Such is the first hot weather.

May 7 

May  7, 2019

Saturday. Surveying Damon's Acton lot. 

It is hotter still, — 88° or more, as I hear in the afternoon. 

I frequently see pigeons dashing about in small flocks, or three or four at a time, over the woods here. Theirs is a peculiarly swift, dashing flight. 

The mayflower is still sparingly in bloom on what I will call Mayflower Path in this lot. It is almost the prevailing undershrub here. 

I think I hear the redstart. 

To-day and yesterday the sunlight is peculiarly yellow, on account of the smoky haze. I notice its peculiar yellowness, almost orange, even when, coming through a knot-hole in a dark room, it falls on the opposite wall. 

Such is the first hot weather.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 7, 1856

The mayflower is still sparingly in bloom on what I will call Mayflower Path. See May 7, 1854 ("As I ascend Cliff Hill, the two leaves of the Solomon's-seal now spot the forest floor, pushed up amid the dry leaves.")  April 12, 1858 ("Surveying part of William P. Brown's wood-lot in Acton, west of factory . . . I find the mayflower, but not in bloom. It appears to be common thereabouts."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Two-leaved Solomon's Seal ( Canada mayflower or false lily-of-the-valley)

I think I hear the redstart. See May 16, 1858 (“See and hear a redstart, the rhythm of whose strain is tse'-tse, tse'-tse, tse', emphasizing the last syllable of all and not ending with the common tsear”); May 17, 1856 (“At the Kalmia Swamp, see and hear the redstart, very lively and restless, flirting and spreading its reddish tail.”) See also  A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The American Redstart

May 7. See A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 7

Sunlight coming through 

a knot-hole in a dark room –

yellow, almost orange. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Such is the first hot weather.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau 

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560507

*****

A sunset walk. We walk to the view getting a late start, around 630 At the view there are beacons of light shining at spots all over the landscape through broken clouds. Parts of the lake are illuminated parts of the golf course suddenly bright bright green. 

The maple leaves are now lacy against the sky and probably will be forming shadows. The small maples go straight to leaf but the adult trees still have no leaves. This spring green color of the tree flowers is coloring the valley and the grass is bright green.

It is obviously going to be an incredibly good sunset. Gradually the clouds break up and we see the peachy orange color in the west. The mountains are blue to dark purple. Whiteface is concealed.

We wait until the sun is down and then notice the beam of red light illuminating the clouds behind the Adirondacks like a red fan silhouetting the mountains. Many pictures to document this beautiful evening.

Meanwhile through the hike we hear the hermit thrush,'the wood thrush, the oven bird, the black throated green the sapsuckers tapping and perhaps others. Rose breasted grosbeak –we have been been waiting for it; today it first is heard.

Just as the sun sets the peepers in the lower pond start up in earnest.

  zphx 20190507

It may be many generations before the partridges learn to give the cars a sufficiently wide berth.

April 12. 

A. M. —Surveying part of William P. Brown's wood-lot in Acton, west of factory. 

Hear the huckleberry-bird and, I think, the Fringilla socialis. 

The handsomest pails at the factory are of oak, white and some “gray” (perhaps scarlet), but these are chiefly for stables. 

The woods are all alive with pine warblers now. Their note is the music to which I survey. 

Now the early willows are in their prime, methinks. 

At angle H of the lot, on a hillside, I find the mayflower, but not in bloom. It appears to be common thereabouts. 

Returning on the railroad, the noon train down passed us opposite the old maid Hosmer's house. In the woods just this side, we came upon a partridge standing on the track, between the rails over which the cars had just passed. She had evidently been run down, but, though a few small feathers were scattered along for a dozen rods beyond her, and she looked a little ruffled, she was apparently more disturbed in mind than body.

I took her up and carried her one side to a safer place. At first she made no resistance, but at length fluttered out of my hands and ran two or three feet. I had to take her up again and carry and drive her further off, and left her standing with head erect as at first, as if beside herself. She was not lame, and I suspect no wing was broken. 

I did not suspect that this swift wild bird was ever run down by the cars. We have an account in the newspapers of every cow and calf that is run over, but not of the various wild creatures who meet with that accident. It may be many generations before the partridges learn to give the cars a sufficiently wide berth.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 12, 1858

Hear the huckleberry-bird and, I think, the Fringilla socialis. See April 27, 1852 ("Heard the field or rush sparrow this morning (Fringilla juncorum), George Minott's "huckleberry-bird." It sits on a birch and sings at short intervals, apparently answered from a distance. It is clear and sonorous heard afar; but I found it quite impossible to tell from which side it came; sounding like phe, phe, phe, pher-pher-tw-tw-tw-t-t-t-t, — the first three slow and loud, the next two syllables quicker, and the last part quicker and quicker, becoming a clear, sonorous trill or rattle, like a spoon in a saucer. Heard also a chipping sparrow (F. socialis) ”);  April 9, 1856 ("Wandering over that high huckleberry pasture, I hear the sweet jingle of the Fringilla juncorum."); ; April 15, 1856 ("I hear the note of the Fringilla juncorum (huckleberry-bird) from the plains beyond. "); April 18, 1857 ("Hear the huckleberry-bird, also the seringo.");June 24, 1857 ("Heard a fine, clear note from a bird on a white birch near me, — whit whit, whit whit, whit whit, (very fast) ter phe phe phe, — sounding perfectly novel. Looking round, I saw it was the huckleberry-bird");  

Now the early willows are in their prime, methinks. See April 12, 1852 ("See the first blossoms (bright-yellow stamens or pistils) on the willow catkins to-day . . .First the speckled alder, then the maple without keys, then this earliest, perhaps swamp, willow with its bright-yellow blossoms on one side of the ament. It is fit that this almost earliest spring flower should be yellow, the color of the sun."); April 15, 1852 ("I think that the largest early-catkined willow in large bushes in sand by water now blossoming -- the fertile catkins with paler blossoms, the sterile covered with pollen, a pleasant lively bright yellow -- is the brightest flower I have seen thus far.."); April 18, 1852 ("The most interesting fact, perhaps, at present is these few tender yellow blossoms, these half-expanded sterile aments of the willow, seen through the rain and cold, — signs of the advancing year, pledges of the sun's return.")

The woods are all alive with pine warblers now. Their note is the music to which I survey.  See April 12, 1859 ("Pine warblers heard in the woods by C. to-day. This, except the pigeon woodpecker and pigeon and hawks, as far as they are migratory, is the first that I should call woodland (or dry woodland) birds that arrives.");See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Pine Warbler and April 2, 1853 ("Hear and see what I call the pine warbler, --vetter vetter vetter vetter vet, -- the cool woodland sound. The first this year of the higher-colored birds, after the bluebird and the blackbird's wing. It so affects me as something more tender."); April 9, 1853 ("On a pitch pine on side of J. Hosmer's river hill, a pine warbler, by ventriloquism sounding farther off than it was"); April 9, 1856 ("I hear from the old locality, the edge of the great pines and oaks in the swamp by the railroad, the note of the pine warbler. It sounds far off and faint, but, coming out and sitting on the iron rail, I am surprised to see it within three or four rods . . . When heard a little within the wood, as he hops to that side of the oak, they sound particularly cool and inspiring, like a part of the evergreen forest itself, the trickling of the sap."); April 11, 1856 ("And hear in the old place, the pitch pine grove on the bank by the river, the pleasant ringing note of the pine warbler. Its a-che, vitter 'vitter, m'tter 'vitter, vitter m'tter, m'tter m'tter, 'vet rings through the open pine grove very rapidly. I also heard it at the old place by the railroad, as I came along. It is remarkable that I have so often heard it first in these two localities"); April 15. 1855 ("In the meanwhile, as we steal through the woods, we hear the pleasing note of the pine warbler, bringing back warmer weather,");April 15, 1860 ("At Conantum pitch pines hear the first pine warbler."); April 16, 1856 ("I see a pine warbler, much less yellow than the last, searching about the needles of the pitch and white pine. Its note is somewhat shorter, -- a very rapid and continuous trill or jingle which I remind myself of by wetter wetter wetter wetter wet’, emphasizing the last syllable.");April 16, 1857 ("Meanwhile I hear the note of the pine warbler. ")

We came upon a partridge standing on the track. She had evidently been run down,I took her up and carried her one side to a safer place. See e.g. April 22, 1857 (“Near Tall's Island, rescue a little pale or yellowish brown snake that . . . was apparently chilled by the cold.”); December 31, 1857 ("found . . .a bull frog. . . It was evidently nearly chilled to death and could not jump, though there was then no freezing. I looked round a good while and finally found a hole to put it into,")

The woods all alive

with pine warblers notes – music

to which I survey.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The woods are all alive with pine warblers

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

The epigaea shows a good deal of the pink.

April 24

A rain-threatening April day. Sprinkles a little in the forenoon. 

P. M. — To mayflower. 

The yellow willow peels fairly, probably for several days. Its buds are bursting and showing a little green, at end of railroad bridge. 

On Money-Diggers’ Shore, much large yellow lily root washed up; that white root with white fibres and yellowish leaf—buds. I doubt if I have seen any pontederia this year. 

I find, on the southeast side of Lupine Hill, nearly four rods from the water and a dozen feet above its level, a young Emys picta, one and five eighths inches long and one and a half wide. I think it must have been hatched year before last. It was headed up-hill. Its rear above was already covered with some kind of green moss (?) or the like, which probably had adhered or grown to it in its winter quarters. 

The epigaea on the upper edge of the bank shows a good deal of the pink, and may open in two or three days if it is pleasant. 

April 23, 2024

Trailing arbutus (epigaea) April 24, 2020

Equisetum arvense, by path beyond second brook, probably yesterday. As usual, am struck with the forwardness of the dark patch of slender rush at the cowslip place. 

Returning, in the low wood just this side the first Second Division Brook, near the meadow, see a brown bird flit, and behold my hermit thrush, with one companion, flitting silently through the birches. I saw the fox-color on his tail-coverts, as well as the brown streaks on the breast. Both kept up a constant jerking of the tail as they sat on their perches. 

This season of rain and superabundant moisture makes attractive many an unsightly hollow and recess. I see some roadside lakes, where the grass and clover had already sprung, owing to previous rain or melted snow, now filled with perfectly transparent April rain water, through which I see to their emerald bottoms, -- paved with emerald.

In the pasture beyond Nut Meadow Brook Crossing, the unsightly holes where rocks have been dug and blasted out are now converted into perfect jewels. They are filled with water of crystalline transparency, paved with the same emerald, with a few hardhacks and meadow-sweets standing in them, and jagged points of rock, and a few skaters gliding over them.

Even these furnish goblets and vases of perfect purity to hold the dews and rains, and what more agreeable bottom can we look to than this which the earliest moisture and sun had tinged green? We do not object to see dry leaves and withered grass at the bottom of the goblet when we drink, if these manifestly do not affect the purity of the water. What wells can be more charming? 

If I see an early grasshopper drowning in one, it looks like a fate to be envied. Here is no dark unexplored bottom, with its imagined monsters and mud, but perfect sincerity, setting off all that it reveals. Through this medium we admire even the decaying leaves and sticks at the bottom. 

The brook had risen so, owing to Miles’s running his mill, that I could not get over where I did going.* 

April wells, call them, vases clean as if enameled.

There is a slight sea-turn. I saw it like a smoke beyond Concord from Brown’s high land, and felt the Cool fresh east wind. Is it not common thus early?

The old caterpillar-nests which now lie on the ground under wild cherry trees, and which the birds may use, are a quite light-colored cottony web, close and thick matted, together with the dried excrement of caterpillars, etc., on the inside. 

See a dog’s-bane with two pods open and partially curved backward on each side, but a third not yet open. This soon opens and scatters its down and seeds in my chamber. The outside is a dull reddish or mahogany-color, but the inside is a singularly polished very pale brown. The inner bark of this makes a strong twine like that of the milkweed, but there is not so much of it. 

What is that now ancient and decayed fungus by the first mayflowers, —trumpet-shaped with a very broad mouth, the chief inner part green, the outer dark brown?   

The earliest gooseberry leaf has spread a third of an inch or more.

Goodwin shot, about 6 P. M., and brought to me a cinereous coot (Fulica Americana) which was flying over the willows at Willow Bay, where the water now runs up. It measures fourteen inches to end of tail; eighteen and one half to end of legs. Tail projects a half inch beyond closed wings. Alar extent twenty-six inches. (These dimensions are somewhat stretched.) Above it is a bluish slate, passing into olive behind the wings, the primaries more brownish. Beneath, ash color or pale slate. Head and neck, uniform deep black. Legs, clear green in front, passing into lead-color behind and on the lobes. Edging of wings, white; also the tips of the secondaries for one fourth of an inch, and a small space under the tail. Wings beneath, very light,  almost silvery, slate. Vent, for a small space, black. Bill, bluish-white, with a chestnut bar near tip, and corresponding chestnut spot on each side of lower mandible and a somewhat diamond-shaped chestnut spot at base in front. No noticeable yellow on bill. Irides, reddish. No noticeable whitish spot beneath eyes; only bare lid. Legs and feet are very neat; talons very slender, curving, and sharp, the middle ones 1/2 inch+ long. Lobes chiefly on the inner side of the toes. Legs bare half an inch above the joint. From its fresh and tender look I judge it to be a last year’s bird. It is quite lousy. 

According to Nuttall, they range from 55° north latitude to Florida and Jamaica and west to Oregon (?) and Mexico. Probably breed in every part of North America, —even in Fresh Pond, he would imply, — but their nests, eggs, and breeding-habits are yet unknown. Nocturnal, hiding by day. In Florida in the winter. Come to Fresh Pond in September. A pair there in April, and seen with young birds in June. When alarmed utter a “hoarse kruk.” Called “flusterers” in Carolina, according to Lawson, because they fly trailing their legs or pattering with them over the water. Food: vegetables, also small shellfish, insects, gravel, etc. Leave the Northern States in November.

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

*Warren Miles at his new mill tells me eels can’t get above his mill now, in the spring.


A young Emys picta, one and five eighths inches long. See April 21, 1855 ("Saw a painted turtle not two inches in diameter. This must be more than one year old”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle (Emys picta)

The inner bark of [the dog's-bane] makes a strong twine like that of the milkweed. See August 16, 1856 ("I find the dog's-bane (Apocynum androsoemifolium) bark not the nearly so strong as that of the A. cannabinum”).; August 5, 1856 (“At the Assabet stone bridge, apparently freshly in flower, — though it may have been out nearly as long as the androscemifolium, — apparently the Apocynum var. hypericifolium (?)”) ;  September 2, 1856 ("Some years ago I sought for Indian hemp (Apocynum cannabinum) hereabouts in vain, and concluded that it did not grow here. A month or two ago I read again, as many times before, that its blossoms were very small, scarcely a third as large as those of the common species, and for some unaccountable reason this distinction kept recurring to me, and I regarded the size of the flowers I saw, though I did not believe that it grew here; and in a day or two my eyes fell on it, aye, in three different places, and different varieties of it.")

The earliest gooseberry leaf has spread a third of an inch or more. See April 13, 1856 ("The early gooseberry leaf-buds in garden have burst, -- now like small green frilled horns); April 23, 1855 ("The currant and second gooseberry are bursting into leaf.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Spring Leaf-Out

The epigaea on the upper edge of the bank shows a good deal of the pink. See April 4, 1859 ("The epigaea looks as if it would open in two or three days at least, — showing much color. The flower-buds are protected by the withered leaves, oak leaves, which partly cover them, so that you must look pretty sharp to detect the first flower."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Epigaea (mayflower or trailing arbutus)

Equisetum arvense, by path beyond second brook, probably yesterday. See April 24, 1855 ("The Equisetum arvense on the causeway sheds its green pollen .”)

Behold my hermit thrush, with one companion, flitting silently through the birches . . . Both kept up a constant jerking of the tail as they sat on their perches.   This may be HDT’s first certain, correct identification of the hermit, which is the first thrush to arrive in April. He has mistaken it for the wood thrush and the "golden-crowned” thrrush and  has been brushing up on his thrushes. See  May 7, 1852 (" A wood [sic] thrush which. . .betrayed himself by moving, like a large sparrow with ruffled feathers, and quirking his tail like a pewee,  on a low branch.”);  May 22, 1852 ("On my way to Plymouth, looked at Audubon in the State-House. The female (and male?) wood thrush spotted the whole length of belly; the hermit thrush not so.”); April 18, 1854 ("Was surprised to see a wagtail thrush, the golden-crowned, at the Assabet Spring,”); April 27, 1854 ("What a shy fellow my hermit thrush! ");May 4, 1855 ("Several larger thrushes on low limbs and on ground, with a dark eye (not the white around it of the wood thrush) and, I think, the nankeen spot on the secondaries. A hermit thrush?); April 21, 1855 ("At Cliffs, I hear at a distance a wood [sic] thrush. It affects us as a part of our unfallen selves..”); September 29, 1855 ("At Natural History Library saw Dr. Cabot, who says that he has heard either the hermit, or else the olivaceous, thrush sing,—very like a wood thrush, but softer. Is sure that the hermit thrush sometimes breeds hereabouts.”). See also June 12, 1857 ("At Natural History Rooms.. . . The wood thrush's is a slender egg, a little longer than a catbird's and uniform greenish-blue. . . . The egg of the hermit thrush [which variety?] is about as big as that of Wilson's thrush, but darker green.”); October 22, 1857 (“I see what I call a hermit thrush on the bushes by the shore of Flint’s Pond . . .”) Also see A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Early Spring: The Arrival of the Hermit Thrush

See a brown bird flit

and behold my hermit thrush

with one companion.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The epigaea shows a good deal of the pink

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-560424