Heard my night-warbler on a solitary white pine in the Heywood Clearing by the Peak.

June 19.

June 19, 2020

P. M. – To Flint ’ s Pond.

I see large patches of blue - eyed grass in the meadow across the river from my window.

The pine woods at Thrush Alley emit that hot dry scent, reminding me even of days when I used to go a-blackberrying.

The air is full of the hum of invisible insects, and I hear a locust. Perhaps this sound indicates the time to put on a thin coat.

But the wood thrush sings as usual far in the wood.

A blue jay and a tanager come dashing into the pine under which I stand. The first flies directly away, screaming with suspicion or disgust, but the latter, more innocent, remains.

The cuckoo is heard, too, in the depths of the wood.

Heard my night-warbler on a solitary white pine in the Heywood Clearing by the Peak. Discovered it at last, looking like a small piece of black bark curving partly over the limb. No fork to its tail. It appeared black beneath; was very shy, not bigger than a yellowbird, and very slender.

In the middle of the path to Wharf Rock at Flint's Pond, the nest of a Wilson's thrush, five or six inches high, between the green stems of three or four golden rods, made of dried grass or fibres of bark, with dry oak leaves attached loosely, making the whole nine or ten inches wide, to deceive the eye. Two blue eggs. Like an accidental heap. Who taught it to do thus?

Lobelia Dortmanna, a day or two at most.

No grass balls yet.

That fine-rooted green plant on bottom sends up stems with black heads three or four inches. Do they become white?

Every one who has waded about the shores of a pond must have been surprised to find how much warmer the water was close to the shore, where only three or four inches deep, than a little further out.

I think I saw a young crow now fully grown.

Returned by Smith’s Hill and the Saw Mill Brook.

Got quite a parcel of strawberries on the hill.

The hellebore leaves by the brook are already half turned yellow. Plucked one blue early blueberry.

The strain of the bobolink now begins to sound a little rare. It never again fills the air as the first week after its arrival.

At this season we apprehend no long storm, only showers with or without thunder.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 19, 1853

Heard my night-warbler. Discovered it at last. See June 19, 1858 ("I do not hear the night-warbler so often as a few weeks ago. Birds generally do not sing so tumultuously.")  See also  May 17, 1858 ("Just after hearing my night-warbler I see two birds on a tree. ...[One perhaps golden-crowned thrush. ]”); May 19, 1858 (“Heard the night-warbler begin his strain just like an oven-bird! I have noticed that when it drops down into the woods it darts suddenly one side to a perch when low."); May 28, 1854 ("The night-warbler, after his strain, drops down almost perpendicularly into a tree-top and is lost.”). and  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Oven-bird . Note Thoreau;s night-warbler  is likely the oven-bird making its flight call. According to Emerson the night warbler is "a bird he had never identified, had been in search of twelve years, which always, when he saw it, was in the act of diving down into a tree or bush.” 

In the middle of the path to Wharf Rock at Flint's Pond, the nest of a Wilson's thrush. See June 19, 1858 (“Boys have found this forenoon at Flint’s Pond one or more veery-nests on the ground. ”) and note to June 23, 1858 ("That rather low wood along the path which runs parallel with the shore of Flint's Pond, behind the rock, is evidently a favorite place for veery-nests. I have seen three there.")

I think I saw a young crow now fully grown. See.July 7, 1860 ("I see a flock of some twenty-five crows. Probably the young are just grown."); July 10, 1854 ("Crows are more noisy, probably anxious about young.")

The strain of the bobolink now begins to sound a little rare. See June 9, 1855 ("I think I have hardly heard a bobolink for a week or ten days.");June 15, 1852 ("The note of the bobolink begins to sound somewhat rare.") and note to July 7, 1859 ("The note of the bobolink has begun to sound rare?") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Bobolink

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.")

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. )

Three steps into the swamp barelegged.

June 9. 

June 9, 2017

A large fog. 

Celastrus scandens, maybe a day. 

Triosteum, apparently several days (not at all June 1st). 

Both kinds of sap, yellow birch and black, are now, in some bottles, quite aromatic and alike; but this year, methinks, it has a more swampy taste and musty, and most of the bottles are merely sour. 

P. M. — To Violet Sorrel and Calla Swamp. 

A peetweet's nest near wall by Shattuck's barn, Merrick's pasture, at base of a dock; four eggs just on the point of being hatched. A regular nest of weak stubble set in ground. 

In the sprout-land beyond the red huckleberry, an indigo-bird, which chips about me as if it had a nest there. This is a splendid and marked bird, high-colored as is the tanager, looking strange in this latitude. Glowing indigo. It flits from top of one bush to another, chirping as if anxious. Wilson says it sings, not like most other birds in the morning and evening chiefly, but also in the middle of the day. In this I notice it is like the tanager, the other fiery-plumaged bird. They seem to love the heat. It probably had its nest in one of those bushes. 

The calla is generally past prime and going to seed. I had said to Pratt, "It will be worth the while to look for other rare plants in Calla Swamp, for I have observed that where one rare plant grows there will commonly be others." Carrying out this design, this afternoon, I had not taken three steps into the swamp barelegged before I found the Naumbergia thyrsiflora in sphagnum and water, which I had not seen growing before. (Channing brought one to me from Hubbard's Great Meadow once.) It is hardly beginning yet. (In prime June 24th. Vide June 24th.)

The water in this Calla Swamp feels cold to my feet, and perhaps this is a peculiarity of it; on the north side a hill. 

When I was at the yellow-throat's nest (as above) I heard that very loud sharp pheet pheet of a wood- chuck (?) or rabbit which I have often heard before. 

The hellebore was very much eaten off about the wall whence it proceeded. It was kept up from time to time while I stayed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 9, 1857

June 9, 2017

I had not taken three steps into the swamp barelegged . . . See August 30, 1856 (“I left my shoes and stockings on the bank far off and waded barelegged through rigid andromeda.and other bushes a long way, to the soft open sphagnous centre of the swamp. ”)

Both kinds of sap, yellow birch and black, are now, in some bottles, quite aromatic and alike; but this year, methinks, it has a more swampy taste . . . See  April 16, 1857 ("Get birch sap, — two bottles yellow birch and five of black birch"). Also see April 12, 1856 ("According to Rees’s Cyclopaedia, the sap of the birches is fermentable in its natural state.");   April 11, 1856 ("I have now got four kinds of birch sap. . . .I do not think I could distinguish the different kinds of birch with my eyes shut. I drank some of the black birch wine with my dinner for the name of it; but, as a steady drink, it is only to be recommended to outdoor men and foresters. ");  May 27, 1856 ("My three kinds of birch sap have now become more acid, especially the white and canoe birch. The black birch is milder and more agreeable. With sugar it is an agreeable drink. . . ."); June 21, 1856 ("My canoe birch wine smells and tastes like mead considerably. All my birch wines are now more acid and very good indeed with sugar. Am surprised to see it effervesce, all white with white sugar only, like a soda water."); July 26, 1856 ( "Drank up the last of my birch wine. It is an exceedingly grateful drink now, especially the aromatic, mead like, apparently checkerberry-flavored one, which on the whole I think must be the black birch. It is a surprisingly high-flavored drink, thus easily obtained, and considering that it had so little taste at first. Perhaps it would have continued to improve.")

June 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 9

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 © 2009-2021

Now I notice many bubbles left on the water in my wake.

June 7. 

Sunday. P.M. — To river and Ponkawtasset with M. Pratt. 

June 7, 2017

Now I notice many bubbles left on the water in my wake, as if it were more sluggish or had more viscidity than earlier. Far behind me they rest without bursting. 

Pratt has got the Calla palustris, in prime, — some was withering, so it may have been out ten days,— from the bog near Bateman's Pond; also Oxalis violacea, which he says began about last Sunday, or May 31st, larger and handsomer than the yellow, though it blossoms but sparingly. Red huckleberry about same time. It is sticky like the black. His geranium from Fitzwilliam is well in bloom. It seems to be herb-robert, but without any offensive odor! (?)

A small elm in front of Pratt's which he says three years ago had flowers in flat cymes, like a cornel! ! [He must be mistaken.] I have pressed some leaves. 

At the cross-wall below N. Hunt's, some way from road, the red cohush, one plant only in flower, the rest going to seed. Probably, therefore, with the white. It has slender pedicels and petals shorter than the white. 

Garlic grows there, not yet out. 

Rubus triflorus still in bloom there. 

At the base of some hellebore, in a tuft a little from under the east edge of an apple tree, below violet wood-sorrel, a nest well made outside of leaves, then grass, lined with fine grass, very deep and narrow, with thick sides, with four small somewhat cream-colored eggs with small brown and some black spots chiefly toward larger end. 

The bird, which flew off quickly, made me think of a wren and of a Maryland yellow-throat, though I saw no yellow. 

It was a Maryland yellow-throat. 

Egg fresh. She is very shy and will not return to nest while you wait, but keeps up a very faint chip in the bushes or grass at some distance.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 7, 1857

Now I notice many bubbles left on the water in my wake. See September 14, 1854 ("Now our oars leave a broad wake of large bubbles, which are slow to burst.”)

Oxalis violacea, which [Pratt] says began about last Sunday, or May 31st, larger and handsomer than the yellow, though it blossoms but sparingly . . . under the east edge of an apple tree, below violet wood-sorrel, a nest . . . See June 7, 1858 ("Oxalis violacea in garden.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Wood Sorrel (Oxalis)

A nest well made outside of leaves, then grass, lined with fine grass, very deep and narrow, with thick sides, with four small somewhat cream-colored eggs with small brown and some black spots chiefly toward larger end. See June 8, 1855 ("What was that little nest on the ridge near by, made of fine grass lined with a few hairs and containing five small eggs (two hatched the 11th), nearly as broad as long, yet pointed, white with fine dull-brown spots especially on the large end—nearly hatched? . . .(June 11.—It is a Maryland yellow-throat.)”); June 10, 1858 ("Perfectly concealed under the loose withered grass at the base of a clump of birches, with no apparent entrance. The usual small deep nest (but not raised up) of dry leaves, fine grass stubble, and lined with a little hair. Four eggs, white, with brown spots, chiefly at larger end, and some small black specks or scratches. The bird flits out very low and swiftly and does not show herself, so that it is hard to find the nest or to identify the bird.”); June 12, 1859 ("To Gowing's Swamp . . .Maryland yellow-throat four eggs, fresh, in sphagnum in the interior omphalos.")

June 7. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, June 7

Bubbles left behind

on the water in my wake 

rest without bursting.

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 © 2009-2021

In the low Flint's Pond Path, beyond Britton's, the tall rough goldenrod makes a thicket higher than my head.

July 24. 

P. M. — To Flint's Pond. 

July 24.

Solidago stricta, Ingraham Path, well out, some days.

Chimaphila maculata, three flowers, apparently but few days, while the umbellata is quite done there. Leaves just shooting up. 

See those light-bordered dark spots on tall and other goldenrod leaves (fungi (?) says Russell). In the low Flint's Pond Path, beyond Britton's, the tall rough goldenrod makes a thicket higher than my head.

Many hazelnut burs now look rough and reddish about the base. 

Tobacco-pipe much blackened, out a long time. 

I find, at the shallow stone wharf shore, three balls in good condition, walking about half the length of that shore. Methinks it was about a week earlier than this that they were found last year. 

There is on the surface of the water, washed up and floating about, a good deal of the eriocaulon, loosened up, perhaps, by pouts or other creatures, and also some other fine weeds with it. Yet the eriocaulon has but just begun to bloom!

So also the vallisneria has washed up some time in river. 

There is also a very fine rush (?) on the bottom there like hair. Is that a little submerged kind of utricularia or ranunculus on the sandy bottom in shallow water there, looking thin and dissolving from above, like a conferva? — like little regular green masses of conserve? 

The red lilies are completely out of bloom now at Smith's meadow pasture, but the yellow ones are still very abundant in the meadows. 

The Ranunculus Purshii is now very hard to meet with. Saw one double flower with sixteen petals (at least) in two rows. Time to get seeds of it. 

Hardhack well out, how long? 

The small purple fringed orchis, apparently three or four days at least. 

The fall has already come to skunk-cabbage and hellebore. Their yellow and black decaying leaves and stems now cover the floor of the swamps which they recently clothed in early green. 

The Lobelia Dortmanna still, but no full spikes. It is apparently the worse for the wear. The oldest stems of it are covered here and there with apparently the red ova of some insect. 

Some Gnaphalium uliginosum going to seed; how long?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 24, 1856

In the low Flint's Pond Path, beyond Britton's, the tall rough goldenrod makes a thicket higher than my head. See note to July 18, 1854 ("Methinks the asters and goldenrods begin, like the early ripening leaves, with midsummer heats.")

I doubt if we shall at any season hear more birds singing than now.

May 13

P. M. — Down river and to Yellow Birch Swamp. 

Yesterday was the first warm day for a week or two, and to-day it is much warmer still and hazy — as much like summer as it can be without the trees being generally leafed. 

I saw a Fringilla hyemalis this morning and heard the golden robin, now that the elms are beginning to leaf, also the myrtle-bird’s tealee. 

The earliest gooseberry in garden has opened.

As we float down the river through the still and hazy air, enjoying the June-like warmth, see the first king birds on the bare black willows with their broad white breasts and white-tipped tails; and the sound of the first bobolink floats to us from over the meadows; now that the meadows are lit by the tender yellow green of the willows and the silvery-green fruit of the elms. 

I hear from a female red-wing that peculiar rich screwing warble —- not o gurgle ee — made with r, not with l. The whole air too is filled with the ring of toads louder than heretofore. 

Some men are already fishing, indistinctly seen through the haze. 

Under the hop-horn beam below the monument, observe a large pellet, apparently dropped by some bird of prey, consisting of mouse-hair, with an oat or two in it undigested, which probably the mouse had swallowed. This reminds me that I had read this kind of birds digested the flesh of the animals they swallowed, but not the vegetable food in the stomachs of the latter. 

The air is filled with the song of birds, — warbling vireo, gold robin, yellowbirds, and occasionally the bobolink. The gold robin, just come, is heard in all parts of the village.

Baltimore Oriole

I see both male and female. 

It is a remarkable difference between this day and yesterday, that yesterday this and the bobolink were not heard and now the former, at least, is so musical and omnipresent.

Even see boys a-bathing, though they must find it cold. 

I saw yesterday some of that common orange rust-like fungus already on a Potentilla simplex leaf. Hear the first catbird, more clear and tinkling than the thrasher. 

Leave the boat below N. Barrett’s and walk inland. See several handsome red-winged grasshoppers in different parts of our walk; but though we see where they alight, yet several times we can not find them in the grass for all that. 

The bayberry apparently will not open under a week. There are now a great many Viola pedata. 

The brook in Yellow Birch Swamp is very handsome now — broad and full, with the light-green hellebore eighteen inches high and the small two-leaved Solomon’s-seal about it, in the open wood. 

Only a part of the yellow birches are leafing, but not yet generally the large ones. I notice no catkins. One white birch sheds pollen. The white birches on the side of Ponkawtasset are beginning to show faint streaks of yellowish green here and there. 

A cooler and stronger wind from the east by midafternoon. The large bass trees now begin to leaf. 

Now, about two hours before sunset, the brown thrashers are particularly musical. One seems to be contending in song with another. The chewink’s strain sounds quite humble in comparison. 

At 9.30 P.M. I hear from our gate my night-warbler. Never heard it in the village before. I doubt if we shall at any season hear more birds singing than now.

Saw an amelanchier with downy leaf (apparently oblongifolia) on the southeast edge of Yellow Birch Swamp, about eighteen feet high and five or six inches in diameter, —a clump of them about as big as an apple tree.

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

Even see boys a-bathing, though they must find it cold. See May 8, 1857 (“Summer has suddenly come upon us, and the birds all together. Some boys have bathed in the river.”)

Hear the first catbird, more clear and tinkling than the thrasher. See May 13, 1853 ("At Corner Spring, stood listening to a catbird, sounding a good way off. Was surprised to detect the singer within a rod and a half on a low twig, the ventriloquist. . . .”)

I hear from our gate my night-warbler. Never heard it in the village before. See note to May 12, 1855

 I doubt if we shall 

at any season hear more 

birds singing than now.

The young aspens are the first of indigenous trees conspicuously leafed.

May 2.

May 2,, 1855

P. M. — By boat up Assabet. 

Quince begins to leaf, and pear; perhaps some of last earlier. 

Aspen leaves of young trees —or twenty to twenty-five feet high—an inch long suddenly; say yesterday began; not till the 11th last year. Leafing, then, is differently affected by the season from flowering. The leafing is apparently comparatively earlier this year than the flowering. The young aspens are the first of indigenous trees conspicuously leafed.

Diervilla, say began to leaf with viburnums. 

Amelanchier Botryapium yesterday leafed. 

That small native willow now in flower, or say yesterday, just before leaf, —for the first seem to be bracts, — two to seven or eight feet high, very slender and curving. Apparently has three or four lanceolate toothed bracts at base of petioled catkin; male three quarters and female one inch long; scales black and silky-haired; ovary oblong-oval, stalked, downy, with a small yellowish gland not so long as its stalk. See leaf by and by. 

Saw many crow blackbirds day before yesterday. 

Vigorous look the little spots of triangular sedge (?) springing up on the river-banks, five or six inches high, yellowish below, glaucous and hoary atop, straight and rigid. 

Many clamshells have round brassy-colored spots as big as a fourpence. Found one opened by rats last winter, almost entirely the color of tarnished brass within. 

Open the Assabet spring. 

The anemone is well named, for see now the nemorosa, amid the fallen brush and leaves, trembling in the wind, so fragile. 

Hellebore seems a little later than the cabbage. 

Was that a harrier seen at first skimming low then seating and circling, with a broad whiteness on the wings beneath?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 2, 1855

Aspen are the first trees to leaf.  . . .  See May 2, 1859 (" I am surprised by the tender yellowish green of the aspen leaf just expanded suddenly, even like a fire, seen in the sun, against the dark-brown twigs of the wood, though these leafets are yet but thinly dispersed. It is very enlivening."); May 17, 1860    ("Standing in the meadow near the early aspen at the island, I hear the first fluttering of leaves, - a peculiar sound, at first unaccountable to me.") See also  A Book of Seasons,   Aspens.

Blueberries pretty numerously ripe on Fair Haven.

June 27

June 27, 2024

June 27, 2014

Р. М. Cliffs via Hubbard meadow. 

Hellebore in full bloom; how long? For the most part does not bloom. 

Blueberries pretty numerously ripe on Fair Haven. 

P. Hutchinson says that he can remember when haymakers from Sudbury, thirty or forty years ago, used to come down the river in numbers and unite with Concord to clear the weeds out of the river in shallow places and the larger streams emptying in. 

H. D Thoreau, Journal, June 27, 1854

Blueberries pretty numerously ripe on Fair Haven. See  June 29, 1852 ("Children bring you the early blueberry to sell now.   It is considerably earlier on the tops of hills which have been recently cut off than on the plains or invales. The girl that has Indian blood in her veins and picks berries for a living will find them out as soon as they turn."); July 9, 1852 ("These blueberries on Fair Haven have a very innocent, ambrosial taste, as if made of the ether itself, as they plainly are colored with it"); July 26, 1854 ("Almost every bush now offers a wholesome and palatable diet to the wayfarer, — large and dense clusters of Vaccinium vacillans, largest in most moist ground, sprinkled with the red ones not ripe; great high blueberries, some nearly as big as cranberries, of an agreeable acid; huckleberries of various kinds, some shining black, some dull-black, some blue; and low blackberries of two or more varieties"). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Blueberries

Haymakers from Sudbury, thirty or forty years ago, used to come down the river in numbers. See June 30, 1851 ("Haying has commenced. I see the farmers in distant fields cocking their hay now at six o'clock. The day has been so oppressively warm that some workmen have lain by at noon, and the haymakers are mowing now in the early twilight."); June 30, 1852 ("Haying has commenced.") See alsoA Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Haymaking

Haymaker's Moon

July 13.

The evergreen is very handsome in the woods now, rising somewhat spirally in a round tower of five or six stories, surmounted by a long bud.

Looking across the river to Conantum from the open plains, I think how the history of the hills would read, since they have been pastured by cows, if every plowing and mowing and sowing and chopping were recorded. 

These plains are covered with shrub oaks, birches, aspens, hickories, mingled with sweet-fern and brakes and huckleberry bushes and epilobium, now in bloom, and much fine grass. The hellebore by the brooksides has now fallen over, though it is not broken off.

I hear, 4 P.M., a pigeon woodpecker on a dead pine near by, uttering a harsh and scolding scream, spying me. The chewink jingles on the tops of the bushes, and the [field] sparrow, the vireo, and oven-bird at a distance. A robin sings, superior to all; a barking dog has started something on the opposite side of the river; and now the wood thrush surpasses them all.

The cows now repose and chew the cud under the shadow of a tree, or crop the grass in the shade along the side of the woods, and when you approach to observe them they mind you just enough.

The sweet-scented life-everlasting is budded.

This might be called the Haymaker's Moon, for I perceive that when the day has been oppressively warm the haymakers rest at noon and resume their mowing after sunset, sometimes quite into evening.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  July 13, 1851

The haymakers rest at noon and resume their mowing after sunset, sometimes quite into evening. See July 13, 1857 ("The haymakers are busy raking their hay, to be ready for a shower. They would rather have their grass wet a little than not have the rain. ")

July 13.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 13.

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 © 2009-2021

April snow

April 26

Hear the ruby-crowned wren in the morning, near George Heywood's.

We have had no snow for a long long while, and have about forgotten it. Dr. Bartlett, therefore, surprises us by telling us that a man came from Lincoln after him last night on the wheels of whose carriage was an inch of snow, for it snowed there a little, but not here. This is connected with the cold weather of yesterday; the chilling wind came from a snow-clad country. 

As the saying is, the cold was in the air and had got to come down.

To-day it is 53° at 2 P. M., yet cold, such a difference is there in our feelings. What we should have called a warm day in March is a cold one at this date in April. It is the northwest wind makes it cold. Out of the wind it is warm. It is not, methinks, the same air at rest in one place and in motion in another, but the cold that is brought by the wind seems not to affect sheltered and sunny nooks.

P. M. – To Cliffs and Well Meadow.

Comptonia.

There are now very few leaves indeed left on the young oaks below the Cliffs. Sweet-briar, thimble-berry, and blackberry on warm rocks leaf early.

Red maples are past prime. I have noticed their handsome crescents over distant swamps commonly for some ten days. At height, then, say the 21st. They are especially handsome when seen between you and the sunlit trees.

The Amelanchier Botryapium is leafing; will apparently bloom tomorrow or next day.

Sweet-fern (that does not flower) leafing.

The forward-rank sedge of Well Meadow which is so generally eaten (by rabbits, or possibly woodchucks), cropped close, is allied to that at Lee's Cliff, which is also extensively browsed now. I have found it difficult to get whole specimens. Certain tender early greens are thus extensively browsed now, in warm swamp-edges and under cliffs, — the bitter cress, the Carex varia (?) at Lee's, even skunk-cabbage. \

The hellebore now makes a great garden of green under the alders and maples there, five or six rods long and a foot or more high.

False Hellebore. April 28, 2019

It grows thus before these trees have begun to leaf, while their numerous stems serve only to break the wind but not to keep out the sun. It is the greatest growth, the most massive, of any plant's; now ahead of the cabbage. Before the earliest tree has begun to leaf it makes conspicuous green patches a foot high.

The river is exactly at summer level.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 26, 1860

Hear the ruby-crowned wren in the morning.  See May 6, 1855 (“Dark bill and legs, apparently dark olivaceous ashy head, a little whitish before and behind the full black eyes, ash breast, olive-yellow on primaries, with a white bar, dark tail and ends of wings, white belly and vent. Did not notice vermilion spot on hindhead. It darts off from apple tree for insects like a pewee, and returns to within ten feet of me as if curious. I think this the only Regulus I have ever seen.”). See also note to April 20, 1859 ("My ruby-crowned or crested wren”). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau: the ruby-crowned or crested wren.

It snowed there a little, but not here. The chilling wind came from a snow-clad country. See April 4, 1859 ("When I look with my glass, I see the cold and sheeny snow still glazing the mountains. This it is which makes the wind so piercing cold."); April 12, 1855 ("The mountains are again thickly clad with snow, and, the wind being northwest, this coldness is accounted for.")

Chilling wind came from a snow-clad country. As the saying is, the cold was in the air and had got to come down. See April 2, 2019, overheard in the hospital waiting room ("the air won’t be warm, my father slways said, until they get the snow out of the mountains")

What we should have called a warm day in March is a cold one at this date in April. See February 8, 1860 (40° and upward may be called a warm day in the winter"):  March 20, 1855 (“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.”); April 25 1860 ("A cold day, so that the people you meet remark upon it, yet the thermometer is 47° at 2 P. M. We should not have remarked upon it in March. It is cold for April, being windy withal.")

I have noticed their handsome crescents over distant swamps commonly for some ten days. They are especially handsome when seen between you and the sunlit trees. See April 26, 1855 ("The blossoms of the red maple (some a yellowish green) are now most generally conspicuous and handsome scarlet crescents over the swamps"). See also April 24, 1854 ("The first red maple blossoms — so very red over the water — are very interesting. ");April 24, 1857 ("I see the now red crescents of the red maples in their prime . . . above the gray stems."); April 28, 1855 ("The red maples, now in bloom, are quite handsome at a distance over the flooded meadow beyond Peter’s. The abundant wholesome gray of the trunks and stems beneath surmounted by the red or scarlet crescents.”); April 29, 1856 ("How pretty a red maple in bloom (they are now in prime), seen in the sun against a pine wood") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Red Maple


The hellebore now makes a great garden of green under the alders and maples there, five or six rods long and a foot or more high . . . It is the greatest growth, the most massive, of any plant's; now ahead of the cabbage. Before the earliest tree has begun to leaf it makes conspicuous green patches a foot high. See  March 25, 1860 (“The skunk-cabbage leaf-buds have just begun to appear, but not yet any hellebore.”); April 2, 1856 (“The plaited buds of the hellebore are four or five inches high.”); April 10, 1859 (“The hellebore buds are quite conspicuous and interesting to-day, but not at all unrolled, though six or eight inches high. ”); April 17, 1852 (" The leaves of the Veratrum viride, American hellebore, now just pushing up.");  April 22, 1856 (“Some hellebore leaves are opened in the Cliff Brook Swamp.”); May 2, 1855 ("Hellebore seems a little later than the cabbage."); May 13, 1855 ("The brook in Yellow Birch Swamp is very handsome now — broad and full, with the light-green hellebore eighteen inches high and the small two-leaved Solomon’s-seal about it, in the open wood.”); June 12, 1853 ("Visited the great [purple fringed] orchis which I am waiting to have open completely. . . .  Its great spike, six inches by two, of delicate pale-purple flowers, which begin to expand at bottom, rises above and contrasts with the green leaves of the hellebore and skunk-cabbage and ferns (by which its own leaves are concealed) in the cool shade of an alder swamp.");  June 27, 1854 ("Hellebore in full bloom; how long? For the most part does not bloom. "); August 23, 1858 (“I see . . . in swamps, the withering and blackened skunk-cabbage and hellebore, and, by the river, the already blackening pontederias and pipes. There is no plateau on which Nature rests at midsummer, but she instantly commences the descent to winter.”); August 30, 1859 (“The plants now decayed and decaying and withering are those early ones which grow in wet or shady places, as hellebore, skunk-cabbage, . . . and how is it with trilliums and arums? ”)