A Book of the Seasons: first fireflies in June

I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

Many men walk by day;

few walk by night.

It is a very different season.

Instead of the sun,

there are the moon and stars;

instead of the wood thrush,

there is the whip-poor-will;

instead of butterflies,

fireflies--

winged sparks of fire!

July 16, 1850

June 3. It has been a sultry day, and a slight thunder-shower, and now I see fireflies in the meadows at evening. June 3, 1852


June 4. George Minott says he saw many lightning-bugs a warm evening the forepart of this week, after the rains. Probably it was the 29th. June 4, 1853


June 7. Mosquitoes are very troublesome in the woods . . . This muggy evening I see fireflies, the first I have seen or heard of at least. June 7, 1854


June 7. Fireflies pretty numerous over the river, though we have had no thunder-showers of late. Mosquitoes quite troublesome here. June 7, 1858


June 8.  See lightning-bugs to-night. June 8, 1859


June 11. When I get away from the town and deeper into the night, I hear whip-poor-wills, and see fireflies in the meadow. June 11, 1851

Away from the town

and deeper into the night --

whip-poor-wills, fireflies.

June 11, 1851

June 13. A few fireflies in the meadow. Do they shine, though invisibly, by day? Is their candle lighted by day? June 13, 1851


June 14. Where there was only one firefly in a dozen rods, I hastily ran to one which had crawled up to the top of a grass head and exhibited its light, and instantly another sailed in to it , showing its light also; but my presence made them extinguish their lights. The latter retreated, and the former crawled slowly down the stem. It appeared to me that the first was a female who thus revealed her place to the male, who was also making known his neighborhood as he hovered about, both showing their lights that they might come together. It was like a mistress who had climbed to the turrets of her castle and exhibited there a blazing taper for a signal, while her lover had displayed his light on the plain. If perchance she might have any lovers abroad. June 14, 1851


June 15. It is candle light. The fishes leap. The meadows sparkle with the coppery light of fireflies. June 15, 1852


June 16. Heat lightning in the horizon. A sultry night. A flute from some villager. How rare among men so fit a thing as the sound of a flute at evening! Have not the fireflies in the meadow relation to the stars above, étincelant?   When the darkness comes, we see stars beneath also . . . Do not the stars, too, show their light for love, like the fireflies?  June 16, 1852

When the darkness comes

do not the stars like fireflies

show their light for love?

June 16, 1852

June 16. The meadows full of lightning-bugs to-night; first seen the 14th. June 16, 1860

June 16. It appears to me that these phenomena occur simultaneously, say June 12th, viz.:

• Heat about. 85° at 2 P.M

• Hylodes cease to peep.

• Purring frogs (Rana palustris) cease

• Lightning-bugs first seen

• Bullfrogs trump generally.

• Mosquitoes begin to be really troublesome.

• Afternoon thunder-showers almost regular

• Sleep with open window.

• Turtles fairly and generally begun to lay.

June 16, 1860

June 17. In the damp, warm evening after the rain, the fireflies appear to be more numerous than ever. June 17, 1852

June 22. The fireflies in the meadows are very numerous, as if they had replenished their lights from the lightning. June 22, 1852

June 25. The fireflies appear to be flying, though they may be stationary on the grass stems, for their perch and the nearness of the ground are obscured by the darkness, and now you see one here and then another there, as if it were one in motion. Their light is singularly bright and glowing to proceed from a living creature. June 25, 1852

You see one here and

another there as if it

were one in motion.

June 25, 1852

June 25. What were the firefly's light, if it were not for darkness? The one implies the other. June 25, 1852

Why the firefly's light,

if it were not for darkness?

One implies the other.

June 25, 1852

June 30. It is starlight about half an hour after sunset to-night; i. e. the first stars appear. . . .Ten or fifteen minutes after, the fireflies are observed, at first about the willows on the Causeway, where the evening is further advanced. June 30, 1852

Magically at dusk

the woods fill with fireflies and

the flute of the thrush.

zphx July 29, 2013

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, first fireflies in June

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 © 2009-2023

Bacon says he has seen pitch pine pollen in a cloud going over a hill a mile off

June 14.

P. M.--To lime-kiln with Mr. Bacon of Natick.

Sisymbrium amphibium (?) of Bigelow, some days, at foot of Loring's land.

Common mallows well out; how long? 

What is that sisymbrium or mustard-like plant at foot of Loring 's ?

Erigeron strigosus (??) out earliest, say yesterday.

Observed a ribwort near Simon Brown's barn by road, with elongated spikes and only pistillate flowers.

Hedge-mustard, how long? Pepper grass, how long? Some time.

Scirpus lacustris, maybe some days.

I see a black caterpillar on the black willows nowadays with red spots.

Mr. Bacon thinks that cherry-birds are abundant where cankerworms are.

Says that only female mosquitoes sting (not his observation alone); that there are one or two arbor-vitæs native in Natick.

He has found the Lygodium palmatum there.

There is one pure-blooded Indian woman there. Pearl [?], I think he called her.

He thought those the exuviæ of mosquitoes on the river weeds under water.

Makes his own microscopes and uses garnets.

He called the huckleberry-apple a parasitic plant, — pterospora, – which grown on and changed the nature of the huckleberry.

Observed a diseased Andromeda paniculata twig prematurely in blossom.

Caught a locust, — properly harvest-fly (cicada), — drumming on a birch, which Bacon and Hill (of Waltham) think like the septendecim, except that ours has not red eyes but black ones. 

Harris's other kind, the dog-day cicada (canicularis), or harvest-fly. He says it begins to be heard invariably at the beginning of dog-days; he (Harris) heard it for many years in succession with few exceptions on the 25th of July.

Bacon says he has seen pitch pine pollen in a cloud going over a hill a mile off; is pretty sure.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 14, 1854

To lime-kiln with Mr. Bacon of Natick. See August 24, 1857 ("Ride to Austin Bacon’s, Natick.")
Makes his own microscopes and uses garnets. See August 24. 1857 ("A. Bacon showed me a drawing apparatus which he said he invented, very simple and convenient, also microscopes and many glasses for them which he made.")

Bacon says there are one or two arbor-vitæs native in Natick. See August 24, 1857 ("B[acon] says that the arbor-vitae grows indigenously in pretty large patches in Needham")

Thee dog-day cicada begins to be heard invariably at the beginning of dog-days; he (Harris) heard it for many years in succession with few exceptions on the 25th of July. See note to July 22, 1860 ("First locust heard.")

Bacon says he has seen pitch pine pollen in a cloud going over a hill a mile off; See. June 3, 1857 ("The pitch pine at Hemlocks is in bloom. . . .As usual, when I jar them the pollen rises in a little cloud about the pistillate flowers and the tops of the twigs, there being a little wind"); June 9, 1850 ("I see the pollen of the pitch pine now beginning to cover the surface of the pond.")

All things in this world must be seen with the morning dew on them.

June 13

Sunday.

3 p. m. — To Conantum.

A warm day.

It has been cold, and we have had fires the past week sometimes.

Clover begins to show red in the fields, and the wild cherry is not out of blossom.

The river has a summer midday look, smooth to a cobweb, with green shores, and shade from the trees on its banks.

The Viburnum nudum.

The oblong- leaved sundew, but not its flower.

Do the bulbous arethusas last long? 

What a sweetness fills the air now in low grounds or meadows, reminding me of times when I went strawberrying years ago! It is as if all meadows were filled with some sweet mint.

The Dracama borealis (Bigelow) (Clintonia borealis (Gray)) amid the Solomon's-seals in Hubbard's Grove Swamp, a very neat and handsome liliaceous flower with three large, regular, spotless, green convallaria leaves, making a triangle from the root, and sometimes a fourth from the scape, linear, with four drooping, greenish-yellow, bell-shaped (?) flowers. Not in sun. In low shady woods. It is a handsome and perfect flower, though not high-colored. I prefer it to some more famous.

But Gray should not name it from the Governor of New York. What is he to the lovers of flowers in Massachusetts? If named after a man, it must be a man of flowers. Rhode Island botanists may as well name the flowers after their governors as New York. Name your canals and railroads after Clinton, if you please, but his name is not associated with flowers.

Mosquitoes now trouble the walker in low shady woods.

No doubt woodchucks in their burrows hear the steps of walkers through the earth and come not forth.

Yellow wood sorrel (Oxalis stricta), which, according to Gray, closes its leaves and droops at nightfall.

The woolly aphides on alders whiten one's clothes now.

What is that palmate(?)-leaved water-plant by the Corner causeway? 

The buck-bean grows in Conant's meadow.

Lambkill is out. I remember with what delight I used to discover this flower in dewy mornings – All things in this world must be seen with the morning dew on them, must be seen with youthful, early-opened, hopeful eyes.

Saw four cunning little woodchucks nibbling the short grass, about one third grown, that live under Conant's old house. Mistook one for a piece of rusty iron.

The Viburnum Lentago is about out of bloom; shows young berries.

The Smilax herbaeea, carrion-flower, a rank green vine with long-peduncled umbels, with small greenish or yellowish flowers just opening, and tendrils, at the Miles swamp. It smells exactly like a dead rat in the wall, and apparently attracts flies (I find small gnats on it) like carrion. A very remarkable odor; a single minute flower in an umbel open will scent a whole room.

Nature imitates all things in flowers. They are at once the most beautiful and the ugliest objects, the most fragrant and the most offensive to the nostrils, etc., etc.

The compound-racemed convallaria, being fully out, is white. I put it down too early, perhaps by a week.

The great leaves of the bass attract you now, six inches in diameter.

The delicate maidenhair fern forms a cup or dish, very delicate and graceful. Beautiful, too, its glossy black stem and its wave-edged fruited leafets.

I hear the feeble plaintive note of young bluebirds, just trying their wings or getting used to them.

Young robins peep.

I think I know four kinds of cornel beside the dog wood and bunchberry: 

• one now in bloom, with rather small leaves with a smooth, silky feeling beneath, a greenish-gray spotted stem, in older stocks all gray (Cornus alternifolia? or sericea?); 

• the broad-leaved cornel in Laurel Glen, yet green in the bud (C. circinata?);

• the small-leaved cornel with a small cyme or corymb, as late to be [sic] as the last, in Potter's hedge and on high hills (C. paniculata);

• and the red osier by the river (C. stolonifera), which I have not seen this year.

Mosquitoes are first troublesome in the house with sultry nights.

Orobanche uniflora, single-flowered broom-rape (Bigelow), [or] Aphyllon uniflorum, one-flowered cancer-root (Gray). C. found it June 12 at Clematis Brook.

Also the common fumitory (?), methinks; it is a fine-leaved small plant.

Captain Jonathan Carver commences his Travels with these words: 

"In June, 1766, I set out from Boston, and proceeded by way of Albany and Niagara, to Michillimackinac; a Fort situated between the Lakes Huron and Michigan, and distant from Boston 1300 miles. This being the uttermost of our factories towards the northwest, I considered it as the most convenient place from whence I could begin my intended progress, and enter at once into the Regions I designed to explore."

So he gives us no information respecting the intermediate country, nor much, I fear, about the country beyond.

Holbrook says the Emys picta is the first to be seen in the spring.

  

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 13, 1852

Gray should not name it from the Governor of New York . . . If named after a man, it must be a man of flowers. See August 31, 1851 (" I have no objection to giving the names of some naturalists, men of flowers, to plants, if by their lives they have identified themselves with them . . . But it must be done very sparingly, or, rather, discriminatingly, and no man's name be used who has not been such a lover of flowers that the flowers themselves may be supposed thus to reciprocate his love ")

Lambkill is out. I remember with what delight I used to discover this flower in dewy mornings. See June 13, 1854 ("How beautiful the solid cylinders of the lamb-kill now just before sunset, — small ten-sided, rosy-crimson basins, about two inches above the recurved, drooping dry capsules of last year"); June 25, 1852 ("Sometimes the lambkill flowers form a very even rounded, close cylinder, six inches long and two and a half in diameter, of rich red saucer-like flowers, the counterpart of the latifolia in flowers and flower- buds, but higher colored. I regard it as a beautiful flower neglected. It has a slight but not remarkable scent.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia)

All things in this world must be seen with the morning dew on them, must be seen with youthful, early-opened, hopeful eyes. See July 18, 1851 ("It is a test question affecting the youth of a person , — Have you knowledge of the morning? . . .  Are you abroad early, brushing the dews aside?"); March 17, 1852 ("There is a moment . . .before the exhalations of the day commence to rise, when we see things more truly than at any other time.");  July 31, 1859 (""It is worth the while to get at least a dozen miles on your journey before the dew is off. );   A Week (Tuesday):

"In each dew-drop of the morning 

Lies the promise of a day"

Walden (“Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.”); and note to March 17, 1857 (“No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of the spring”) See also September 10, 1860:

Dew on a fine grass

white and silvery as frost –

the newly risen sun.

The Viburnum nudum. . . .The Viburnum Lentago is about out of bloom; shows young berries. See June 10, 1854 ("The Viburnum lentago is just out of bloom now that the V. nudum is fairly begun.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Viburnum lentago (nannyberry)

Yellow wood sorrel (Oxalis stricta), which closes its leaves and droops at nightfall. See August 15, 1851 ("Oxalis stricta, upright wood-sorrel, the little yellow ternate-leaved flower in pastures and corn-fields.")

The great leaves of the bass attract you now, six inches in diameter. See The bass suddenly expanding its little round leaves. May 13, 1854 ("The bass suddenly expanding its little round leaves. May 13, 1854"); See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood

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

Sweetness fills the air

reminding me – years ago,

strawberrying times.

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 vertebrae and talons of a partridge in the dry excrement of a fox, left on a rock.

June 11 

Saturday. Another fog this morning. 

The mosquitoes first troubled me a little last night. 

On the river at dusk I hear the toads still, with the bullfrogs. 

The black willow, having shed its fuzzy seeds and expanded its foliage, now begins to be handsome, so light and graceful. 

The upland fields are already less green where the June-grass is ripening its seeds. They are greenest when only the blade is seen. 

In the sorrel-fields, also, what lately was the ruddy, rosy cheek of health, now that the sorrel is ripening and dying, has become the tanned and imbrowned cheek of manhood. 

Probably blackbirds were never less numerous along our river than in these years. They do not depend on the clearing of the woods and the cultivation of or chards, etc. Streams and meadows, in which they delight, always existed. Most of the towns, soon after they were settled, were obliged to set a price upon their heads. In 1672, according to the town records of Concord, instruction was given to the selectmen, "That incorigment be given for the destroying of blackbirds and jaies." (Shattuck, page 45.) 

Murder will out. I find, in the dry excrement of a fox left on a rock, the vertebrae and talons of a partridge (?) which he has consumed. They are memoires pour servir. 

I remember Helen's telling me that John Marston of Taunton told her that he was on board a vessel during the Revolution, which met another vessel, — and, as I think, one hailed the other, — and a French name being given could not be understood, whereupon a sailor, probably aboard his vessel, ran out on the bowsprit and shouted "La Sensible,"  and that sailor's name was Thoreau. 

["La Sensible," was] the vessel in which John Adams was being brought back from or carried out to France. My father has an idea that he stood on the wharf and cried this to the bystanders.] 

My father tells me that, when the war came on, my grandfather, being thrown out of business and being a young man, went a-privateering. I find from his Diary that John Adams set sail from Port Louis at L'Orient in the French frigate Sensible, Captain Chavagnes, June 17th, 1779, the Bonhomme Richard, Captain Jones, and four other vessels being in company at first, and the Sensible arrived at Boston the 2d of August. 

On the 13th of November following, he set out for France again in the same frigate from Boston, and he says that a few days before the 24th, being at the last date "on the Grand Bank of Newfoundland," "we spoke an American privateer, the General Lincoln, Captain Barnes." If the above-mentioned incident occurred at sea, it was probably on this occasion.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 11, 1853

The mosquitoes first troubled me a little last night. At dusk I hear the toads still, with the bullfrogs.  See June 7, 1858 "Mosquitoes quite troublesome here."); June 7, 1854 ("[M]osquitoes are very troublesome in the woods."); June 15, 1860 ("The bullfrogs now commonly trump at night, and the mosquitoes are now really troublesome."); June 16, 1852 ("The sonorous note of bullfrogs is heard a mile off in the river, the loudest sound this evening"). See also June 16, 1860 ("It appears to me that these phenomena occur simultaneously, say June 12th . . .")


A partridge which he has consumed.  See January 27, 1855 ("What a life is theirs, venturing forth only at night for their prey, ranging a great distance, trusting to pick up a sleeping partridge or a hare, and at home again before morning!”); January 1, 1856 (“In the other direction you trace the retreating steps of the disappointed fox until he has forgotten this and scented some new game, maybe dreams of partridges or wild mice.”); June 25, 1860 ("What an unfailing supply of small game it secures that its excrement should be so generally of fur! ")

The French frigate Sensible sailed from L'Orient, France to Boston, Ma between June 17-August 2, 1779, carrying John Adams and his son, and also the french minister to the U.S., Chevalier Anne-Cesar de La Luzerne. See John Adams Journals.  The ship sailed from Boston, MA destination France on November 14, 1779, but a storm damaged the hull and she ended up in Ferrol, Spain on December 8, 1779. John Adams and two suns were traveling with it.  see link.  From Adam's diary:

November 24 1779

We were on the Grand Bank of Newfound Land, and about this time, We spoke with an American Privateer, The General Lincoln Captain Barnes. He came on board and our Captain supplied him with some Wood and other Articles he wanted. 

Jean Thoreau, grandfather of Henry, born at St. Helier's, Jersey, April, 1754, was a sailor on board the American privateer General Lincoln, November, 1779

The green of the ice and water begins to be visible about half an hour before sunset.

January 20. 

A second remarkably pleasant day like the last. 

P. M. — Up river. 

I see a large white oak perfectly bare. 

Among four or five pickerel in a “well” on the river, I see one with distinct transverse bars as I look down on its back, — not quite across the back, but plain as they spring from the side of the back, — while all the others are uniformly dark above. Is not the former Esox fasciatus? There is no marked difference when I look at them on their sides. 

I see in various places on the ice and snow, this very warm and pleasant afternoon, a kind of mosquito perhaps, a feeble flyer, commonly resting on the ice.

The green of the ice and water begins to be visible about half an hour before sunset. Is it produced by the reflected blue of the sky mingling with the yellow or pink of the setting sun?

What a singular element is this water! I go shaking the river from side to side at each step, as I see by its motion at the few holes. 

I learn from J. Farmer that he saw to-day in his wood lot, on removing the bark of a dead white pine, an immense quantity of mosquitoes, moving but little, in a cavity between the bark and the wood made probably by some other insect. These were probably like mine. 

There were also wasps and what he calls lightning-bugs there.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 20, 1859

Among four or five pickerel I see one with distinct transverse bars as I look down on its back, — while all the others are uniformly dark above.  See April 6, 1858 (“ I asked him to let me see the fish he had caught. It was a little pickerel five inches long, and appeared to me strange, being transversely barred, and reminded me of the Wrentham pond pickerel; but I could not remember surely whether this was the rule or the exception; but when I got home I found that this was the one which Storer does not name nor describe, but only had heard of. Is it not the brook pickerel?”); April 18, 1858 ("I saw in those ditches many small pickerel, landlocked, which appeared to be transversely barred!”); May 27, 1858 ("De Kay describes the Esox fasciatus, which is apparently mine of May 11th.”); May 11, 1858 ("Thickly barred transversely with broken dark greenish brown lines, alternating with golden ones. The back was the dark greenish brown with a pale-brown dorsal line.”); See also Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History ("[Mr. Putnam] exhibited specimens of the young and adult pickerel, to show that the "short-nosed pickerel " is specifically distinct from the "long-nosed " — the Esox reticulatus — and said that the " short-nosed " species is the Esox fasciatus of Dekay, which is not the young of the Esox reticulates”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

The green of the ice and water begins to be visible about half an hour before sunset. See January 7, 1856 (“Returning, just before sunset, the few little patches of ice look green as I go from the sun (which is in clouds). It is probably a constant phenomenon in cold weather when the ground is covered with snow and the sun is low, morning or evening, and you are looking from it.”); December 25, 1858 (“The sun getting low now, say at 3.30, I see the ice green, southeast.”); February 12, 1860 ("Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green...”)

The green of the ice

begins to be visible

just before sunset.

January 20, 1859

What a singular element is this water! See March 14, 1860 ("No sooner has the ice of Walden melted than the wind begins to play in dark ripples over the surface of the virgin water. Ice dissolved is the next moment as perfect water as if melted a million years.”)

A new season has arrived: heat, fireflies; mosquitoes; trumping bullfrogs

June 7

P. M. — To Walden. 

Warm weather has suddenly come, beginning yesterday. To-day it is yet warmer, 87° at 3 P. M., compelling me to put on a thin coat, and I see that a new season has arrived.

June 7, 2018
 (Avesong)

June shadows are moving over waving grass-fields, the crickets chirp uninterruptedly, and I perceive the agreeable acid scent of high blueberry bushes in bloom. The trees having leaved out, you notice their rounded tops, suggesting shade. 

The nighthawk sparks and booms over arid hillsides and sprout-lands. 

It is evidence enough against crows and hawks and owls, proving their propensity to rob birds’ nests of eggs and young, that smaller birds pursue them so often. You do not need the testimony of so many farmers' boys when you can see and hear the small birds daily crying “Thief and murder” after these spoilers. 

What does it signify, the kingbird, black bird, swallow, etc., etc., pursuing a crow? They say plainly enough, “I know you of old, you villain; you want to devour my eggs or young. I have often caught you at it, and I’ll publish you now.” And probably the crow pursuing the fish hawk and eagle proves that the latter sometimes devour their young. 

The Salix tristis is now generally going or gone to seed.

Oxalis violacea in garden.

I see toads copulating and toad-spawn freshly laid in the Wyman meadow at Walden. 

Utricularia vulgaris out there. 

The water colored or dusted with the pollen of the pitch pine. 

As I was wading in this Wyman meadow, looking for bullfrog-spawn, I saw a hole at the bottom, where it was six or eight inches deep, by the side of a mass of mud and weeds which rose just to the surface three or four feet from the shore. It was about five inches in diameter, with some sand at the mouth, just like a musquash's hole. As I stood there within two feet, a pout put her head out, as if to see who was there, and directly came forth and disappeared under the target-weed; but as I stood perfectly still, waiting for the water which I had disturbed to settle about the hole, she circled round and round several times be tween me and the hole, cautiously, stealthily approaching the entrance but as often withdrawing, and at last mustered courage to enter it.

I then noticed another similar hole in the same mass, two or three feet from this. I thrust my arm into the first, running it in and downward about fifteen inches. It was a little more than a foot long and enlarged somewhat at the end, the bottom, also, being about a foot beneath the surface, — for it slanted downward, – but I felt nothing within; I only felt a pretty regular and rounded apartment with firm walls of weedy or fibrous mud. 

I then thrust my arm into the other hole, which was longer and deeper, but at first discovered nothing; but, trying again, I found that I had not reached the end, for it turned a little and descended more than I supposed. Here I felt a similar apartment or enlargement, some six inches in diameter horizontally but not quite so high nor nearly so wide at its throat.

 Here, to my surprise, I felt something soft, like a gelatinous mass of spawn, but, feeling a little further, felt the horns of a pout. I deliberately took hold of her by the head and lifted her out of the hole and the water, having run my arm in two thirds its length. She offered not the slightest resistance from first to last, even when I held her out of water before my face, and only darted away suddenly when I dropped her in the water. 

The entrance to her apartment was so narrow that she could hardly have escaped if I had tried to prevent her. Putting in my arm again, I felt, under where she had been, a flattish mass of ova, several inches in diameter, resting on the mud, and took out some. Feeling again in the first hole, I found as much more there. Though I had been stepping round and over the second nest for several minutes, I had not scared the pout.

 The ova of the first nest already contained white wiggling young. I saw no motion in the others. The ova in each case were dull-yellowish and the size of small buckshot. These nests did not communicate with each other and had no other outlet.

 Pouts, then, make their nests in shallow mud-holes or bays, in masses of weedy mud, or probably in the muddy bank; and the old pout hovers over the spawn or keeps guard at the entrance. Where do the Walden pouts breed when they have not access to this meadow?

 The first pout, whose eggs were most developed, was the largest and had some slight wounds on the back. The other may have been the male in the act of fertilizing the ova.

 I sit in my boat in the twilight by the edge of the river. Toads are now in full blast along the river. Some sit quite out at the edge of the pads, and hold up their heads so high when they ring, and make such a large bubble, that they look as if they would tumble over backward.

 Bullfrogs now are in full blast. I do not hear other frogs; their notes are probably drowned. I perceive that this generally is the rhythm of the bullfrog; er|er-r er-r-r| (growing fuller and fuller and more tremendous) and then doubling, er, er er, err er, er, er er, er, er and finally er, er, er, er er, er, er, er. Or I might write it oorar oorar oorar oorar-hah oorar-hah hah oorar hah hah hah.

Some of these great males are yellow or quite yellowish over the whole back. Are not the females oftenest white-throated?

 What lungs, what health, what terrenity (if not serenity) it suggests! 

At length I hear the faint stertoration of a Rana palustris (if not halecina).

Seeing a large head, with its prominent eyes, projecting above the middle of the river, I found it was a bullfrog coming across. It swam under water a  rod or two, and then came up to see where it was, or its way. It is thus they cross when sounds or sights attract them to more desirable shores. Probably they prefer the night for such excursions, for fear of large pickerel, etc.

 I thought its throat was not yellow nor baggy. Was it not the female attracted by the note of the male?

 Fireflies pretty numerous over the river, though we have had no thunder-showers of late.

 Mosquitoes quite troublesome here.

 The ledum is a very good plant to bloom in a pitcher, lasting a week or more.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 7, 1858


87° at 3 P. M and i see that a new season has arrived. . . .Fireflies pretty numerous over the river, though we have had no thunder-showers of late. Mosquitoes quite troublesome here. See  June 7, 1854   ([M]osquitoes are very troublesome in the woods . . .This muggy evening I see fireflies, the first I have seen"); See also June 16, 1860 ("It appears to me that these phenomena occur simultaneously, say June 12th, viz.: -

• Heat about. 85° at 2 P.M.
• Hylodes cease to peep.
• Purring frogs (Rana palustris) cease.
• Lightning-bugs first seen.
• Bullfrogs trump generally.
• Mosquitoes begin to be really troublesome.
• Afternoon thunder-showers almost regular.
• Sleep with open window.
• Turtles fairly and generally begun to lay.")

See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Fireflies, winged sparks of fire!

The nighthawk sparks and booms over arid hillsides and sprout-lands. See June 7, 1853 ("Visit my nighthawk on her nest. . . . The sight of this creature sitting on its eggs impresses me with the venerableness of the globe.");  See also  May 25, 1852 ("First nighthawks squeak and boom")  and also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,, the Nighthawk

Oxalis violacea in garden. See June 7, 2057 ("Pratt has got the . . . Oxalis violacea, which he says began about last Sunday, or May 31st, larger and handsomer than the yellow, though it blossoms but sparingly.")

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

 June shadows moving

 over waving grass-fields, a 

new season arrived.

 

I sit in my boat

in the twilight by the

edge of the river.

At length I hear the 

faint stertoration of a 

Rana palustris

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A new season arrived

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-580607

An early frog, peculiar to pools and small ponds in the woods and fields.

March 30. 

March 30, 2018

P. M. – To my boat at Cardinal Shore and thence to Lee's Cliff. 

Another fine afternoon, warmer than before, I think. I walk in the fields now without slumping in the thawing ground, or there are but few soft places, and the distant sand-banks look dry and warm. 

The frogs are now heard leaping into the ditches on your approach, bullfrog under my boat. 

Approaching carefully the little pool south of Hubbard's Grove, I see the dimples where the croakers which were on the surface have dived, and I see two or three still spread out on the surface, in the sun. They are very wary, and instantly dive to the bottom on your approach and bury themselves in the weeds or mud. The water is quite smooth, and it is very warm here, just under the edge of the wood, but I do not hear any croaking. Later, in a pool behind Lee's Cliff, I hear them, – the waking up of the leafy pools. The last was a pool amid the blue berry and huckleberry and a few little pines. I do not remember that I ever hear this frog in the river or ponds. They seem to be an early frog, peculiar to pools and small ponds in the woods and fields. 

I notice, scampering over this water, two or three brown spiders, middling-sized. They appear to be the ones which have spun this gossamer. 

There is at the bottom of this pool much of the ludwigia, that evergreen weed seen in winter at the bottom of pools and ditches. Methinks those peculiar bulbs, some of which I see near it, are of this plant.

 Landing at Bittern Cliff, I went round through the woods to get sight of ducks on the pond. Creeping down through the woods, I reached the rocks, and saw fifteen or twenty sheldrakes scattered about. The full plumaged males, conspicuously black and white and often swimming in pairs, appeared to be the most wary, keeping furthest out. Others, with much less white and duller black, were very busily fishing just north the inlet of the pond, where there is about three feet of water, and others still playing and preening themselves. 

These ducks, whose tame representatives are so sluggish and deliberate in their motions, were full of activity. A party of these ducks fishing and playing is a very lively scene. On one side, for instance, you will see a party of eight or ten busily diving and most of the time under water, not rising high when they come up, and soon plunging again. The whole surface will be in commotion there, though no ducks may be seen. I saw one come up with a large fish, whereupon all the rest, as they successively came to the surface, gave chase to it, while it held its prey over the water in its bill, and they pursued with a great rush and clatter a dozen or more rods over the surface, making a great furrow in the water, but, there being some trees in the way, I could not see the issue. 

I saw seven or eight all dive together as with one consent, remaining under half a minute or more. On another side you see a party which seem to be playing and pluming themselves. They will run and dive and come up and dive again every three or four feet, occasionally one pursuing an other; will flutter in the water, making it fly, or erect themselves at full length on the surface like a penguin, and flap their wings. This party make an incessant noise. Again you will see some steadily tacking this way or that in the middle of the pond, and often they rest there asleep with their heads in their backs. They readily cross the pond, swimming from this side to that.

While I am watching the ducks, a mosquito is endeavoring to sting me. 

At dusk I hear two flocks of geese go over.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 30, 1858

Approaching carefully the little pool south of Hubbard's Grove, I see the dimples where the croakers which were on the surface have dived. Later, in a pool behind Lee's Cliff, I hear them, – the waking up of the leafy pools. See March 26, 1860 ("The wood frog may be heard March 15, as this year, or not till April 13, as in’56, — twenty-nine days."); March 15, 1860 ("Am surprised to hear, from the pool behind Lee's Cliff, the croaking of the wood frog. . . . How suddenly they awake! yesterday, as it were, asleep and dormant, to-day as lively as ever they are. The awakening of the leafy woodland pools.."); March 23, 1859 ("I hear a single croak from a wood frog. . . . Thus we sit on that rock, hear the first wood frog's croak"); March 24, 1859 (" Can you ever be sure that you have heard the very first wood frog in the township croak?"); March 26, 1857 ("As I go through the woods by Andromeda Ponds, though it is rather cool and windy in exposed places, I hear a faint, stertorous croak from a frog in the open swamp; at first one faint note only, which I could not be sure that I had heard, but, after listening long, one or two more suddenly croaked in confirmation of my faith, and all was silent again."); March 27, 1853 ("Tried to see the faint-croaking frogs at J. P. Brown's Pond in the woods. They are remarkably timid and shy; had their noses and eyes out, croaking, but all ceased, dove, and concealed themselves, before I got within a rod of the shore."); March 28, 1858 ("Coming home, I hear the croaking frogs in the pool on the south side of Hubbard’s Grove. It is sufficiently warm for them at last."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica)

Now in the woods there is still snow but many open places running with water in the trails. My old snowshoe tracks are elevated. The streams are rushing. There is no difficulty going anywhere. No out of breath. We go to the view via under view trail and up the shortcut. It being too windy from the west we go to the double chair. I had not been here in the several weeks since the big snows. The red maples are showing their buds We hear and see crows usually in pairs coursing overhead.

Down the mountain trail there are spots where it is bare earth. Quite different to be walking on this solid ground. The snow is rain-saturated mushy and easy walking although there is some sliding.

On the other side of the middle pond a tree has a root growing perpendicularly out of the trunk about two or 3 feet up making a nice seat. Probably was a seedling on a tip up that is now gone.Above the cliff trail that woodpecker tree is now fallen over. The top half of the cliff trail is easy --no longer any snow. We spend good time sawing  branches and eventually saw our way through the pine that blocks the trail along the cliff. A long walk staying out almost ’til 8. (And it is light this late ) zphx 20180330

A strange turtle at Long Pond

April 13. 

Monday. 

To Middleborough ponds. There was no boat on Little Quitticus; so we could not explore it. 

Set out to walk round it, but, the water being high,— higher than anciently even, on account of dams, — we had to go round a swamp at the south end, about Joe’s Rocks, and R. gave it up. 

I went to Long Pond and waited for him. 

Saw a strange turtle, much like a small snapping turtle or very large Sternothaerus odoratus, crawling slowly along the bottom next the shore. Poked it ashore with a stick. It had a peculiarly square snout, two hinges to the sternum and both parts movable. Was very sluggish; would not snap nor bite. Looked old, being mossy above on the edge, and the scales greenish and eaten beneath. The flesh slate colored.* 

I saw that it was new and wished to bring it away, but had no paper to wrap it in. So I peeled a white birch, getting a piece of bark about ten inches long. I noticed that the birch sap was flowing. This bark at once curled back so as to present its yellow side out ward. I rolled it about the turtle and folded the ends back and tied it round with a strip of birch bark, making a very nice and airy box for the creature, which would not be injured by moisture, far better than any paper, and so I brought it home to Concord at last. 

As my coat hung in R.’s shanty, over a barrel of paper, the morning that I came away the turtle made a little noise, scratching the birch bark in my pocket. R. observed, 

“ There is a mouse in that barrel. What would you do about it?”

“Oh, let him alone,” said I, “ he ’ll get out directly.”

“ They often get among my papers,” he added.

“ I guess I ’d better set the barrel outdoors.” 

I did not explain, and perhaps he experimented on the barrel after my departure.

As I sat on the shore there, waiting for R., I saw many mosquitoes flying low over the water close to the sandy shore. 

The turtle when I first saw him was slowly and tremblingly pacing along the bottom, rather toward the shore, with its large head far out on its outstretched neck. From its size and general color and aspect, I did not doubt at first that it was a snapping turtle, notwithstanding the season.

H  D. Thoreau, Journal, April 13, 1857 

To Middleborough ponds. See June 30, 1856 ("To Middleborough ponds in the new town of Lakeville") and  June 24, 1856 ("To Sassacowen Pond and to Long Pond")

I rolled [the strip of birch bark]about the turtle and folded the ends back and tied it round with a strip of birch bark, making a very nice and airy box for the creature. . .and so I brought it home to Concord at last. See April 25, 1857 ("I find that I can very easily make a convenient box of the birch bark, at this season at least, when the sap is running") See also   April 23, 1856 ("Brought it [a beetle] home in a clam’s shells tied up, —a good insect-box."); June 23, 1852 ("I am inclined to think that my hat, whose lining is gathered in midway so as to make a shelf, is about as good a botany-box as I could have and far more convenient. . .").

* The Freetown Turtle compared with Storer’s Sternothoerus.

Answers to the generic description, except perhaps that the posterior valve of the sternum is movable.

Compared with the S. odoratus. 

There is no peculiar scent to it. The upper shell is flattened on the dorsal ridge for the width of the dorsal plates and is not carinated there. (I find one as flat, and others are not carinated.) Color out of water a dirty brown. The marginal plates are a little narrower. 

The sternum (as well as that of my S. odomtus) is apparently composed of 11 instead of 9 plates, the anterior portion being composed of 5 instead of 3 plates. The posterior portion is distinctly movable, much more than the odoratus, and it is quite rounded on the sides. 

Irides not distinct. It appears as if blind. No yellow lines what ever on the head or neck. Jaws not dark-brown, but bluish-slate, as is the skin generally.

My two S. odoratus are 3 3/5 inches long by 2 1/2 wide and 1 1/2 inches high, being highest behind. The Freetown turtle is 4 inches long by 2 3/4 and 1 5/8  high, being highest forward. It has much green moss (?) on the rear and marginal plates, and the scales of the sternum are greenish and worn or carious. It is quite sluggish. Otherwise it apparently answers to Storer’s S. odoratus.