Snipes’ peculiar zigzag manner, rambling about high over the meadow.

April 25

P. M. —To Hill by boat. 

Sweet-gale is out in some parts of the Island birch meadow, next the Indian field, probably several days, at least in some places. 

Larch not yet sheds pollen. 

The toads have begun fairly to ring at noonday in amid the birches to hear them. The wind is pretty strong and easterly. There are many, probably squatted about the edge of the falling water, in Merrick’s pasture. (The river began to fall again, I think, day before yesterday.) It is a low, terrene sound, the undertone of the breeze. Now it sounds low and indefinitely far, now rises, as if by general consent, to a higher key, as if in another and nearer quarter, — a singular alternation.

The now universal hard metallic ring of toads blended and partially drowned by the rippling wind. The voice of the toad, the herald of warmer weather. 

The cinquefoil well out. I see two or three on the hemlock dry plain, — probably a day or two. 

I observe a male grackle with a brownish head and the small female on one tree, red-wings on another.

Return over the top of the hill against the wind. The Great Meadows now, at 3.30 P. M., agitated by the strong easterly wind this clear day, when I look against the wind with the sun behind me, look particularly dark blue. 

Aspen bark peels; how long? 

I landed on Merrick’s pasture near the rock, and when I stepped out of the boat and drew it up, a snipe flew up, and lit again seven or eight rods off. After trying in vain for several minutes to see it on the ground there, I advanced a step and, to my surprise, scared up two more, which had squatted on the bare meadow all the while within a rod, while I drew up my boat and made a good deal of noise. In short, I scared up twelve, one or two at a time, within a few rods, which were feeding on the edge of the meadow just laid bare, each rising with a sound like squeak squeak, hoarsely. That part of the meadow seemed all alive with them. 

It is almost impossible to see one on the meadow, they squat and run so low, and are so completely the color of the ground. They rise from within a rod, fly, half a dozen rods, and then drop down on the bare open meadow before your eyes, where there seems not stubble enough to conceal, and are at once lost as completely as if they had sunk into the earth. I observed that some, when finally scared from this island, flew off rising quite high, one a few rods behind the other, in their peculiar zigzag manner, rambling about high over the meadow, making it uncertain where they would settle, till at length I lost sight of one and saw the other drop down almost perpendicularly into the meadow, as it appeared. 


Warren Miles had caught three more snapping turtles since yesterday, at his mill, one middling—sized one and two smaller. He said they could come down through his mill without hurt. Were they all bound down the brook to the river? I brought home one of the small ones. It was seven and one eighth inches long. Put it in a firkin for the night, but it got out without upsetting it. It had four points on each side behind, and when I put it in the river I noticed half a dozen points or projections on as many of its rear plates, in keeping with the crest of its tail. It buried itself in the grassy bottom within a few feet of the shore. Moves off very flat on the bottom. These turtles have been disturbed or revealed by his operations.

Anne Kamey, our neighbor, looking over her garden yesterday with my father, saw what she said was shamrock, which the Irish wear on their caps on St. Patrick’s Day, the first she had ever seen in this country. My father pointed it out in his own garden to the Irish man who was working for him, and he was glad to see it, for he had had a dispute with another Irishman as to whether it grew in this country and now he could convince him, and he put it in his pocket. 

I saw it afterward and pronounced it common white clover, and, looking into Webster’s Dictionary, I read, under Shamrock: “The Irish name for a three-leafed plant, the Oxalis Acetosella, or common wood-sorrel. It has been often supposed to be the Trifolium repens, white trefoil or white clover.” This was very satisfactory, though perhaps Webster’s last sentence should have been, The Trifolium repens has often been mistaken for it. 

At evening see a spearer’s light.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 25, 1856

Sweet-gale is out in some parts of the Island birch meadow. See April 22, 1855 ("The blossoms of the sweet-gale are now on fire over the brooks, contorted like caterpillars"). April 30, 1852 ("The sweet gale is in blossom.  Its rich reddish-brown buds have expanded into yellowish and brown blossoms, all male blossoms that I see . . . The female plants of the sweet-gale are rare (?) here."); See also April 13, 1860 ("II go up the Assabet to look at the sweet-gale . . . it distinctly occurred to me that, perhaps, if I came against my will, as it were, to look at the sweet-gale as a matter of business, I might discover something else interesting.")

Larch not yet sheds pollen. See April 22, 1856 ("Monroe’s larches by river will apparently shed pollen soon. "); April 24, 1854 ("The larch will apparently blossom in one or two days at least, both its low and broad purple-coned male flowers and its purple-tipped female cones."); April 26, 1856 ("Monroe’s larch will [shed pollen], apparently, by day after to-morrow. ");  April 27, 1856 (" I find none of Monroe’s larch buds shedding pollen, but the anthers look crimson and yellow, and the female flowers are now fully expanded and very pretty, but small. I think it will first scatter pollen to-morrow."); April 29, 1856 ("J Monroe’s larch staminate buds have now erected and separated their anthers, and they look somewhat withered, as if they had shed a part of their pollen. If so, they began yesterday. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Larch in Spring

The toads have begun fairly to ring at noonday . . . It is a low, terrene sound, the undertone of the breeze. See April 25, 1859 ("Methinks I hear through the wind to-day — and it was the same yesterday — a very faint, low ringing of toads. . . an indistinct undertone, and I am far from sure that I hear anything. It may be all imagination.") See alss A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Ring of Toads

The Great Meadows now, at 3.30 P. M., agitated by the strong easterly wind this clear day, when I look against the wind with the sun behind me, look particularly dark blue. See April 9, 1856  ("The water on the meadows now, looking with the sun, is a far deeper and more exciting blue than the heavens. ");April 9, 1859 ("For three weeks past, when I have looked northward toward the flooded meadows they have looked dark-blue or blackish.") 

Snipes’ peculiar zigzag manner. See April 18, 1854 ("They circle round and round, and zig zag high over the meadow, and finally alight again, descending abruptly from that height.”) See also  April 25, 1854 ("I hear now snipes far over the meadow incessantly at 3.15 p. m."); April 25, 1859 ("The snipe have hovered commonly this spring an hour or two before sunset and also in the morning.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau: the Snipe

At evening see a spearer’s light. See April 25, 1855 ("A spearers’ fire seems three times as far off as it is. ")

Snipe rise, fly, and then

drop down on the bare meadow

completely concealed.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snipes’ peculiar zigzag manner

 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-560425 

On the rock this side the Leaning Hemlocks

March 6, 2016

March 6.

P. M. — Up Assabet.

The snow is softening. Methinks the lichens are a little greener for it. 

A thaw comes, and then the birches, which were gray on their white ground before, appear prettily clothed in green. 

I see various kinds of insects out on the snow now. 

On the rock this side the Leaning Hemlocks, is the track of an otter. He has left some scentless jelly-like substance an inch and a half in diameter there, yellowish beneath, maybe part of a fish, or clam(?), or himself. 

The leaves still hanging on some perhaps young swamp white oaks are re markably fresh, almost ochre-colored brown. 

See the snow discolored yellowish under a (probably) gray squirrel’s nest high in a pitch pine, and acorn shells about on it. 

Also a squirrel’s track on the snow over Lee’s Hill. The outside toe on the forefeet is nearly at right angles with the others. This also distinguishes it from a rabbit’s track. It visits each apple tree, digs up frozen apples and sometimes filberts, and when it starts again, aims for an apple tree, though fifteen rods distant. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 6, 1856

Methinks the lichens are a little greener. See January 9, 1858 ("This moist snow has affected the yellow sulphur parmelias and others. They have all got a green hue."); March 3, 1857 ("You can trace the course of this trickling stream . . .by the olive-green of the lichens alone . . . the same moisture refreshes and brightens up the scarlet crowns of some little cockscomb lichen"); March 5, 1852 ("I find myself inspecting little granules, as it were, on the bark of trees, little shields or apothecia springing from a thallus, such is the mood of my mind, and I call it studying lichens.") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Lichens and the lichenst

I see various kinds of insects out on the snow now. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: insects and worms come forth and are active

On the rock this side the Leaning Hemlocks, is the track of an otter. March 6, 1852 ("See the track of an otter near the Clamshell Hill, for it looks too large for a mink, — nearly an inch and a half in diameter and nearly round. Occasionally it looked as if a rail had been drawn along through the thin snow over the ice, with faint footprints at long intervals. I saw where he came out of a hole in the ice, and tracked him forty rods, to where he went into an other. Saw where he appeared to have been sliding. "); See also December 6, 1856 (“Just this side of Bittern Cliff, I see a very remarkable track of an otter . . .The river was all tracked up with otters, from Bittern Cliff upward. Sometimes one had trailed his tail, apparently edge wise, making a mark like the tail of a deer mouse; sometimes they were moving fast, and there was an interval of five feet between the tracks.”); December 31, 1854 (“ On the edge of A. Wheeler’s cranberry meadow I see the track of an otter made since yesterday morning.”); January 21, 1853 (“I think it was January 20th that I saw that which I think an otter track in path under the Cliffs, — a deep trail in the snow, six or seven inches wide and two or three deep in the middle, as if a log had been drawn along, similar to a muskrat's only much larger, and the legs evidently short and the steps short, sinking three or four inches deeper still, as if it had waddled along.”); February 4, 1855 ("See this afternoon a very distinct otter-track by the Rock, at the junction of the two rivers.”); February 8, 1857 (“The otter must roam about a great deal, for I rarely see fresh tracks in the same neighborhood a second time the same winter, though the old tracks may be apparent all the winter through.”);  February 20, 1856 (“See a broad and distinct otter-trail, made last night or yesterday. It came out to the river through the low declivities, making a uniform broad hollow trail there without any mark of its feet. . . .Commonly seven to nine or ten inches wide, and tracks of feet twenty to twenty-four apart; but sometimes there was no track of the feet for twenty-five feet, frequently for six; in the last case swelled in the outline.”); February 22, 1856 (“Just below this bridge begins an otter track, several days old yet very distinct, which I trace half a mile down the river. In the snow less than an inch deep, on the ice, each foot makes a track three inches wide, apparently enlarged in melting. The clear interval, sixteen inches; the length occupied by the four feet, fourteen inches. It looks as if some one had dragged a round timber down the middle of the river a day or two since, which bounced as it went.”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Otter

A squirrel’s track on the snow . . . The outside toe on the forefeet is nearly at right angles with the others. This also distinguishes it from a rabbit’s track. See January 24, 1856 ("I see squirrel-tracks. . . much like rabbits, only the toes, are very distinct.") See also January 5, 1853 ("Two of the tracks, when they are running, apparently, the two foremost, are wider apart; and perhaps with one pair they often make five marks, with the other four.")

The brittle light-brown twigs of the black willow

November 11

P.M. — Up Assabet. 

As long as the sun is out, it is warm and pleasant.

The water is smooth. I see the reflections, not only of the wool-grass, but the bare button-bush, with its brown balls beginning to crumble and show the lighter inside, and the brittle light-brown twigs of the black willow, and the coarse rustling sedge, now completely withered (and hear it pleasantly whispering), and the brown and yellowish sparganium blades curving over like well-tempered steel, and the gray cottony mikania. 

The bricks of which the muskrat builds his house are little masses or wads of the dead weedy rubbish on the muddy bottom, which it probably takes up with its mouth. It consists of various kinds of weeds, now agglutinated together by the slime and dried confervae threads, utricularia, hornwort, etc., — a streaming, tuft-like wad. 

The building of these cabins appears to be coincident with the commencement of their clam diet, for now their vegetable food, excepting roots, is cut off. I see many small collections of shells already left along the river’s brink. Thither they resort with their clam to open and eat it. 

But if it is the edge of a meadow which is being overflowed, they must raise it and make a permanent dry stool there, for they cannot afford to swim far with each clam. I see where one has left half a peek of shells on perhaps the foundation of an old stool or a harder clod, which the water is just about to cover, and he has begun his stool by laying two or three fresh wads upon the shells, the foundation of his house. 

Thus their cabin is first apparently intended merely for a stool, and afterward, when it is large, is perforated as if it were the bank! 

There is no cabin for a long way above the Hemlocks, where there is no low meadow bordering the stream. The clamshells freshly opened are handsomest this month (or rather are most observable, before the ice and snow conceal them) and in the spring. 

November 11, 2025

I am surprised to see quite a number of painted tortoises out on logs and stones and to hear the wood tortoise rustling down the bank. 

Frogs are rare and sluggish, as if going into winter quarters. A cricket also sounds rather rare and distinct. 

At the Hemlocks I see a narrow reddish line of hemlock leaves and, half an inch below, a white line of saw dust, eight inches above the present surface, on the upright side of a rock, both mathematically level. This chronicles the hemlock fall, which I had not noticed, we have so few trees, and also the river’s rise. 

The North Branch must have risen suddenly before the South, for I see much pail-stuff from the Fort Pond Brook, which has been carried eighteen rods up the latter stream above the Rock, or as far as it extends immediately due west there. 

By “pail-stuff ” I mean the curved and grooved pieces which form the sides and the flat ones for the bottom and their trimmings. 

High blueberry leaves still conspicuous bright scarlet; also duller and darker green-briar leaves hold on on the Island. 

I hear gray squirrels coursing about on the dry leaves, pursuing one another, and now they come in sight, coursing from pine to pine on their winding way, on their unweariable legs, on their undulating and winding course. It is a motion intermediate between running and flying. 

I hear but a tree sparrow and a chickadee this voyage.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 11, 1855

The brittle light-brown twigs of the black willow. See June 8, 1856 ("Some species are so brittle at the base of the twigs that they break on the least touch, and these twigs are only thus shed like seeds which float away and plant themselves in the first bank on which they lodge.")

The building of these cabins appears to be coincident with the commencement of their clam diet. See note to November 5, 1853 ("What exactly are they for? . . . so that they may not have to swim so far as the flood would require in order to eat their clams[?]")

At the Hemlocks I see a narrow reddish line of hemlock leaves and, half an inch below, a white line of saw dust, on the upright side of a rock, both mathematically level. See April 1, 1859 ("The river being so low, we see lines of sawdust perfectly level and parallel to one another on the side of the steep dark bank at the Hemlocks. . .”) See also November 23, 1853 ("What an engineer this water is! It comes with its unerring level . . . an obvious piece of geometry in nature.")

This chronicles the hemlock fall, which I had not noticed. See October 8, 1857 (“Hemlock leaves are copiously falling. They cover the hillside like some wild grain.”); October 13, 1859 ("The hemlock seed is now in the midst of its fall, some of it, with the leaves, floating on the river."); October 15, 1856 ("A great part of the hemlock seeds fallen."); October 16, 1857 (“Hemlock leaves are falling now faster than ever, and the trees are more parti-colored. The falling leaves look pale-yellow on the trees, but become reddish on the ground.”);  October 28, 1858 (The hemlock is in the midst of its fall, and the leaves strew the ground like grain."); October 31, 1853 ("The hemlock seeds are apparently ready to drop from their cones.”)

And the coarse rustling 

sedge now completely withered 

pleasantly whispers.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  

The brittle light-brown twigs of the black willow

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

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

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

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-551111

 

It is a dark, almost rainy day; the winter is approaching.

November 4

November 4, 2015

To Hill by Assabet. 

This forenoon the boys found a little black kitten about a third grown on the Island or Rock, but could not catch it. We supposed that some one had cast it in to drown it. 

This afternoon, as I was paddle by the Island, I see what I think a duck swimming down the river diagonally, to the south shore just below the grassy island, opposite the rock; then I think it two ducks, then a muskrat. It passes out of sight round a bend. 

I land and walk alongshore, and find that it is a kitten, which had just got ashore. It is quite wet excepting its back. It swam quite rapidly, the whole length of its back out, but was carried down about as fast by the stream. 

It had probably first crossed from the rock to the grassy island, and then from the lower end of this to the town side of the stream, on which side it may have been attracted by the noise of the town. 

It is rather weak and staggers as it runs, from starvation or cold, being wet, or both. A very pretty little black kitten. 

It is a dark, almost rainy day. Though the river appears to have risen considerably, it is not more than nine or ten inches above the lowest summer level, as I see by the bridge. Yet it brings along a little drift wood. 

Whatever rails or boards have been left by the water’s edge the river silently takes up and carries away. Much small stuff from the pail-factory. 

The winter is approaching. The birds are almost all gone. The note of the dee de de sounds now more distinct, prophetic of winter, as I go amid the wild apples on Nawshawtuct. 

The autumnal dandelion sheltered by this apple-tree trunk is drooping and half closed and shows but half its yellow, this dark, late wet day in the fall.

Gather a bag of wild apples. A great part are decayed now on the ground. The snail slug is still eating them. Some have very fiery crimson spots or eyes on a very white ground. 

From my experience with wild apples I can understand that there may be a reason for a savage preferring many kinds of food which the civilized man rejects. The former has the palate of an outdoor man. It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild apple.

I remember two old maids to whose house I enjoyed carrying a purchaser to talk about buying their farm in the winter, because they offered us wild apples, though with an unnecessary apology for their wildness.

Return, and go up the main stream.

Larches are now quite yellow, — in the midst of their fall. The river-brink — at a little distance at least — is now all sere and rustling, except a few yellowed sallow leaves, - though beyond in the meadows there is some fresh greenness. 

Cattle seem to stray wider for food than they did. They are turned into the meadows now, where is all the greenness. New fences are erected to take advantage of all the fall feed. 

But the rank herbage of the river’s brink is more tender and has fallen before the frosts. Many new muskrat-houses have been erected this wet weather, and much gnawed root is floating. 

When I look away to the woods, the oaks have a dull, dark red now, without brightness. The willow-tops on causeways have a pale, bleached, silvery, or wool-grass-like look.   

See some large flocks of F. hyemalis, which fly with a clear but faint chinking chirp, and from time to time you hear quite a strain, half warbled, from them. They rise in a body from the ground and fly to the trees as you approach. There are a few tree sparrows with them. These and one small soaring hawk are all the birds I see. 

I have failed to find white pine seed this year, though I began to look for it a month ago. The cones were fallen and open. Look the first of September. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 4, 1855

The winter is approaching. The birds are almost all gone. The note of the dee de de sounds now more distinct, prophetic of winter . See   November 4, 1851(“[These little cheerful hemlocks] remind me of winter, the snows which are to come . . .and the chickadees that are to flit and lisp amid them.”) See also  October 6, 1856 ("The common notes of the chickadee, so rarely heard for a long time, and also one phebe strain from it, amid the Leaning Hemlocks, remind me of pleasant winter days, when they are more commonly seen. “);October 11, 1851( The chickadee, sounding all alone, now that birds are getting scarce, reminds me of the winter, in which it almost alone is heard.”); October 13, 1860 ("Now, as soon as the frost strips the maples, and their leaves strew the swamp floor and conceal the pools, the note of the chickadee sounds cheerfully winterish.”); October 15, 1856  (“The chickadees . . .resume their winter ways before the winter comes.”);; November 26, 1859 (“The chickadee is the bird of the wood the most unfailing. When, in a windy, or in any, day, you have penetrated some thick wood like this, you are pretty sure to hear its cheery note therein. At this season it is almost their sole inhabitant.”); March 1, 1856 ("I hear several times the fine-drawn phe-be note of the chickadee, which I heard only once during the winter. Singular that I should hear this on the first spring day.”)

It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild apple. See October 27, 1855 ("It is remarkable that the wild apples which I praise as so spirited and racy when eaten in the fields and woods, when brought into the house have a harsh and crabbed taste. To appreciate their wild and sharp flavors, it seems necessary that you be breathing the sharp October or November air ")

Larches are now quite yellow, — in the midst of their fall. See November 1, 1858 (" These trees now cannot easily be mistaken for any other, because they are the only conspicuously yellow trees now left in the woods"); . November 9, 1850 ("The leaves of the larch are now yellow and falling off") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Larch

Cattle . . . are turned into the meadows now, where is all the greenness. See November 3, 1858 ("I notice that the cows lately admitted to the meadows and orchards have browsed the grass, etc., closely, on that strip between the dry hillside and the wet meadow, where it is undoubtedly sweetest and freshest yet, and where it chances that this late flower the gentian grows. There, too, grows the herbage which is now the most grateful to the cattle.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Cows in their Pasture

Many new muskrat-houses have been erected this wet weather, and much gnawed root is floating.  See October 16, 1859 ("I see the new musquash-houses erected, conspicuous on the now nearly leafless shores. To me this is an important and suggestive sight  . . . For thirty years I have annually observed, about this time or earlier, the freshly erected winter lodges of the musquash along the riverside ");  November 11, 1855 ("The building of these cabins appears to be coincident with the commencement of their clam diet, for now their vegetable food, excepting roots, is cut off") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

See some large flocks of F. hyemalis . . . They rise in a body from the ground and fly to the trees as you approach.  See  October 25, 1858 ("The F. hyemalis, which has been here for a month, flits away with its sharp twitter amid the falling leaves. This is a fall sound."); October 26, 1857 ("You wonder if they know whither they are bound, and how their leader is appointed. "); November 6, 1853 ("These little sparrows with white in tail, perhaps the prevailing bird of late, have flitted before me so many falls and springs, yet they have been strangers to me. I have not inquired whence they came or whither they were going, ") See also A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis)

I have failed to find white pine seed this year. . . Look the first of September. See October 15, 1855 ("Go to look for white pine cones, but see none."); October 19, 1855 ("I see at last a few white pine cones open on the trees, but almost all appear to have fallen."); See also October 8, 1856 ("At length I discover some white pine cones, a few . . . are all open, and the seeds, all the sound ones but one, gone. So September is the time to gather them.")

Amid wild apples

the note of the dee de de

sounds now more distinct.

A hundred crows in a great rambling flock.

Fresh election-cake with peppered surface

October 29.

Carried my owl to the hill again. Had to shake him out of the box, for he did not go of his own accord. There he stood on the grass, at first bewildered, with his horns pricked up and looking toward me. In this strong light the pupils of his eyes suddenly. contracted and the iris expanded till they were two great brazen orbs with a centre spot merely. His attitude expressed astonishment more than anything. I was obliged to toss him up a little that he might feel his wings, and then he flapped away low and heavily to a hickory on the hillside twenty rods off. ...

I see many aphides very thick and long-tailed on the alders. 

Soapwort gentian and pasture thistle still. 

There are many fresh election-cake toadstools amid the pitch pines there, and also very regular higher hemispherical ones with a regularly warted or peppered surface.

As I pass Merrick’s pasture, I see and count about a hundred crows advancing in a great rambling flock from the southeast and crossing the river on high, and cawing.

When the leaves fall, the whole earth is a cemetery pleasant to walk in. I love to wander and muse over them in their graves, returning to dust again. Here are no lying nor vain epitaphs. The scent of their decay is pleasant to me. 

I buy no lot in the cemetery which my townsmen have just consecrated with a poem and an auction, paying so much for a choice. Here is room enough for me.

The swamp white oak has a fine, firm, leathery leaf with a silver under side, half of them now turned up. Oaks are now fairly brown; very few still red. 

Returning, I scare up a blue heron from the bathing rock this side the Island. It is whitened by its droppings, in great splotches a foot or more wide. He has evidently frequented it to watch for fish there.

Also a flock of blackbirds fly eastward over my head from the top of an oak, either red-wings or grackles.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 29, 1855

My owl. See October 28, 1855 ("Sealing squietly up behind the hemlock, though from the windward, I look carefully around it, and, to my surprise, see the owl still sitting there. So I spring round quickly, with my arm outstretched, and catch it in my hand."). See also A Book of the Seasons, , by Henry Thoreau, the Screech Owl


Soapwort gentian and pasture thistle still. See October 11, 1856 ("A pasture thistle with many fresh flowers and bees on it. ")' See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Soapwort Gentian; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Thistles

I see and count about a hundred crows advancing in a great rambling flock from the southeast and crossing the river on high, and cawing.  See October 29, 1857 ("A flock of about eighty crows flies ramblingly over toward the sowing, cawing and loitering and making a great ado, apparently about nothing."); November 1, 1853 ("As I return, I notice crows flying southwesterly in a very long straggling flock, of which I see probably neither end.")

The cemetery which my townsmen have just consecrated. See note to October 30, 1855 ("Going to the new cemetery,")

Election cake toadstools. See October 20, 1856 ("Amid the young pitch pines . . . a great many brownish-yellow (and some pink) election-cake fungi . . .”); July 29, 1853 (“ . . .small, umbrella-shaped (with sharp cones), shining and glossy yellow fungi, like an election cake  . .”). See also Concord: A Sense of Place, October 20, 2015, Election-cake Fungus Mystery.

Election Cake dates back to Colonial America and the young Republic.  Bakers made this “muster" cake to feed militia members in the Colonial era during military training days. After the American Revolution, it evolved into an Election Cake, one prepared for town hall meetings and community celebrations to encourage eligible voter attendance.  ~ owl bakery

I love to wander and muse over them in their graves, returning to dust again. See  October 16, 1857 ("How beautifully they die, making cheerfully their annual contribution to the soil! They fall to rise again; as if they knew that it was not one annual deposit alone that made this rich mould in which pine trees grow. They live in the soil whose fertility and bulk they increase, and in the forests that spring from it. "); October 20, 1853 ("Merrily they go scampering over the earth, selecting their graves, whispering all through the woods about it. They that waved so loftily, how contentedly they return to dust again and afford nourishment to new generations of their kind, as well as to flutter on high! So they troop to their graves, light and frisky. They are about to add a leaf's breadth to the depth of the soil. We are all the richer for their decay.").

I love to wander

over the leaves in their graves

returning to dust.

When the leaves fall

I love to wander and muse 

here is room for me.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A hundred crows in a great rambling flock.

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/hdt551029

A flock of thousands of barn swallows.

August 4

August 4, 2015

Just after bathing at the rock near the Island this afternoon, after sunset, I saw a flock of thousands of barn swallows and some white-bellied, and perhaps others, for it was too dark to distinguish them. 

They came flying over the river in loose array, wheeled and flew round in a great circle over the bay there, about eighty feet high, with a loud twittering as if seeking a resting-place, then flew up the stream. I was very much surprised at their numbers.

Directly after, hearing a buzzing sound, we found them all alighted on the dense golden willow hedge at Shattuck’s shore, parallel with the shore, quite densely leaved and eighteen feet high. They were generally perched five or six feet from the top, amid the thick leaves, filling it for eight or ten rods. 

They were very restless, fluttering from one perch to another and about one another, and kept up a loud and remarkable buzzing or squeaking, breathing or hum, with only occasionally a regular twitter, now and then flitting along side from one end of the row to the other. It was so dark we had to draw close to see them. At intervals they were perfectly still for a moment, as if at a signal. 

At length, after twenty or thirty minutes of bustle and hum, they all settled quietly to rest on their perches, I supposed for the night. We had rowed up within a rod of one end of the row, looking up so as to bring the birds between us and the sky, but they paid not the slightest attention to us. 

What was remarkable was: first, their numbers; second, their perching on densely leaved willows; third, their buzzing or humming, like a hive of bees, even squeaking notes; and fourth, their disregarding our nearness. I supposed that they were preparing to migrate, being the early broods.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 4, 1855

Disregarding our nearness. See July 12, 1854 ("Many young barn swallows sit in flocks on the bared dead willows over the water and let me float within four or five feet. Birds do not distinguish a man sitting in a boat.")

I supposed that they were preparing to migrate, being the early broods. See August 5, 1855 ("On river to see swallows. They are all gone . . . Probably they started very early. I asked Minott if he ever saw swallows migrating . . . He thought it was in the latter part of August."); August 29,1854 ("The barn swallows are very lively, filling the air with their twittering now, at 6 p.m. They rest on the dry mullein-tops, then suddenly all start off together as with one impulse and skim about over the river, hill, and meadow . . . Are they not gathering for their migration?")

August 4. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  August 4 

Thousands of swallows

flying over the river

prepare to migrate.

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

Distinct otter-track by the Rock at the junction of the two rivers.

February 4

Clear and cold and windy; much colder than for some time. It is better skating to-day than yesterday. This is the sixth day of some kind of skating.

See this afternoon a very distinct otter-track by the Rock, at the junction of the two rivers. The separate foot-tracks are quite round, more than two inches in diameter, showing the five toes distinctly in the snow, which is about half an inch deep. 

Close by the Great Aspen I see where it had entered or come out of the water under a shelf of ice left adhering to a maple. There it apparently played and slid on the level ice, making a broad trail as if a shovel had been shoved along, just eight inches wide, without a foot-track in it for four feet or more. 

It had left much dung on the ice, soft, yellow, bowel-like, like a gum that has been chewed in consistency. About the edge of the hole, where the snow was all rubbed off, was something white which looks and smells exactly like bits of the skin of pouts or eels.

Minott tells of one shot once while eating an eel. Vance saw one this winter in this town by a brook eating a fish.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 4, 1855

This is the sixth day of some kind of skating. See February 5, 1855 ("The ice for the last week has reached quite up into the village, so that you could get on to it just in the rear of the bank and set sail on skates for any part of the Concord River valley.");  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Winter of Skating

A very distinct otter-track by the Rock, at the junction of the two rivers. See February 8, 1857 (“The otter must roam about a great deal, for I rarely see fresh tracks in the same neighborhood a second time the same winter, though the old tracks may be apparent all the winter through.”);  February 20, 1856 (“See a broad and distinct otter-trail, made last night or yesterday. It came out to the river through the low declivities, making a uniform broad hollow trail there without any mark of its feet  . . . Commonly seven to nine or ten inches wide, and tracks of feet twenty to twenty-four apart; but sometimes there was no track of the feet for twenty-five feet, frequently for six; in the last case swelled in the outline.”); February 22, 1856 (“Just below this bridge begins an otter track, several days old yet very distinct, which I trace half a mile down the river. In the snow less than an inch deep, on the ice, each foot makes a track three inches wide, apparently enlarged in melting. The clear interval, sixteen inches; the length occupied by the four feet, fourteen inches. It looks as if some one had dragged a round timber down the middle of the river a day or two since, which bounced as it went.”). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Otter

The Rock:  Egg Rock / Island Rock, "The most forwrd point on the small area that Thoreau refers to as the Island,"  an outcrop at the confluence of the Assabet and Sudbury rivers where they form the Concord River." ~ Ray Angelo,  Thoreau Place Names 74  

Minott tells of one. See  April 6, 1855 ("It reminds me of an otter, which however I have never seen."); January 30, 1854 ("How retired an otter manages to live! He grows to be four feet long without any mortal getting a glimpse of him,"); February 20, 1855 (among the quadrupeds of Concord, the otter is "very rare."); March 31, 1857 ("The existence of the otter, our largest wild animal, is not betrayed to any of our senses (or at least not to more than one in a thousand)! ): Natural History of Massachusetts (1842) ("The bear, wolf, lynx, wildcat, deer, beaver, and marten have disappeared ; the otter is rarely if ever seen here at present; and the mink is less common than formerly..")

February 4. See A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, February 4

Distinct otter-track

by the rock at the junction

of the two rivers.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Distinct otter-track by the Rock

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau 

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdy-550204