-day that we sail up from Cardinal Shore to the pond, and from the road up what I will call Otter Bay, behind Farrar's, and, returning, sail from the road at Creel (or Pole) Brook to Pond Island and from Hallowell willows to railroad. 

The water is quite high still, and we sail up Otter Bay, I think, more than half a mile, to within a very short distance of Farrar's. This is an interesting and wild place. There is an abundance of low willows whose catkins are now conspicuous, rising four to six or seven feet above the water, thickly placed on long wand-like osiers. They look, when you look from the sun, like dead gray twigs or branches (whose wood is exposed) of bushes in the light, but, nearer, are recognized for the pretty bright buttons of the willow. We sail by masses of these silvery buttons two or three rods long, rising above the water. By their color they have relation to the white clouds and the sky and to the snow and ice still lingering in a few localities. In order to see these silvery buttons in the greatest profusion, you must sail amid them on some flooded meadow or swamp like this. 

Our whole course, as we wind about in this bay, is lined also with the alder, whose pretty tassels, now many of them in full bloom, are hanging straight down, suggesting in a peculiar manner the influence of gravity, or are regularly blown one side. It is remarkable how modest and unobtrusive these early flowers are. The musquash and duck hunter or the farmer might and do commonly pass by them without perceiving them. They steal into the air and light of spring without being noticed for the most part. The sportsman seems to see a mass of weather-stained dead twigs showing their wood and partly covered with gray lichens and moss, and the flowers of the alder, now partly in bloom, maybe half, make the impression at a little distance of a collection of the brown twigs of winter — also are of the same color with many withered leaves. 

Twenty rods off, masses of alder in bloom look like masses of bare brown twigs, last year's twigs, and would be taken for such. 

Of our seven indigenous flowers which begin to bloom in March, four, i. e. the two alders, the aspen, and the hazel, are not generally noticed so early, if at all, and most do not observe the flower of a fifth, the maple. The first four are yellowish or reddish brown at a little distance, like the banks and sward moistened by the spring rain. 

The browns are the prevailing shades as yet, as in the withered grass and sedge and the surface of the earth, the withered leaves, and these brown flowers. 

I see from a hilltop a few very bright green spots a rod in diameter in the upper part of Farrar's meadow, which the water has left within a day or two. Going there, I find that a very powerful spring is welling up there, which, with water warm from the bowels of the earth, has caused the grass and several weeds, as Cardamine rhomboidca, etc., to grow thus early and luxuriantly, and perhaps it has been helped by the flood standing over it for some days. These are bright liquid green in the midst of brown and withered grass and leaves. Such are the spots where the grass is greenest now. 

C. says that he saw a turtle dove on the 25th. 

It is remarkable how long many things may be preserved by excluding the air and light and dust, moisture, etc. Those chalk-marks on the chamber-floor joists and timbers of the Hunt house, one of which was read by many "Feb. 1666," and all of which were in an ancient style of writing and expression, — "ye" for " the," etc., "enfine Brown," — were as fresh when exposed (having been plastered and cased over) as if made the day before. Yet a single day's rain completely obliterated some of them. 

Cousin Charles says that, on the timbers of a very old house recently taken down in Haverhill, the chalk-marks made by the framers, numbering the sticks, [were] as fresh as if just made. 

I saw a large timber over the middle of the best room of the Hunt house which had been cased, according to all accounts, at least a hundred years ago, the casing having just been taken off. I saw that the timber appeared to have been freshly hewn on the under side, and I asked the carpenter who was taking down the house what he had been hewing that timber for, — for it had evidently been done since it was put up and in a very inconvenient position, and I had no doubt that he had just done it, for the surface was as fresh and distinct from the other parts as a fresh whittling, — but he answered to my surprise that he had not touched it, it was so when he took the casing off. When the casing was put on, it had been roughly hewn by one standing beneath it, in order to reduce its thickness or perhaps to make it more level than it was. So distinct and peculiar is the weather-stain, and so indefinitely it may be kept off if you do not allow this painter to come [?] to your wood. 

Cousin Charles says that he took out of the old Haverhill house a very broad panel from over the fire place, which had a picture of Haverhill at some old period on it. The panel had been there perfectly sheltered in an inhabited house for more than a hundred years. It was placed in his shop and no moisture allowed to come near it, and yet it shrunk a quarter of an inch in width when the air came to both sides of it. 

He says that his men, who were digging a cellar last week on a southwest slope, found fifty-one snakes of various kinds and sizes — green, black, brown, etc. — about a foot underground, within two feet square (or cube ?). The frost was out just there, but not in many parts of the cellar. They could not run, they were so stiff, but they ran their tongues out. They did [not] take notice of any hole or cavity.

H.. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 27, 1859


Seven indigenous flowers which begin to bloom in March:

• two alders.  See March 22, 1853 (" The very earliest alder is in bloom and sheds its pollen. I detect a few catkins at a distance by their distinct yellowish color. This the first native flower.")
• the aspen. See March 21, 1855 ("aspen catkins are very conspicuous now.")
• the hazel. See March 27, 1853 ("The hazel is fully out. The 23d was perhaps full early to date them. It is in some respects the most interesting flower yet, though so minute that only an observer of nature, or one who looked for them, would notice it. It is the highest and richest colored yet, - ten or a dozen little rays at the end of the buds which are at the ends and along the sides of the bare stems. Some of the flowers are a light, some a dark crimson. The high color of this minute, unobserved flower, at this cold, leafless, and almost flowerless season! It is a beautiful greeting of the spring, when the catkins are scarcely relaxed and there are no signs of life in the bush.")
• the maple.  See March 27, 1857 ("Leave the boat and run down to the white maples by the bridge. The white maple is well out with its pale [?] stamens on the southward boughs, and probably began about the 24th.")

See also March 21, 1858("The skunk-cabbage at Clamshell is well out, shedding pollen. It is evident that the date of its flowering is very fluctuating"); 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")

Like the note of an alarm-clock set last fall so as to wake Nature up at exactly this date.

March 23. 

March 23, 2019

P. M. — Walk to Cardinal Shore and sail to Well Meadow and Lee's Cliff. 

It clears up at 2 p. m. The Lycoperdon stellatum are numerous and blossomed out widely in Potter's Path by Bare Hill, after the rain of the night. 

As we sail upward toward the pond, we scare up two or three golden-eyes, or whistlers, showing their large black heads and black backs, and afterward I watch one swimming not far before us and see the white spot, amid the black, on the side of his head. I have now no doubt that I saw some on the 21st flying here, and it is very likely that Rice saw them here on the 17th, as he says. 

The pond may be said to be open to-day. There is, however, quite a large mass of ice, which has drifted, since the east wind arose yesterday noon, from the east side over to the north of the Island. 

This ice, of which there may be eight or ten acres, is so very dark, almost black, that it is hard to discern till you are just upon it, though some little pieces which we broke off and left on its edge were very visible for half a mile. When at the edge of this field of ice, it was a very dark gray in color, had none of the usual whiteness of ice. It was about six inches thick, but was most completely honeycombed. The upper surface was not only thus dark, dusky, or blackish, but full of little hollows three to six inches across, and the whole mass undulated with the waves very much, irregular cracks alternately opening and closing in it, yet it was well knitted together. 

With my paddle I could depress it six inches on the edge, and cause it to undulate like a blanket for a rod or more, and yet it bore us securely when we stepped out upon it, and it was by no means easy to break off or detach a piece a foot wide. In short, it was thoroughly honeycombed and, as it were, saturated with water. The masses broken off reminded me of some very decayed and worm-eaten interiors of trees. Yet the small cakes into which it visibly cracked when you bent it and made it undulate were knitted together or dovetailed somewhat like the plates of a tortoise-shell, and immediately returned to their places.  

Though it would bear you, the creaking of one such part on another was a quite general and considerable noise, and one detached mass, rubbed in your hand upon the edge of the field, yielded a singular metallic or ringing sound, evidently owing to its hollowness or innumerable perforations. It had a metallic ring. The moment you raised a mass from the water, it was very distinctly white and brilliant, the water running out from it. This was the relic of that great mass which I saw on the 21st on the east side. 

There was a great quantity of bayonet rush, also, drifted over here and strewn along the shore. This and the pontederia are the coarsest of the wrack. 

Now is the time, then, that it is added to the wrack, probably being ripped up by the ice. It reminds you of the collections of seaweed after a storm, — this river-weed after the spring freshets have melted and dispersed the ice. The ice thus helps essentially to clear the shore. 

I am surprised to see one of those sluggish ghost-horses alive on the ice. It was probably drifted from the shore by the flood and here lodged. 

That dark, uneven ice has a peculiarly coarse-grained appearance, it is so much decomposed. The pieces are interlocked by the irregularities of the perpendicular combing. The underside presents the most continuous surface, and it is held together chiefly on that side. One piece rings when struck on another, like a trowel on a brick, and as we rested against the edge of this ice, we heard a singular wheezing and grating sound, which was the creaking of the ice, which was undulating under the waves and wind. 

As we entered Well Meadow, we saw a hen-hawk perch on the topmost plume of one of the tall pines at the head of the meadow. Soon another appeared, probably its mate, but we looked in vain for a nest there. It was a fine sight, their soaring above our heads, presenting a perfect outline and, as they came round, showing their rust-colored tails with a whitish rump, or, as they sailed away from us, that slight teetering or quivering motion of their dark-tipped wings seen edgewise, now on this side, now that, by which they balanced and directed themselves. 

These are the most eagle-like of our common hawks. They very commonly perch upon the very topmost plume of a pine, and, if motionless, are rather hard to distinguish there. 

The cowslip and most of the skunk-cabbage there have been and are still drowned by flood; else we should find more in bloom. As it is, I see the skunk- cabbage in bloom, but generally the growth of both has been completely checked by the water. 

While reconnoitring there, we hear the peep of one hylodes somewhere in this sheltered recess in the woods. And afterward, on the Lee side, I hear a single croak from a wood frog. 

We cross to Lee's shore and sit upon the bare rocky ridge overlooking the flood southwest and northeast. It is quite sunny and sufficiently warm. I see one or two of the small fuzzy gnats in the air. The prospect thence is a fine one, especially at this season, when the water is high. 

The landscape is very agreeably diversified with hill and vale and meadow and cliff. As we look southwest, how attractive the shores of russet capes and peninsulas laved by the flood! Indeed, that large tract east of the bridge is now an island. How fair that low, undulating russet land! 

At this season and under these circumstances, the sun just come out and the flood high around it, russet, so reflecting the light of the sun, appears to me the most agreeable of colors, and I begin to dream of a russet fairyland and elysium. How dark and terrene must be green! but this smooth russet surface reflects almost all the light. 

That broad and low but firm island, with but few trees to conceal the contour of the ground and its outline, with its fine russet sward, firm and soft as velvet, reflecting so much light, — all the undulations of the earth, its nerves and muscles, revealed by the light and shade, and even the sharper ridgy edge of steep banks where the plow has heaped up the earth from year to year, — this is a sort of fairyland and elysium to my eye. 

The tawny couchant island! Dry land for the Indian's wigwam in the spring, and still strewn with his arrow-points. The sight of such land reminds me of the pleasant spring days in which I have walked over such tracts, looking for these relics. How well, too, this smooth, firm, light-reflecting, tawny earth contrasts with the darker water which surrounds it, — or perchance lighter sometimes! 

At this season, when the russet colors prevail, the contrast of water and land is more agreeable to behold. What an inexpressibly soft curving line is the shore! Or if the water is perfectly smooth and yet rising, you seem to see it raised an eighth of an inch with swelling up above the immediate shore it kisses, as in a cup or the of [sic] a saucer. Indian isles and promontories. 

Thus we sit on that rock, hear the first wood frog's croak, and dream of a russet elysium. Enough for the season is the beauty thereof. Spring has a beauty of its own which we would not exchange for that of summer, and at this moment, if I imagine the fairest earth I can, it is still russet, such is the color of its blessed isles, and they are surrounded with the phenomena of spring. 

The qualities of the land that are most attractive to our eyes now are dryness and firmness. It is not the rich black soil, but warm and sandy hills and plains which tempt our steps. We love to sit on and walk over sandy tracts in the spring like cicindelas. 

These tongues of russet land tapering and sloping into the flood do almost speak to one. They are alternately in sun and shade. When the cloud is passed, and they reflect their pale-brown light to me, I am tempted to go to them. 

I think I have already noticed within a week how very agreeably and strongly the green of small pines contrasts with the russet of a hillside pasture now. Perhaps there is no color with which green contrasts more strongly. 

I see the shadow of a cloud — and it chances to be a hollow ring with sunlight in its midst — passing over the hilly sprout-land toward the Baker house, a sprout-land of oaks and birches; and, owing to the color of the birch twigs, perhaps, this shadow turns all from russet to a decided dark-purplish color as it moves along. 

And then, as I look further along eastward in the horizon, I am surprised to see strong purple and violet tinges in the sun, from a hillside a mile off densely covered with full-grown birches. It is the steep old corn-field hillside of Jacob Baker's. 

I would not have believed that under the spring sun so many colors were brought out. 

It is not the willows only that shine, but, under favorable circumstances, many other twigs, even a mile or two off. 

The dense birches, so far that their white stems are not distinct, reflect deep, strong purple and violet colors from the distant hillsides opposite to the sun.

Can this have to do with the sap flowing in them? 

As we sit there, we see coming, swift and straight, northeast along the river valley, not seeing us and therefore not changing his course, a male goosander, so near that the green reflections of his head and neck are plainly visible. He looks like a paddle-wheel steamer, so oddly painted up, black and white and green, and moves along swift and straight like one. Ere long the same returns with his mate, the red-throated, the male taking the lead. 

The loud peop (?) of a pigeon woodpecker is heard in our sea [?], and anon the prolonged loud and shrill cackle, calling the thin-wooded hillsides and pastures to life. It is like the note of an alarm-clock set last fall so as to wake Nature up at exactly this date. Up up up up up up up up up ! What a rustling it seems to make among the dry leaves! 

You can now sit on sunny sheltered sprout-land hillsides and enjoy the sight and sound of rustling dry leaves. 

Then I see come slowly flying from the southwest a great gull, of voracious form, which at length by a sudden and steep descent alights in Fair Haven Pond, scaring up a crow which was seeking its food on the edge of the ice. This shows that the crows get along the meadow's edge also what has washed up.

 It is suggested that the blue is darkest when reflected from the most agitated water, because of the shadow (occasioned by the inequalities) mingled with it. Some Indians of the north have but one word for blue and black, and blue is with us considered the darkest color, though it is the color of the sky or air. Light, I should say, was white; the absence of it, black. Hold up to the light a perfectly opaque body and you get black, but hold up to it the least opaque body, such as air, and you get blue. Hence you may say that blue is light seen through a veil.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 23, 1859

A male goosander, so near that the green reflections of his head and neck are plainly visible. He looks like a paddle-wheel steamer, so oddly painted up, black and white and green, and moves along swift and straight like one. See March 17, 1860 (“See a large flock of sheldrakes . . . flying with great force and rapidity over my head in the woods. Now I hear the whistling of their wings, and in a moment they are lost in the horizon. Like swift propellers of the air.”); April 6, 1855 (“I am near enough to see its green head and neck. I am delighted to find a perfect specimen of the Mergus merganser, or goosander, undoubtedly shot yesterday by the Fast-Day sportsmen”); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

A single croak from a wood frog . . . Thus we sit on that rock, hear the first wood frog's croak. See March 15, 1860 ("Am surprised to hear, from the pool behind Lee's Cliff, the croaking of the wood frog. . . . As Walden opens eight days earlier than I have known it, so this frog croaks about as much earlier.."); March 24, 1859 ("I am sitting in Laurel Glen, listening to hear the earliest wood frogs croaking . . . Now, when the leaves get to be dry and rustle under your feet, dried by the March winds, the peculiar dry note, wurrk wurrk wur-r-r-k wurk of the wood frog is heard faintly by ears on the alert, borne up from some unseen pool in a woodland hollow which is open to the influences of the sun. ")

An alarm-clock set

as to wake Nature up at

exactly this date.

Spring has a beauty –

beauty we would not exchange

for that of summer.

Birches reflect deep 

strong purple and violet 

colors from the hillsides.

Sitting on this rock

we hear the first wood frog’s croak

and begin to dream.

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