We go listening for early birds with bread and cheese for our dinners.

March 20.  

A rather cool and breezy morning, which was followed by milder day.

March 20, 2022

We go listening

for early birds with bread and

cheese for our dinners.

(Yesterday I forgot to say I painted my boat. Spanish brown and raw oil were the ingredients. I found the painter had sold me the brown in hard lumps as big as peas, which I could not reduce with a stick; so I passed the whole when mixed through an old coffee-mill, which made a very good paint-mill, catching it in an old coffee- pot , whose holes I puttied up, there being a lack of vessels ; and then I broke up the coffee-mill and nailed a part over the bows to protect them , the boat is made so flat. I had first filled the seams with some grafting- wax I had, melted.) 

How handsome the curves which the edge of the ice makes, answering somewhat to those of the shore, but more regular, sweeping entirely round the pond  as if defined by a vast, bold sweep! 

It is evident that the English do not enjoy that contrast between winter and summer that we do, that there is too much greenness and spring in the winter.  There is no such wonderful resurrection of the year. Birds kindred with our first spring ones remain with them all winter, and flowers answering to our earliest spring ones put forth there in January. In one sense they have no winter but such as our spring. Our April is their March; our March, their February; our February, January, and December are not theirs at all under any name or sign. 

Those alder catkins on the west side of Walden tremble and undulate in the wind, they are so relaxed and ready to bloom, the most forward blossom-buds. 

Here and there around the pond, within a rod of the water, is the fisherman's stone fireplace, with its charred brands, where he cheered and warmed himself and ate his lunch. 

The peculiarity of to-day is that now first you perceive that dry, warm, summer-presaging scent from dry oak and other leaves, on the sides of hills and ledges. You smell the summer from afar. The warm [ sic ] makes a man young again. There is also some dryness, almost dustiness, in the roads. 

The mountains are white with snow, and sure as the wind is northwest it is wintry; but now it is more westerly. The edges of the mountains now melt into the sky. It is affecting to be put into communication with such distant objects by the power of vision, -actually to look into rich lands of promise. 

In this spring breeze, how full of life the silvery pines, probably the under sides of their leaves. 

Goose Pond is wholly open. 

Unexpectedly dry and crispy the grass is getting in warm places.

 At Flint's Pond, gathered a handful or two of chestnuts on a sloping bank under the leaves, every one sound and sweet, but mostly sprouting. There were none black as at C. Smith's, proving that in such places as this, somewhat warm and dry, they are all preserved the winter through. Now, then, new groves of chestnuts (and of oaks?) are being born. 

Under these wet leaves I find myriads of the snow-fleas, like powder. 

Some brooks are full of little wiggling creatures somewhat like caddis-worms, stemming the stream, — food for the early fishes. 

The canoe birch sprouts are red or salmon- colored like those of the common, but soon they cast off their salmon - colored jackets and come forth with a white but naked look, all dangling with ragged reddish curls. 

What is that little bird that makes so much use of these curls in its nest, lined with coarse grass? 

The snow still covers the ground on the north side of hills, which are hard and slippery with frost. 

I am surprised to find Flint's Pond not more than half broken up. Probably it was detained by the late short but severe cold, while Walden, being deeper, was not. Standing on the icy side, the pond appears nearly all frozen; the breadth of open water is far removed and diminished to a streak; I say it is beginning to break up. Standing on the water side (which in Flint's is the middle portion ), it appears to be but bordered with ice, and I say there is ice still left in the pond.

Saw a bluish-winged beetle or two. 

In a stubble-field east of Mt. Tabor, started up a pack ( though for numbers, about twenty, it may have been a bevy ) of quail, which went off to some young pitch pines, with a whir like a shot, the plump  round birds. 

The redpolls are still numerous.

On the warm, dry cliff, looking south over Beaver Pond, I was surprised to see a large butterfly, black with buff-edged wings, so tender a creature to be out so early, and, when alighted, opening and shutting its wings. What does it do these frosty nights? Its chrysalis must have hung in some sunny nook of the rocks. Born to be food for some early bird.

Cutting a maple for a bridge over Lily Brook, I was rejoiced to see the sap falling in large, clear drops from the wound. 

H. D Thoreau, Journal, March 20, 1853

March 20, 1853 How handsome the curves which the edge of the ice makes, See Walden is melting apace

I painted my boat . . . I had first filled the seams with some grafting- wax. See March 16, 1854 ("See and hear honey-bees about my boat in the yard, attracted probably by the beeswax in the grafting-wax which was put on it a year ago.) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Boat in. Boat out.

Those alder catkins on the west side of Walden tremble and undulate in the wind, they are so relaxed and ready to bloom, the most forward blossom-buds. 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, Signs of the Spring:: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

The edges of the mountains now melt into the sky. It is affecting to be put into communication with such distant objects by the power of vision. See February 21, 1855 ("We now notice the snow on the mountains, because on the remote rim of the horizon its whiteness contrasts with the russet and darker hues of our bare fields"); March 11, 1854 ("The distant mountains are all white with snow while our landscape is nearly bare."); May 17, 1858 ("I doubt if in the landscape there can be anything finer than a distant mountain-range. They are a constant elevating influence.");  October 22, 1857 ("But what a perfect crescent of mountains we have in our northwest horizon! Do we ever give thanks for it?")See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Mountains in the Horizon

Now first you perceive that dry, warm, summer-presaging scent from dry oak and other leaves, on the sides of hills and ledges. You smell the summer from afar. See February 18, 1857 (“I was surprised to find how sweet the whole ground smelled when I lay flat and applied my nose to it”); March 4, 1854 ("I begin to sniff the air and smell the ground."); March 18,1853 ("To-day first I smelled the earth.”) April 2, 1856 ("I am tempted to stretch myself on the bare ground above the Cliff, to feel its warmth in my back, and smell the earth and the dry leaves . I see and hear flies and bees about. A large buff-edged butterfly flutters by along the edge of the Cliff, — Vanessa antiopa.”); April 27, 1860 ("There is a certain summeriness in the air now, especially under a warm cliff like this, where you smell the very dry leaves, and hear the pine warbler and the hum of insects")

In this spring breeze, how full of life the silvery pines, probably the under sides of their leaves. See February 10, 1860 ("I see that Wheildon's pines are rocking and showing their silvery under sides as last spring, — their first awakening, as it were. "); March 21, 1859 (“That fine silvery light reflected from its needles (perhaps their undersides) incessantly in motion.”); April 29, 1852 ("The pines have an appearance they have not worn before, yet not easy to describe"); May 1, 1855 ("Why have the white pines at a distance that silvery look around their edges or thin parts? Is it owing to the wind showing the under sides of the needles? Methinks you do not see it in the winter.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: First silvery sheen from needles of the white pine waving in the wind

Goose Pond is wholly open. Compare March 21, 1855("Crossed Goose Pond on ice."); March 24, 1854 ("Goose Pond half open. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-Out

Under these wet leaves I find myriads of the snow-fleas, like powder. See January 30, 1860 ("The snow-flea seems to be a creature whose summer and prime of life is a thaw in the winter. It seems not merely to enjoy this interval like other animals, but then chiefly to exist. It is the creature of the thaw."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow-flea

The canoe birch sprouts are red or salmon-colored . . . but soon they . . . come forth with a white but naked look, all dangling with ragged reddish curls. See April 7, 1856 ("The tops of young white birches now have a red-pink color."); January 9, 1860 ("I am interested by a clump of young canoe birches on the hillside shore of the pond. There is an interesting variety in the colors of their bark, passing from bronze at the earth, through ruddy and copper colors to white higher up, with shreds of different color from that beneath peeling off. . . .It is as if the tree unbuttoned a thin waistcoat and suffered it to blow aside, revealing its bosom or inner garment, which is a more ruddy brown, or sometimes greenish or coppery; and thus one cuticle peels off after another till it is a ruddy white, as if you saw to a red ground through a white wash; . . .It may be, then, half a dozen years old before it assumes the white toga which is its distinctive dress. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Birches in Season

The redpolls are still numerous. See March 23, 1853 ("The birds which are merely migrating or tarrying here for a season are especially gregarious now, — the redpoll, Fringilla hyemalis, fox-colored sparrow, etc.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

A large butterfly, black with buff-edged wings, so tender a creature to be out so early. See  March 21, 1853 ("Saw two more of those large black and buff butterflies. The same degree of heat brings them out everywhere.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Buff-edged Butterfly

Rejoiced to see the sap. See  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Red Maple Sap Flows

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, We go listening for early birds

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-530329

Both the pink and the green are phenomena of the morning.

February 20.

 P. M. – I see directly in front [of] the Depot Lee [?] house, on the only piece of bare ground I see hereabouts, a large flock of lesser redpolls feeding. They must be picking up earth, sand, or the withered grass. They are so intent on it that they allow me to come quite near This, then is one use for the drifting of snow which lays bare some spots, however deep it may be elsewhere, — so that the birds, etc., can come at the earth. I never thought of this use before. 

First the snow fell deep and level on the 18th, then, the 19th, came high wind and plowed it out here and there to the ground; and so it will always be in some places, however deep it may have been. 

J. Farmer tells me that his grandfather once, when moving some rocks in the winter, found a striped squirrel frozen stiff. He put him in his pocket, and when he got home laid him on the hearth, and after a while he was surprised to see him running about the room as lively as ever he was. 

I notice a very pale pink reflection from snowy roofs and sides of white houses at sunrise. So both the pink and the green are phenomena of the morning, but in a much less degree, which shows that they depend more on the twilight and the grossness of the atmosphere than on the angle at which the sunlight falls.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 20, 1860

A large flock of lesser redpolls feeding. See February 12, 1860 ("On the east side of the pond, under the steep bank, I see a single lesser redpoll picking the seeds out of the alder catkins, and uttering a faint mewing note from time to time on account of me, only ten feet off. It has a crimson or purple front and breast.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the lesser redpoll.

The snow fell deep and level on the 18th, then, the 19th, came high wind and plowed it out here  See February 19, 1860 ("Snow maybe near a foot deep, and now drifting.")

Both the pink and the green are phenomena of the morning, but in a much less degree. See notes to January 31, 1859 ("Also the pink light reflected from the low, flat snowy surfaces amid the ice on the meadows, just before sunset, is a constant phenomenon these clear winter days. . . .Perhaps the green seen at the same time in ice and water is produced by the general yellow or amber light of this hour, mingled with the blue of the reflected sky."); and   December 29, 1859 ("I went to the river immediately after sunrise. I could [see] a little greenness in the ice, and also a little rose-color from the snow, but far less than before the sun set. Do both these phenomena require a gross atmosphere? . . .To-night I notice the rose-color in the snow and the green in the ice at the same time, having been looking out for them. ")

We live and walk on solidified fluids.

February 12

Return on green ice

to walk amid purple clouds

of the sunset sky. 

February 12, 1860

February 12, 2020

Sunday. 2 p. m., 22°. Walk up river to Fair Haven Pond. Clear and windy, — northwest.

About a quarter of an inch of snow fell last evening. This scarcely colors that part of the ground that was bare, and on all icy surfaces which are exposed to the sweep of the wind it is already distributed very regularly in thin drifts. It lies on the ice in waving lines or in lunar or semicircular, often spread-eagle, patches with very regular intervals, quite like the openings lately seen in the river when breaking up. The whole surface of the icy field is thus watered. That is, it is not collected in one place more than another, but very evenly distributed in these patches over the whole surface. 

I speak of what lies on the open ice. It comes flowing like a vapor from the northwest, low over the ice and much faster than a man walks, and a part is ever catching and lodging here and there and building a low drift, the northwest side of which will be abrupt with a sharp, beetling edge an inch or a half-inch high. No doubt these drifts are constantly changing their ground or rolling over. 

I see now that this vapor-like snow-dust is really sometimes blown up six or eight feet into the air, though for the most part it merely slides low over the ice. 

The greater part of this snow is lodged a foot deep amid the button-bushes, and there it continues to accumulate as long as the wind blows strong. 

In this cold, clear, rough air from the northwest we walk amid what simple surroundings! Surrounded by our thoughts or imaginary objects, living in our ideas, not one in a million ever sees the objects which are actually around him. 

Above me is a cloudless blue sky; beneath, the sky- blue, i. e. sky-reflecting, ice with patches of snow scattered over it like mackerel clouds. At a distance in several directions I see the tawny earth streaked or spotted with white where the bank or hills and fields appear, or else the green-black evergreen forests, or the brown, or russet, or tawny deciduous woods, and here and there, where the agitated surface of the river is exposed, the blue-black water.

That dark-eyed water, especially when I see it at right angles with the direction of the sun, is it not the first sign of spring? How its darkness contrasts with the general lightness of the winter! It has more life in it than any part of the earth's surface. It is where one of the arteries of the earth is palpable, visible. Those are peculiar portions of the river which have thus always opened first, — been open latest and longest.

In winter not only some creatures, but the very earth is partially dormant; vegetation ceases, and rivers, to some extent, cease to flow. Therefore, when I see the water exposed in midwinter, it is as if I saw a skunk or even a striped squirrel out. It is as if the woodchuck unrolled himself and snuffed the air to see if it were warm enough to be trusted. 

It excites me to see early in the spring that black artery leaping once more through the snow-clad town. 

All is tumult and life there, not to mention the rails and cranberries that are drifting in it. Where this artery is shallowest, i. e., comes nearest to the surface and runs swiftest, there it shows itself soonest and you may see its pulse beat. These are the wrists, temples, of the earth, where I feel its pulse with my eye. The living waters, not the dead earth. It is as if the dormant earth opened its dark and liquid eye upon us.

But to return to my walk. I proceed over the sky- blue ice, winding amid the flat drifts as if amid the clouds, now and then treading on that thin white ice (much marked) of absorbed puddles (of the surface), which crackles somewhat like dry hard biscuit. Call it biscuit ice. Some of it is full of internal eyes like bird's-eye maple, little bubbles that were open above, and elsewhere I tread on ice in which are traced all kinds of characters, Coptic and Syriac, etc.

How curious those crinkled lines in ice that has been partly rotted, reaching down half an inch per pendicularly, or else at an angle with the surface, and with a channel that may be felt above! 

There are places (a few), like that at Hubbard's Grove, commonly thin or open, leading to the shore, with the ice puffed up, as if kept open by a musquash, where apparently a spring comes in. Only betrayed by its being slow to freeze, or by the rottenness of the ice there. 

This is the least observed of all tributaries, the first evidence of a tributary. 

On the east side of the pond, under the steep bank, I see a single lesser redpoll picking the seeds out of the alder catkins, and uttering a faint mewing note from time to time on account of me, only ten feet off. It has a crimson or purple front and breast. 

How unexpected is one season by another! Off Pleasant Meadow I walk amid the tops of bayonet rushes frozen in, as if the summer had been overtaken by the winter.

Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green, and a rose-color to be reflected from the  low snow-patches. I see the color from the snow first where there is some shade, as where the shadow of a maple falls afar over the ice and snow. From this is reflected a purple tinge when I see none elsewhere. Some shadow or twilight, then, is necessary, umbra mixed with the reflected sun. 

Off Holden Wood, where the low rays fall on the river from between the fringe of the wood, the snow-patches are not rose-color, but a very dark purple like a grape, and thus there are all degrees from pure white to black. 

When crossing Hubbard's broad meadow, the snow-patches are a most beautiful crystalline purple, like the petals of some flowers, or as if tinged with cranberry juice. It is quite a faery scene, surprising and wonderful, as if you walked amid those rosy and purple clouds that you see float in the evening sky. What need to visit the crimson cliffs of Beverly? 

I thus find myself returning over a green sea, winding amid purple islets, and the low sedge of the meadow on one side is really a burning yellow. 

The hunter may be said to invent his game, as Neptune did the horse, and Ceres corn. 

It is twenty above at 5.30, when I get home. 

I walk over a smooth green sea, or aequor, the sun just disappearing in the cloudless horizon, amid thousands of these flat isles as purple as the petals of a flower. It would not be more enchanting to walk amid the purple clouds of the sunset sky. 

And, by the way, this is but a sunset sky under our feet, produced by the same law, the same slanting rays and twilight. Here the clouds are these patches of snow or frozen vapor, and the ice is the greenish sky between them. Thus all of heaven is realized on earth. 

You have seen those purple fortunate isles in the sunset heavens, and that green and amber sky between them. Would you believe that you could ever walk amid those isles? You can on many a winter evening. I have done so a hundred times. The ice is a solid crystalline sky under our feet. 

Whatever aid is to be derived from the use of a scientific term, we can never begin to see anything as it is so long as we remember the scientific term which always our ignorance has imposed on it. Natural objects and phenomena are in this sense forever wild and unnamed by us. 

Thus the sky and the earth sympathize, and are subject to the same laws, and in the horizon they, as it were, meet and are seen to be one. 

I have walked in such a place and found it hard as marble. Not only the earth but the heavens are made our footstool.

That is what the phenomenon of ice means. The earth is annually inverted and we walk upon the sky. The ice reflects the blue of the sky. The waters become solid and make a sky below. The clouds grow heavy and fall to earth, and we walk on them. We live and walk on solidified fluids. 

We have such a habit of looking away that we see not what is around us. How few are aware that in winter, when the earth is covered with snow and ice, the phenomenon of the sunset sky is double! The one is on the earth around us, the other in the horizon. 

These snow-clad hills answer to the rosy isles in the west. The winter is coming when I shall walk the sky. The ice is a solid sky on which we walk. It is the inverted year. 

There is an annual light in the darkness of the winter night. The shadows are blue, as the sky is for ever blue. In winter we are purified and translated. The earth does not absorb our thoughts. It becomes a Valhalla. 

Next above Good Fishing Bay and where the man was drowned, I pass Black Rock Shore, and over the Deep Causeway I come to Drifted Meadow. 

North of the Warm Woodside (returning) is Bulrush Lagoon, — off Grindstone Meadow, — a good place for lilies; then Nut Meadow Mouth; Clamshell Bend, or Indian Bend; Sunset Reach, where the river flows nearly from west to east and is a fine sparkling scene from the hills eastward at sunset; then Hubbard's Bathing-Place, and the swift place, and Lily Bay, or Willow Bay.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 12, 1860

Above me is a cloudless blue sky; beneath, the sky-blue, sky-reflecting ice with patches of snow scattered over it like mackerel clouds See February 8, 1860 ("The ice is thus marked under my feet somewhat as the heavens overhead; there is both the mackerel sky and the fibrous flame or asbestos-like form in both.")

It is as if I saw a skunk or even a striped squirrel out. It is as if the woodchuck unrolled himself and snuffed the air to see if it were warm enough to be trusted. See Walden ("I am on the alert for the first signs of spring, to hear the chance note of some arriving bird, or the striped squirrel's chirp, for his stores must be now nearly exhausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters.")

Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green . . . See January 7, 1856 ("Returning, just before sunset, the few little patches of ice look green as I go from the sun (which is in clouds). It is probably a constant phenomenon in cold weather when the ground is covered with snow and the sun is low, morning or evening, and you are looking from it.")

On the east side of the pond, under the steep bank, I see a single lesser redpoll picking the seeds out of the alder catkins, and uttering a faint mewing note from time to time on account of me, only ten feet off. It has a crimson or purple front and breast. See March 5, 1853 ("They have a sharp bill, black legs and claws, and a bright-crimson crown or frontlet, in the male reaching to the base of the bill, with, in his case, a delicate rose or carmine on the breast and rump. [I]t has been the prevailing bird here this winter."); January 8, 1860 ("See a few on the top of a small black birch by the pond-shore, of course eating the seed. . . .When I heard their note, I looked to find them on a birch, and lo, it was a black birch!"); January 24, 1860 (" See a large flock of lesser redpolls, eating the seeds of the birch (and perhaps alder) in Dennis Swamp by railroad. . . . They alight on the birches, then swarm on the snow beneath, busily picking up the seed in the copse"); January 29, 1860 ("To-day I see quite a flock of the lesser redpolls eating the seeds of the alder, picking them out of the cones just as they do the larch, often head downward; and I see, under the alders, where they have run and picked up the fallen seeds, making chain-like tracks, two parallel lines. "); ; See also A Book of the Seasons, the Lesser Redpoll

Surrounded by our thoughts or imaginary objects, living in our ideas, not one in a million ever sees the objects which are actually around him. See Walking ("I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is, —I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the 'woods?") See also November 6, 1853 (“It is remarkable how little we attend to what is passing before us constantly, unless our genius directs our attention that way.”); November 3, 1861 ("All this is perfectly distinct to an observant eye, and yet could easily pass unnoticed by most.")

Whatever aid is to be derived from the use of a scientific term, we can never begin to see anything as it is so long as we remember the scientific term See January 15, 1853 ("Science suggests the value of mutual intelligence. I have long known this dust, but, as I did not know the name of it, i. e . what others called it, I therefore could not conveniently speak of it. . .") March 5, 1858 ("Our scientific names convey a very partial information only; they suggest certain thoughts only. It does not occur to me that there are other names for most of these objects, given by a people who stood between me and them, who had better senses than our race.")

The phenomenon of ice . . . We live and walk on solidified fluids. See January 31, 1859 ("Surely the ice is a great and absorbing phenomenon. Consider how much of the surface of the town it occupies, how much attention it monopolizes! We do not commonly distinguish more than one kind of water in the river, but what various kinds of ice there are!")

There is an annual light in the darkness of the winter night. The shadows are blue, as the sky is forever blue. See September 9, 1851 (" Even by night the sky is blue and not black, for we see through the veil of night into the distant atmosphere of day"); February 3. 1852 ("Is not the sky unusually blue to-night? dark blue? Is it not always bluer when the ground is covered with snow in the winter than in summer?"); February 4, 1852 ("The sky is the most glorious blue I ever beheld, even a light blue on some sides, as if I actually saw into day.); February 5, 1852 ("The sky last night was a deeper, more cerulean blue than the far lighter and whiter sky of to-day."). See also May 11, 1853 ("Blue is the color of the day, and the sky is blue by night as well as by day, because it knows no night."); January 21, 1853 ("The blueness of the sky at night — the color it wears by day — is an everlasting surprise to me, suggesting the constant presence and prevalence of light in the firmament, that we see through the veil of night to the constant blue, as by day.") and  Night and Moonlight (first published in the Atlantic Monthly, November 1863) ("Nevertheless, even by night the sky is blue and not black, for we see through the shadow of the earth into the distant atmosphere of day, where the sunbeams are reveling.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 12

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2023

Welcome the apple tree.

January 29

Colder than before, and not a cloud in the sky to-day. 

P. M. — To Fair Haven Pond and return via Andromeda Ponds and railroad.

Half an inch or more of snow fell last night, the ground being half bare before. It was a snow of small flakes not star-shaped. 

As usual, I now see, walking on the river and river-meadow ice, thus thinly covered with the fresh snow, that conical rainbow, or parabola of rainbow-colored reflections, from the myriad reflecting crystals of the snow, i. e., as I walk toward the sun, — always a little in advance of me, of course, angle of reflection being equal to that of incidence. 

The rainbow-colored
reflections from myriad
crystals of the snow.
January 29, 1860

To-day I see quite a flock of the lesser redpolls eating the seeds of the alder, picking them out of the cones just as they do the larch, often head downward; and I see, under the alders, where they have run and picked up the fallen seeds, making chain-like tracks, two parallel lines. 

Not only the Indian, but many wild birds and quadrupeds and insects, welcomed the apple tree to these shores. 

• As it grew apace, the bluebird, robin, cherry-bird, kingbird, and many more came with a rush and built their nests in it, and so became orchard-birds. 

• The woodpecker found such a savory morsel under its bark that he perforated it in a ring quite round the tree, a thing he had never done before.

•  It did not take the partridge long to find out how sweet its buds were, and every winter day she flew and still flies from the wood to pluck them, much to the farmer's sorrow. 

• The rabbit too was not slow to learn the taste of its twigs and bark.

•  The owl crept into the first one that became hollow, and fairly hooted with delight, finding it just the place for him. He settled down into it, and has remained there ever since.

•  The lackey caterpillar saddled her eggs on the very first twig that was formed, and it has since divided her affections with the wild cherry; and the canker-worm also in a measure abandoned the elm to feed on it.

•  And when the fruit was ripe, the squirrel half carried, half rolled, it to his hole, and even the musquash crept up the bank and greedily devoured it; and when it was frozen and thawed, the crow and jay did not disdain to peck it.

•  And the beautiful wood duck, having made up her mind to stay a while longer with us, has concluded that there is no better place for her too..

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 29, 1860 

It was a snow of small flakes not star-shaped. See  December 30, 1859 ("little slender spiculae about one tenth of an inch long, little dry splinters, sometimes two forking, united at one end, or two or three lying across one another, quite dry and fine "); Compare December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. . . . I remember the perfectly crystalline or star snows, when each flake is a perfect six (?)-rayed wheel. ");  ls with a centre disk, perfect geometrical figures in thin scales far more perfect than I can draw."); January 14, 1853 ("Examined closely, the flakes are beautifully regular six-rayed stars or wheels");   January 21, 1855 ("The snow is turning to rain through a fine hail.");. January 27, 1855 ("

Yesterday’s driving easterly snow-storm turned to sleet in the evening, and then to rain")

A parabola of rainbow-colored reflections, from the myriad reflecting crystals of the snow as I walk toward the sun. See December 6, 1858 ("Looking at a dripping tree between you and the sun, you may see here or there one or another rainbow color, a small brilliant point of light."); December 11, 1855 ("Great winter itself looked like a precious gem, reflecting rainbow colors from one angle");  January 12, 1860 ("Going from the sun, I see a myriad sparkling points scattered over its surface, — little mirror-like facets, . . .which has fallen in the proper position, reflecting an intensely bright little sun. Such is the glitter or sparkle on the surface of a snow freshly fallen when the sun comes out and you walk from it, the points of light constantly changing."); February 3, 1852 (“This snow . . . is two feet deep, pure and powdery. From a myriad little crystal mirrors the moon is reflected, which is the untarnished sparkle of its surface.”);  February 8, 1856 ("At this hour the crust sparkles with a myriad brilliant points or mirrors.");  February 13, 1859 ("A dry, powdery snow about one inch deep, from which, as I walk toward the sun, this perfectly clear, bright afternoon, at 3.30 o’clock, the colors of the rainbow are reflected from a myriad fine facets."). 

A flock of the lesser redpolls eating the seeds of the alder, picking them out of the cones just as they do the larch, often head downward; and I see chain-like tracks, two parallel lines. See March 5, 1853 (“They have a sharp bill, black legs and claws, and a bright-crimson crown or frontlet, in the male reaching to the base of the bill, with, in his case, a delicate rose or carmine on the breast and rump. Though this is described by Nuttall as an occasional visitor in the winter, it has been the prevailing bird here this winter. ”); January 19, 1855 ("At noon it is still a driving snow-storm, and a little flock of redpolls is busily picking the seeds of the pig weed in the garden. Almost all have more or less crimson; a few are very splendid, with their particularly bright crimson breasts. The white on the edge of their wing-coverts is very conspicuous"); December 11, 1855 ("Standing there, though in this bare November landscape, I am reminded of the incredible phenomenon of small birds in winter. ... There is no question about the existence of these delicate creatures, their adaptedness to their circumstances."); January 24, 1860 ("See a large flock of lesser redpolls, eating the seeds of the birch (and perhaps alder) in Dennis Swamp by railroad. . . .They alight on the birches, then swarm on the snow beneath, busily picking up the seed in the copse"); January 27, 1860 ("Half a dozen redpolls busily picking the seeds out of the larch cones behind Monroe's.");See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 29

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2023

What hieroglyphics in the winter sky!

January 27

2 p. m. — Up river to Fair Haven Pond, and return by Walden. 

Half a dozen redpolls busily picking the seeds out of the larch cones behind Monroe's. They are pretty twigs which are beaded with cones, and swing and teeter there while they perseveringly peck at them, trying now this one, now that, and sometimes appearing to pick out and swallow them quite fast. I notice no redness or carmine at first, but when the top of one's head comes between me and the sun it unexpectedly glows. 

Fair and hardly a cloud to be seen. Thermometer 28. (But it is overcast from the northwest before sun set.) 

After the January thaw we have more or less of crusted snow, i. e. more consolidated and crispy. When the thermometer is not above 32 this snow for the most part bears, — if not too deep. 

Now I see, as I am on the ice by Hubbard's meadow, some wisps of vapor in the west and southwest advancing. They are of a fine, white, thready grain, curved like skates at the end. Have we not more finely divided clouds in winter than in summer? flame-shaped, asbestos-like? I doubt if the clouds show as fine a grain in warm weather. They are wrung dry now. They are not expanded but contracted, like spicule? What hieroglyphics in the winter sky! 

Those wisps in the west advanced and increased like white flames with curving tongues, — like an aurora by day. Now I see a few hard and distinct ripple-marks at right angles with them, or parallel with the horizon, the lines indicating the ridges of the ripple-marks. These are like the abdominal plates of a snake. This occupies only a very small space in the sky. 

Looking right up overhead, I see some gauzy cloud-stuff there, so thin as to be grayish, — brain-like, finely reticulated; so thin yet so firmly drawn, membranous. These, methinks, are always seen overhead only. 

Now, underneath the flamy asbestos part, I detect an almost imperceptible rippling in a thin lower vapor, — an incipient mackerel-ling (in form). Now, nearly to the zenith, I see, not a mackerel sky, but blue and thin, blue-white, finely mixed, like fleece finely picked and even strewn over a blue ground. The white is in small roundish flocks. In a mackerel sky there is a parallelism of oblongish scales. This is so remote as to appear stationary, while a lower vapor is rapidly moving eastward. 

Such clouds as the above are the very thin advance-guard of the cloud behind. It soon comes on more densely from the northwest, and darkens all. 

No bright sunset to-night. What fine and pure reds we see in the sunset sky! Yet earth is not ransacked for dye-stuffs. It is all accomplished by the sunlight on vapor at the right angle, and the sunset sky is constant if you are at the right angle. The sunset sky is sometimes more northerly, sometimes more southerly. 

I saw one the other day occupying only the south horizon, but very fine, and reaching more than half-way to the zenith from west to east. This may either be for want of clouds or from excess of them on certain sides. 

As I go along the edge of Hubbard's Wood, on the ice, it is very warm in the sun — and calm there. There are certain spots I could name, by hill and wood sides, which are always thus sunny and warm in fair weather, and have been, for aught I know, since the world was made. What a distinction they enjoy! 

How many memorable localities in a river walk ! Here is the warm wood-side; next, the good fishing bay; and next, where the old settler was drowned when crossing on the ice a hundred years ago. It is all storied. 

I occasionally hear a musquash plunge under the ice next the shore. 

These winter days I occasionally hear the note of a goldfinch, or maybe a redpoll, unseen, passing high overhead. 

When you think that your walk is profitless and a failure, and you can hardly persuade yourself not to return, it is on the point of being a success, for then you are in that subdued and knocking mood to which Nature never fails to open.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 27, 1860

Half a dozen redpolls busily picking the seeds out of the larch cones behind Monroe's. See January 24, 1860 ("See a large flock of lesser redpolls, eating the seeds of the birch (and perhaps alder) in Dennis Swamp by railroad . . .They alight on the birches, then swarm on the snow beneath, busily picking up the seed in the copse"); January 29, 1860 ("To-day I see quite a flock of the lesser redpolls eating the seeds of the alder, picking them out of the cones just as they do the larch, often head downward; and I see, under the alders, where they have run and picked up the fallen seeds, making chain-like tracks, two parallel lines.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

There are certain spots I could name, by hill and wood sides, which are always thus sunny and warm in fair weather, and have been, for aught I know, since the world was made. See October 26, 1852 ("At this season we seek warm sunny lees and hillsides, as that under the pitch pines by Walden shore, where we cuddle and warm ourselves in the sun as by a fire, where we may get some of its reflected as well as direct heat.”); November 11, 1858 ("Now seek sunny and sheltered places as in early spring, the south side the island, for example. Certain localities are thus distinguished. And they retain this peculiarity permanently, unless it depends on a wood which may be cut. Thousands of years hence this may still be the warmest and sunniest spot in the spring and fall.")

These winter days I occasionally hear the note of a goldfinch, or maybe a redpoll, unseen, passing high overhead. See January 20, 1857 ("Heard, in the Dennis swamp by the railroad this afternoon, the peculiar goldfinch-like mew — also like some canaries — of, I think, the lesser redpoll (?)."); January 8, 1860 ("Hear the goldfinch notes (they may be linarias), and see a few on the top of a small black birch by the pond-shore, of course eating the seed. Thus they distinguish its fruit from afar. When I heard their note, I looked to find them on a birch, and lo, it was a black birch! [Were they not linarias? ]"); January 24, 1860 ("[Redpolls] are distinct enough from the goldfinch, their note more shelly and general as they fly, and they are whiter, without the black wings, beside that some have the crimson head or head and breast.")

When you can hardly persuade yourself not to return, [your walk ] is on the point of being a success, for then you are in that subdued and knocking mood to which Nature never fails to open. See January 27, 1858  ("You can not go home yet; you stay and sit in the rain."); See also May 23, 1853 ("When the chaste and pensive eve draws on...a certain lateness ... releases me from the obligation to return in any particular season. I have passed the Rubicon of staying out. I have said to myself, that way is not homeward; I will wander further from what I have called my home — to the home which is forever inviting me. In such an hour the freedom of the woods is offered me."); June 14, 1853 ("This seems the true hour to be abroad sauntering far from home. Your thoughts being already turned toward home, your walk in one sense ended, you are in that favorable frame of mind . . . open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before. Then . . . home is farther away than ever. Here is home"); June 13, 1854 ("When I have stayed out thus late many miles from home . . . I have felt that I was not far from home after all."); April 16, 1855 ('We are glad that we stayed out so late and feel no need to go home now in a hurry");  January 7, 1857 ("But alone in distant woods or fields, . . . even in a bleak and, to most, cheerless day, like this,. . . I come to myself, I once more feel myself grandly related, and that cold and solitude are friends of mine")

January 27.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  January 27

When you can't persuade 

yourself not to return – then 

your moment arrives.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, What hieroglyphics in the winter sky! 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau 

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-600127

"And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land."

January 24

bobcat, January 24,2020

2 p. m. — To Tarbell, river, via railroad. 

Thermometer 46. Sky thinly overcast, growing thicker at last as if it would rain. Wind northwest. 

See a large flock of lesser redpolls, eating the seeds of the birch (and perhaps alder) in Dennis Swamp by railroad. They are distinct enough from the goldfinch, their note more shelly and general as they fly, and they are whiter, without the black wings, beside that some have the crimson head or head and breast. They alight on the birches, then swarm on the snow beneath, busily picking up the seed in the copse. 

The Assabet is open above Derby's Bridge as far as I go or see, probably to the factory, and I know not how far below Derby's. It opens up here sooner than below the Assabet Bath to its mouth. 

The blue vervain stands stiffly and abundant in one place, with much rather large brown seed in it. It is in good condition. 

Scare a shrike from an apple tree. He flies low over the meadow, somewhat like a woodpecker, and alights near the top twig of another apple tree. 

See a hawk sail over meadow and woods; not a hen-hawk; possibly a marsh hawk. 

A grasshopper on the snow. 

The droppings of a skunk left on a rock, perhaps at the beginning of winter, were full of grasshoppers' legs. 

As I stand at the south end of J. P. B.'s moraine, I watch six tree sparrows, which come from the wood and alight and feed on the ground, which is there bare. They are only two or three rods from me, and are incessantly picking and eating an abundance of the fine grass (short-cropped pasture grass) on that knoll, as a hen or goose does. I see the stubble an inch or two long in their bills, and how they stuff it down. Perhaps they select chiefly the green parts. So they vary their fare and there is no danger of their starving. 

These six hopped round for five minutes over a space a rod square before I put them to flight, and then I noticed, in a space only some four feet square in that rod, at least eighteen droppings (white at one end, the rest more slate-colored). So wonderfully active are they in their movements, both external and internal. They do not suffer for want of a good digestion, surely. No doubt they eat some earth or gravel too. So do partridges eat a great deal. 

These birds, though they have bright brown and buff backs, hop about amid the little inequalities of the pasture almost unnoticed, such is their color and so humble are they. 

Solomon thus describes the return of Spring (Song of Solomon, ii, 10-12) : — 

"Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.

"For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;

"The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land."

JANUARY 24, 2020

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 24, 1860

See a large flock of lesser redpolls, eating the seeds of the birch (and perhaps alder) in Dennis Swamp by railroad. See January 20, 1857 ("Heard, in the Dennis swamp by the railroad this afternoon, the peculiar goldfinch-like mew — also like some canaries — of, I think, the lesser redpoll (?). Saw several. Heard the same a week or more ago. "); January 8, 1860 ("Hear the goldfinch notes (they may be linarias), and see a few on the top of a small black birch by the pond-shore, of course eating the seed. Thus they distinguish its fruit from afar. When I heard their note, I looked to find them on a birch, and lo, it was a black birch! [Were they not linarias? Vide Jan. 24]")

A grasshopper on the snow. See January 24, 1859 ("I also see a great many of those little brown grasshoppers and one perfectly green one, some of them frozen in")

The droppings of a skunk left on a rock, perhaps at the beginning of winter, were full of grasshoppers' legs. See February 24, 1854 "The other day I thought that I smelled a fox very strongly, and went a little further and found that it was a skunk.”);February 24, 1857 ("I have seen the probings of skunks for a week or more. “); February 26, 1860 ("They appear to come out commonly in the warmer weather in the latter part of February.”)

Six tree sparrows come from the wood and alight and feed on the ground. See  January 16, 1860 ("I see a flock of tree sparrows busily picking something from the surface of the snow amid some bushes. . . . the tree sparrow comes from the north in the winter . . . The bird understands how to get its dinner perfectly.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  "And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land."

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau 

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

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

It is wonderful what gradation and harmony there is in nature

November 13. 

8.30 A. M. — To Hill. 

I notice of late the darker green (livid ?) of the arbor vitae and other evergreens, the effect of cold. So they are never so purely bright a green as immediately after their fall. They are not perfectly ever-green. 

I hear go over, not far from the house, goldfinches, as I think, — their mewing note and ricochet flight, -— I think not redpolls, for I hear no rattling notes. Also hear a robin’s note. 

Last night was quite cold, and the ground is white with frost. Thus gradually, but steadily, winter approaches. First there is the bleached grass, then the frost, then snow, the fields growing more and more hoary. There is frost not only on all the withered grass and stubble, but it is particularly thick and white and handsome around the throat of every hole and chink in the earth’s surface, the congealed breath of the earth as it were, so that you would think at first it was the entry to some woodchuck’s, or squirrel’s, or mouse’s, retreat. But it is the great dormant earth gone into winter quarters here, the earth letting off steam after the summer’s work is over. 

As I stand on the hill at 9 A. M., it looks like snow; the sky is overcast; smokes go up thickly from the village, answering to the frost in the chinks; and there is a remarkable stillness, as if it were earlier, the effect of the colder weather merely, as it were stiffening things. Leaves, twigs, birds (except the chickadee, and its feeble note seems to enhance the stillness), and insects are hushed. The few tinkling sounds — the chopping, or the like — are heard far and distinctly. It is like the calm before a hurricane or an earthquake, this stillness which precedes the winter’s setting in. 


Larches now look dark or brownish yellow. Now, on the advent of much colder weather, the last Populus tremuliformis has lost its leaves, the sheltered dogwood is withered, and even the scarlet oak may be considered as extinguished, and the larch looks brown and nearly bare, and the few leaves left here and there on the indigenous shrubs named on the 9th are being rapidly killed by the same cause, and are falling. 

Now for twinkling light reflected from unseen windows in the horizon in the early twilight. 

One hickory at least (on the hill) has not lost its leaves yet, i. e., has a good many left. So they are a month falling. 

I see some feathers of a blue jay scattered along a wood-path, and at length come to the body of the bird. What a neat and delicately ornamented creature, finer than any work of art in a lady’s boudoir, with its soft light purplish-blue crest and its dark-blue or purplish secondaries (the narrow half) finely barred with dusky. It is the more glorious to live in Concord because the jay is so splendidly painted.

A large flock of geese go over just before night. 

After expecting snow all day, —'though we did not know but it would prove rain,—we looked out the window at 9 P. M. and saw the ground for the most part white with the first sugaring, which at first we could hardly tell from a mild moonlight, — only there was no moon. Thus it comes stealthily in the night and changes the whole aspect of the earth. 

Of course frozen ground, ice, and snow have now banished the few remaining skaters (if there were any ?), crickets, and water-bugs. 

It is wonderful what gradation and harmony there is in nature. The light reflected from bare twigs at this season — i. e., since they began to be bare, in the latter part of October — is not only like that from gossamer, but like that which will ere long be reflected from the ice that will incrust them. So the bleached herbage of the fields is like frost, and frost like snow, and one prepares for the other.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 13, 1858

I think not redpolls, for I hear no rattling notes. See November 13, 1852 ("When startled, they went off with a jingling sound somewhat like emptying a bag of coin. Is it the yellow redpoll?"); September 19, 1854 ("Did I see a returned yellow redpoll fly by? "); November 21, 1852 ("The commonest bird I see and hear nowadays is that little red crowned or fronted bird I described the 13th. I hear now more music from them. They have a mewing note which reminds me of a canary-bird. They make very good forerunners of winter. Is it not the {lesser redpoll}?”); December 11, 1855 ("Standing there, though in this bare November landscape, I am reminded of the incredible phenomenon of small birds in winter. ... The age of miracles is each moment thus returned. Now it is wild apples, now river reflections, now a flock of lesser redpolls.")


Now, on the advent of much colder weather, the last Populus tremuliformis has lost its leaves. See October 25, 1858 ("Aspens (tremuliformis) generally bare"); October 29, 1858 ("Am surprised to see, by the path to Baker Farm, a very tall and slender large Populus tremuliformis still thickly clothed with leaves which are merely yellowish greén."); November 10, 1853 ("There are still a few leaves on the large Populus tremuliformis, but they will be all gone in a day or two. They have turned quite yellow.")

Now for twinkling light reflected from unseen windows in the horizon in the early twilight. See November 17, 1858 ("The setting sun, too, is reflected from windows more brightly than at any other season. “November Lights" would be a theme for me. “)

A large flock of geese go over just before night. See November 8 , 1857 ("About 10 A.M. a long flock of geese are going over from northeast to southwest"); November 13, 1855 ("Seventy or eighty geese, in three harrows successively smaller, flying southwest—pretty well west—over the house. A completely overcast, occasionally drizzling forenoon. "); November 14, 1858 ('The principal flight of geese was November 8th, so that the bulk of them preceded this cold turn five days.") ; November 18, 1854 ("Sixty geese go over the Great Fields, in one waving line, broken from time to time by their crowding on each other and vainly endeavoring to form into a harrow, honking all the while.”); November 30, 1857 (“You first hear a faint honking from one or two in the northeast and think there are but few wandering there, but, looking up, see forty or fifty coming on in a more or less broken harrow, wedging their way southwest. . . . According to my calculation a thousand or fifteen hundred may have gone over Concord to-day. When they fly low and near, they look very black against the sky.”)

It is wonderful what gradation and harmony there is in nature. See Walden ("Nature has woven a natural selvage, and the eye rises by just gradations from the low shrubs of the shore to the highest trees. There are few traces of man's hand to be seen. The water laves the shore as it did a thousand years ago. A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature."): January 26, 1858 (" Nature loves gradation")