The pitch pine has an ingrained sunniness especially valuable for imparting warmth to the landscape at this season.

March 19. 

Early willows in their silvery state. 

2 P. M.—Thermometer 51; wind easterly, blowing slightly. To Everett's Spring.

Going along the Turnpike, I look over to the pitch pines on Moore's hillside, – ground bare as it has been since February 23, except a slight whitening or two, — and it strikes me that this pine, take the year round, is the most cheerful tree and most living to look at and have about your house, it is so sunny and full of light, in harmony with the yellow sand there and the spring sun. 

The deciduous trees are apparently dead, and the white pine is much darker, but the pitch pine has an ingrained sunniness and is especially valuable for imparting warmth to the landscape at this season.and is especially valuable for imparting warmth to the landscape at this season. Yet men will take pains to cut down these trees and set imported larches in their places! The pitch pine shines in the spring somewhat as the osiers do. 

I see in the ditch by the Turnpike bridge a painted tortoise, and, I think, a small shiner or two, also several suckers which swiftly dart out of sight, rippling the water. We rejoice to see the waters inhabited again, for a fish has become almost incredible.

Myriads of water-bugs of various sizes are now gyrating, and they reflect the sun like silver. Why do they cast a double orbicular shadow on the bottom? 

I see some monstrous yellow lily roots in the ditch there just beyond the bridge on the right hand, - great branching roots, three or four of them from one base, two feet long (or more) and as big as my arm, all covered with muddy sediment. I know of no herbaceous plant which suggests so much vigor. They taper at the extremity, down (or up) to the green leaf-bud, and, regularly marked as they are with the bases of the leaf-stalks, they look like pineapples there. 

Holding by an alder, I get my hand covered with those whitish lice, which I suppose will cover themselves with down. 

The Rana halecina sits on the bank there. 


The Alnus incana is out, near Everett' s Spring, but not the Alnus serrulata, i. e. the smaller one, which grows south of scouring-rush. The plants which have grown the most there — and they are very conspicuous now — are the forget-me-not , the Ranunculus repens (much more than any bulbosus), and a common sedge which already begins to yellow the top of some tussocks.  

The lower part of the hill at Minott's is decidedly green now. 

The road and paths are perfectly dry and settled in the village, except a very little frost still coming out on the south side the street.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 19, 1860

The pitch pine shines in the spring . See March 26, 1846 ( The green pitch  suddenly looked brighter and more erect, as if now entirely washed and cleansed by the rain. I knew it would not rain any more. A serene summer-evening sky seemed darkly reflected in the pond, though the clear sky was nowhere visible overhead. It was no longer the end of a season, but the beginning.).  Compare March 19, 1858 ("This is the brightening and awakening of the pines, a phenomenon perchance connected with the flow of sap in them.")

I see in the ditch by the Turnpike bridge a painted tortoise. See March 28, 1857 ("He who painted the tortoise thus, what were his designs? ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle

I see, I think, a small shiner or two, also several suckers which swiftly dart out of sight, rippling the water.  See March 19, 1854 ("You look into some clear, sandy-bottomed brook, where it spreads into a deeper bay, yet flowing cold from ice and snow not far off, and see, indistinctly poised over the sand on invisible fins, the outlines of a shiner, scarcely to be distinguished from the sands behind it as if it were transparent.”);  March 19, 1856 ("No sooner is some opening made in the river, a square rod in area, where some brook or rill empties in, than the fishes apparently begin to seek it for light and warmth, . . .They are seen to ripple the water, darting out as you approach.") Compare March 19, 1857 ("I observed yesterday a dead shiner by the riverside, and to-day the first sucker.")

We rejoice to see the waters inhabited again,. See March 20, 1853 ("A myriad brilliant sparkles on the bare face of the pond, an expression of glee, of youth, of spring, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it.")

Myriads of water-bugs of various sizes are now gyrating, and they reflect the sun like silver. Why do they cast a double orbicular shadow on the bottom? See March 10, 1855 ("To-day they are here and yesterday they were not");  March 19, 1856 ("In the smooth open water there, small water-bugs were gyrating singly, not enough to play the game"); October 18, 1857 ("The shadows of these bugs on the bottom, half a dozen times as big as themselves, are very distinct and interesting, with a narrow and well-defined halo about them. But why are they composed, as it were, of two circles run together, the foremost largest? Is it owing to the manner in which the light falls on their backs, in two spots? You think that the insect must be amused with this pretty shadow. I also see plainly the shadows of ripples they make, which are scarcely perceptible on the surface.")

The Alnus incana is out, near Everett' s Spring,  See   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 Alders

The road and paths are perfectly dry and settled in the village, except a very little frost still coming out on the south side the street.  See March 15, 1860 ("Though it is pretty dry and settled travelling on open roads, it is very muddy still in some roads through woods").

First sounds of awakened nature in the spring.

April 17. 

April 17, 2019

Sunday. P. M. — Up Assabet. 

The river, which had got down on the 10th so that I could not cross the meadows, is up again on account of snow and rain, so that I push with difficulty straight to Mantatuket's Rock, but, I believe, is already falling. 

Many grackles and robins are feeding on those strips of meadow just laid bare.

It is still rather cold and windy, and I listen for new birds under the lee of the Rock woods in vain; but I hear the hum of bees on a willow there, and this fine susurrus makes the weather seem warmer than it is. At the same time I hear the low stuttering of the Rana halecina from the Hunt meadow (call it the Winthrop meadow).

How pleasing and soothing are some of the first and least audible sounds of awakened nature in the spring, as this first humming of bees, etc., and the stuttering of frogs! They cannot be called musical, — are no more even than a noise, so slight that we can endure it. But it is in part an expression of happiness, an ode that is sung and whose burden fills the air. It reminds me of the increased genialness of nature. 

The air which was so lately void and silent begins to resound as it were with the breathing of a myriad fellow-creatures, and even the unhappy man, on the principle that misery loves company, is soothed by this infinite din of neighbors.

I have listened for the notes of various birds, and now, in this faint hum of bees, I hear as it were the first twittering of the bird Summer. Go ten feet that way, to where the northwest wind comes round the hill, and you hear only the dead mechanical sound of the blast and your thoughts recur to winter, but stand as much this way in the sun and in the lee of this bush, and your charmed ears may hear this faint susurrus weaving the web of summer. The notes of birds are interrupted, but the hum of insects is incessant.

I suppose that the motion of the wings of the small tipulidae which have swarmed for some weeks produced a humming appreciated by some ears. Perhaps the phoebe heard and was charmed by it. Thus gradually the spaces of the air are filled. Nature has taken equal care to cushion our ears on this finest sound and to inspire us with the strains of the wood thrush and poet. We may say that each gnat is made to vibrate its wings for man's fruition. 

In short, we hear but little music in the world which charms us more than this sound produced by the vibration of an insect's wing and in some still and sunny nook in spring.

 A wood tortoise on bank; first seen, water so high.

I heard lately the voice of a hound hunting by itself. What an awful sound to the denizens of the wood! That relentless, voracious, demonic cry, like the voice of a fiend! At hearing of which, the fox, hare, marmot, etc., tremble for their young and themselves, imagining the worst. This, however, is the sound which the lords of creation love to accompany and follow, with their bugles and "mellow horns" conveying a similar dread to the hearers instead of whispering peace to the hare's palpitating breast.

 A partridge drums.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 17, 1859

I hear the hum of bees on a willow there, and this fine susurrus makes the weather seem warmer than it is. See April 17, 1852 ("I smelt the willow catkins to-day, tender and innocent after this rude winter . . . A mild, sweet, vernal scent . . . attractive to bees"); April 17, 1855 (“The second sallow catkin (or any willow) I have seen in blossom . . . but find already a bee curved close on each half-opened catkin, intoxicated with its early sweet,. . .So quickly and surely does a bee find the earliest flower . . . No matter what pains you take, probably —undoubtedly—an insect will have found the first flower before you”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bees

How pleasing and soothing are some of the first and least audible sounds of awakened nature in spring. See April 3, 1858 ("There is no pause to the hum of the bees all this warm day. It is a very simple but pleasing and soothing sound, this susurrus, thus early in the spring.”); . 


In the lee of this bush, and your charmed ears may hear this faint susurrus weaving the web of summer. See April 6, 1854 ("Maples resound with the hum of honey-bees, and you see thousands of them about the flowers against the sky. This susurrus carries me forward some months toward summer -- like a summer's dream.")

April heat.

April 13. 

April 13,  2019

A little snow fell on the 11th with the rain, and on some very warm banks, the south sides of houses and hills, the grass looked quite green by contrast in spots. 

The streets are strewn with the bud-scales of the elm, which they, opening, have lost off, and their tops present a rich brown already. 

I hear a purple finch on one, and did I not hear a martin's rich warble also? [Probably a white-bellied swallow.] 

The birds are not so early now as I should have expected. Were they not deterred from coming north by the very strong and cold northwest wind, notwithstanding that the ground has been bare so long? 

The Salix purpurea will hardly open for five days yet.

2 P. M. — Paddle to Ball's Hill and sail back. 

I see the small botrychium fresh and yellow still, so it is as much an evergreen as any fern. 

It is pleasant and pretty warm. To-day is the awakening of the meadows now partly bare. I hear the stuttering note of probably the Rana halecina (see one by shore) come up from all the Great Meadow, especially the sedgy parts, or where the grass was not cut last year and now just peeps above the surface. 

There is something soothing and suggestive of halcyon days in this low but universal breeding-note of the frog. Methinks it is a more unmistakable evidence of warmer weather — of the warmest we have at this date — than almost anything else. The hylodes and wood frogs are other degrees on the thermometer of the season, indicating that the weather has attained a higher temperature than before and winter fairly ended, but this note marks what you may call April heat (or spring heat). 

I see no ducks on the meadows to-day, perhaps be cause there is so much less water and it is so fair.

Saw a great bird flying rather low and circling more or less over the Great Meadows, which I at first thought was a fish hawk, having a fair sight of it from Ball's Hill, but with my glass I saw that it was a gull, but, I should say, wholly slate-color and dark at that, — though there may have been small spots which made no impression of another color. It was at least as large, maybe larger than the herring gull. Was it the saddle back gull ? 

Is that a potamogeton, or a pontederia, or a sium, coming up so thickly now on the bottom of the river near the shore, especially on a grassy bottom, with two little roundish leafets becoming spatulate, and a seed triangular and pointed with one side more flat than the others ?

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

The streets are strewn with the bud-scales of the elm, which they, opening, have lost off, and their tops present a rich brown already. See April 13, 1852 ("The elm buds begin to show their blossoms."); April 21, 1858 (“The puddles have dried off along the road and left thick deposits or water-lines of the dark-purple anthers of the elm, coloring the ground like sawdust. You could collect great quantities of them.”)   See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Elms and the Purple Finch

To-day is the awakening of the meadows. See April 13, 1854 ("Heard now, at 5.30 P.M., that faint bullfrog like note from the meadows, er- er-er. "); April 13, 1856 ("As I go by the Andromeda Ponds, I hear the tut tut of a few croaking frogs, and at Well Meadow I hear once or twice a prolonged stertorous sound, as from river meadows a little later usually, which is undoubtedly made by a different frog from the first."); See also  April 3, 1858 (" This might be called the Day of the Snoring Frogs, or the Awakening of the Meadows.");  April 5, 1855 (“Hear from one half-flooded meadow that low, general, hard, stuttering tut tut tut of frogs,—the awakening of the meadow.”); April 9, 1853 (“The whole meadow resounds, probably from one end of the river to the other, this evening, with this faint, stertorous breathing. It is the waking up of the meadows.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Leopard Frog (Rana Halecina) in Spring

The twenty-two herbaceous flowers which I have known to be open before the first of May.

April 10. 

A calm day at last, the water almost smooth and now so low that I cannot cross the meadows. 

So ends the spring freshet (apparently), which began (not to include the winter one) March 8th and was at its height the 17th and 18th. It has lasted a month, and to-day, too, ends the windy spell. Since the 6th (q. v.) there have been two days, the 7th and 8th, of strong northwest wind, and one, the 9th, of very strong and yet colder and more northerly wind than before.

This makes twenty-two days of windy weather in all, reckoning only from the last still days (the 17th and 18th of March) and not including to-day. Of these, eleven days have been of very strong and cold northwest wind, the last, or yesterday, more northerly, — except the first, when the wind was southwest, — seven of strong wind and generally northwest, and four only of moderate wind. 

We had rain on the 18th, 22d, 24th, 25th, 29th of March, and 3d of April, and always with an easterly or southerly wind; or as often as the wind came from the east or south it brought rain, with generally considerable wind driving it, and it invariably cleared off cold with a wind from the northwest. 

The wind has regularly gone down with the sun, and risen again with it. It has been so strong as to interfere with all outdoor occupations. Yet I have not observed a single tree which was blown down by it. 

P. M. — Paddle to Well Meadow. 

I see some remarkable examples of meadow-crust floated off on the A. Wheeler meadow and above, densely covered with button-bushes and willows, etc. One sunk in five feet of water on a sandy shore, which I must examine again. 

I hear of a cinquefoil found in bloom on the 8th. It was in this sprout-land, where it was protected. 

This, with bluets, mouse-ear, and Viola ovata (of the herbaceous plants), I should call pasture flowers (among those of March and April). 

I might class the twenty-two herbaceous flowers which I have known to be open before the first of May thus: — 

• Garden flowers Chickweed and shepherd's-purse. 
• Meadow flowers Skunk-cabbage, caltha, chrysosplenium, dandelion, strawberry, Viola cucullata. Ranunculus repens (?). 
• Rock flowers Saxifrage, crowfoot, columbine, and tower-mustard. 
• Woodland flowers Epigaea, anemone, and thalictrum. 
• Pasture flowers Cinquefoil, bluets, mouse-ear, and Viola sagittata. 
• Water flowers Callitriche verna and nuphar. 

The woody plants — trees and shrubs — might be arranged under three heads, viz. : — 

Wet Land             Dry Land     Intermediate 
Alders, both (?)      Aspens            Elms 
White maple          Hazels           Red maple 
Most willows         Arbutus             Peach 
Sweet-gale        (?)Arbor-vitae       Abele 
Benzoin        Red cedar   Cultivated cherry Cassandra         Fir-balsam 
White alder [?]   (?) Sweet-fern 
Larch                   Shad-bush 
                          Salix humilis 
                          S. tristis 
                           S. rostrata 
                           Yew 


The hellebore buds [?] are quite conspicuous and interesting to-day, but not at all unrolled, though six or eight inches high. 

The Alnus serrulata appears to grow on drier land than the other sometimes. 

See a kingfisher flying very low, in the ricochet manner, across the water. 

Sheldrakes and gulls and black ducks still. 

Hear the first stuttering frog croak — probably halecina — in the last Cassandra Pond.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  April 10, 1859

The twenty-two herbaceous flowers which I have known to be open before the first of May. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Earliest Flower

This makes twenty-two days of windy weather. See April 6, 1859 ("For nineteen days, from the 19th of March to the 6th of April, both inclusive, we have had remarkably windy weather. For ten days of the nineteen the wind has been remarkably strong and violent . . .The last seven, including to-day, have all been windy, five of them remarkably so; wind from northwest."); April 8, 1859 ("We have had, most of the time, during this windy weather for a month past, when the wind was northwest, those peculiar brushy clouds which look as if a little snow or rain was falling in the northwest, but they prove to be wind chiefly.")

See a kingfisher flying very low, in the ricochet manner, across the water.  See  April 11, 1856 ("Does not its arrival mark some new movement in its finny prey?"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau The Kingfisher

Hear the first stuttering frog croak — probably halecina.:Rana halecina (Lithobates pipiens)  – Northern Leopard Frog. See   April 3, 1858 (“I stood perfectly still, and ere long they began to reappear one by one, and spread themselves out on the surface. They were the R. halecina. I could see very plainly the two very prominent yellow lines along the sides of the head and the large dark ocellated marks, even under water, on the thighs, etc. Gradually they begin to recover their voices, but it is hard to say at first which one of the dozen within twenty feet is speaking. . . .. Their note is a hard dry tut tut tut tut, not at all ringing like the toad’s, and produced with very little swelling or motion of the throat, but as much trembling of the whole body; and from time to time one makes that faint somewhat bullfrog-like er er er. Both these sounds, then, are made by one frog, and what I have formerly thought an early bullfrog note was this. This, I think, is the first frog sound I have heard from the river meadows or anywhere, except the croaking leaf-pool frogs and the hylodes. . . . This might be called the Day of the Snoring Frogs, or the Awakening of the Meadows. “); April 5, 1855 ("Hear from one half-flooded meadow that low, general, hard, stuttering tut tut tut of frogs,—the awakening of the meadow.”);  April 8, 1852 ("To-day I hear the croak of frogs in small pond-holes in the woods"); ; April 9, 1853 (“The whole meadow resounds, probably from one end of the river to the other, this evening, with this faint, stertorous breathing. It is the waking up of the meadows." );April 13, 1855 ("The small croaking frogs are now generally heard in all those stagnant ponds or pools in woods floored with leaves, which are mainly dried up in the summer.");  ; April 13, 1856 ("As I go by the Andromeda Ponds, I hear the tut tut of a few croaking frogs. . ."); April 15, 1855 ("That general tut tut tut tut, or snoring, of frogs on the shallow meadow heard first slightly the 5th. )

Talked with Minott, who sits in his wood-shed

August 16.

Hear it raining again early when I awake, as it did yesterday, still and steady, as if the season were troubled with a diabetes.

P. M. — To Cardinal Ditch.

I hear these birds on my way thither, between two and three o’clock:

• goldfinches twitter over;
• the song sparrow sings several times; hear a low warble from bluebirds, with apparently their young,
• the link of many bobolinks (and see large flocks on the fences and weeds; they are largish-looking birds with yellow throats); 
• a large flock of red-wings goes tchucking over; 
• a lark twitters; 
• crows caw; 
• a robin peeps; 
• kingbirds twitter, as ever.

At sunset I hear a low short warble from a golden robin, and the notes of the wood pewee.

In my boating of late I have several times scared up a couple of summer ducks of this year, bred in our meadows. They allowed me to come quite near, and helped to people the-river. I have not seen them for some days. Would you know the end of our intercourse? Goodwin shot them, and Mrs. , who never sailed on the river, ate them. Of course, she knows not' what she did. What if I should eat her canary? Thus we share each other’s sins as well as burdens. The lady who watches admiringly the matador shares his deed. They belonged to me, as much as to any one, when they were alive, but it was considered of more importance that Mrs. should taste the flavor of them dead than that I should enjoy the beauty of them alive.

A three-ribbed goldenrod on railroad causeway, two to three feet high, abundantly out before Solidago nemoralis. 

I notice that when a frog, a Rana halecina, jumps, it drops water at the same instant, as a turtle often when touched as she is preparing to lay. I see many frogs jump from the side of the railroad causeway toward the ditch at its base, and each drops some water. They apparently have this supply of water with them in warm and dry weather, at least when they leave the water, and, returning to it, leave it behind as of no further use.

Thalictrum Comuti is now generally done.

The hardhack commonly grows in low meadow-pastures which are uneven with grassy clods or hummocks, such as the almshouse pasture by Cardinal Ditch.

I am surprised to find that where of late years there have been so many cardinal-flowers, there are now very few. So much does a plant fluctuate from season to season. Here I found nearly white ones once. Charming tells me that he saw a white bobolink in a large flock of them to-day. Almost all flowers and animals may be found white. As in a large number of cardinal-flowers you may find a white one, so in a large flock of bobolinks, also, it seems, you may find a white one.

Talked with Minott, who sits in his wood-shed, having, as I notice, several seats there for visitors, —one a block on the sawhorse, another a patchwork mat on a wheelbarrow, etc., etc. His half-grown chickens, which roost overhead, perch on his shoulder or knee. According to him, the Holt is at the “ diving ash,” where is some of the deepest water in the river. He tells me some of his hunting stories again. He always lays a good deal of stress on the kind of gun he used, as if he had bought a new one every year, when probably he never had more than two or three in his life. In this case it was a “half-stocked” one, a little “cocking-piece,” and whenever he finished his game he used the word “gavel,” I think in this way, “gave him gavel,” i. e. made him bite the dust, or settled him. Speaking of foxes, he said: “As soon as the nights get to be cool, if you step outdoors at nine or ten o’clock when all is still, you’ll hear them bark out on the flat behind the houses, half a mile off, or sometimes whistle through their noses. I can tell ’em. I know what that means. I know all about that. They are out after something to eat, I suppose.” He used to love to hear the goldfinches sing on the hemp which grew near his gate.

At sunset paddled to Hill.

Goodwin has come again to fish, with three poles, hoping to catch some more of those large eels.

A blue heron, with its great undulating wings, prominent cutwater, and leisurely flight, goes over southwest, cutting off the bend of the river west of our house. 

Goodwin says he saw one two or three days ago, and also that he saw some black ducks. 

A muskrat is swimming up the stream, betrayed by two long diverging ripples, or ripple-lines, two or three rods long each, and inclosing about seventy-five degrees, methinks. The rat generally dives just before reaching the shore and is not seen again, probably entering some burrow in the bank.

Am surprised to see that the snapping turtle which I found floating dead June 16th, and placed to rot in the cleft of a rock, has been all cleaned, so that there is no smell of carrion. The scales have nearly all fallen Off, and the sternum fallen apart, and the bony frame of the back is loose and dropping to pieces, as if it were many years old. It is a wonderful piece of dovetailing, the ends of the ribs (which are narrow and rib-like) set into sockets in the middle of the marginal bones, .whose joints are in each case between the ribs. There are many large fish-bones within the shell. Was it killed by the fish it swallowed? The bones not being dispersed, I suppose it was cleaned by insects.

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

 A blue heron, with its great undulating wings, prominent cutwater, and leisurely flight. See  April 29, 1854 ("Off the Cliffs, I meet a blue heron flying slowly down stream. He flaps slowly and heavily, his long, level, straight and sharp bill projecting forward, then his keel-like neck doubled up, and finally his legs thrust out straight behind."); August 14,1859 ("If you would know the depth of the water on these few shoalest places of Musketaquid, ask the blue heron that wades and fishes there")

August 16. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  August 16

 

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

This makes the fifth kind of frog or toad spawn that I have detected this year..

May 9. 

P. M. – To Holden and to Ledum Swamp. 

See two Rana halecina. They have the green halo, but are plain brown between the spots on the back and not vivid light-green like the one of May 4th. 

See in Ludwigia palustris ditch on Hubbard’s land evidently toad-spawn already hatched, or flatted out. I distinguish the long strings, now straighter than usual and floating thin on the surface. It is less obvious than frog-spawn, and might easily be overlooked on a slimy surface. I can distinguish the little pollywog while yet in the ova by their being quite small and very black. 

This makes the fifth kind of frog or toad spawn that I have detected this year.

See, in the Holden Swamp wood, the bird of May 3d. It has sly and inquisitive ways, holding down its head and looking at me at some distance off. It has a distinct white line along the bill and about the eyes, and no yellow there, as is said of the white-eyed vireo, and I am now inclined to think it the solitary vireo (?), whose song is not described, and which is considered rare. I should say it had a blue-slate head, and, I note, a distinct yellowish vent, which none of the vireos are allowed to have!! The sides of the body are distinctly yellow, but there is none at all on the throat or breast. 

Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum, – how long? — by owl nest tree. 

Sylvia Americana

The parti-colored warbler is very common and musical there, — my tweezer-bird, – making the screep screep screep note. It is an almost incessant singer and a very handsomely marked bird. It frequents the spruce trees, at regular intervals pausing as it flits, hops, and creeps about from limb to limb or up the main stem, and holding up its head, utters its humble notes, like ah twze twze twze, or ah twze twze twze twze.

I notice very large clams, apparently the Unio complanatus (vide two specimens in drawer), or common, in West Meadow Brook near the road, one more than four and a half inches long. I have before seen them very large in brooks. 

A dandelion perfectly gone to seed, a complete globe, a system in itself. 

My Rana palustris spawn, laid in house May 5th, in the sun this afternoon swells and rises to the surface in the jar, so that the uppermost ova project slightly above it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 9, 1858

The fifth kind of frog or toad spawn. See note to May 6, 1858 (Frogs of Massachusetts)

The parti-colored warbler — my tweezer-bird. See May 18, 1856 ("A Sylvia Americana, — parti-colored warbler, — in the Holden Wood, sings a, tshrea tshrea tshrea, tshre’ tshritty tshrit’." and note to May 13, 1856 ("The tweezer-bird or Sylvia Americana. . . . the parti-colored warbler, and was that switter switter switter switter swit also by it?.”) See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Parti-Colored (Parula) Warbler (Sylvia Americana)

The bird of May 3d. . . . I am now inclined to think it the solitary vireo. See May 3, 1858.("See and hear a new bird to me. At first it was silent, and I took it for the common pewee, but, bringing my glass to bear on it, found it to be pure white throat and beneath, yellow on sides of body or wings, greenish-yellow back and shoulders, a white or whitish ring about eyes, and a light mark along side of head,
two white bars on wings, apparently black bill and dark or perhaps slate-colored (?) wings and above tail. It surprised me by singing in a novel and powerful and rich strain.")

Saw and heard the small pewee yesterday.

May 5. 

May 5, 2018

The two Rana palustris which I caught May 1st have been coupled ever since in a firkin in my chamber. They were not coupled when I caught them. Last night I heard them hopping about, for the first time, as if trying to get out. Perhaps the female was trying to find a good place to deposit her spawn. 

As soon as I get up I find that she has dropped her spawn, a globular mass, wrong or white side up, about two inches in diameter, which still adheres to her posterior, and the male still lies on her back. A few moments later they are separate. 

The female moves about restlessly from time to time, the spawn still attached, but soon it is detached from her posterior, still adhering to her right leg, as if merely sticking to it. In the course of the forenoon it becomes quite detached. 

At night they are coupled again. The spawn was not dropped at 10 P.M. the evening before, but apparently in the night. The female now looked long and lank. 

This is the first spawn I have known to be dropped by the R. palustris. I should not know it by its appearance from that of the sylvatica and halecina.

The only frogs hereabouts whose spawn I do not know are the bullfrogs, R. fontinalis, and hylodes. The first have not begun to trump, and I conclude are not yet breeding; the last, I think, must be nearly done breeding, and probably do not put their spawn in the river proper; possibly, therefore, the oat spawn of yesterday may be that of the R. fontinalis.

Saw and heard the small pewee yesterday. 

The aspen leaves at Island to-day appear as big as a nine pence suddenly.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 5, 1858

Saw and heard the small pewee yesterday. See May 3, 1854 ("What I have called the small pewee on the willow by my boat, — quite small, uttering a short tchevet from time to time.”); May 7, 1852 ("The first small pewee sings now che-vet, or rather chirrups chevet, tche-vet — a rather delicate bird with a large head and two white bars on wings.) Also note to May 3, 1855("Small pewee; tchevet, with a jerk of the head.”)   ~ The “Small Pewee” is listed as Muscicapa acadia in Report on the Fishes, Reptiles and Birds of Massachusetts 295 (1839), also in Thompson, Natural History of Vermont, part I, 76 (1842). Probably what Thoreau calls the "small pewee” is what we now know as the Least Flycatcher (Empidonax minimus). It arrives in Massachusetts the last week in April and in Vermont the first week of May. See A Book of the Seasons, the "Small Pewee”

The aspen leaves at Island to-day appear as big as a nine pence suddenly. See May 2, 1855 (" The young aspens are the first of indigenous trees conspicuously leafed.”); May 2, 1859 (" I am surprised by the tender yellowish green of the aspen leaf just expanded suddenly, even like a fire, seen in the sun, against the dark-brown twigs of the wood, though these leafets are yet but thinly dispersed. It is very enlivening.”); May 4, 1856 ("The aspen there ( the Island) just begun to leaf.”)

By boat to Holden Swamp.

May 4. 

Camel’s Hump

May 4, 2015

The Salix pedicellaris by railroad, apparently not for two or three days. 

The Missouri currant, probably to-day. 

P. M. — By boat to Holden Swamp. 

To go among the willows now and hear the bees hum is equal to going some hundreds of miles southward toward summer. 

I see along the sides of the river, i. e., where the bottom is permanently covered, what I have heretofore called the oat spawn, attached to old pontederia stems, etc., now some foot or eighteen inches under the surface. It is not black and white, like that of the Rana halecina, sylvaltica, and palustris, which I cannot distinguish from one another, but a pale brown or fawn-color. Some is pretty fresh or recently laid, others already flatted out. Hence, from comparison with my earlier sylvatica and halecina spawn, I judge that it may have been laid ten days. [Is it not that of the R. fontinalis?]

At Clamshell Shore, I see a clam lying up with open valves. 

Salix pedicellaris at Holden's Swamp, staminate, out apparently two days. - 

It is still warmer than May 1st, yet I hear the stertorous tut tut tut of hardly so many frogs (R. palustris chiefly, I suppose) as then. As with the halecina, it is the first sudden heats that excite them most, me thinks. 

I find hopping in the meadow a Rana halecina, much brighter than any I have seen this year. There is not only a vivid green halo about each spot, but the back is vivid light-green between the spots. I think this was not the case with any of the hundreds I saw a month ago!! Why?? The brassy lines along the sides of the back are narrower (only about one sixteenth of an inch) and more prominent than the more fawn-colored lines of the R. palustris. In this one, which I carry home and compare with the palustris, there is a large spot on each orbit, but none on the top of the head in front. It is all white beneath, except a tinge of greenish yellow on the abdomen. 

Witherell speaks of the R. palustris as the yellow legged frog, very properly. 

See several bullfrogs along the river, but silent. 

I go into Holden Swamp to hear warblers. See a little blue butterfly (or moth) — saw one yesterday — fluttering about over the dry brown leaves in a warm place by the swamp-side, making a pleasant contrast. From time to time have seen the large Vanessa Antiopa resting on the black willows, like a leaf still adhering.

As I sit there by the swamp-side this warm summery afternoon, I hear the crows cawing hoarsely, and from time to time see one flying toward the  top of a tall white pine. At length I distinguish a hen-hawk perched on the top. The crow repeatedly stoops toward him, now from this side, now from that, passing near his head each time, but he pays not the least attention to it. 

I hear the weese wese wese of the creeper continually from the swamp. It is the prevailing note there. And methought I heard a redstart's note (?), but oftener than the last I heard the tweezer note, or screeper note, of the particolored warbler, bluish above, yellow or orange throat and breast, white vent, and white on wings, neck above yellowish, going restlessly over the trees — maples, etc. — by the swamp, in creeper fashion, and as you may hear at the same time the true creeper's note without seeing it, you might think it uttered the creeper's note also. 

The red-wings, though here and there in flocks, are apparently beginning to build. I judge by their shyness and alarm in the bushes along the river and their richer, solitary warbling. 

Coming back, I talk with Witherell at William Wheeler's landing. He comes pushing Wheeler's square ended boat down-stream with a fish-spear. Says he caught a snapping turtle in the river May 1st. He sits on the side of my boat by the shore a little while, talking with me. There is a hole in the knee of his pants as big as your hand, and he keeps passing his hand over this slowly, to hide his bare skin, which is sun burnt and the color of his face, though the latter is reddened by rum, of which his breath smells. But how intimate he is with mud and its inhabitants. 

He says he caught a large pickerel the other night with spawn in it yet; that Henry Bigelow put many little trout into that round pond (Green Pond he calls it) on the Marlborough road, which Elbridge Haynes caught a few years after, weighing two or three pounds apiece. 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. This was in Spectacle Pond in Littleton. 

A fisherman told him once that the common eel “gendered” into the river clam, and the young fed on the clam till they were big enough to get other food, and hence you found so many dead clams in the river. 

I asked him if he knew what fish made the stone-heaps in the river. He said the lamprey eel. He saw one making one last spring about this time, as he was going across the fields by the river near Tarbell's to get seed corn. It was a single lamprey piling up the stones. He used to see thousands of them where he lived a boy, where the lead pipe factory was. 

Agassiz says in his Introduction (page 175), “I have known it [the Chelonara serpentina] snapping in the same fierce manner [which somebody else had described at a later period when it was very young] as it does when full grown, at a time it was still a pale almost colorless embryo, wrapped up in its foetal envelopes, with a yolk larger than itself hanging from its sternum, three months before hatching.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 4, 1858

The crow repeatedly stoops toward him, now from this side, now from that, passing near his head each time, but he pays not the least attention to it. See May 13, 1860 ("See two crows pursuing and diving at a hen-hawk very high in the air over the river. [H]e merely winks, as it were, bends or jerks his wings slightly as if a little startled. but never ceases soaring. nor once turns to pursue or shake them off.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

I heard the tweezer note, or screeper note, of the particolored warbler. See  May 13, 1860 ("At Holden Swamp, hear plenty of parti-colored warblers (tweezer-birds) and redstarts."); May 18, 1856 ("A Sylvia Americana, — parti-colored warbler, — in the Holden Wood, sings a, tshrea tshrea tshrea, tshre’ tshritty tshrit’.”)  See note to May 13, 1856 (“At the swamp, hear the yorrick of Wilson’s thrush; the tweezer-bird or Sylvia Americana. Also the oven-bird sings.”) See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the parti-colored warbler (Sylvia Americana)

See a little blue butterfly (or moth) — saw one yesterday — fluttering about over the dry brown leaves in a warm place. See April 30, 1859 ("That interesting small blue butterfly (size of small red) is apparently just out, fluttering over the warm dry oak leaves within the wood in the sun.");See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The  Blue Butterfly in Spring

I too have been looking for frogs. If I were to be a frog hawk for a month I should soon know some things.

May 2.

Hepatica, May 2, 2018

Sit without fire to-day and yesterday.

I compare the three Rana palustris caught yesterday with the male and female of April 23d. 

The males agree very well. What I have regarded as the groundwork varies from pale brown to dusky brown, even in the same specimen at different times. 

The present female is larger than that of April 23d, more than half an inch longer than her male, and she has the round dark spots on the orbits and one in front on head and also oblong-square spots on back. She is also dusky-brown like male. 

None of all have any green. 

I at last hear the note, for two are coupled in a firkin in my chamber, under my face. It is made by the male alone, and is, as I supposed, the sound of April 30th and May 1st, — the tut tut tut, more or less rapidly repeated, and a frequent querulous or inquisitive cr-r-rack, half a second long. 

It makes these sounds only when I excite it by putting others of its kind near it. Its pouches are distended laterally, apparently beneath and behind the eye, and not very conspicuous. Close by, it sounds like a dry belching sound, the bursting of little bubbles more or less rapidly, and the querulous note may be the same very rapidly repeated. 

I doubt if I have heard any sound from a bullfrog in river yet. 

P. M. — Down river. 

The Salix Babylonica (fertile) behind Dodd's is more forward than the alba by my boat. Put it just before it. See stake-driver. 

At mouth of the Mill Brook, I hear, I should say, the true R. halecina croak, i. e. with the faint bullfrog-like er-er-er intermixed. Are they still breeding? 

Peetweet on a rock. 

See and hear the red-wings in flocks yet, making a great noise. 

If I were to be a frog hawk for a month I should soon know some things about the frogs. How patiently they skim the meadows, occasionally alighting, and fluttering as if it were difficult ever to stand still on the ground. I have seen more of them than usual since I too have been looking for frogs. 

Hear a tree-toad.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 2, 1858

Sit without fire to-day and yesterday. See May 3, 1857 (“”To-day we sit without fire")
I compare the three Rana palustris caught yesterday with the male and female of April 23d. See April 24, 1858 ("I go at 8 A.M. to catch frogs to compare with the R. palustris and bull frog which I have, but I find it too cold for them")

At mouth of the Mill Brook, I hear, I should say, the true R. halecina croak, i. e. with the faint bullfrog-like er-er-er intermixed. See note to  April 3, 1858 ("Their note is a hard dry tut tut tut tut, . . .  and from time to time one makes that faint somewhat bullfrog-like er er er. Both these sounds, then, are made by one frog, ")


If I were to be a frog hawk for a month I should soon know some things about the frogs. See March 27, 1855 (“See my frog hawk. . . .It is the hen-barrier, i.e. marsh hawk, male. Slate-colored; beating the bush; black tips to wings and white rump. "); March 29, 1854 (See two marsh hawks, white on rump."); March 30, 1856 ("May have been a marsh hawk or harrier.");  April 5, 1854  ("These days . . . bring out the butterflies and the frogs, and the marsh hawks which prey on the last. Just so simple is every year.”); April 8, 1856 ("Marsh hawks circling low shows that frogs must be out."); April 19, 1858 ("He skims along exactly over the edge of the water, on the meadowy side, not more than three or four feet from the ground and winding with the shore, looking for frogs.."); April 22, 1856 (“A marsh hawk, in the midst of the rain, is skimming along the shore of the meadow, close to the ground, . . . It is looking for frogs.”); May 2, 1855 ("Was that a harrier seen at first skimming low then seating and circling, with a broad whiteness on the wings beneath?” ~~ What HDT calls the "frog/marsh hawk/hen harrier" is the northern harrier.

I go at 8 A.M. to catch frogs to compare with the R. palustris.

April 24.

A cold northwest wind.

April 24, 2018

I go at 8 A.M. to catch frogs to compare with the R. palustris and bull frog which I have, but I find it too cold for them. Though I walk more than a mile along the river, I do not get sight of one, and only of one or two turtles. Neither do I find any more frogs (though many Emys picta) at 4 P. M., it being still cold. 

Yet the frogs were quite numerous yesterday. This shows how sensitive they are to changes of temperature. Hardly one puts its head out of the water, if ever he creeps out the grassy or muddy bottom this cold day. 

That proserpinaca deserves to be named after the frog, — ranunculus, or what-not, — it is so common and pretty at the bottom the shallow grassy pools where I go looking for spawn. 

It is remarkable that I see many E. picta dead along the shore, dead within a few weeks apparently, also a sternothaerus. One of the last, alive, emitted no odor to-day. 

I find washed up by the riverside part of a pale-greenish egg-shell bigger than a hen’s egg, which was probably the egg of a duck laid on the meadow last year or lately. 

There is an abundance of the R. halecina spawn near the elm at the hill shore north of Dodd's. It is now semiopaque, greenish, and flatted down and run together, mostly hatched; and a good deal has been killed, apparently by the cold. The water thereabouts is swarming with the young pollywogs for a rod about, but where have all the frogs hidden themselves? 

E. Hoar saw the myrtle-bird to-day. 

The pollywogs must be a long time growing, for I see those of last year not more than two inches long, also some much larger. 

The hatched frog-spawn is quite soft and apparently dissolving at last in the water. Yet possibly that mass of jelly once brought me on a stake was this jelly consolidated. 

I find that my fish ova were not all killed some weeks ago in the firkin, as I supposed, for many that were accidentally left in it have hatched, and they bore the cold of last night better than those hatched earlier and kept in the larger vessel (tub), which froze but thinly, while the firkin froze a quarter of an inch thick last night.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  April 24, 1858

Many Emys picta. See April 24, 1856 ("A young Emys Picta one and five eighths inches long and one and a half wide. . . . already covered with some kind of green moss."); See also March 28, 1857 ("The Emys picta, now pretty numerous . . .He who painted the tortoise thus, what were his designs?");  April 22, 1858 ("The Emys picta are evidently breeding also.") and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle (Emys picta)

A sternothaerus emitted no odor to-day. See April 1, 1858 ("I see six Sternothaarus odoratus . . . and smelt of five of these, and they emitted none of their peculiar scent! It would seem, then, that this may be connected with their breeding, or at least with their period of greatest activity.");   June 16, 1858 ("Two sternothaerus which I smell of have no scent to-day.  ")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musk Turtle (Sternothaerus odoratus )

That proserpinaca [palustris] deserves to be named after the frog:  Rana palustris, the pickerel frog; Proserpinaca is a genus of flowering plants found in aquatic or terrestrial wetland habitat  Palustris is a Latin word meaning swampy or marshy often used for species names to refer to the typical habitat of the species. ~ Wikipedia

There is an abundance of the R. halecina spawn near the elm at the hill shore north of Dodd's. The water thereabouts is swarming with the young pollywogs for a rod about. See April 14, 1858 (“My Rana halecina spawn in tumbler is now flatted out and begins to betray the pollywog form.”); 

I find that my fish ova were not all killed some weeks ago in the firkin, as I supposed. See note to April 16, 1858 ("I think that the spawn could not have been laid long when I found it April 3d, . . .My fish ova in a tumbler has gradually expanded ... (Some are still in the egg on the 18th.)")