A gray screech owl.

 

February 5.

Horace Mann brings me a screech owl, which was caught in Hastings's barn on the meeting-house avenue. It had killed a dove there.

This is a decidedly gray owl, with none of the reddish or nut brown of the specimen of December 26, though it is about the same size, and answers exactly to Wilson's mottled owl.

Rice brings me an oak stick with a woodpecker's hole in it by which it reached a pupa.

The first slight rain and thaw of this winter was February 2d .

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 5, 1861

This is a decidedly gray owl, with none of the reddish or nut brown of the specimen of December 26 and answers exactly to Wilson's mottled owl. See December 26, 1860 ("Melvin sent to me yesterday a perfect Strix asio, or red owl of Wilson, - not at all gray. . . . This is, as Wilson says, a bright “nut brown" . . .. It is twenty-three inches alar extent by about eleven long.") See also July 10, 1856 ("I find myself suddenly within a rod of a gray screech owl sitting on an alder bough with horns erect, turning its head from side to side and up and down,. . .Another more red, also horned, repeats the same warning sound . . . I draw near and find a young owl a third smaller than the old, all gray without obvious horns --only four or five feet distant.")

 We hike to the fort via the rope trail making new tracks in compressed snow over a foot deep. At the lower view hear the spring note of the chickadee one seems to be calling another and then one carries on for quite some time hear the white breasted nuthatch as well I stay out of janes trail and for once keep up with her as it turns out because she is in excruciating pain with her right foot flopping to one side. But this is alleviated by a small adjustment to the padding after we get to the fort for the most part the dogs trail behind us 1, 2, 3 but as we near the Fort  acorn runs head crosses the stream and goes up there and waits. Loki meanwhile begins to trot and hunt through the deep snow. It was a good plan to leave the chair upside-down as I have a dry seat the temperature is a little over 30° perhaps over freezing and there is some sun in the woods and then in the tops of the trees and cliffs as dusk approaches we stop on porcupine ridge and look up at the pine tops glowing in the sun.

As dusk approaches

we look up at the pine tops

glowing in the sun. 

February 5, 2021

To relieve and ventilate the tree and, as well, to destroy its enemies.

December 2. 

The woodpeckers' holes in the apple trees are about a fifth of an inch deep or just through the bark and half an inch apart. 

They must be the decaying trees that are most frequented by them, and probably their work serves to relieve and ventilate the tree and, as well, to destroy its enemies.

The barberries are shrivelled and dried. I find yet cranberries hard and not touched by the frost.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 2, 1850


The woodpeckers' holes in the apple trees. See December 5, 1853 ("See and hear a downy woodpecker on an apple tree. Have not many winter birds, like this and the chickadee, a sharp note like tinkling glass or icicles?"); December 14, 1855 ("I heard the sound of a downy woodpecker tapping . . . Frequently, when I pause to listen, I hear this sound in the orchards or streets."); January 5, 1860 ("I see where the downy woodpecker has worked lately by the chips of bark and rotten wood scattered over the snow, though I rarely see him in the winter. Once to-day, however, I hear his sharp voice.") see also  Walter Harding, Walden’s Man of Science, VQR (Winter 1981) ("He mistook the distinctive hole-drilling of the yellow-bellied sapsucker for the work of the downy woodpecker,")

I find yet cranberries hard and not touched by the frost. See August 23, 1859 ("The cranberries (not vines) are extensively frost-bitten and spoiled.");  August 29, 1858 ("We saw where many cranberries had been frost-bitten, F. thinks the night of the 23d. They are much injured."); September 20, 1851 ("The cranberries, too, are touched."); September 24, 1855 ("Some still raking, others picking, cranberries. "); December 7 , 1853 ("I sent two and a half bushels of my cranberries to Boston and got four dollars for them.")

A dead maple in Hubbard’s swamp

February 26.

To Hubbard’s Close. 

I see at bottom of the mill brook, below Emerson’s, two dead frogs. The brook has part way yet a snowy bridge over it. Were they left by a mink, or killed by cold and ice? 

In Hubbard’s maple swamp beyond, I see the snow under a dead maple, where a woodpecker has drilled a handsome round hole. Excepting the carrying it downward within, it is ready for a nest. May they not have a view to this use even now?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 26, 1856

Two dead frogs. See March 8, 1860 ("I saw, in Monroe's well by the edge of the river, the other day, a dozen frogs, chiefly shad frogs, which had been dead a good while."); March 28, 1852 ("See . . .dead frogs, and the mud stirred by a living one, in this ditch, and afterward in Conantum Brook a living frog, the first of the season") 

To Inches Woods.

November 16.

This and yesterday Indian-summer days. 

November 16, 2019

P. M. – To Inches Woods .

Walked over these woods again, — first from Harvard turnpike at where Guggins Brook leaves it, which is the east edge of the old wood, due north along near the edge of the wood, and at last more northwest along edge to the cross - road, a strong mile.

I observe that the black, red, and scarlet oaks are generally much more straight and perpendicular than the white, and not branched below.

The white oak is much oftener branched below and is more irregular, curved or knobby.

The first large erect black oak measured on the 9th was by the path at foot of hill southeast of pigeon - place.

Another, more north, is (all at three feet when not otherwise stated) ten and a half in circumference.

There is not only a difference between most of the white oaks within Blood's wood and the pasture oaks without, — the former having a very finely divided and comparatively soft tawnyish bark, and the latter a very coarse rugged and dark - colored bark, — but there is here a similar difference within this wood; i. e., some of the white oaks have a hard, rugged bark, in very regular oblong squares or checkers(an agreeably regular roughness like a coat of mail), while others have a comparatively finely divided and soft bark.

It happens oftenest here, I think, that the very largest white oaks have the most horizontal branches and branch nearest the ground, which would at first suggest that these trees were a different variety from the more upright and rather smaller ones, but it may be that these are older, and for that reason had more light and room and so temptation to spread when young.

Northwesterly from pigeon - place(near base of hill), - A white oak 64 in circumference 819 611 The last one grows close against a rock(some three feet high), and it has grown over the top and sides of this rock to the breadth of twelve and eighteen inches in a thin, close - fitting, saddle - like manner, very remark able and showing great vigor in the tree.

Here, too, coming to water, I see the swamp white oak rising out of it, elm - like in its bark and trunk.

Red maples also appear here with them.

It is interesting to see thus how surely the character of the ground determines the growth.

It is evident that in a wood that has been let alone for the longest period the greatest regularity and harmony in the disposition of the trees will be observed, while in our ordinary woods man has often interfered and favored the growth of other kinds than are best fitted to grow there naturally.

To some, which he does not want, he allows no place at all.

Hickories occasionally occur, - sometimes scaly barked, if not shagbarks, -- also black birch and a few little sugar maples.

Still going north, a white pine nine feet circumference.

The wood at the extreme north end(along the road) is considerably smaller.

After proceeding west along the road, we next went west by south through a maple and yellow birch swamp, in which a black oak eight feet and four twelfths [ in ] circumference, a red maple six feet and a half, a black birch seven feet, a black birch eight feet.

And in the extreme northwesterly part of the wood, close to the road, are many large chestnuts, one eleven and three quarters feet circumference with many great knobs or excrescences, another twelve and seven twelfths.

We next walked across the open land by the road to the high hill northeast of Boxboro Centre.

In this neighborhood are many very large chestnuts, of course related to the chestnut wood just named.

1st, along this road just over the north wall, beyond a new house, one 13/1 feet in circumference; 2d, 16, a few rods more west by the wall; then, perhaps fifty or sixty rods more west and maybe eight or ten rods north from the road, along a wall, the 3d, 15 %; and then, near the road, southwest from this, the 4th, 15-40; and some rods further north, toward hill and house of O. and J. Wetherbee, the 5th, 1372; then northeast, in lower ground(?), the 6th, 16 feet, at ground 213; then, near base of hill, beyond house, the 7th, 164 at two feet from ground; next, some rods west of the hill, the 8th, 1. at three feet, at ground 231; and then, a consider able distance north and further down the hill, the 9th, 131.(There [ were ] also four other good - sized chestnuts on this hillside, with the last three.) Or these nine trees averaged about 157 feet in circumference.

The 3d tree had a limb four or five feet from the ground, which extended horizontally for a rod toward the south, declining a little toward the earth, and this was nine feet in circumference about eighteen inches from the tree.

The 7th had a large limb broken off at one foot above the ground on the side, whose stump prevented measuring at the ordinary height.

As I remember, the 8th was the finest tree.

These nine(or thirteen) trees are evidently the relics of one chestnut wood of which a part remains and makes the northwest part of Inches Wood, and the trees are all within about a quarter of a mile southeast and north west, the first two being by themselves at the southeast.

The chestnut is remarkable for branching low, occasionally so low that you cannot pass under the lower limb.

In several instances a large limb had fallen out on one side.

Commonly, you see great rugged strips of bark, like straps or iron clamps made to bind the tree together, three or four inches wide and as many feet long, running more or less diagonally across the trunk and suggesting a very twisted grain, while the grain of the recent bark beneath them may be perpendicular.

Perhaps this may be owing to old portions of the bark which still adhere, being wrenched aside by the unequal growth of Frank Brown tells me of a chestnut in his neighbor hood nineteen feet and eight(?) inches in circumference at three feet.

White oaks within a wood commonly, at Wetherbee's and Blood's woods, have lost the outside rough and rugged bark near the base, like a jacket or vest cast off, revealing that peculiar smooth tawny - white inner garment or shirt.

Probably the moisture and shade of a wood softens the bark and causes it to scale off.

Apparently outside trees do not lose this outer bark, but it becomes far more rugged and dark exposed to the light and air, forming a strong coat of mail such as they need.

Most of the white oaks in Inches Wood are of a slight ashy tinge and have a rather loose, scaly bark, but the larger, losing this below, become tawny - white.

Having returned into Inches Wood, not far west of the meadow(which is west of the brook), at the angle made by the open land, a black oak stump recently cut, about one foot high and twenty - one inches in diameter, had only one hundred and six rings.

A white oak only nine inches in diameter near by had eighty rings.

I suspect that the smaller white oaks are much older comparatively(with the large) than their size would indicate, as well as sounder and harder wood.

A white oak at three feet, six and one half in circumference.

A black oak had been recently cut into at the west base of Pigeon Hill, and I counted about eighty five rings in the outside three inches.

The tree(wood only) was some twenty - three inches in diameter.

Looking at this wood from the Boxboro hill, the higher land, forming a ridge from north to south.

Young white pines have very generally come in(a good many being twenty feet high or more), though in some places much more abundantly than in others, all over this oak wood, though not high enough to be seen at a distance or from hills(except the first - named larger trees); but though there are very many large pitch pines in this wood, especially on the hills or moraines, young pitch pines are scarcely to be seen.

I saw some only in a dell on the south side the turnpike.

If these oaks were cut off with care, there would very soon be a dense white pine wood there.

The white pines are not now densely planted, except in some more open places, but come up stragglingly every two or three rods.

The natural succession is rapidly going on here, and as fast as an oak falls, its place is supplied by a pine or two.

I have no doubt that, if entirely let alone, this which is now an oak wood would have become a white pine wood.

Measured on the map, this old woodland is fully a mile and a half long from north to south one mile being north [ of ] the turnpike — and will average half a mile from east to west.

Its extreme width, measuring due east and west, is from Guggins Brook on the turn pike to the first church.

(It runs considerably further southeast, however, on to the high hill.)

There is a considerable tract on the small road south [ of ] the turn pike covered with second growth.

There is, therefore, some four hundred acres of this old wood.

There is a very little beech and hemlock and yellow birch in this wood.

Many large black birches at the northwest end.

Chestnuts at the northwest and south east ends.

The bark of the oaks is very frequently gnawed near the base by a squirrel or other animal.

Guggins Brook unites with Heather Meadow Brook, and then with Fort Pond Brook just this side of West Acton, and thus the water of this old oak wood comes into the Assabet and flows by our North Bridge.

The seeds of whatever trees water will transport, provided they grow there, may thus be planted along our river.

I crossed the brook in the midst of the wood where there was no path, but four or five large stones had evidently been placed by man at convenient intervals for stepping - stones, and possibly this was an old Indian trail.

You occasionally see a massive old oak prostrate and decaying, rapidly sinking into the earth, and its place is evidently supplied by a pine rather than an oak.

There is now remarkably little life to be seen there.

In my two walks I saw only one squirrel and a chickadee.

Not a hawk or a jay.

Yet at the base of very many oaks were acorn - shells left by the squirrels.

In a perfectly round hole made by a woodpecker in a small dead oak five feet from the ground, were three good white oak acorns placed In the midst of the wood, west of the brook, is a natural meadow, — i. e. in a natural state, strip without trees, yet not very wet.

Evidently swamp white oaks and maples might grow there.

The greater part of this wood is strewn with large rocks, more or less flat or table - like, very handsomely clothed with moss finely diversified, there being hills, dells, moraines, meadows, swamps, and a fine brook in the midst of all.

Some parts are very thickly strewn with rocks(as at the northwest), others quite free from them.

Nowhere any monotony.

It is very pleasant, as you walk in the shade below, to see the cheerful sunlight reflected from the maze of oak boughs above.

They would be a fine sight after one of those sticking snows in the winter.

On the north end, also, the first evidence we had that we were coming out of the wood — approaching its border — was the crowing of a cock.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 16, 1860

To Inches Woods. October 23, 1860 ("[Anthony Wright] tells me of a noted large and so-called primitive wood, Inches Wood, between the Harvard turnpike and Stow, sometimes called Stow Woods"); November 9, 1860 ("There may be a thousand? acres of old oak wood.); November 10, 1860 ("I have lived so long in this neighborhood and but just heard of this noble forest, - probably as fine an oak wood as there is in New England, only eight miles west of me"); January 3, 1861 ("Far the handsomest thing I saw in Boxboro was its noble oak wood. I doubt if there is a finer one in Massachusetts. Let her keep it a century longer, and men will make pilgrimages to it from all parts of the country.")