That singular springlike note of a bird which I heard once before about this time

February 17

The river very high, one inch higher than the evening of January 31st. The bridge at Sam Barrett’s caved in; also the Swamp Bridge on back road. Muskrats driven out. 

Hear this morning, at the new stone bridge, from the hill, that singular springlike note of a bird which I heard once before one year about this time (under Fair Haven Hill). 

February 17, 2024

The jays are uttering their unusual notes, and this makes me think of a woodpecker. It reminds me of the pine warbler, vetter vetter vetter vetter vet, except that it is much louder, and I should say has the sound of l rather than t, — veller, etc., perhaps. Can it be a jay? or a pigeon woodpecker? 

Is it not the earliest springward note of a bird? In the damp misty air. 

Was waked up last night by the tolling of a bell about 11 o’clock, as if a child had hold of the rope. Dressed and went abroad in the wet to see if it was a fire. It seems the town clock was out of order, and the striking part ran down and struck steadily for fifteen minutes. If it had not been so near the end of the week, it might have struck a good part of the night.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 17, 1855

Muskrats driven out. See February 17, 1857 ("The river is fairly breaking up, and men are out with guns after muskrats."); February 24, 1860 ("The river risen and quite over the meadows yesterday and to-day, and musquash begun to be killed. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

That singular springlike note of a bird which I heard once before one year about this time. See March 13, 1853 (“But what was that familiar spring sound from the pine wood across the river, a sharp vetter vetter vetter vetter,”); February 14, 1854 ("This greater liveliness of the birds methinks I have noticed commonly in warm, thawing days toward spring"); February 18, 1857 (“When I step out into the yard I hear that earliest spring note from some bird, perhaps a pigeon woodpecker (or can it be a nuthatch, whose ordinary note I hear?), the rapid whar whar, whar whar, whar whar, which I have so often heard before any other note.”);  March 5, 1859 ("Going down-town this forenoon, I heard a white-bellied nuthatch on an elm within twenty feet, uttering peculiar notes and more like a song than I remember to have heard from it.. . .It was something like to-what what what what what, rapidly repeated, and not the usual gnah gnah; and this instant it occurs to me that this may be that earliest spring note which I hear, and have referred to a woodpecker! (This is before I have chanced to see a bluebird, blackbird, or robin in Concord this year.) It is the spring note of the nuthatch"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, The Spring Note of the Nuthatch abd A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch

The jays are uttering their unusual notes. See October 11, 1856 ("In the woods I hear the note of the jay, a metallic, clanging sound, some times a mew. Refer any strange note to him.") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

Was waked up last night by the tolling of a bell.  See May 3, 1852 ("There is a grand, rich, musical echo trembling on the air long after the clock has ceased to strike, like a vast organ, filling the air with a trembling music like a flower of sound. Nature adopts it. Beautiful is sound.”)

February 17.  See  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 17

The first springlike note

at the stone bridge from the hill

in the misty air.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, That singular springlike note

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-550217

The vast wild earth.

May 3

5 a. m. — To Cliffs. A great brassy moon going down in the west.

A flock of neat sparrows, small, striped-throated, whitish over eye, on an apple tree by J. Potter's. At Hayden's orchard, quite a concert from some small sparrows, forked-tailed, many jingling together like canaries. Their note still somewhat like the chip-sparrow's. Can it be this?

Fair Haven. How cheering and glorious any landscape viewed from an eminence! For every one has its horizon and sky. It is so easy to take wide views. Snow on the mountains. 

The wood thrush reminds me of cool mountain springs and morning walks. 

That oven-birdish note which I heard here on May 1st I now find to have been uttered by the black and white warbler or creeper. He has a habit of looking under the branches. 

The towhee finch is the loudest singer here now.

Looking from the Cliff, now, about 6 A.M.  the landscape is as if seen in a mirage, the Cliff being both in shadow and in the fresh and dewy sunshine (not much dew yet). Cool sunlight. The landscape lies in a fresh morning light; the earth and water smell fresh and new; the,   water is marked by a few smooth streaks. 

The white pine is beautiful in the morning light--the early sun light and the dew on it -- before the water is rippled and the morning song of the birds is quenched.

Evening.--The moon is full. The air is filled with a certain luminous, liquid, white light. You can see the moonlight, as it were, reflected from the atmosphere,- which some might mistake for a haze, - a glow of mellow light,  as if the air were a very thin but transparent liquid, not dry, as in winter, nor gross, as in summer.  The sky has depth, and not merely distance.  The sky is not so withdrawn, clear, tight, and cold as last moon.

I go along the side of Fair Haven Hill. The clock strikes distinctly, showing the wind is easterly. There is a grand, rich, musical echo trembling on the air long after the clock has ceased to strike, like a vast organ, filling the air with a trembling music like a flower of sound. Nature adopts it. Beautiful is sound. 

From the Hill the river is a broad blue stream exactly the color of the heavens which it reflects. Sit on the Cliff with comfort, in greatcoat.  All the tawny and russet earth--for no green is seen on the ground at this hour--  sending only this faint multitudinous sound (of frogs) to heaven. The vast, wild earth.

Summer is coming apace. Within three or four days the birds have come so fast I can hardly keep the run of them  - much faster than the flowers. I did not watch for the very earliest, however. 

The little peeping frogs make a background of sound in the horizon, which you do not hear unless you attend. The little peeper prefers a pool on the edge of a wood, which mostly dries up at midsummer, whose shore is covered with leaves and [where] twigs lie in the water, as where choppers have worked. Theirs is a clear, sharp, earpiercing peep, not shrill, - sometimes a squeak from one whose pipe is out of order, frequently a quavering, curving (?) trill, as if of alarm (?). My little peepers when they slept, the pulsation in their throats stopped. There was a wrinkled bag there. They begin to peep in earnest at or before sundown, and they keep it up now at 10 P. M. But I rarely hear any numbers in the morning, when they probably sleep. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 3, 1852 

How cheering and glorious any landscape viewed from an eminence! See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Seen from a Hillside

That oven-birdish note which I heard here on May 1st I now find to have been uttered by the black and white warbler or creeper. See May 1, 1852 ("I think I heard an oven-bird just now, wicher wicher whicher wich."); May 3, 1858 ("Heard the black and white creeper April 25th. I hear it and see it well to-day."); See also April 28, 1856 ("I hear to-day frequently the seezer seezer seezer of the black and white creeper, . . .”); May 4, 1858 ("I hear the weese wese wese of the creeper continually from the swamp. It is the prevailing note there.") See also A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, The Black and White Creeper

The clock strikes distinctly, showing the wind is easterly. See August 8, 1851 ("I hear the nine o'clock bell ringing in Bedford. Pleasantly sounds the voice of one village to another."); January 21, 1853 ("I hear the nine-o'clock bell in Bedford five miles off, which I might never hear in the village, but here its music surmounts the village din and has something very sweet and noble and inspiring in it, associated, in fact, with the hooting of owls"); April 18, 1852 ("An east wind. I hear the clock strike plainly ten or eleven P.M."); October 21, 1855 ("The wind must be east, for I hear the church bell very plainly.") and An East Wind. See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bells and Whistles and April 5, 1855 ("[W]e on the water hear the loud and musical sound of bells ringing for church in the surrounding towns."); April 15, 1855 ("The sound of church bells sounds very sweet to us on the water this still day. It is the song of the villages."); September 13, 1851 ("The Bedford sunrise bell rings sweetly and musically at this hour, when there is no bustle in the village to drown it. Bedford deserves a vote of thanks from Concord for it. It is a great good at these still and sacred hours, when towns can hear each other. ")

Within three or four days the birds have come so fast. See May 7, 1852 (" The birds I have lately mentioned come not singly, as the earliest, but all at once, i.e. many yellowbirds all over town.")

The little peeping frogs make a background of sound in the horizon, which you do not hear unless you attend.   See  May 3, 1857 ("A hylodes or two were heard close about me, but not one was seen. The nearest seemed to have his residence in my ear alone. It took such possession of my ear that I was unable to appreciate the source whence it came. ") See also March 31, 1857  ("How gradually and imperceptibly the peep of the hylodes mingles with and swells the volume of sound which makes the voice of awakening nature! If you do not listen carefully for its first note, you probably will not hear it, and, not having heard that, your ears become used to the sound, so that you will hardly notice it at last, however loud and universal.")