The woods now begin to ring with the woodland note of the oven-bird.

May 7.

Forenoon. — Up North River to stone-heaps.

The willows (Salix alba) where I keep my boat resound with the hum of bees and other insects.

The leaves of the aspen are perhaps the most conspicuous of any, though the Salix alba, from its mass and its flowers in addition, makes the greater impression.

I hear the loud cackling of the flicker about the aspen at the rock.

A gray squirrel is stealing along beneath.

Hundreds of tortoises, painted and wood, are heard hurrying through the dry leaves on the bank, and seen tumbling into the water as my boat approaches; sometimes half a dozen and more are sunning on a floating rail, and one will remain with outstretched neck, its head moving slowly round in a semicircle, while the boat passes within a few feet.

Fresh green meadow-grass is springing up, as the water goes down, and flags.

The larch has grown a quarter of an inch or more, studded with green buds; not so forward as the Scotch larch.

The hemlock and the pitch pine have also started.

The keys of the white maple are more than half an inch long, not including stem; a dull-purplish cottony white. They make no such show as the red.

The keys of the red are longer-stemmed but as yet much smaller.

The leaves of the white are perhaps most advanced, yet lost in the fruit.

The catkins of the hop-hornbeam, yellow tassels hanging from the trees, which grow on the steep bank of the Assabet, give them a light, graceful, and quite noticeable appearance.

It is among the more conspicuous growths now; yet the anthers shed no pollen yet.

Smaller trees and limbs which have few or no catkins have leaves, elm-like, already an inch long.

The black cherry leaves are among the more conspicuous, more than an inch long.

One of the many cherries which have when bruised the strong cherry scent.

But this is the strongest and most rummy of all.

The black oak buds are considerably expanded, probably more than any oaks.

Their catkins are more than half an inch long.

The swamp white oak is late, but the tips of the buds show yellowish green.

The sugar maple in blossom, probably for a day or two, but since April 30th, though the peduncles are not half their length yet.

Apple trees are greened with opening leaves, and their blossom-buds show the red.

As I advance up the Assabet, the lively note of the yellowbird is borne from the willows, and the creeper is seen busy amid the lichens of the maple, and the loud, jingling tche tche tche tche, etc., of the chip-bird rings along the shore occasionally.

The chewink is seen and heard scratching amid the dry leaves like a hen.

The woods now begin to ring with the woodland note of the oven-bird.

I hear the mew of the first catbird, and, soon after, its rich and varied melody; and there sits on a tree over the water the ungainly king fisher, who flies off with an apparently laborious flight, sounding his alarum.

A few yellow lily pads are already spread out on the surface, tender reddish leaves, with a still crenate or scalloped border like that of some tin platters on which turnovers are cooked, while the muddy bottom is almost everywhere spotted with the large reddish ruffle-like leaves, from the midst of which the flower stems already stand up a foot, aiming toward the light and heat.

That long reddish bent grass abounds on the river now.

That small kind of pondweed, with a whorl of small leaves on the surface and nutlets already in the axils of the very common linear leaves, is common in the river.

I hear the witter-che of the Maryland yellow-throat, also, on the willows.

The note of the peetweet resounds along the river, — standing on the rocks laid bare by the fallen water or running along the sandy shore.

The rich medley of the thrasher is also heard.

In the frog-spawn (which looks like oats in a jelly, masses as big as the fist), I distinguish the form of the pollywog, which squirms a little.

The female flowers of the sweet-gale, somewhat like but larger and more crowded than the hazel, is now an interesting sight along the edge of the river.

That early cross-like plant is a foot high and budded.

The stone heaps have been formed since I was here before, methinks about a month ago, and for the most part of fresh stones; i. e., piles several feet in diameter by a foot high have evidently been made (no doubt commonly on the ruins of old ones) within a month. The stones are less than the size of a hen's egg, down to a pebble; now all under water. The Haverhill fisherman found the young of the common eel in such, and referred them to it.

I take it to be the small pewee whose smart chirp I hear so commonly.

The delicate cherry-like leaf, transparent red, of the shad-bush is now interesting, especially in the sun. Some have green leaves. There is one of the former, five inches in diameter and eighteen or twenty feet high, on the Island, with only four to six flowers to a raceme.

Heard stake-driver.

Saw a large snake, I think a black one, drop into the river close by; pursued, and as he found me gaining, he dived when he had reached the middle, and that was the last I saw of him.

Fishing has commenced in the river.

A white-throated sparrow (Fringilla Pennsylvanica) died in R. W. E.'s garden this morning. Half the streak over eye yellow. A passer.

The odor of the sweet-briar along the side of a house.

Riding through Lincoln, found the peach bloom now in prime, gen erally a dark pink with a lighter almost white inmixed, more striking from the complete absence of leaves, and especially when seen against the green of pines.

I can find no wild gooseberry in bloom yet.

The barberry bushes are in some places now quite green.

Various grasses in bloom for a week.

With respect to leafing, the more conspicuous and forward trees and shrubs are the following, and nearly in this order, as I think, and these have formed small leaves : Gooseberry, aspens (not grandidentata), willows, young maples of all kinds, balm-of-Gilead (?), elder, meadow-sweet, back cherry, and is that Jersey tea on Island? or diervilla? ostrya, alder, white birch and the three others, Pyrus arbutifolia (?), apple, amelanchier, choke (?)-cherry, dwarf ditto, wild red, Viburnum nudum (?) and Lentago, barberry.

The following are bursting into leaf: Hazel, shrub oak, black oak and red, white pine, larch, cornel, thorns, etc., elms.

Yorrick.

Some birds-pewees, ground birds, robins, etc. — have already built nests and laid their eggs, before the leaves are expanded or the fields fairly green.

Heard to-day that more slumbrous stertorous sound (not the hoarse one of early frogs) as I paddled up the river.

Is it tortoises? These are abundantly out.

The Viola pedata with the large pale-blue flower is now quite common along warm sandy banks.

The ovata is a smaller and darker and striped violet.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 7, 1853

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

The willows (Salix alba) where I keep my boat resound with the hum of bees and other insects. See  May 10, 1860 ("Salix alba flower in prime and resounding with the hum of bees on it. The sweet fragrance fills the air for a long distance."); May 11, 1854 ("The willows on the Turnpike now resound with the hum of bees,")

I can find no wild gooseberry in bloom yet. See May 7, 1858 ("The wild gooseberry here and there along the edge of river in front of Tarbell’s, . . . will open in a few days.")

As I advance up the Assabet, the lively note of the yellowbird is borne from the willow. See May 7, 1852 ("The first summer yellowbirds on the willow causeway. The birds come not singly, as the earliest, but all at once, i. e. many yellowbirds all over town. Now I remember the yellowbird comes when the willows begin to leave out") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Summer Yellowbird

The woods now begin to ring with the woodland note of the oven-bird. See May 7, 1852 ("The first oven-bird.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Oven-bird

The Viola pedata with the large pale-blue flower is now quite common along warm sandy banks. See May 7, 1858 ("See already a considerable patch of Viola pedata on the dry, bushy bank northeast of Tarbell’s.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

The uses of the cyanometer .

May 4.

Cattle are going up country.

Hear the tull-lull of the chickadee (?) [white-throated sparrow].

The currant in bloom.

The Canada plum just ready, probably to-day.

8 A. M.-To Walden and Cliffs.

The sound of the oven-bird.

Caterpillar nests two or three inches in diameter on wild cherries; caterpillars one third of an inch long.

The Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum appeared yesterday.

The vacillans, resinosum ( ? ), and early high blueberry will bloom in a few days.

Vide Cerasus pumila by shanty path, and wild red ditto, as early.

The white birch leaves are beginning to expand and are shining with some sticky matter. I must attend to their fragrance.  In a warm place on the Cliffs one of their catkins shows its anthers, the golden pendant.

The woods and paths next them now ring with the silver jingle of the field sparrow, the medley of the brown thrasher, the honest qui vive of the chewink, or his jingle from the top of a low copse tree, while his mate scratches in the dry leaves beneath; the black and white creeper is hopping along the oak boughs, head downward, pausing from time to time to utter its note like a fine, delicate saw-sharpening; and ever and anon rises clear over all the smooth, rich melody of the wood thrush.

Could that have been a jay? I think it was some large, uncommon woodpecker that uttered that very loud, strange, cackling note.

The dry woods have the smell of fragrant everlasting.

I am surprised by the cool drops which now, at 10 o'clock, drop from the flowers of the amelanchier, while other plants are dry, as if these had attracted more moisture.

The white pines have started.

The indigo-bird and mate; dark throat and light beneath, and white spot on wings, which is not described; a hoarse note, and rapid the first two or three syllables,-twe twe twee, dwelling on the last, or twe twe twe twee-e, or as if an rin it, tre, etc., not musical.

The myrtle-bird, which makes me think the more that I saw the black and yellow warbler on Sunday.

I find apparently two varieties of the amelanchier, the first I noticed, with smooth reddish delicate leaves and somewhat linear petals and loose racemes, petals sometimes pinkish; the second to-day, perhaps a little later than the first, leaves light-colored and downy and petals broader and perhaps not quite so long as the first, racemes more crowded. I am not sure that this is the variety oblongifolium of Gray.[This appears to be the Pyrus ovalis or swamp pyrus of Bigelow and Willdeming.]

It is stated in the Life of Humboldt that he proved "that the expression, 'the ocean reflects the sky,' was a purely poetical, but not a scientifically correct one, as the sea is often blue when the sky is almost totally covered with light white clouds.” 

He used Saussure's cyanometer even to measure the color of the sea. This might probably be used to measure the intensity of the color of blue flowers like lupines at a distance.

Humboldt speaks of its having been proved that pine pollen falls from the atmosphere.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 4, 1853.

Cattle are going up country. See May 10, 1852 ("This Monday the streets are full of cattle being driven up-country, — cows and calves and colts."); May 8, 1854 ("I hear the voices of farmers driving their cows past to their up-country pastures now.");; May 6, 1855 ("Road full of cattle going up country.”); May 7, 1856 ("For a week the road has been full of cattle going up country ")

The sound of the oven-bird. See May 1, 1852 ("I think I heard an oven-bird just now, - wicher wicher whicher wich"): May 7, 1853 ("The woods now begin to ring with the woodland note of the oven-bird.")

The myrtle-bird, which makes me think the more that I saw the black and yellow warbler on Sunday. See May 1, 1853 ("Was it not the black and yellow or spotted warbler I saw by the Corner Spring? . . . I think it much too dark for the myrtle-bird."); May 10, 1853 (" Is it the redstart? I now see one of these. The first I have distinguished. And now I feel pretty certain that my black and yellow warbler of May 1st was this.")

I find apparently two varieties of the amelanchier, . . . ; the second to-day, perhaps a little later than the first. See May 4, 1855 ("The second amelanchier, , , begin to leaf to-day.") See also April 26, 1860 ("The Amelanchier Botryapium . . . will apparently bloom tomorrow or next day."); May 1, 1853 ("Is not the Botryapium our earliest variety of amelanchier?"); May 5, 1860 ("Amelanchier Botryapium flower in prime."); May 8, 1854 ("The early Amelanchier Botryapium overhangs the rocks and grows in the shelves, with its loose, open-flowered racemes, curving downward, of narrow-petalled white flowers, red on the back and innocently cherry-scented"); May 9, 1852 ("The first shad-bush, June- berry, or service-berry (Amelanchier Canadensis), in blossom."); May 13, 1852 ("The amelanchiers are now the prevailing flowers in the woods and swamps and sprout-lands, a very beautiful flower, with its purplish stipules and delicate drooping white blossoms. The shad-blossom days in the woods."); May 13, 1855 ("Saw an amelanchier with downy leaf (apparently oblongifolia) on the southeast edge of Yellow Birch Swamp, about eighteen feet high and five or six inches in diameter, —a clump of them about as big as an apple tree).May 21, 1857 ("It seems to be a common variety of the variety Botryapium and quite downy, though not so downy as those of the oblongifolia.")

The indigo-bird and mate; dark throat and light beneath, and white spot on wings. See June 9, 1857 ("In the sprout-land beyond the red huckleberry, an indigo-bird, which chips about me as if it had a nest there. This is a splendid and marked bird, high-colored as is the tanager, looking strange in this latitude. Glowing indigo."); July 21, 1851 ("a perfect embodiment of the darkest blue that ever fills the valleys at this season")

The black and white creeper is hopping along the oak boughs, head downward, pausing from time to time to utter its note. See May 11, 1856 ("The black and white creeper also is descending the oaks, etc., and uttering from time to time his seeser seeser seeser. "); May 12, 1855 ("Watch a black and white creeper from Bittern Cliff, a very neat and active bird, exploring the limbs on all sides and looking three or four ways almost at once for insects. Now and then it raises its head a little, opens its bill, and, without closing it, utters its faint seeser seeser seeser.");  May 30, 1857  ("In the midst of the shower, though it was not raining very hard, a black and white creeper came and inspected the limbs of a tree before my rock, in his usual zigzag, prying way, head downward often, and when it thundered loudest, heeded it not.") See alsoA Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, The Black and White Creeper

He used the instrument also to measure the colour of the sea, which is generally green, and here he also found changes which often turned the sea during fine weather from the deepest indigo blue to the darkest green, or slate grey, without any atmospheric change being perceptible. He proved also that the expression “the ocean reflects the sky", was a purely poetical, but not a scientifically correct one, as the sea is often blue when the sky is almost totally covered with light white clouds

Lives of the Brothers Humbold 46 (1852) See Atlas Obscura ("In 1802, Humboldt took the tool on an ascent of the Andean mountain Chimborazo, where he set a new record, at the 46th degree of blue, for the darkest sky ever measured.") See also James Jeans “Why the Sky is Blue” (1931)

Humboldt speaks of its having been proved that pine pollen falls from the atmosphere:

Organic life is active everywhere on the surface of the earth, in its precipices and its atmospheric altitudes; the great ocean contains minute microscopic life far into the polar circles of the arctic ocean. It has been proved by direct observation, that "in the eternal night of oceanic depths," as Humboldt expresses himself, more animal than vegetable life is developed, while on terra firma, the vegetable principle prevails; yet the bulk of the latter far exceeds that of the former, although there is less land than sea. Modern naturalists believe they have discovered infusoria in the air. Humboldt considers this discovery still doubtful, but not impossible; he thinks that just as well as it has been proved that pine pollen falls from the atmosphere, it is possible that little infusoria may be raised upwards in vapour, and be retained floating in the air for some time.* Ehrenberg has also discovered that the misty dust rain which clouds the atmosphere near the Cape Verd islands, 380 leagues from the African coast, consists of the remains of eighteen different silicious, polygastric infusoria ~Lives of the Brothers Humboldt, (1852)by Hermann Klencke, Gustav Schlesier

Early flowers, leaves and birds.

 

May 1. 

May 1, 2021

 Sunday.

A cold northwest wind.

Now, on my return to Concord, I am struck by the increased greenness of the country, or landscape.

I find that since I left Concord, April 11th, there have blossomed here, probably nearly in the following order, these plants, including those I saw in Haverhill: 

• dandelion, 
• field horse-tail, 
• Antennaria plantaginifolia, 
• sweet-gale, 
• epigæa, 
• Populus grandidentata, 
• Salix tristis, 
• Viola ovata (Ellen Emerson found it April 20th), 
• Potentilla Canadensis, 
• comptonia, 
• Thalictrum anemonoides, 
• Anemone nemorosa, 
• V. blanda, 
• P. balsamifera, 
• Aquilegia Canadensis, 
• Hedyotiscærulea, 
• andromeda, 
• Fragaria Virginiana (?) (distinguished from the other species in fruit),
• Salix alba, 
• benzoin, 
• Amelanchier Canadensis var. Botryapium.

Peach, cultivated cherry, and the following apparently just begun: 

• Viola pedata, 
• Ostrya Virginica, 
• V. cucullata (Ellen Emerson says she saw it the 30th ult.; it is to be looked for at Depot Field Brook).

And Rumex Acetosella shows red and is eight inches high on Columbine Cliff.

The expanding leaves of the sugar maples now make small crosses against the sky.

Other conspicuous green leaves are 

• the gooseberry, 
• currant, 
• elder, 
• the willows just beginning,
•  and alder, 
• and apple trees 
• and high blackberry, 
• amelanchier, 
• meadow-sweet,
•  beside many herbaceous plants.

Drosera (round leaved) leaves now.

Sedge-grass (early sedge) very abundant still.

The Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum is just ready to bloom and also the vacillans nearly.

These things observed on way To Cliffs.

The oak leaves on the plain are fallen.

The colors are now: 

• light blue above (where is my cyanometer? Saussure invented one, and Humboldt used it in his travels); 
• landscape russet and greenish,
•  spotted with fawn-colored plowed lands, 
• with green pine and gray or reddish oak woods intermixed, and 
• dark-blue or slate-colored water here and there.

It is greenest in the meadows and where water has lately stood, and a strong, invigorating scent comes up from the fresh meadows.

It is like the greenness of an apple faintly or dimly appearing through the russet.

A phoebe's nest and one cream-colored white egg at the spring-house; nest of mud, lined with grass and edged with hypnum.

Channing has seen a robin's nest and eggs.

I hear a black and white creeper at the Cliffs, and a chewink.

The shrub oaks are well budded.

The young ivy leaves are red on Cliffs.

Oaks and hickory buds just ready to open.

How aromatic the balm-of-Gilead buds now! 

The large woolly ferns and others stand up a foot on banks.

The skunk-cabbage leaves green the warm, springy meads.

Was it not the black and yellow or spotted warbler I saw by the Corner Spring? [Vide May 10th.] Apparently black, brown striped, with a yellow rump and also yellow wing, shoulders, and sides of breast, with a large black spot on breast; size of phæbe nearly; note somewhat like yellowbird. Yet I think it much too dark for the myrtle-bird.

Columbine Cliff a place to look for early rue anemones and nemorosa and dandelions.

The columbines have been out some days.

How ornamental to these dark-colored perpendicular cliffs, nodding from the clefts and shelves! 

The barn swallow is about.

Have we the Viola lanceolata?  [Yes. Vide Hubbard's] 

Is not the Botryapium our earliest variety of amelanchier, and what difference in the fruit? 

Channing says he has heard the wood thrush, brown thrasher, and stake-driver (?), since I have been gone.

This and last page for birds which I find come in the interval.

Did I not see the oven-bird yesterday?

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

I find that since I left Concord, April 11th, there have blossomed here.  See April 8, 1859 ("The earliest peculiarly woodland herbaceous flowers are epigaea, anemone, thalictrum, and — by the first of May — Viola pedata.")

Dandelion: See April 18, 1860 ("Melvin has seen a dandelion in bloom."); April 29, 1857 ("I commonly meet with the earliest dandelion set in the midst of some liquid green patch. It seems a sudden and decided progress in the season.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Dandelion in Spring

Sweet-gale.  See  April 22, 1855 ("The blossoms of the sweet-gale are now on fire over the brooks, contorted like caterpillars.")

Epigæa. See April 9, 1853 ("The epigæa will not be out for some days."); see also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Epigaea

Populus grandidentata. See April 8, 1853 ("The male Populus grandidentata appears to open very gradually, beginning sooner than I supposed. It shows some of its red anthers long before it opens. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Big-toothed Aspen

Early violets: Viola ovata (Ellen Emerson found it April 20th), V. cucullata (Ellen Emerson says she saw it the 30th ult.; it is to be looked for at Depot Field Brook). See  April 19, 1858 ("Viola ovata on bank above Lee's Cliff. Edith Emerson found them there yesterday.");. April 23, 1858 (" Saw a Viola blanda in a girl's hand");   May 5, 1859  ("V. blanda and cucullata are. . .rather rare; V. pedata and lanceolata rarer yet, or not seen");  May 9, 1852 ("The first Viola pedata ");  May 20, 1852 ("The Viola ovata is of a deep purple blue, is darkest and has most of the red in it; the V. pedata is smooth and pale-blue, delicately tinged with purple reflections; the cucullata is more decidedly blue, slaty-blue, and darkly striated."); May 19, 1858 (“There appears to be quite a variety in the colors of the Viola cucullata. Some dark-blue, if not lilac (?), some with a very dark blue centre and whitish circumference, others dark-blue within and dark without, others all very pale blue.”); May 16, 1852 (“I observe some very pale blue Viola cuculata in the meadows. ”); May 31, 1858 (“I saw . . . to-day a white V. cucullata. ”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

Saussure invented one, and Humboldt used it in his travels. See May 4, 1853 ("He used Saussure's cyanometer even to measure the color of the sea.")

A phoebe's nest and one cream-colored white egg. See June 20, 1856 (" A phoebe nest, second time, with four cream-white eggs. . . . The second brood in the same nest.")

Was it not the black and yellow or spotted warbler I saw by the Corner Spring? . . . I think it much too dark for the myrtle-bird. See May 4, 1853 ("The myrtle-bird, which makes me think the more that I saw the black and yellow warbler on Sunday."); May 10, 1853 ("I hear , and have for a week , in the woods , the note of one or more small birds somewhat like a yellow bird's . What is it ? Is it the redstart ? I now see one of these . The first I have distinguished . And now I feel pretty certain that my black and yellow warbler of May 1st was this."); May 29, 1855 ("females of the redstart, described by Wilson, — very different from the full-plumaged black males. ")

American Redstart

Did I not see the oven-bird yesterday? See May 1, 1852 ("I think I heard an oven-bird just now, - wicher wicher whicher wich. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Oven-bird

The oven-bird's nest in Laurel Glen is near the edge of an open pine wood

July 3

July 3, 2013

Elder is now in its prime.

Buttercups are almost gone.

Clover is blackened.

The umbelled pyrola, apparently yesterday, as well as the P. rotundifolia and the P. elliptica, or shin-leaf.

The P. secunda, or one-sided pyrola, is already out of bloom.

The oven-bird's nest in Laurel Glen is near the edge of an open pine wood, under a fallen pine twig and a heap of dry oak leaves. Within these, on the ground, is the nest, with a dome-like top and an arched entrance of the whole height and width on one side. Lined within with dry pine-needles.

Mountain laurel lingers in the woods still.

The chestnut behind my old house site is fully out, and apparently has been partly so for several days.

There are no flowers on bass trees commonly this year.

Smooth sumach just opening and already resounding with bees.

The water-target appears to be in its prime, its flowers rising above the water. Remarkable for the thick jelly on its leaves and stem.

A smaller potamogeton is in flower there, — the small globose white flower. Why is it so often already torn up by the roots?

Poke a day or two in favorable places.

Dogsbane and Jersey tea are among the prevailing flowers now.

The Utricularia vulgaris now yellows low muddy water, as near the Lincoln bound by Walden.

The Vaccinium vacillans a day or two ripe.

Black huckleberries. 

Tansy on the causeway.

The Canada thistle.

The pinweeds have a reddish look, as if in flower. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 3, 1853

The oven-bird's nest in Laurel Glen is near the edge of an open pine wood. See June 7, 1853 ("The oven-bird runs from her covered nest, so close to the ground under the lowest twigs and leaves, even the loose leaves on the ground, like a mouse, that I can not get a fair view of her. "); June 10, 1855 ("Oven-bird’s nest with four eggs two thirds hatched, under dry leaves, composed of pine-needles and dry leaves and a hair or two for lining, about six feet south west of a white oak") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Oven-bird

There are no flowers on bass trees commonly this year.  See June 3, 1857 (“The bass at the Island will not bloom this year. (?)”);  See also  June 21, 1853 (There are no flowers nor flower-buds on the bass this year, though it was so full last year."");June 30, 1852 ("The bass tree is budded"); July 4, 1853 ("The bass appears now — or a few trees — to have bloomed here and there prematurely.");  July 9, 1857 (“I see no flowers on the bass trees by this river this year, nor at Conantum.”)  and  A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood

Dogsbane and Jersey tea are among the prevailing flowers now. See June 29, 1853 ("Jersey tea, just beginning.") and note to June 27, 1853 ("The dogsbane is one of the more interesting little flowers") see also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Dogsbane and Indian hemp

A meadow and an island.

In all my rambles I have seen no landscape which can make me forget Fair Haven. I still sit on its Cliff in a new spring day, and look over the awakening woods and the river, and hear the new birds sing, with the same delight as ever. It is as sweet a mystery to me as ever, what this world is. Fair Haven Lake in the south, with its pine-covered island and its meadows, the hickories putting out fresh young yellowish leaves, and the oaks light-grayish ones, while the oven-bird thrums his sawyer-like strain, and the chewink rustles through the dry leaves or repeats his jingle on a tree-top, and the wood thrush, the genius of the wood, whistles for the first time his clear and thrilling strain, - it sounds as it did the first time I heard it. The sight of these budding woods intoxicates me, — this diet drink.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May, 1850


In all my rambles I have seen no landscape which can make me forget Fair Haven. See November 21, 1850 ("I see Fair Haven Pond with its island, and meadow between the island and the shore, and a strip of perfectly still and smooth water in the lee of the island, and two hawks, fish hawks perhaps, sailing over it. I do not see how it could be improved. Yet I do not see what these things can be."); February 14, 1851 ("One afternoon in the fall, November 21st, I saw Fair Haven Pond with its island and meadow; between the island and the shore, a strip of perfectly smooth water in the lee of the island; and two hawks sailing over it; and something more I saw which cannot easily be described . . .") April 14, 1852 ("Fair Haven Pond -- the pond, the meadow beyond the button-bush and willow curve, the island, and the meadow between the island and mainland with its own defining lines -- are all parted off like the parts of a mirror. A fish hawk is calmly sailing over all . . . "); May 17, 1853 ("I was surprised, on turning round, to behold the serene and everlasting beauty of the world.”)May 22, 1854 ("How many times I have been surprised thus, on turning about on this very spot, at the fairness of the earth!”); October 7, 1857 ("When I turn round half-way up Fair Haven Hill, by the orchard wall, and look northwest, I am surprised for the thousandth time at the beauty of the landscape, and I sit down to behold it at my leisure. I think that Concord affords no better view.");  March 18, 1858 ("When I get two thirds up the hill, I look round and am for the hundredth time surprised by the landscape of the river valley and the horizon with its distant blue scalloped rim. “) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Fair Haven Pond

Hear the pe-pe and evergreen-forest note, also night-warbler.

May 13. 

May 13, 2019

Friday. 

Surveying Damon's Acton lot. 

Hear the pe-pe and evergreen-forest note, also night-warbler (the last perhaps the 11th). 

Apple in bloom.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 13, 1859



Hear the pe-pe. See May 15, 1855 ("I hear from the top of a pitch pine in the swamp that loud, clear, familiar whistle . . . I saw it dart out once, catch an insect, and return to its perch muscicapa-like. As near as I could see it had a white throat . . .”).;May 18, 1857 ("Hear the pepe, how long?”); May 20, 1858 (“Hear the pepe”); June 5, 1856 (“The Muscicapa Cooperi sings pe pe pe’, sitting on the top of a pine”); June 6, 1857 ("As I sit on Lee's Cliff, I see a pe-pe on the topmost dead branch of a hickory eight or ten rods off. . . . mouse-colored above and head (which is perhaps darker), white throat, and narrow white beneath, with no white on tail.”)

Evergreen-forest note. See May 6, 1855 ("The er er twe, ter ter twe, evergreen-forest note."); June 1, 1854 ("Hear my evergreen-forest note, . . . I get a glimpse of its black throat and, I think, yellow head"); May 30, 1855 ("In the thick of the wood between railroad and Turnpike, hear the evergreen forest note, and see probably the bird,-- black throat, greenish-yellow or yellowish-green head and back, light-slate (?) wings with two white bars. Is it not the black-throated green warbler?”).

Night-warbler. See May 13, 1855 ("At 9.30 P.M. I hear from our gate my night-warbler. Never heard it in the village before.”)and  note to May 19, 1858 (“Heard the night-warbler begin his strain just like an oven-bird! I have noticed that when it drops down into the woods it darts suddenly one side to a perch when low.”)

Apple in bloom. See May 14, 1854 (“Apple in bloom”)

The first thunder this afternoon.

May 9. 

Black birch May 9, 2015

Surveying for Stow near Flint's Pond. 

Hear the warbling vireo and oven-bird; yellow-throat vireo(?). 

One helping me says he scared up a whip-poor-will from the ground. 

See black birch bloom fallen effete. 

The first thunder this afternoon.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 9, 1859

Hear the warbling vireo and oven-bird; yellow-throat vireo See May 9, 1860 ("Oven-bird, how long? ). See also May 1, 1852 ("I think I heard an oven-bird just now, - wicher wicher whicher wich.");  May 6, 1852 ("Hear the first warbling vireo this morning on the elms. This almost makes a summer. "); May 6, 1859 ("  Hear yellow-throat vireo, and probably some new warblers."); May 10, 1858 ("As I paddle along, hear the Maryland yellow-throat, the bobolink, the oven-bird, and the yellow-throated vireo.")

The first thunder this afternoon. See May 11, 1859 (“In that first thunder-shower, the evening of the 9th, the grass evidently erected itself and grew darker, as it were instantaneously”); see also May 10, 1857 ("Before night a sudden shower with some thunder and lightning; the first.”); May 11, 1854 (“It is surprising what an electrifying effect this shower appears to have had. It is like the christening of the summer. I suspect that summer weather may be always ushered in in a similar manner, — thunder-shower, rainbow, smooth water, and warm night”); May 12, 1858 (“I see now, as I go forth on the river, the first summer shower coming up in the northwest, a dark and well defined cloud with rain falling sheaf-like from it, . . .The thunder-cloud is like the ovary of a perfect flower. Other showers are merely staminiferous or barren. There are twenty barren to one fertile. It is not commonly till thus late in the season that the fertile are seen. In the thunder-cloud, so distinct and condensed, there is a positive energy, and I notice the first as the bursting of the pollen-cells in the flower of the sky.”)

Storrow Higginson and other boys find nests and eggs of veery, wood thrush and tanager.

June 19. 

June 19, 2018

Saturday. 

I do not hear the night-warbler so often as a few weeks ago. Birds generally do not sing so tumultuously. 

Storrow Higginson and other boys have found this forenoon at Flint’s Pond one or more veery-nests on the ground. 

Also showed me one of five eggs, far advanced, they found there in a nest some fourteen feet high in a slender maple sapling, placed between many upright shoots, many dry leaves outside. It is a slender clear-blue egg, more slender and pointed at the small end than the robin's, and he says the bird was thrush like with a pencilled breast. It is probably the wood thrush. [Saw it the 23d, and it is apparently this bird. It is some ten rods south along path beyond the clearing, opposite a stone turned over.] He saw one or two other similar nests, he thought, not yet completed. 

Also showed me an egg, which answers to the description of the tanager's. Two fresh eggs in small white oak sapling, some four teen feet from ground. They saw a tanager near. [I have one egg. 
Vide 23d.] 

P. M. — To Bateman’s Pond. 

The swamp-pink, apparently not long, and the maple leaved viburnum, a little longer, but quite early. Some of the calla is going to seed. 

See an oven-bird's nest with two eggs and one young one just hatched. The bird flits out low, and is, I think, the same kind that I saw flit along the ground and trail her wings to lead me off day before yesterday.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 19, 1858

To Bateman’s Pond. The swamp-pink, apparently not long. See June 20, 1853 ("Those great greenish-white puffs on the panicled andromeda are now decaying. On the swamp-pink they are solid."); June 20, 1856 ( ("Swamp-pink out apparently two or three days at Clamshell Ditch"); June 21, 1852 ("The swamp-pink bushes have many whitish spongy excrescences. "); June 30, 1852 ("Is not this period more than any distinguished for flowers, when roses, swamp-pinks, morning-glories, arethusas, pogonias, orchises, blue flags, epilobiums, mountain laurel, and white lilies are all in blossom at once?") See also November 5, 1855 ("Swamp-pink buds now begin to show.”); November 6, 1853 (“The remarkable roundish, plump red buds of the high blueberry.”); November 16, 1852 ("The swamp-pink and blueberry buds attract."); December 1, 1852 (“The large bright yellowish and reddish buds of the swamp-pink,"); December 11, 1855 ("The great yellow buds of the swamp-pink"); January 25, 1858 ("The large yellowish buds of the swamp pink."); January 10, 1855 ("The great buds of the swamp-pink, on the central twig, clustered together, are more or less imbrowned and reddened. "); January 31, 1854 ("In the winter, when there are no flowers and leaves are rare, even large buds are interesting and somewhat exciting. I go a-budding like a partridge. I am always attracted at this season by the buds of the swamp-pink, the poplars, and the sweet-gale."); February 13, 1858 )("How often vegetation is either yellow or red! as the buds of the swamp-pink, the leaves of the pitcher-plant, etc., etc."); February 13, 1858 ("The great buds of the swamp-pink, on the central twig, clustered together, are more or less imbrowned and reddened.")

Some of the calla is going to seed. See June 7, 1857 (“Pratt has got the Calla palustris, in prime. . .from the bog near Bateman's Pond”); June 9, 1857( “The calla is generally past prime and going to seed. I had said to Pratt, "It will be worth the while to look for other rare plants in Calla Swamp, for I have observed that where one rare plant grows there will commonly be others." ”); June 24, 1857 ("Found [in Owl-Nest Swamp] the Calla palustris, out of bloom, and the naumbergia, now in prime, which was hardly begun on the 9th at Bateman Pond Swamp.”); August 29, 1857 ("I find the calla [in Owl-Nest Swamp] going to seed, but still the seed is green.”); and note to July 2, 1857 ("Calla palustris . . . at the south end of Gowing's Swamp. Having found this in one place, I now find it in another.")

Also showed me one of five eggs found there in a nest some fourteen feet high in a slender maple sapling. See July 31, 1858 ("Got the wood thrush’s nest of June 19th (now empty) . . . measures four and a half to five inches in diameter from outside to outside of the rim, and one and three quarters deep within. "); August 10, 1858 ("The wood thrush’s was a peculiarly woodland nest, made solely of such materials as that unfrequented grove afforded, the refuse of the wood or shore of the pond. There was no horsehair, no twine nor paper nor other relics of art in it.") See also June 16, 1856 (Worcester) ("A wood thrush’s nest., , , of fine moss . . . lined with pine-needles; three eggs, fresh.");  June 23, 1858 ("In the case of the hermit thrush, wood thrush, and tanager's [nests], each about fourteen feet high in slender saplings, you had to climb an adjacent tree in order to reach them."); 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."); 

See an oven-bird's nest with two eggs and one young one just hatched. The bird flits out low, and is, I think, the same kind that I saw flit along the ground and trail her wings to lead me off day before yesterday. See June 1, 1853 (“ Eggs in oven- bird's nest. ”); June 7, 1853; (“The oven-bird runs from her covered nest, so close to the ground under the lowest twigs and leaves, even the loose leaves on the ground, like a mouse, that I can not get a fair view of her. She does not fly at all. Is it to attract me, or partly to protect herself ?”); June 10, 1855; ( Oven-bird’s nest with four eggs two thirds hatched, under dry leaves, composed of pine-needles and dry leaves and a hair or two for lining, about six feet south west of a white oak which is six rods southwest of the hawk pine.”); June 18, 1854 (“Observe in two places golden-crowned thrushes, near whose nests I must have been, hopping on the lower branches and in the underwood, — a somewhat sparrow-like bird, with its golden-brown crest and white circle about eye, carrying the tail somewhat like a wren, and inclined to run along the branches. Each had a worm in its bill, no doubt intended for its young.”); July 3, 1853 (“The oven-bird's nest in Laurel Glen is near the edge of an open pine wood, under a fallen pine twig and a heap of dry oak leaves. Within these, on the ground, is the nest, with a dome-like top and an arched entrance of the whole height and width on one side. Lined within with dry pine-needles.”).

Heard the night-warbler begin his strain just like an oven-bird!

May 19. 

A. M. – Surveying (by the eye) for Warner the meadow surveyed for John Hosmer in June, ’56. 

The black currant near southwest corner of his Saw Mill field (Ribes floridum) perfectly out; how long? 

P. M. – To Everett Spring.

May 19, 2019

There appears to be quite a variety in the colors of the Viola cucullata [blue marsh violet]. Some dark-blue, if not lilac (?), some with a very dark blue centre and whitish circum ference, others dark-blue within and dark without, others all very pale blue. 

May 19, 2019

Stellaria borealis well out, apparently several days. 

What I called the Ranunculus bulbosus there May 3d proves to be the R. repens. It would appear then to be the earliest ranunculus. It is a dense bed of yellow now. I am struck by the light spot in the sinuses of the leaves. 

The Equisetum sylvaticum there is now of a reddish cast. 

Starflower (Trientalis borealis)

May 19, 2023

R. W. E. says that Pratt found yesterday out the trientalis, Trillium cernuum, and Smilacina bifolia. 

Four rods plus south of the cross-fence over Everett's hill, on the west slope, I find the Ranunculus abortivus, two plants open only; but will not shed pollen till to-morrow. 

A rod or two further the Equisetum hyemale, apparently a little past bloom, or effete, all the heads open. 

Looking with my glass into the Gourgas pond-hole, I see three or four buck-bean blossoms. 

Two birds about the size and of the appearance of a pigeon or turtle dove start up with a loud alarm note from the shallow muddy flat there, — with a harsh shrill cry, phil phil phil or the like. At first I could not guess what they were, but since concluded that they were the larger yellow-legs. 

Could this bird have made the sound heard on the 15th? 

There remained feeding on the mud along the water's edge two peetweet-like birds, but apparently larger and less teetering. I thought they were T. solitaires. 

Heard the night-warbler begin his strain just like an oven-bird! I have noticed that when it drops down into the woods it darts suddenly one side to a perch when low.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 19, 1858

Surveying for Warner the meadow surveyed for John Hosmer in June, ’56. See June 3, 1856 ("Surveying for John Hosmer beyond pail-factory”); June 4, 1856 (“Surveying for J. Hosmer . . .running a line on the west edge of Loring’s Pond, south of the brook.”).  Also  June 6, 1856 ("J. Hosmer, who is prosecuting Warner for flowing his land, says that the trees are not only broken off when young by weight of ice, but, being rubbed and barked by it, become warty or bulge out there.")

There appears to be quite a variety in the colors of the Viola cucullata. See May 15, 1856  ("Viola cucullata abundant now.”); May 20, 1852 ("The Viola ovata is of a deep purple blue, is darkest and has most of the red in it; the V. pedata is smooth and pale-blue, delicately tinged with purple reflections; the cucullata is more decidedly blue, slaty-blue, and darkly striated.")

Two birds start up with a loud alarm note from the shallow muddy flat with a harsh shrill cry, phil phil phil or the like The larger yellow-legs. See May 31, 1854 ( "It acts the part of a telltale." "watchful, but not timid, ... while it stands on the lookout ... wades in the water to the middle of its yellow legs; goes off with a loud and sharp phe phe phe phe. ...”); August 5, 1855 (" Hear a yellow-legs flying over,—phe' phe phe, phe' phe phe.”); September 14, 1854 ("A flock of thirteen tell tales, great yellow-legs, start up with their shrill whistle from the midst of the great Sudbury meadow, and away they sail in a flock. . .to alight in a more distant place.”)

Heard the night-warbler begin his strain just like an oven-bird!  Thoreau's night-warbler  is likely the oven-bird making its flight call. According to Emerson the night warbler is "a bird he had never identified, had been in search of twelve years, which always, when he saw it, was in the act of diving down into a tree or bush.” See  May 8, 1860 ("The night-warbler's note.");  May 9, 1852 ("Heard the night warbler.”); May 9, 1853 ("Again I think I heard the night-warbler.”); May 10, 1854 ("Heard the night-warbler. “);  May 12, 1857 ("A night-warbler, plainly light beneath. It always flies to a new perch immediately after its song");.  May 13, 1855 ("At 9.30 P.M. I hear from our gate my night-warbler. Never heard it in the village before.”); May 14, 1852 (“Most birds are silent in the storm.Hear the robin, oven-bird, night warbler, and [etc.]); May 16, 1858 ("Hear the night-warbler"); May 17, 1858 ("Just after hearing my night-warbler I see two birds on a tree. ...[One perhaps golden-crowned thrush. ]”); May 19, 1858 (“Heard the night-warbler begin his strain just like an oven-bird! I have noticed that when it drops down into the woods it darts suddenly one side to a perch when low."); May 28, 1854 ("The night-warbler, after his strain, drops down almost perpendicularly into a tree-top and is lost.”). See also May 12, 1855 (“We sit about half an hour, and it is surprising what various distinct sounds we hear there deep in the wood, as if the aisles of the wood were so many ear trumpets,-- the cawing of crows, the peeping of hylas in the swamp and perhaps the croaking of a tree-toad, the oven-bird, the yorrick of Wilson’s thrush, a distant stake-driver, the night-warbler and black and white creeper, the lowing of cows, the late supper horn, the voices of boys, the singing of girls, -- not all together but separately, distinctly, and musically, from where the partridge and the red-tailed hawk and the screech owl sit on their nests.”)

May 19.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 19

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021

A very large black snake I thought was preparing to strike at me

May 16

A. M. – Up Assabet. 

Aralia nudicaulis at Island. The leaf-stalks are often eaten off, probably by some quadruped. 

The flower-buds of the Cornus florida are five eighths of an inch in diameter. 

The Salix lucida will hardly bloom within two days. The S. Torreyana catkins are so reddish that at a little distance it looks some what like the common black cherry now leafing. 

A hummingbird yesterday came into the next house and was caught. Flew about our parlor to-day and tasted Sophia's flowers. In some lights you saw none of the colors of its throat. In others, in the shade the throat was a clear bright scarlet, but in the sun it glowed with splendid metallic, fiery reflections about the neck and throat. 

It uttered from time to time, as it flew, a faint squeaking chirp or chirrup. The hum sounded more hollow when it approached a flower. Its wings fanned the air so forcibly that you-felt the cool wind they raised a foot off, and nearer it was very remarkable. Does not this very motion of the wings keep a bird cool in hot weather? 

The only indigenous willow I noticed yesterday on the Shawsheen — a mile below Fitch's mill — was the small sericea, such as by Assabet white maple. 

What was that loud but distant note of a bird, apparently in the low land, somewhat like the guinea-hen note, also reminding me a little of the plover about Truro light, but apparently a hawk? 

Got quite a view down the valley of the Shawsheen below the junction of Vine Brook, northeast, from a hill in the extreme northeast of Bedford.

P. M. – To Uvularia perfoliata at Flint's Pond. 

See again the warbler of yesterday. All bright yellow beneath and apparently bluish-slate above, but I do not see it well. Its note, with little variation, is like twit twit, twit twit, twitter twitter twe. It must be the parti-colored warbler.

Sat down in the sun in the path through Wright's wood-lot above Goose Pond, but soon, hearing a slight rustling, I looked round and saw a very large black snake about five feet long on the dry leaves, about a rod off. 

When I moved, it vibrated its tail very rapidly and smartly, which made quite a loud rustling or rattling sound, reminding me of the rattlesnake, as if many snakes obeyed the same instinct as the rattle snake when they vibrate their tails. Once I thought I heard a low hiss. 

It was on the edge of a young wood of oaks and a few white pines from ten to eighteen feet high, the oaks as yet bare of leaves. 

As I moved toward the snake, I thought it would take refuge in some hole, but it appeared that it was out on a scout and did not know of any place of refuge near. Suddenly, as it moved along, it erected itself half its length, and when I thought it was preparing to strike at me, to my surprise it glided up a slender oak sapling about an inch in diameter at the ground and ten feet high. 

It ascended this easily and quickly, at first, I think, slanting its body over the lowest twig of the next tree. There were seven little branches for nine feet, averaging about the size of a pipe-stem. It moved up in a somewhat zig zag manner, availing itself of the branches, yet also in part spirally about the main stem. It finds a rest (or hold if necessary) for its neck or forward part of its body, moving crosswise the small twigs, then draws up the rest of its body. From the top of this little oak it passed into the top of a white pine of the same height an inch and a half in diameter at the ground and two feet off; from this into another oak, fifteen feet high and three feet from the pine; from this to another oak, three feet from the last and about the same height; from this to a large oak about four feet off and three or four inches in diameter, in which it was about fourteen feet from the ground; thence through two more oaks, a little lower, at intervals of four feet, and so into a white pine; and at last into a smaller white pine and thence to the ground. 

The distance in a straight line from where it left the ground to where it descended was about twenty-five feet, and the greatest height it reached, about fourteen feet. It moved quite deliberately for the most part, choosing its course from tree to tree with great skill, and resting from time to time while it watched me, only my approach compelling it to move again. 

It surprised me very much to see it cross from tree to tree exactly like a squirrel, where there appeared little or no support for such a body. It would glide down the proper twig, its body resting at intervals of a foot or two, on the smaller side twigs, perchance, and then would easily cross an interval of two feet, sometimes in an ascending, sometimes a descending, direction. If the latter, its weight at last bent the first twig down nearer to the opposite one. It would extend its neck very much, as I could see by the increased width of the scales exposed, till its neck rested across the opposite twig, hold on all the while tightly to some part of the last twig by the very tip of its tail, which was curled round it just like a monkey's. 

I have hardly seen a squirrel rest on such slight twigs as it would rest on in mid-air, only two or three not bigger than a pipe-stem, while its body stretched clear a foot at least between two trees. It was not at all like creeping over a coarse basket work, but suggested long practice and skill, like the rope dancer's. There were no limbs for it to use comparable for size with its own body, and you hardly noticed the few slight twigs it rested on, as it glided through the air. 

When its neck rested on the opposite twig, it was, as it were, glued to it. It helped itself over or up them as surely as if it grasped with a hand. There were, no doubt, rigid kinks in its body when they were needed for support. It is a sort of endless hook, and, by its ability to bend its body in every direction, it finds some support on every side. Perhaps the edges of its scales give it a hold also. 

It is evident that it can take the young birds out of a sapling of any height, and no twigs are so small and pliant as to prevent it. Pendulous sprays would be the most difficult for it, where the twigs are more nearly parallel with the main one, as well as nearly vertical, but even then it might hold on by its tail while its head hung below. I have no doubt that this snake could have reached many of the oriole-nests which I have seen. 

I noticed that in its anger its rigid neck was very much flattened or compressed vertically. At length it coiled itself upon itself as if to strike, and, I presenting a stick, it struck it smartly and then darted away, running swiftly down the hill toward the pond. 

Yellow butterflies. 

Nabalus leaves are already up and coming up in the wood-paths. 

Also the radical leaves of one variety of Solidago arguta, and apparently of S. altissima, are conspicuously up. 

A golden-crowned thrush hops quite near. It is quite small, about the size of the creeper, with the upper part of its breast thickly and distinctly pencilled with black, a tawny head; and utters now only a sharp cluck for a chip. 

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. 

Hear the night-warbler. 

The Uvularia perfoliata, which did not show itself at all on the 3d, is now conspicuous, and one is open but will not shed pollen before to-morrow. It has shot up about ten inches in one case and bloomed within thirteen days!! 

Ranunculus repens at Brister's Spring; how long? Was that R. repens at the Everett Spring on the 3d? [Yes.]

The whip-poor-will heard. 

E. Hoar detected the other day two ovaries under one scale of a Salix rostrata, and, under another, a stamen and another stamen converted into an ovary.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 16, 1858

To Uvularia perfoliata at Flint's Pond. See May 30, 1857 ("By the path near the northeast shore of Flint's Pond. . .  am surprised to find it the Uvularia perfoliata, which I have not found hereabouts before.");  May 3, 1858 ("See no signs of the Uvularia perfoliata yet; apparently will not bloom within ten days") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Bellworts

A hummingbird in some lights the shade the throat was a clear bright scarlet, but in the sun it glowed with splendid metallic, fiery reflections. See  May 17, 1856 (" A splendid male hummingbird . . . This golden-green gem. Its burnished back looks as if covered with green scales dusted with gold. . . . turning toward me that splendid ruby on its breast, that glowing ruby.") May 15, 1855("Hear a hummingbird in the garden."); May 16, 1852 ("I hear a hummingbird about the columbines.").