A Blanding's Turtle on the hot sand of the new road at Beck Stow's Swamp.

July 6 . 

P. M. - To Beck Stow's.

Euphorbia maculata, good while.

Polygonum aviculare, a day or two.

Now a great show of elder blossoms.

Polygala sanguinea, apparently a day or more.

Galium asprellum in shade; probably earlier in sun.

Partridges a third grown.

Veery still sings and toad rings.

On the hot sand of the new road at Beck Stow's, headed toward the water a rod or more off, what is probably Cistudo Blandingii; had some green conferva (?) on its shell and body.

Length of upper shell, 6 inches; breadth behind, 4 5/8 ; tail beyond shell, 2 1/4.

Did not see it shut its box; kept running out its long neck four inches or more; could bend it directly back to the posterior margin of the second [?] dorsal plate.

Ran out its head further and oftener than usual.

The spots pale-yellow or buff.

Upper half of head and neck blackish, the former quite smooth for 13 inches and finely sprinkled with yellowish spots, the latter warty The snout lighter, with five perpendicular black marks.

Eyes large (?), irides dull green-golden.

Under jaw and throat clear chrome-yellow.

Under parts of neck and roots of fore legs duller yellow; inner parts behind duller yellow still.

Fore legs with black scales, more or less yellow spotted above; at root and beneath pale-yellow and yellowish.

Hind legs uniformly black above and but little lighter beneath.

Tail black all round.

No red or orange about the animal.

No hook or notch to jaw.

Plantain, some days, and gnaphalium, apparently two or three days.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 6, 1854

Beck Stow's. See July 17, 1852 ("Beck Stow's Swamp! What an incredible spot to think of in town or city! . . .deep and impenetrable, where the earth quakes for a rod around you at every step. . . and its verdurous border of woods imbowering it on every side") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, at Beck Stow's Swamp

Partridges a third grown. See July 5, 1856 ("Young partridges (with the old bird), as big as robins, make haste into the woods from off the railroad. ");July 5, 1857 ("Partridges big as quails"); July 7, 1854 ("Disturb two broods of partridges this afternoon, — one a third grown, flying half a dozen rods over the bushes, yet the old, as anxious as ever, rushing to me with the courage of a hen.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

On the hot sand of the new road at Beck Stow's, what is probably Cistudo Blandingii. See March 13, 1859 (“On the northeast part of the Great Fields, I find the broken shell of a Cistudo Blandingii, on very dry soil. This is the fifth, then, I have seen in the town. All the rest were three in the Great Meadows (one of them in a ditch) and one within a rod or two of Beck Stow's Swamp”)

 A Blanding's Turtle 

on the hot sand of the new 

road at Beck Stow's Swamp

Willow catkins show red and yellowish pushed out half an inch or more.

February 22

I measured the thickness of the frozen ground at the deep cut on the new Bedford road, about half-way up the hill. They dig under the frozen surface and then crack it off with iron wedges, with much labor, in pieces from three to six feet square. It was eighteen inches thick and more there thicker higher up, not so thick lower down the hill. 

Saw in Sleepy Hollow a small hickory stump, about six inches in diameter and six inches high, so completely, regularly, and beautifully covered by that winkle-like fungus in concentric circles and successive layers that the core was concealed and you would have taken it for some cabbage-like plant. This was the way the wound was healed. The cut surface of the stump was completely and thickly covered. 

Our neighbor Wetherbee was J. Moore's companion when he took that great weight of pickerel this winter. He says it was fifty-six pounds in Flint's, in one day, and that four of them weighed eighteen pounds and seven ounces. 

February 22, 2020

My alder catkins in the pitcher have shed their pollen for a day or two, and the willow catkins have pushed out half an inch or more and show red and yellowish.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 22, 1854

The frozen ground at the deep cut on the new Bedford road. See January 9, 1856 ("In passing through the deep cut on the new Bedford road, I saw that a little sand, which was pretty coarse, almost gravel, had fallen from the bank, and was blown over the snow, here and there.")

That winkle-like fungus in concentric circles and successive layers. See October 10, 1858 ("The simplest and most lumpish fungus has a peculiar interest to us, compared with a mere mass of earth, because it is so obviously organic and related to ourselves, however mute . . . T]he humblest fungus betrays a life akin to my own. It is a successful poem in its kind.")

Four of them weighed eighteen pounds and seven ounces. See December 29, 1858 ("Heavy Haynes was fishing a quarter of a mile this side of Hubbard’s Bridge. He had caught a pickerel, which the man who weighed it told me (he was apparently a brother of William Wheeler’s, and I saw the fish at the house where it was) weighed four pounds and three ounces. It was twenty-six inches long."); February 29, 1856 ("Minott told me this afternoon of his catching a pickerel in the Mill Brook once . . . which weighed four pounds . . . and I willingly listen to the stories he has told me half a dozen times already.”); May 4, 1858 (" A man told him that he saw a trout weighing about a pound and a half darting at a pickerel, and every time he darted he took a bit off a fin, and at last the man walked in and caught the pickerel, and it weighed five pounds"); April 3, 1859 ("I hear that Peter Hutchinson hooked a monstrous pickerel at the Holt last winter. It was so large that he could not get his head through the hole, and so they cut another hole close by, and then a narrow channel from that to the first to pass the line through, but then, when they came to pull on the line, the pickerel gave a violent jerk and escaped. Peter thinks that he must have weighed ten pounds.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Pickerel

My alder catkins in the pitcher have shed their pollen for a day or two.  See March 6, 1853 ("Last Sunday I plucked some alder twigs, some aspen, and some swamp willow, and put them in water in a warm room, Immediately the alder catkins were relaxed and began to lengthen and open, and by the second day to drop their pollen"); March 10, 1853 ("The alder's catkins — the earliest of them — are very plainly expanding, or, rather, the scales are loose and separated, and the whole catkin relaxed."); March 22, 1853 ("The very earliest alder is in bloom and sheds its pollen. I detect a few catkins at a distance by their distinct yellowish color. This the first native flower")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Earliest Flower

The willow catkins have pushed out half an inch or more and show red and yellowish. See February 19, 1857 ("Some willow catkins have crept a quarter of an inch from under their scales and look very red, probably on account of the warm weather.");  March 21, 1855 ("Early willow and aspen catkins are very conspicuous now . . . It would be well to observe them once a fortnight through the winter. It is the first decided growth I have noticed, and is probably a month old.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

Willow catkins show

red and yellowish pushed out

half an inch or more.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Willow catkins show

red and yellowish 

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-540222

Here is one shaped just like a hand or a mitten with a thumb.

October 11.

October 11, 2020

Sassafras leaves are a rich yellow now and falling fast. They come down in showers on the least touching of the tree. I was obliged to cut a small one while surveying the Bedford road to-day. What singularly and variously formed leaves! For the most part three very regular long lobes, but also some simple leaves; but here is one shaped just like a hand or a mitten with a thumb. They next turn a dark cream color.

Father saw to-day in the end of a red oak stick in his wood-shed, three and a half inches in diameter, which was sawed yesterday, something shining.  It is lead, either the side of a bullet or a large buckshot just a quarter of an inch in diameter. It came from the Ministerial Lot in the southwest part of the town, and we bought the wood of Martial Miles. 

It is completely and snugly buried under some twelve or fifteen layers of the wood, and it appears not to have penetrated originally more than its own thickness, for there is a very close fit all around it, and the wood has closed over it very snugly and soundly, while on every other side it is killed, though snug for an eighth of an inch around it.

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

Sassafras leaves are a rich yellow. See September 30, 1854 ("I detect the sassafras by its peculiar orange scarlet half a mile distant.")

While surveying the Bedford road to-day. October 8, 1853 ("Surveying on the new Bedford road to-day,"); July 1, 1858 (“I am surveying the Bedford road these days, and have no time for my Journal.”); May 3, 1859 ('Surveying the Bedford road.")

I drink at the black and sluggish run

July 6 . 

I can sound the swamps and meadows on the line of the new road to Bedford with a pole, as if they were water. 

It may be hard to break through the crust, but then it costs a very slight effort to force it down, sometimes nine or ten feet, where the surface is dry. 

Cut a straight sapling, an inch or more in (diameter]; sharpen and peel it that it may go down with the least obstruction.

The larch grows in both Moore's and Pedrick’s swamps. Do not the trees that grow there indicate the depth of the swamp?

I drink at the black and sluggish run which rises in Pedrick's Swamp and at the clearer and cooler one at Moore's Swamp, and, as I lie on my stomach, I am surprised at the quantity of decayed wood continually borne past. 

It is this process which, carried on for ages, formed this accumulation of soil. The outlets of a valley being obstructed, the decayed wood is no longer carried off but deposited near where it grew.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 6, 1853

It may be hard to break through the crust, but then it costs a very slight effort to force it down, sometimes nine or ten feet. See July 1, 1853 (“ In the swamp or meadow this side of Pedrick's . . . I ran a pole down nine feet”) Compare February 1, 1858 ("Measured Gowing's Swamp . . . the pole went hard at first, but broke through a crust of roots and sphagnum at about three feet beneath the surface, and I then easily pushed the pole down just twenty feet.")

The larch grows in both Moore's and Pedrick’s swamps. See February 1, 1858 ("There were three or four larch trees three feet high or more between these holes, or over exactly the same water")

The new road to Bedford. See October 8, 1853 ("Surveying on the new Bedford road to-day,"); October 11, 1853 ("While surveying the Bedford road to-day."); July 1, 1853 (“I am surveying the Bedford road these days, and have no time for my Journal.”); May 3, 1859 ('Surveying the Bedford road.")

Hear the te-e-e of a white-throat sparrow..

May 3. 

Surveying the Bedford road. 

Hear the te-e-e of a white-throat sparrow. 

I hear of phoebes', robins', and bluebirds' nests and eggs. 

I have not heard any snipes boom for about a week, nor seen a tree sparrow certainly since April 30 (? ?), nor F. hyemalis for several days.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 3, 1859

Surveying the Bedford road. See July 1, 1858 (“I am surveying the Bedford road these days, and have no time for my Journal.”)

Hear the te-e-e of a white-throat sparrow. See May 4, 1855 (“Myrtle-birds numerous, and sing their tea lee, tea lee in morning. White-throated sparrows here”).  See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the White-throated Sparrow

I hear of phoebes', robins', and bluebirds' nests and eggs.  See May 3, 1858 (“Hear of robins' nests with four eggs. ”)

I have not heard any snipes boom for about a week. See April 30, 1858 (“I hear no snipe.”); compare May 4, 1855 (“Snipes feeding in numbers on the 29th April.”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snipe

Nor nor seen a tree sparrow certainly since April 30 nor F. hyemalis for several days. See May 4, 1855 (“Have not noticed robins in flocks for two or three days. See no gulls, nor F. hyemalis nor tree sparrows now. ”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco;  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Tree Sparrow

A great pea-green emperor moth.

July 1.

I am surveying the Bedford road these days, and have no time for my Journal. 

July 1, 2013

Saw one of those great pea-green emperor moths, like a bird, fluttering over the top of the woods this forenoon, 10 a. m., near Beck Stow's. 

Gathered the early red blackberry in the swamp or meadow this side of Pedrick's, where I ran a pole down nine feet. It is quite distinct from the evergreen one and is without prickles. Fruit red, middle-sized, with a few, perhaps ten or twelve, large globules.

May be the Rubus triflorus, but not growing on hills.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 1, 1853


One of those great pea-green emperor moths. See June 27, 1858 (“See an Attacus luna in the shady path”)  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Luna Moth (Attacus luna)

May be the Rubus triflorus. See June 30, 1854 ("Rubus triflorus berries, some time, — the earliest fruit of a rubus. The berries are very scarce, light red, semitransparent, showing the seed . . ."); July 2, 1851("Some of the raspberries are ripe, the most innocent and simple of fruits")

I hear the boots of passing travellers squeak.

January 9.

Clear, cold morning. 

Smith’s thermometer - 16°; ours - 14° at breakfast time, - 6° at 9 A. M. 

3 P. M. —To Beck Stow’s. 

The thermometer at + 2°. When I return at 4.30, it is at - 2°. 

Probably it has been below zero far the greater part of the day. 

I meet choppers, apparently coming home early on account of the cold. 

I wade through the swamp, where the snow lies light eighteen inches deep on a level, a few leaves of andromedas, etc., peeping out. (I am a-birds’-nesting.) 

The mice have been out and run over it. I see one large bush of winter-berries still quite showy, though somewhat discolored by the cold. The rabbits have run in paths about the swamp. Go now anywhere in the swamp and fear no water. 

The fisherman whom I saw on Walden last night will find his lines well frozen in this morning. 

In passing through the deep cut on the new Bedford road, I saw that a little sand, which was pretty coarse, almost gravel, had fallen from the bank, and was blown over the snow, here and there. The surface of the snow was diversified by those slight drifts, or perhaps cliffs, which are left a few inches high (like the fracture of slate rocks), with a waved outline, and all the sand was collected in waving lines just on the edge of these little drifts, in ridges, maybe an eighth of an inch high. This may help decide how those drifts or cliffs (?) are formed. (Yet when it blows and drifts again it presents a similar appearance.)

It has not been so cold throughout the day, before, this winter. I hear the boots of passing travellers squeak.

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, January 9, 1856


Clear, cold morning. See  January 9, 1854 ("This clear, cold afternoon, we see to our surprise a star, about half past three or earlier, a mere round white dot.");  January 9, 1859 ("The perfect Winter days are cold, but clear and bright.")

Probably it has been below zero for the greater part of the day. See January 7, 1856 ("At breakfast time the thermometer stood at - 12°. Earlier it was probably much lower. Smith’s was at -24° early this morning."); January 10, 1856 ("The weather has considerably moderated; - 2° at breakfast time (it was — 8° at seven last evening); but this has been the coldest night probably.");  January 25, 1856 ("The hardest day to bear that we have had, for, beside being 5° at noon and at 4 P. M., there is a strong northwest wind. It is worse than when the thermometer was at zero all day. ")/ See also January 23, 1857 ("The coldest day that I remember recording . . .I may safely say that -5° has been the highest temperature to-day . . "); January 26, 1857 ("Another cold morning. None looked early, but about eight it was -14°");