My friends are my rivals.

January 16

Sunday. Cold, with blustering winds drifting the snow.

Yesterday the hounds were heard. It was a hunter's day. All tracks were fresh, the snow deep and light. I met Melvin with his bag full. 

Trench says that "'rivals,' in the primary sense of the word, are those who dwell on the banks of the same stream" or "on opposite banks," but as he says, in many words, since the use of water-rights is a fruitful source of contention between such neighbors, the word has acquired this secondary sense. 

My friends are my rivals on the Concord, in the primitive sense of the word. There is no strife between us respecting the use of the stream. The Concord offers many privileges, but none to quarrel about. It is a peaceful, not a brawling, stream. 

It has not made rivals out of neighbors that lived on its banks, but friends. My friends are my rivals; we dwell on opposite banks of the stream, but that stream is the Concord, which flows without a ripple or a murmur, without a rapid or a brawl, and offers no petty privileges to quarrel about.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 16, 1853

January 16  See A Book of the Seasons,by Henry Thoreau, January 16

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky

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 © 2009-2022

The winter diet of muskrat.

December 26

P. M. — Skate to Lee's Bridge and there measure back, by pacing, the breadth of the river. 

After being uniformly overcast all the forenoon, still and moderate weather, it begins to snow very gradually, at first imperceptibly, this afternoon, — at first I thought I imagined it, — and at length begins to snow in earnest about 6 p. m., but lasts only a few minutes. 

I see a brute with a gun in his hand, standing motionless over a musquash-house which he has destroyed. I find that he has visited every one in the neighborhood of Fair Haven Pond, above and below, and broken them all down, laying open the interior to the water, and then stood watchful, close by, for the poor creature to show its head there for a breath of air. There lies the red carcass of one whose pelt he has taken on the spot, flat on the bloody ice. 

And for his afternoon's cruelty that fellow will be rewarded with a ninepence, perchance. When I consider what are the opportunities of the civilized man for getting ninepences and getting light, this seems to me more savage than savages are. Depend on it that whoever thus treats the musquash's house, his refuge when the water is frozen thick, he and his family will not come to a good end. 

So many of these houses being broken open, — twenty or thirty I see, — I look into the open hole, and find in it, in almost every instance, many pieces of the white root with the little leaf-bud curled up which I take to be the yellow lily root, — the leaf- bud unrolled has the same scent with the yellow lily. There will be half a dozen of these pointed buds, more or less green, coming to a point at the end of the root. 

Also I see a little coarser, what I take to be green leaf -stalk of the pontederia, for I see a little of the stipule sheathing the stalk from within it? 

The first unrolls and off course it is yellow lily. In one hole there was a large quantity of this root, and these buds attached or bitten off, the root generally five or six eighths inch in diameter and one to four inches long. I think, therefore, that this root must be their principal food at this time. 

If you open twenty cabins you will find it in at least three quarters of them, and nothing else, unless a very little pontederia leaf-stem. 

I see no fresh clamshells in them, and places, nor are they probably deposited in a heap under the ice. It may be, however, that the shells are opened in this hole and then dropped in the water near by!! By eating or killing at least so many lily buds they must thin out that plant considerably. 

Twice this winter I have noticed a musquash floating in a placid open place in the river when it was frozen for a mile each side, looking at first like a bit of stump or frozen meadow, but showing its whole upper outline from nose to end of tail; perfectly still till he observed me, then suddenly diving and steering under the ice toward some cabin's entrance or other retreat half a dozen or more rods off. 

As some of the tales of our childhood, the invention of some Mother Goose, will haunt us when we are grown up, so the race itself still believes in some of the fables with which its infancy was amused and imposed on, e. g. the fable of the cranes and pygmies, which learned men endeavored to believe or explain in the last century. 

Aristotle, being almost if not quite the first to write systematically on animals, gives them, of course, only popular names, such as the hunters, fowlers, fishers, and farmers of his day used. He used no scientific terms. But he, having the priority and having, as it were, created science and given it its laws, those popular Greek names, even when the animal to which they were applied cannot be identified, have been in great part preserved and make those learned far-fetched and commonly unintelligible names of genera to-day. His History of Animals has thus become a very storehouse of scientific nomenclature.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 26, 1859

By eating or killing at least so many lily buds they must thin out that plant considerably. See April 10, 1855 ("I see much yellow lily root afloat, which the muskrats have dug up and nibbled.")

My pool in Gowing's Swamp used to be called Duck Pond,

July 3. 

July 3,  2017

Minott says that old Joe Merriam used to tell of his shooting black ducks in the Dam meadows and what luck he had. One day he had shot a couple of ducks and was bringing them home by the legs, when he came to a ditch. As he had his gun in the other hand, and the ditch was wide, he thought he would toss the ducks over before he jumped, but they had no sooner struck the ground than they picked themselves up and flew away, which discouraged him with respect to duck-shooting. 

M. says that my pool in Gowing's Swamp used to be called Duck Pond, though he does not know of ducks settling there. Perhaps they did anciently. He once fell into a deep hole when going after blueberries in the town (?) swamp beyond his own meadow. He stepped on to some "water-brush" (probably water andromeda), and suddenly sank very deep, spraining his hand, which he put out to save himself. He once killed a black duck in Beck Stow's Swamp, but could not get it on account of the water. Somebody else got a boat and got it. 

Thus the ducks and geese will frequent a swamp where there is considerable water, in the spring. 

Minott was sitting in his shed as usual, while his handsome pullets were perched on the wood within two feet of him, the rain having driven them to this shelter. 

There always were poor and rich as now, — in that first year when our ancestors lived on pumpkins and raccoons, as now when flour is imported from the West.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 3, 1857

My pool in Gowing's Swamp. See August 23, 1854 ("I improve the dry weather to examine the middle of Gowing's Swamp. There is in the middle an open pool, twenty or thirty feet in diameter . . .”); May 31, 1857 ("That central meadow and pool in Gowing's Swamp is its very navel, omphalos, where the umbilical cord was cut that bound it to creation's womb.. . .”)

Minott was sitting in his shed as usual, while his handsome pullets were perched on the wood within two feet of him. See February 20, 1857 ("Minott always sits in the corner behind the door, close to the stove, with commonly the cat by his side, often in his lap. Often he sits with his hat on"); September 30, 1857 ("Talked with Minott, who was sitting, as usual, in his wood-shed. His hen and chickens, finding it cold these nights on the trees behind the house, had begun last night to roost in the shed, and one by one walked or hopped up a ladder within a foot of his shoulder to the loft above. He sits there so much like a fixture that they do not regard him."); August 16, 1858 ("Talked with Minott, who sits in his wood-shed, having, as I notice, several seats there for visitors, —one a block on the sawhorse, another a patchwork mat on a wheelbarrow, etc., etc. His half-grown chickens, which roost overhead, perch on his shoulder or knee.")

Man is all in all, Nature nothing, but as she draws him out and reflects him.

October 18. 

aglow with yellow,
red, and green

Rain all night and half this day. 

P. M. — A-chestnutting down Turnpike and across to Britton's, thinking that the rain now added to the frosts would relax the burs which were open and let the nuts drop. 

The sugar maples are now in their glory, all aglow with yellow, red, and green. They are remarkable for the contrast they afford of deep blushing red on one half and green on the other. 

The chestnuts are not so ready to fall as I expected. Perhaps the burs require to be dried now after the rain. In a day or two they will nearly all come down. They are a pretty fruit, thus compactly stowed away in this bristly chest, — three is the regular number, and there is no room to spare, — the two outside nuts having each one convex side without and a flat side within; the middle nut has two flat sides. Sometimes there are several more nuts in a bur, but this year the burs are small, and there are not commonly more than two good nuts, very often only one, the middle one, both sides of which will then be convex, each way bulging out into a thin abortive mere reminiscence of a nut, all shell, beyond it. 

It is a rich sight, that of a large chestnut tree with a dome-shaped top, where the yellowing leaves have become thin, — for most now strew the ground evenly as a carpet throughout the chestnut woods and so save some seed, — all richly rough with great brown burs, which are opened into several segments so as to show the wholesome-colored nuts peeping forth, ready to fall on the slightest jar. 

The individual nuts are very interesting, of various forms, according to the season and the number in a bur. The base of each where it was joined to the bur is marked with an irregular dark figure on a light ground, oblong or crescent-shaped commonly, like a spider or other insect with a dozen legs, while the upper or small end tapers into a little white, woolly spire crowned with a star, and the whole upper slopes of the nuts are covered with the same hoary wool, which reminds you of the frosts on whose advent they peep forth. 

Each nut stretches forth a little starry hand at the end of a slender arm — and by this, when mature, you may pull it out without fear of prickles. Within this thick prickly bur the nuts are about as safe until they are quite mature, as a porcupine behind its spines. Yet I see where the squirrels have gnawed through many closed burs and left the pieces on the stumps. 

There are sometimes two meats within one chestnut shell, divided transversely, and each covered by its separate brown-ribbed skin.

The late goldenrod (S. latifolia) is all gone, on account of frost. 

Men commonly exaggerate the theme. Some themes they think are significant and others insignificant. I feel that my life is very homely, my pleasures very cheap. Joy and sorrow, success and failure, grandeur and meanness, and indeed most words in the English language do not mean for me what they do for my neighbors. I see that my neighbors look with compassion on me, that they think it is a mean and unfortunate destiny which makes me to walk in these fields and woods so much and sail on this river alone.

But so long as I find here the only real elysium, I can not hesitate in my choice. My work is writing, and I do not hesitate, though I know that no subject is too trivial for me, tried by ordinary standards; for, ye fools, the theme is nothing, the life is everything. 

All that interests the reader is the depth and intensity of the life excited. We touch our subject but by a point which has no breadth, but the pyramid of our experience, or our interest in it, rests on us by a broader or narrower base. That is, man is all in all, Nature nothing, but as she draws him out and reflects him. Give me simple, cheap, and homely themes.

I still see a yellow butterfly occasionally zigzagging by the roadside. 

What a strong medicinal but rich scent now after the rain, from decaying weeds, perhaps ferns, by the road side! The rain, falling on the fresh dried herbs and filling the ditches into which they drooped, has converted them into tea.

Apple leaves are now pretty generally brown and crisp. 

I see where the chestnut trees have been sadly bruised by the large stones cast against them in previous years and which still lie around. 

That was an interesting sight described on the 12th, the winged insects of various kinds gathered on the last fragment of a watermelon in the garden, to taste the last sweets of the year. In midsummer they are dispersed and not observed, but now, as in the spring, they are congregated about the little sweet that is left. 

Minott told me one of his hunting stories yesterday, how he saw a very large hen-hawk come sailing from over the hill, just this side of where Moore lives now. He didn't expect to reach her, but he knew that he had a plaguy smart little piece, — it was a kind of half- stocked one (he always speaks of the gun he used on a particular occasion as if it were a new one, describing it minutely, though he never had more than three, perhaps not more than two, in his life, I suspect), — so he thought he'd give her a try, and, faith, she pitched down into the little meadow on the north side the road there, and when he came up she bristled up to him so that he was obliged to give her another charge.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 18, 1856

The sugar maples are now in their glory, all aglow with yellow, red, and green. See October 18, 1858 ("The large sugar maples on the Common are now at the height of their beauty.")
We touch our subject but by a point which has no breadth. . . . See June 6, 1857 (" Each season is but an infinitesimal point. It no sooner comes than it is gone. It has no duration. It simply gives a tone
and hue to my thought. . . . We are conversant with only one point of contact at a time, . . .") December 11, 1855 ("I am tickled by this or that I come in contact with, as if I touched the wires of a battery. The age of miracles is each moment thus returned. ”); January 26, 1852 ("The moment always spurs us. The spurs of countless moments goad us incessantly into life.")

I still see a yellow butterfly occasionally zigzagging by the roadside. See July 14, 1852 (" See to-day for the first time this season fleets of yellow butterflies in compact assembly in the road like a mackerel fleet with their small hulls and great sails now suddenly dispersing on our approach and filling the air with yellow in their zigzag flight, as when a fair wind calls schooners out of haven and disperses them over the broad ocean. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Yellow Butterflies

All that interests the reader is the depth and intensity of the life excited. . . . That is, man is all in all, Nature nothing, but as she draws him out and reflects him. See May 24, 1857 ("We want no[t] completeness but intensity of life."); May 6, 1854 ("Every important worker will report what life there is in him. All that a man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind, is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love, — to sing; and, if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love."); May 23, 1853 ("The poet must bring to Nature the smooth mirror in which she is to be reflected.”) May 10, 1853 ("I pray for such inward experience as will make nature significant") August 7, 1853("The objects I behold correspond to my mood"); May 21, 1851 ("The existence of man in nature is the divinest and most startling of all facts. Man, the crowning fact, the god we know. . . .The standing miracle to man is man."):

A chimney swallow’s nest.

July 29

Rhexia. Probably would be earlier if not mowed down.

What I have called Hieracium Gronovii, with three cauline leaves and without veins, has achenia like H . venosum; so I will give it up. Its radical leaves are very hairy beneath, especially along midrib. 

Another smart rain, with lightning. 

Pratt gave me a chimney swallow's nest, which he says fell down Wesson's chimney with young in it two or three days ago. As it comes to me, it is in the form of the segment of the circumference of a sphere whose diameter is three and a half inches, the segment being two plus wide, one side, of course, longer than the other. It bears a little soot on the inner side. It may have been placed against a slanting part of the chimney, or perhaps some of the outer edge is broken off. 

It is composed wholly of stout twigs, one to two inches long, one sixteenth to one eighth inch diameter, held quasi cob-fashion, so as to form a sort of basketwork one third to one half inch thick, without any lining, at least in this, but very open to the air. These twigs, which are quite knubby, seem to be of the apple, elm, and the like, and are firmly fastened together by a very conspicuous whitish semi-transparent glue, which is laid on pretty copiously, sometimes extending continuously one inch. 

It reminds me of the edible nests of the Chinese swallow. Who knows but their edibleness is due to a similar glue secreted by the bird and used still more profusely in building its nests? 

The chimney swallow is said to break off the twigs as it flies. 

Pratt says he one day walked out with Wesson, with their rifles, as far as Hunt's Bridge. Looking down stream, he saw a swallow sitting on a bush very far off, at which he took aim and fired with ball. He was surprised to see that he had touched the swallow, for it flew directly across the river toward Simon Brown's barn, always descending toward the earth or water, not being able to maintain itself; but what surprised him most was to see a second swallow come flying be hind and repeatedly strike the other with all his force beneath, so as to toss him up as often as he approached the ground and enable him to continue his flight, and thus he continued to do till they were out of sight. 

Pratt said he resolved that he would never fire at a swallow again. 

Looked at a Sharp's rifle, a Colt's revolver, a Maynard's, and a Thurber's revolver. The last fires fastest (by a steady pull), but not so smartly, and is not much esteemed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 29, 1856

Rhexia. Probably would be earlier if not mowed down. See July 29, 1853 ("About these times some hundreds of men with freshly sharpened scythes make an irruption into my garden when in its rankest condition, and clip my herbs all as close as they can,"); September 18, 1854 ("Fringed gentian . . .that has been cut off by the mowers, . . . may after all be earlier.")  See also July 18, 1852 ("The petals of the rhexia have a beautiful clear purple with a violet tinge."); August 1, 1856 (" They make a splendid show, these brilliant rose-colored patches . . Yet few ever see them in this perfection, unless the haymaker who levels them, or the birds that fly over the meadow.") and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Rhexia Virginica (meadow-beauty)

What I have called Hieracium Gronovii , has achenia like H . venosum; so I will give it up. See October 23, 1853  ("Is it Gronovii or veiny-leaved?") and note to July 17, 1853 ("I think we have no Hieracium Gronoviis")

July 29. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 29

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

An arctic voyage to find two cowslips in full bloom.

April 8

1 P. M. —To boat at Cardinal Shore, and thence to Well Meadow and back to port. Another very pleasant and warm day. 

The white bellied swallows have paid us twittering visits the last three mornings. You must rush out quickly to see them, for they are at once gone again. 

Warm enough to do without greatcoat to-day and yesterday, though I carry it and put it on when I leave the boat.

Hear the crack of Goodwin’s piece close by, just as I reach my boat. He has killed another rat. Asks if I am bound up-stream. “Yes, to Well Meadow.” Says I can’t get above the hay-path a quarter of a mile above on account of ice; if he could, he ’d ’a’ been at Well Meadow before now. But I think I will try, and he thinks if I succeed he will try it. 

By standing on oars, which sink several inches, and hauling over one cake of ice, I manage to break my way into an open canal above, where I soon see three rats swimming. 

Goodwin says that he got twenty-four minks last winter, more than ever before in one season; trapped most, shot only two or three. 

From opposite Bittern Cliff, I push along, with more or less difficulty, to Well Meadow Brook. There is a water passage ten feet wide, where the river has risen beyond the edge of the ice, but not more than four or five feet was clear of the bushes and trees. 

By the side of Fair Haven Pond it was particularly narrow. I shove the ice on the one hand and the bushes and trees on the other all the way. Nor was the passage much wider below, as far back as where I had taken my boat. For all this distance, the river for the most part, as well as all the pond, is an unbroken field of ice. I went winding my way and scraping between the maples. 

Half a dozen rods off on the ice, you would not have supposed that there was room for a boat there. In some places you could have got on to the ice from the shore without much difficulty. 

But all of Well Meadow was free of ice, and I paddle up to within a rod or two of where I found the cowslips so forward on the 2d. It is difficult pushing a boat over the meadows now, for even where the bottom is not covered with slippery snow ice which affords no hold to the paddle, the meadow is frozen and icy hard, for it thaws slowly under water. This meadow is completely open, because none of the snow ice has risen up. Sometimes you see a small piece that has been released come up suddenly, with such force as to lift it partly out of water, but, sinking again at once, it looks like a sheldrake which has dived at a distance. 

There, in that slow, muddy brook near the head of Well Meadow, within a few rods of its source, where it winds amid the alders, which shelter the plants some what, while they are open enough now to admit the sun, I find two cowslips in full bloom, shedding pollen; and they may have opened two or three days ago; for I saw many conspicuous buds here on the 2d which now I do not see. 

Have they not been eaten off? Do we not often lose the earliest flowers thus? A little more, or if the river had risen as high as frequently, they would have been submerged. 

What an arctic voyage was this in which I find cowslips, the pond and river still frozen over for the most part as far down as Cardinal Shore!

See two marsh hawks this afternoon, circling low over the meadows along the water’s edge. This shows that frogs must be out. Goodwin and Puffer both fired at one from William Wheeler’s shore. They say they made him duck and disturbed his feathers some. 

The muskrats are now very fat. They are reddish-brown beneath and dark—brown above. 

I see not a duck in all this voyage. Perhaps they are moving forward this bright and warm day. 

Was obliged to come down as far as Nut Meadow (being on the west side), before I could clear the ice, and, setting my sail, tack across the meadow for home. the wind northwesterly. 

The river is still higher than yesterday. 

***

About 8.30 P. M. hear geese passing quite low over the river. 

Found beneath the surface, on the sphagnum, near wrinkled shells, a little like nutmegs, perhaps bass nuts, collected after a freshet by mice! I noticed that the fibres of the alder roots in the same place were thickly [sic] with little yellow knubby fruit. Was not that clear light brown snail in that sphagnum a different species from the common one in brooks?

See a few cranberries and smell muskrats. On the Fair Haven Cliff, crowfoot and saxifrage are very backward. That dense—growing moss on the rocks shows now a level surface of pretty crimson cups. 

Noticed, returning, this afternoon, a muskrat sitting on the ice near a small hole in Willow Bay, so motionless and withal round and featureless, of so uniform a color, that half a dozen rods off I should not have detected him if not accustomed to observing them. Saw the same thing yesterday. It reminds me of the truth of the Indian’s name for it, — “that sits in a round form on the ice.” You would think it was a particularly round clod of meadow rising above the ice. But while you look, it concludes its meditations or perchance its meal, and deliberately takes itself off through a hole at its feet, and you see no more of it. 

I noticed five muskrats this afternoon without looking for them very carefully. Four were swimming in the usual manner, showing the vertical tail, and plunging with a half-somerset suddenly before my boat. While you are looking, these brown clods slide of the edge of the ice, and it is left bare.  You would think that so large an animal, sitting right out upon the ice, would be sure to be seen or detected, but not so. A citizen might paddle within two rods and not suspect them. 

Most countrymen might paddle five miles along the river now and not see one muskrat, while a sportsman a quarter of a mile before or behind would be shooting one or more every five minutes. The other, left to himself, might not be able to guess what he was firing at. 

The marsh hawks flew in their usual irregular low tacking, wheeling, and circling flight, leisurely flapping and beating, now rising, now falling, in conformity with the contour of the ground. The last I think I have seen on the same beat in former years. He and his race must be well acquainted with the Musketicook and its meadows. No sooner is the snow off than he is back to his old haunts, scouring that part of the meadows that is bare, while the rest is melting. If he returns from so far to these meadows, shall the sons of Concord be leaving them at this season for slight cause? 

River had risen so since yesterday I could not get under the bridge, but was obliged to find a round stick and roll my boat over the road.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 8, 1856

The white bellied swallows have paid us twittering visits the last three mornings. See April 5, 1855 ("See a single white-bellied swallow dashing over the river. He, too, is attracted here by the early insects that begin to be seen over the water."); April 6, 1856 (" I thought I heard white-bellied swallows over the house before I arose."); April 7, 1853 (''The white-bellied swallows advertise themselves this morning, dashing up the street, and two have already come to disturb the bluebirds at our box."); See alsoA Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The White-bellied Swallow

Warm enough to do without greatcoat to-day. See April 16, 1855 ("I have not got far before, for the first time, I regret that I wore my greatcoat");  April 25, 1854 (" I swelter under my greatcoat. . . (I have not left it at home yet)"); April 26, 1852 (“I begin now to leave off my greatcoat.”); April 26, 1854 ("It is now so warm that I go back to leave my greatcoat for the first time.")

Hear the crack of Goodwin’s piece close by . . . He has killed another rat. See April 4, 1856 ("The muskrats, no doubt, are now being driven out of the banks. I hear, as I walk along the shore, the dull sound of guns —probably most of them fired at muskrats — . . .one every two or three minutes.");  April 7, 1856 ("We see Goodwin skinning the muskrats he killed this forenoon . . . Goodwin says they are fatter than usual, perhaps because they have not been driven out of their holes heretofore.")

 I find two cowslips in full bloom, shedding pollen; and they may have opened two or three days ago; for I saw many conspicuous buds here on the 2d which now I do not see. See 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" ).  April 9, 1853 ("The cowslips are well out, – the first conspicuous herbaceous flower") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Cowslip in Early Spring

See two marsh hawks this afternoon, circling low over the meadows . . . No sooner is the snow off than he is back to his old haunts, scouring that part of the meadows that is bare, while the rest is melting.  See  April 4, 1856 ("The ground no sooner begins to be bare to a considerable extent than I see a marsh hawk, or harrier"); April 5, 1854 ("These days, when a soft west or southwest wind blows and it is truly warm, and an outside coat is oppressive, — these bring out the butterflies and the frogs, and the marsh hawks which prey on the last. Just so simple is every year.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Marsh Hawk

Most countrymen might paddle five miles along the river now and not see one muskrat, while a sportsman a quarter of a mile before or behind would be shooting one or more every five minutes. See February 28, 1856 ("How much more game he will see who carries a gun, i. e. who goes to see it! Though you roam the woods all your days, you never will see by chance what he sees who goes on purpose to see it.”); November 4, 1858 ("The true sportsman can shoot you almost any of his game from his windows. It comes and perches at last on the barrel of his gun; but the rest of the world never see it with the feathers on. He will keep himself supplied by firing up his chimney. The geese fly exactly under his zenith, and honk when they get there. The fisherman, too, dreams of fish, till he can almost catch them in his sink-spout.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

I could not get under the bridge, but was obliged to find a round stick and roll my boat over the road. See  April 2, 1856 ("The river has been at summer level through the winter up to April!"); April 12, 1856 ("The river . . . was at its height when the snow generally was quite melted here, i. e. yesterday."); April 22, 1857 ("We have to roll our boat over the road at the stone bridge ");  May 8, 1854 (“The water has fallen a foot or more, but I cannot get under the stone bridge, so haul over the road.”); May 10, 1854 ("I drag and push my boat over the road at Deacon Farrar's brook, carrying a roller with me."); May 28, 1854 (“This spring the arches of the stone bridge were completely concealed by the flood, and yet at midsummer I can sail under them without lowering my mast.”) Compare April 6, 1861("Am surprised to find the river fallen some nine inches notwithstanding the melted snow. "); April 6, 1858 ("They with whom I talk do not remember when the river was so low at this season.")

April 8. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, April 8

White bellied swallows 

pay us twittering visits 

the last three mornings. 

Two marsh hawks circle

low along the water’s edge –

the frogs must be out.

An arctic voyage –

the pond and river frozen

– to find two cowslips.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  An arctic voyage 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560408

Wishing that I could find a dead duck floating on the water

April 6.

It clears up at 8 P. M. warm and pleasant, leaving flitting clouds and a little wind, and I go up the Assabet in my boat. 

The blackbirds have now begun to frequent the water’s edge in the meadow, the ice being sufficiently out. 

The April waters, smooth and commonly high, before many flowers (none yet) or any leafing, while the landscape is still russet and frogs are just awakening, is peculiar. 

April 6, 2020

It began yesterday. A very few white maple stamens stand out already loosely enough to blow in the wind, and some alder catkins look almost ready to shed pollen. On the hillsides I smell the dried leaves and hear a few flies buzzing over them. 

The banks of the river are alive with song sparrows and tree sparrows. They now sing in advance of vegetation, as the flowers will blossom, —those slight tinkling, twittering sounds called the singing of birds; they have come to enliven the bare twigs before the buds show any signs of starting. 

I see a large wood tortoise just crawled out upon the bank, with three oval, low, bug-like leeches on its sternum. 

You can hear all day, from time to time, in any part of the village, the sound of a gun fired at ducks. Yesterday I was wishing that I could find a dead duck floating on the water, as I had found muskrats and a hare, and now I see something bright and reflecting the light from the edge of the alders five or six rods off. Can it be a duck? 

I can hardly believe my eyes. 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, and I take a small flattened shot from its wing, — flattened against the wing—bone, apparently. The wing is broken, and it is shot through the head. 

(The chief wound was in a wing, which was broken. I afterward took three small shot from it, which were flattened against the bill’s base and perhaps (?) the quills’ shafts.)

It is a perfectly fresh and very beautiful bird, and as I raise it, I get sight of its long, slender vermilion bill (color of red sealing wax) and its clean, bright-orange legs and feet, and then of its perfectly smooth and spotlessly pure white breast and belly, tinged with a faint salmon (or tinged with a delicate buff inclining to salmon). 

This, according to Wilson, is one of the mergansers, or fisher ducks, of which there are nine or ten species and we have four in America. It is the largest of these four; feeds almost entirely on fin and shell fish; called water pheasant, sheldrake, fisherman diver, dun diver, sparkling fowl, harle, etc., as well as goosander. Go in April, return in November. 

Jardine has found seven trout in one female. Nuttall says they breed in the Russian Empire and are seen in Mississippi and Missouri in winter. He found a young brood in Pennsylvania. Yarrell says they are called also saw-bill and jack-saw; are sometimes sold in London market. 

Nest, according to Selby, on ground; according to others, in a hollow tree also. Found on the continent of Europe, northern Asia, and even in Japan. Some breed in the Orkneys and thereabouts.

My bird is 25 7/8 inches long and 35 in alar extent; from point of wing to end of primaries, 11 inches. 

It is a great diver and does not mind the cold. It appears admirably fitted for diving and swimming. Its body is flat, and its tail short, flat, compact, and wedge-shaped; its eyes peer out a slight slit or semicircle in the skin of the head; and its legs are flat and thin in one direction, and the toes shut up compactly so as to create the least friction when drawing them forward, but their broad webs spread them three and a half inches when they take a stroke. The web is extended three eighths of an inch beyond the inner toe of each foot. There are very conspicuous black teeth-like serrations along the edges of its bill, and this also is roughened so that it may hold its prey securely. 

The breast appeared quite dry when I raised it from the water. 

The head and neck are, as Wilson says, black, glossed with green, but the lower part of the neck pure white, and these colors bound on each other so abruptly that one appears to be sewed on to the other. It is a perfect wedge from the middle of its body to the end of its tail, and it is only three and a quarter - inches deep from back to breast at the thickest part, while the greatest breadth horizontally (at the root of the legs) is five and a half inches. In these respects it reminds me of an otter, which however I have never seen. - I suspect that I have seen near a hundred of these birds this spring, but I never got so near one before. 

In Yarrell’s plate the depth of the male goosander is to its length (i. e. from tip of tail to most forward part of breast) as thirty-seven to one hundred and three, or the depth is more than one third. This length in Yarrell’s bird, calling the distance from the point of the wing to the end of the primaries eleven inches, is about fourteen and a half inches, of which my three and a quarter is not one fourth. In Nuttall’s plate the proportion is thirty-two to ninety-one, also more than one third. I think they have not represented the bird flat enough.  

Yarrell says it is the largest of the British mergansers; is a winter visitor, though a few breed in the north of Britain; are rare in the southern counties. But, according to Yarrell, a Mr. Low in his Natural History of Orkney says they breed there, and, after breeding, the sexes separate; and Y. quotes Selby as saying that their nest is near the edge of the water, of grass, roots, etc., lined with down, sometimes among stones, in long grass, under bushes, or in a stump or hollow tree. 

Y. continues, egg “a uniform buff white,” two and a half inches long. Sometimes carry their young  on their backs in the water. It is common in Sweden and, according to the traveller Acerbi, in Lapland they give it a hollow tree to build in and then steal its eggs. The mother, he adds, carries her young to the water in her bill. 

Y. says it is well known in Russia and is found in Germany, Holland, France, Switzerland, Provence, and Italy. Has been seen near the Caucasus (and is found in Japan, according to one authority). Also in North America, Hudson’s Bay, Greenland, and Iceland.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 6, 1855

They now sing in advance of vegetation, as the flowers will blossom, . . .they have come to enliven the bare twigs before the buds show any signs of starting. See April 28, 1852 ("The spring flowers wait not to perfect their leaves before they expand their blossoms.)

White maple stamens stand out already loosely enough to blow in the wind. See April 6, 1853 ("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”); April 6, 1854 ("I am surprised to find so much of the white maples already out”); see also April 7, 1861 (" The white maple at the bridge not quite out.”); April 9, 1852 ("The maple by the bridge in bloom”); April 8, 1855 (I find some anthers effete and dark, and others still mealy with pollen. There are many in this condition. The crimson female stigmas also peeping forth. It evidently began to shed pollen yesterday.”).  Also see A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, White maple buds and flowers.

The banks of the river are alive with song sparrows . See April 6, 1856 ("The hedges resound with the song of the song sparrow."). See also Henry Thoreau, A Book of the Seasons: the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)

A perfect specimen of the Mergus merganser, or goosander, undoubtedly shot yesterday by the Fast-Day sportsmen.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Goosander, Merganser)

I see a large wood tortoise just crawled out upon the bank, with three oval, low, bug-like leeches on its sternum. See April 17, 1858 (" I take up a wood turtle on the shore, whose sternum is covered with small ants") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Wood Turtle (Emys insculpta)

White maple stamens 

already stand out enough

to blow in the wind.

it reminds me of 

an otter, which however 

i have never seen.