I hear it fell fourteen or fifteen inches deep in Vermont.

April 12.

Still falls a little snow and rain this morning, though the ground is not whitened. I hear a purple finch, nevertheless, on an elm, steadily warbling and uttering a sharp chip from time to time. 

P. M. — To Cliffs and Hubbard’s Close. 

Fair with drifting clouds, but cold and windy. 

At the spring brook I see some skunk-cabbage leaves already four or five inches high and partly unrolled.

From the Cliff Hill the mountains are again thickly clad with snow, and, the wind being northwest, this coldness is accounted for.

I hear it fell fourteen or fifteen inches deep in Vermont. 

As I sit in a sheltered place on the Cliffs, I look over the pond with my glass, but see no living thing. Soon after, I see a boat on Lee’s meadow just inside the button-bushes on the west of the pond, about a mile distant, and, raising my glass, I see one man paddling in the stern and another in white pantaloons standing up in the bow, ready to shoot. Presently I see the last raise his gun, take aim, and fire into the bushes, though I hear no sound from over the dashing waves, but merely see the smoke as in a picture. 

There is a strong wind from the northwest, while I am looking southwest. The gunner then points out the course while his companion paddles and strikes the game in the water with a paddle, and I distinctly see him lift up a muskrat by the tail. In a few moments, very nearly the same actions are repeated, though this time I do not see the rat raised. 

Then, turning my glass down the stream, I see, on the Miles meadow shore about half a mile distant, a man whom I know emptying his boat of fat pine roots which he had got for spearing, while his dog digs digs at a woodchuck’s hole close by. For a week past I have frequently seen the tracks of woodchucks in the sand. 

Golden saxifrage out at Hubbard’s Close, -- one, at least, effete. It may have been the 10th. 

The grass has within ten days shot up very perceptibly in shallow water and about springs. In the last place it forms dense moss-like tufts in some cases; also some warm southward banks are considerably greened, and some hollows where the ice has recently melted, but generally there is no obvious greening as yet. It is at most a mere radical greenness, which you must seek to find. Cowslip will apparently open in two days at Hubbard’s Close.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 12, 1855


I hear a purple finch on an elm, steadily warbling and uttering a sharp chip from time to time. See April 12, 1856 ("There suddenly flits before me and alights on a small apple tree in Mackay’s field, as I go to my boat, a splendid purple finch. Its glowing redness is revealed when it lifts its wings "); April 12, 1860 ("Elm bud-scales have begun to strew the ground, and the trees look richly in flower") See also April 11, 1853 ("I hear the clear, loud whistle of a purple finch,. . . from the elm by Whiting's");  April 15, 1854 ("The arrival of the purple finches appears to be coincident with the blossoming of the elm, on whose blossom it feeds") and also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Elms and the Purple Finch

The wind being northwest, this coldness is accounted for. I hear it fell fourteen or fifteen inches deep in Vermont. See May 11, 1857 ("A very cold northwest wind. I hear they had a snow-storm yesterday in Vermont.")

April 12. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 12

Mountains clad with snow

and the wind being northwest

accounts for this cold.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, I hear it fell fourteen or fifteen inches deep in Vermont.

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-550412

April weather

April 11

Rained in the night. Awake to see the ground white with snow, and it is still snowing, the sleet driving from the north at an angle of certainly not more than thirty or thirty-five degrees with the horizon, as I judge by its course across the window panes. By midafternoon the rain has so far prevailed that the ground is bare. 

As usual, this brings the tree sparrows and F. hyemalis into the yard again.

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

The sleet driving from the north at an angle of certainly not more than thirty or thirty-five degrees with the horizon. See December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified . . . Also  there is sleet, which is half snow, half rain.");J anuary 27, 1855 (" Yesterday’s driving easterly snow-storm turned to sleet in the evening, and then to rain. . .  the snow settled to three or four inches on a level, with a frozen crust and some water beneath in many places") see also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified.

This brings the tree sparrows and F. hyemalis into the yard again. See  April 1, 1854 ("The tree sparrows, hyemalis, and song sparrows are particularly lively and musical in the yard this rainy and truly April day. The air rings with them.")   April 10, 1854 ("How sure a rain is to bring the tree sparrows into the yard, to sing sweetly, canary-like!");  April 23, 1854 ("A rain is sure to bring the tree sparrow and hyemalis to the gardens"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Birds in the Rain

April 11. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 11

Awake,  driving sleet 

angled across the window –

ground white with snow.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, April weather

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-550411

*****

 

Sunday, April 11, 2015 around 8 PM we hike up to the view with the dogs most of the remaining snow up yesterday is gone and it is icy only in a few spots where the trail was worn by footprints

At the lower view the horizon is saffron a perfectly clear night with the stars shining brightly we trek onward pass the junction where the stream is deep in places a danger that solid ground will break through into a puddle we detour off the trail and soon we are at the view admiring the stars the Big Dipper is upside down in the north Cassiopeia in the Northwest Venus of course directly west and Orion tilted to the right nearing the horizon

Next we are going to the double chair I stop to P and catching up get a little bit of the experience of being alone in the woods trying to find the trail wearing my baseball cap headlamp so do not have that much light arrive at the saddle and she's already down the trail to the east land

Then it is a bit of work hiking up the gully because of the even more trees have fallen across. near the wetland there is plenty of snow sometimes quite deep it is soft and the trail is marked with tax

Eventually we are on the north ridge there is a view of Burlington and Williston to the north very clear night with the lights shimmering and then to the double chair where my bench collapses or at least starts to collapse I eat a sandwich and drink a bottle of water

And here is the best view of the big dipper upside down with the arc to Arcturus directly in the East --usually Arcturus is remembered as a western star just after sunset

On the way down we bushwhack and arrive in the little Valley heading first for the pond but then bushwhack again straight over the cliff and end up in the ravine of the headwaters of our stream where heading downstream we first hear noise of running water and then discover on the cliff to our left a a waterfall frozen making a wonderful sound--a spot we never noticed before kind of an amphitheater with a spring bursting in bubbling out of the cliff.

From the little ridge trail take a right onto the shortcut trail and where a pinetree has fallen Jane starts to hack away with her new machete and eventually she pokes herself in the eye with a stick her eyebrow bleeds profusely and at 10:30 at night we end up that Dr. Giroux’s office fortunately she did not need a stitch

A long night and lots of new ways to travel around the woods

Saffron horizon

perfectly clear night with the 

stars shining brightly.

Dipper upside down 

with the arc to Arcturus 

now directly East 

April 11, 2015 zphx

Most have not begun to think of flowers yet.

April 10

Another fine clear morning with, as usual, little frost.

6 A. M. — To river. 

I see afar more than one hundred rods distant, sailing on Hubbard’s meadow, on the smooth water in the morning sun, conspicuous, two male sheldrakes and apparently one female. They glide along, a rod or two apart in shallow water, alternately passing one another and from time to time plunging their heads in the water, but the female (whom only the glass reveals) almost alone diving. I think I saw one male drive the other back. One male with the female kept nearly together, a rod or two ahead of the other. 

Therien says James Baker sold his wood-lot south of Fair Haven Pond, about twenty-five acres, chiefly white pine, for one hundred and twenty dollars an acre, and that there was one hemlock whose top and branches alone yielded two and a half cords.

The buds of the earliest gooseberry in garden now first begin to show a little green on a close inspection.  

l P. M. — To Fair Haven Pond by boat. 

A strong south wind and overcast. There is the slightest perceptible green on the hill now. No doubt in a rain it would be pretty obvious. 

Saw a tolerably fresh sucker floating. Have seen two halves two days before which looked very ancient, as if they had died in the winter. There are three or four small scallops in the dorsal fin. 

Another dead muskrat, equally old with the two others I have seen this spring,—as if they had died at the time of the great freshet in February. 

At Lee’s the early sedge; one only sheds pollen. The saxifrage there to-morrow; one flower is partly expanded. 

I measure the hemlock mentioned above. The circumference at the butt, a foot from the ground. was 9 10/12 feet, at ten feet from the ground 8 10/12, at the small end, where it was cut off, 1 1/2 feet. Length, 40 feet. Its diameter diminished very regularly the first twenty-five feet. 

As for the early sedge, who would think of looking for a flower of any kind in those dry tufts whose withered blades almost entirely conceal the springing green ones? I patiently examined one tuft after another, higher and higher up the rocky hill, till at last I found one little yellow spike low in the grass which shed its pollen on my finger. 

As for the saxifrage, when I had given it up for to-day, having, after a long search in the warmest clefts and recesses, found only three or four buds which showed some white, I at length, on a still warmer shelf, found one flower partly expanded, and its common peduncle had shot up an inch. 

These few earliest flowers in these situations have the same sort of interest with the arctic flora, for they are remote and unobserved and often surrounded with snow, and most have not begun to think of flowers yet. 

Early on the morning of the 8th I paddled up the' Assabet looking for the first flowers of the white maple and alder. I held on to the low curving twigs of the maple where the stream ran swiftly, the round clusters of its bursting flower-buds spotting the sky above me, and on a close inspection found a few which (as I have said) must have blossomed the day before. 

I also paddled slowly along the riverside looking closely at the alder catkins and shaking the most loose, till at length I came to a bush which had been weighed down by the ice and whose stem curved downward, passing through the water. and on this was one looser and more yellowish catkin, which, as I have said, on a close examination showed some effete anthers near the peduncle. 

The morning of the 6th, when I found the skunk cabbage out, it was so cold I suffered from numbed fingers, having left my gloves behind. Since April came in, however, you have needed gloves only in the morning. 

Under some high bare bank sloping to the south on the edge of a meadow, where many springs, issuing from the bank, melt the snow early, — there you find the first skunk-cabbage in bloom. 

I see much yellow lily root afloat, which the muskrats have dug up and nibbled.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 10, 1855

Sailing on Hubbard’s meadow, on the smooth water in the morning sun, conspicuous, two male sheldrakes and apparently one female. See April 7, 1855 ("Two sheldrakes, male and probably female, sailing on A. Wheeler’s cranberry meadow. I see only the white of the male at first, but my glass reveals the female."); See also  A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Goosander, Merganser)

 Another dead muskrat, equally old with the two others I have seen this spring,—as if they had died at the time of the great freshet in February. See April 5, 1855 ("There is a strong muskrat scent from many a shore. See a muskrat floating, which may have been drowned when the river was so high in midwinter, —for this is the second I have seen, —with the rabbit.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

These few earliest flowers . . . are remote and unobserved and often surrounded with snow, and most have not begun to think of flowers yet. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Earliest Flower

At Lee’s the early sedge; one only sheds pollen. See April 7, 1854 ("On the Cliff I find, after long and careful search, one sedge above the rocks, low amid the withered blades of last year, out, its little yellow beard amid the dry blades and few green ones, — the first herbaceous flowering I have detected. . . . It must have been so first either on the 5th or 6th.”) See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Sedges in Early Spring

As for the saxifrage, when I had given it up for to-day, having, after a long search in the warmest clefts and recesses, found only three or four buds which showed some white, I at length, on a still warmer shelf, found one flower partly expanded, and its common peduncle had shot up an inch . See 

April 10, 1853 ("The saxifrage is beginning to be abundant, elevating its flowers somewhat, pure, trustful, white amid its pretty notched and reddish cup of leaves. The white saxifrage is a response from earth to the increased light of the year"); See also April 8, 1858 ("At Lee's Cliff I find no saxifrage in bloom above the rock . . . but on a few small warm shelves under the rocks the saxifrage makes already a pretty white edging along the edge of the grass sod [?] on the rocks; has got up three or four inches, and may have been out four or five days.") And A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Saxifrage in Spring (Saxifraga vernalis)

Sailing on Hubbard’s 

meadow on the smooth water 

in the morning sun

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, These few earliest flowers 

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-550410

At sunset after the rain, the robins and song sparrows fill the air along the river with their song.

April 9

5.15 A. M. —To Red Bridge just before sunrise. 

Fine clear morning, but still cold enough for gloves. A slight frost, and mist as yesterday curling over the smooth water. 

April 9, 2025

I see half a dozen crows on an elm within a dozen rods of the muskrats’ bodies, as if eyeing them. I see thus often crows very early in the morning near the houses, which soon after sun rise take their way across the river to the woods again. It is a regular thing with them. 

Hear the hoarse rasping chuck or chatter of crow blackbirds and distinguish their long broad tails. Wilson says that the only note of the rusty grackle is a chuck, though he is told that at Hudson’s Bay, at the breeding-time, they sing with a fine note. Here they utter not only a chuck, but a fine shrill whistle. 

They cover the top of a tree now, and their concert is of this character: They all seem laboring together to get out a clear strain, as it were wetting their whistles against their arrival at Hudson’s Bay. They begin as it were by disgorging or spitting it out, like so much tow, from a full throat, and conclude with a clear, fine, shrill, ear-piercing whistle. Then away they go, all chattering together. 

Hear a phoebe near the river. 

The golden willow is, methinks, a little livelier green and begins to peel a little, but I am not sure the bark is any smoother yet.

Hear a loud, long, dry, tremulous shriek which reminded me of a kingfisher, but which I find proceeded from a woodpecker that had just alighted on an elm; also its clear whistle or Chink afterward. It is probably the hairy woodpecker, and I am not so certain I have seen it earlier this year. Wilson does not allow that the downy one makes exactly such a sound. 

Did I hear part of the note of a golden-crowned wren this morning? It was undoubtedly a robin, the last part of his strain. 

Some twenty minutes after sundown I hear the first booming of a snipe. 

The forenoon was cloudy and in the afternoon it rained, but the sun set clear, lighting up the west with a yellow light, which there was no green grass to reflect, in which the frame of a new building is distinctly seen, while drops hang on every twig, and producing the first rainbow I have seen or heard of except one long ago in the morning. 

With April showers, me thinks, come rainbows. Why are they so rare in the winter? Is the fact that the clouds are then of snow commonly, instead of rain, sufficient to account for it?

At sunset after the rain, the robins and song sparrows fill the air along the river with their song.

MacGillivray says that divers, mergansers, and cormorants actually fly under water, using their wings fully expanded. He had seen them pursuing sand eels along the shores of the Hebrides. Had seen the water ouzel fly in like manner. 

Several flocks of geese went over this morning also. Now, then, the main body are moving. Now first are they generally seen and heard.

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, April 9, 1855

Still cold enough for gloves. See April 10, 1855 ("Since April came in, however, you have needed gloves only in the morning"); April 22, 1855 ("Though my hands are cold this morning I have not worn gloves for a few mornings past, — a week or ten days.")

 
Some twenty minutes after sundown I hear the first booming of a snipe. See April 9, 1853 (“Evening. -- Hear the snipe a short time at early starlight.”); April 9, 1858 ("This “booming” of the snipe is our regular village serenade."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Snipe

A clear, fine, shrill, ear-piercing whistle. See April 3, 1855 ("The first grackles [rusty grackles, or rusty blackbirds.] I have seen. I detected them first by their more rasping note . . . after a short stuttering, then a fine, clear whistle.")

Several flocks of geese went over this morning also.  See April 8, 1855 ("This evening, about 9 P.M., I hear geese go over . . . The first I have heard.  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: Signs of Spring, Geese Overhead

 The first rainbow I have seen or heard of except one long ago in the morning. See February 23, 1860 ("About 4 P. M. a smart shower, ushered in by thunder and succeeded by a brilliant rainbow and yellow light from under the dark cloud in the west."); March 13, 1855 ("Rainbow in east this morning."); March 15. 1859 ("two brilliant rainbows at sunset, the first of the year."); April 18, 1855 ("Am overtaken by a sudden sun-shower, after which a rainbow.”); 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.")

 

April 9. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, April 9

The golden willow  

begins to peel a little –

a livelier green.

Sunset after rain

the robins and song sparrows

fill the air with song.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, At sunset after the rain

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-550409

Early spring on the Assabet. A low morning mist curls over the smooth water now in the sunlight.

April 8

— Up Assabet. A fine clear morning. The ground white with frost, and all the meadows also, and a low mist curling over the smooth water now in the sunlight, which gives the water a silver-plated look.

The frost covers the willows and alders and other trees on the sides of the river fifteen or twenty feet high. Quite a wintry sight.

                               April 8, 2022

At first I can hardly distinguish white maple stamens from the frost spiculae. I find some anthers effete and dark, and others still mealy with pollen. There are many in this condition. The crimson female stigmas also peeping forth. It evidently began to shed pollen yesterday.

I find also at length a single catkin of the Alnus incana, with a few stamens near the peduncle discolored and shedding a little dust when shaken; so this must have begun yesterday, I think, but it is not so forward as the maple. Though I have looked widely, I have not found the alder out before.

I see some long cobweb lines covered with frost, hanging from tree to tree, six feet in one case, like the ropes which extend from mast to mast of a vessel. Very thin dark ice-crystals over shallowest water, showing the flat pyramids.

Hear and see a pigeon woodpecker, something like week-up week-up. The robins now sing in full blast.

Also song sparrows and tree sparrows and F. hyemalis are heard in the yard. The fox-colored sparrow is also there. The tree sparrows have been very musical for several mornings, somewhat canary-like.

As to which are the earliest flowers, it depends on the character of the season, and ground bare or not, meadows wet or dry, etc., etc., also on the variety of soils and localities within your reach. The columbine leaves in the clefts of Cliffs are one of the very earliest obvious growths. I noticed it the first of April.

The radical leaves of the buttercup now at Lee’s Cliff --a small flat dense circle -- are a very different color from those evergreen leaves seen when the snow first goes off. They are emphatically a green green, as if a sort of green fire were kindled under them in the sod.

The buds not only of lilacs, but white birches, etc., look swollen.

When taking the brain out of my duck yesterday, I perceived that the brain was the marrow of the head, and it is probably only a less sentient brain that runs down the backbone, -- the spinal marrow.

Abiel Wheeler tried to plow in sandy soil yesterday, but could not go beyond a certain depth because of frost.

P. M. — Up Assabet to G. Barrett’s meadow.

This forenoon it was still and the water smooth. Now there is a strong cool wind from the east.

Am surprised to see a sound clam close to the shore at mouth of Dakin’s Brook, in one foot of water. A school of small minnows. Already a turtle’s track on sand close to water.

The great buff-edged butterfly flutters across the river. Afterward I see a small red one over the shore.

Though the river -- excepting Fair Haven Pond before the 6th -- has for a week been completely free of ice, and only a little thin crystalwise forms in the night in the shallowest parts, that thick ice of the winter (February) on the meadows, covered by pieces of meadow-crust, is in many places still nearly as thick as ever, now that ice is a rather rare sight and plowing is beginning. It is remarkable how long this frozen meadow-crust lying on it has preserved it. Where the piece of meadow is only three or four feet in diameter, its edges now project over the ice, so that the whole looks like a student’s four-cornered cap, -- or that which the President of Harvard wears. All that mass on B.’s meadow appears to have been taken from the upper part of the meadow near the road, about thirty rods off from where it now lies.

In the ditches near which it was taken up I see the coarse yellow, reddened, and sometimes already green-tipped pads of the yellow lily, partly unrolled at the bottom of the warm water, the most of a spring growth, perhaps, in the water; also two or three good-sized buds of a healthy green.

Hear at a distance in the sprout-lands the croaks of frogs from some shallow pool.

See six muskrats’ bodies, just skinned, on the bank, ~ two large yellowish, fatty-looking masses of (I suppose) musk on each side the lower part of the abdomen. Every part of the animal now emits a very strong scent of musk. A foot which I brought home (together with a head) scented me all over. The fore feet are small and white on the palm, while the hind ones are black. All the skin being stripped off except on the nose and feet, the fore feet look like hands clothed in gauntlets of fur.

This evening, about 9 P.M., I hear geese go over, now there in the south, now southeast, now east, now northeast, low over the village, but not seen. The first I have heard.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 8, 1855

At first I can hardly distinguish white maple stamens from the frost spiculae. The crimson female stigmas also peeping forth. It evidently began to shed pollen yesterday. See April 9, 1856 ("White maples also, the sunny sides of clusters and sunny sides of trees in favorable localities, shed pollen to-day. “)See also note to April 6, 1855 ("A very few white maple stamens stand out already loosely enough to blow in the wind.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, White maple buds and flowers

As to which are the earliest flowers, it depends on the character of the season. See April 2, 1856 (“It will take you half a lifetime to find out where to look for the earliest flover . . . It is evident that it depends on the character of the season whether this flower or that is the most forward”); .February 28, 1857 ("It takes several years' faithful search to learn where to look for the earliest flowers.");    ("At six this morn to Clamshell. The skunk-cabbage open yesterday, — the earliest flower this season.");  April 10, 1855 ("These few earliest flowers . . . are remote and unobserved and often surrounded with snow, and most have not begun to think of flowers yet.");April 17, 1855 ("So quickly and surely does a bee find the earliest flower, as if he had slumbered all winter at the root of the plant. No matter what pains you take, probably —undoubtedly—an insect will have found the first flower before you.”) See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The Earliest Flower

The great buff-edged butterfly flutters across the river. See April 9, 1853 ("You see the buff-edged . . . in warm, sunny southern exposures on the edge of woods or sides of rocky hills and cliffs, above dry leaves and twigs, where the wood has been lately cut and there are many dry leaves and twigs about.”); April 9, 1856 ("The great butterflies, black with buff-edged wings, are fluttering about”) See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Buff-edged Butterfly

I hear geese go over, now there in the south, now southeast, now east, now northeast, low over the village, but not seen. The first I have heard. April 9, 1855 ("Several flocks of geese went over this morning also. Now, then, the main body are moving. Now first are they generally seen and heard."); April 16, 1855 ("After dark, the sound of geese honking all together very low over the houses and apparently about to settle on the Lee meadow. "); April 17, 1855 (" Geese go over at noon, when warm and sunny. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring, Geese Overhead

The columbine leaves in the clefts of Cliffs are one of the very earliest obvious growths. I noticed it the first of April. See April 1, 1855 ("At the first Conantum Cliff I am surprised to see how much the columbine leaves have grown in a sheltered cleft;") See also March 18, 1853 ("At Conantum Cliff the columbines have started and the saxifrage even, the former as conspicuously as any plant . . . Both these grow there in high and dry chinks in the face of tire cliff, where no soil appears, and the sunnier the exposure the more advanced. Even if a fallen fragment of the rock is so placed as to reflect the heat upon it, it has the start of its neighbors. These plants waste not a day, not a moment, suitable to their development. "); April 7, 1855 ("At Lee's Cliff I find the radical leaves of the early saxifrage , columbine , and the tower mustard , etc. , much eaten apparently by partridges and perhaps rabbits."); April 8, 1854 ("The columbine shows the most spring growth of any plant."); and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Earliest Flower

April 8. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, April 8

A low morning mist

curls over the smooth water

now in the sunlight.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A low morning mist 

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-18550408

I suspect that about all the conspicuous white ducks I see are goosanders

April 7

In my walk in the afternoon of to-day, I see from Conantum, say fifty rods distant, two sheldrakes, male and probably female, sailing on A. Wheeler’s cranberry meadow. I see only the white of the male at first, but my glass reveals the female. The male is easily seen a great distance on the water, being a large white mark. But they will let you come only within some sixty rods ordinarily.

April 7, 2019

I observe that they are uneasy at sight of me and begin to sail away in different directions.

I plainly see the vermilion bill of the male and his orange legs when he flies (but he appears all white above), and the reddish brown or sorrel of the neck of the female, and, when she lifts herself in the water, as it were preparatory to flight, her white breast and belly. She has a grayish look on the sides. 

Soon they approach each other again and seem to be conferring, and then they rise and go off, at first low, down-stream, soon up-stream a hundred feet over the pond, the female leading, the male following close behind, the black at the end of his curved wings very conspicuous. 

I suspect that about all the conspicuous white ducks I see are goosanders. 

I skinned my duck yesterday and stuffed it to-day. It is wonderful that a man, having undertaken such an enterprise, ever persevered in it to the end, and equally wonderful that he succeeded. To skin a bird, drawing backward, wrong side out, over the legs and wings down to the base of the mandibles! Who would expect to see a smooth feather again? This skin was very tender on the breast. I should have done better had I stuffed it at once or turned it back before the skin became stiff. Look out not to cut the ear and eye lid. But what a pot-bellied thing is a stuffed bird compared even with the fresh dead one I found! It looks no longer like an otter, like a swift diver, but a mere waddling duck. How perfectly the vent of a bird is covered! There is no mark externally. 

At six this morn to Clamshell. The skunk-cabbage open yesterday, — the earliest flower this season. I suspect that the spathes do not push up in the spring. This is but three inches high. I see them as high and higher in the fall, and they seem only to acquire color now and gape open. I see but one out, and that sheds pollen abundantly. 

See thirty or forty goldfinches in a dashing flock, in all respects (notes and all) like lesser redpolls, on the trees by Wood’s Causeway and on the railroad bank. There is a general twittering and an occasional mew. Then they alight on the ground to feed, along with F. hyemalis and fox-colored sparrows. 

They are merely olivaceous above, dark about the base of the bill, but bright lemon-yellow in a semicircle on the breast; black wings and tails, with white bar on wings and white vanes to tail. I never saw them here so early before; or probably one or two olivaceous birds I have seen and heard of other years were this. 

Clear, but a cold air. 

P. M. — To Hubbard’s Close and Lee’s Cliff. A mouse-nest of grass, in Stow’s meadow east of railroad, on the surface. Just like those seen in the rye-field some weeks ago, but this in lower ground has a distinct gallery running from it, and I think is the nest of the meadow mouse. 

The pool at Hubbard’s Close, which was full of ice, unbroken gray ice, the 27th of March, is now warm-looking water, with the slime-covered callitriche standing a foot high in it; and already a narrow grass, the lake grass, has sprung up and lies bent nine or ten inches flat on the water. This is very early as well as sudden. 

In ten days there has been this change. How much had that grass grown under the ice? I see many small skaters  in it. 

See a trout as long as my finger, in the ditch dug from Brister’s Spring, which, having no hole or overhanging bank where it could hide, plunged into the mud like a frog and was concealed. 

The female flowers of the hazel are just beginning to peep out. 

At Lee’s Cliff I find the radical leaves of the early saxifrage, columbine, and the tower mustard, etc., much eaten apparently by partridges and perhaps rabbits. They must have their greens in the spring, and earlier than we. 

Below the rocks, the most obviously forward radical leaves are the columbine, tower mustard (lanceolate and petioled and remotely toothed), and catnep, and mullein. Early crowfoot, the butter cup (bulbosa), is a peculiarly sappy, dark pickle-green, decided spring, and none of your sapless evergreens. The little thyme-leaved arenaria, I believe it is, which is evergreen, and some other minute leaves, also, already green the ground. 

The saxifrage on the rocks will apparently open in two days; it shows some white. 

The grass is now conspicuously green about open springs, in dense tufts. The frozen sod, partly thawed in low grounds, sinks under me as I walk.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 7, 1855

I plainly see the vermilion bill of the male and his orange legs when he flies . . .I skinned my duck yesterday and stuffed it to-day. See April 6, 1855 ("It is a perfectly fresh and very beautiful bird, and as I raise it, I get sight of its long, slender vermilion bill (color of red sealing wax) and its clean, bright-orange legs and feet, and then of its perfectly smooth and spotlessly pure white breast and belly, tinged with a faint salmon (or tinged with a delicate buff inclining to salmon)”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

See thirty or forty goldfinches in a dashing flock, in all respects (notes and all) like lesser redpolls, on the trees by Wood’s Causeway and on the railroad bank. There is a general twittering and an occasional mew. See   March 24, 1859 ("I see a flock of goldfinches, first of spring, flitting along the cause way-bank. They have not yet the bright plumage they will have, but in some lights might be mistaken for sparrows. There is considerable difference in color between one and another, but the flaps of their coats are black, and their heads and shoulders more or less yellow . . .  Wilson says, "In the month of April they begin to change their winter dress, and, before the middle of May, appear in brilliant yellow.”"); April 15, 1859 ("Hear a goldfinch, after a loud mewing on an apple tree, sing in a rich and varied way, as if imitating some other bird."); April 19, 1858 (Along the wall under the Middle Conantum Cliff, I saw many goldfinches, male and female, the males singing in a very sprightly and varied manner, sitting still on bare trees. Also uttered their watery twitter and their peculiar mewing.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Goldfinch

The female flowers of the hazel are just beginning to peep out. See note to April 7, 1854 ("The hazel stigmas are well out and the catkins loose, but no pollen shed yet.") See also   March 27, 1853 ("The hazel is fully out. . . .It is in some respects the most interesting flower yet, though so minute that only an observer of nature, or one who looked for them, would notice it. It is the highest and richest colored yet, - ten or a dozen little rays at the end of the buds which are at the ends and along the sides of the bare stems. Some of the flowers are a light, some a dark crimson. The high color of this minute, unobserved flower, at this cold, leafless, and almost flowerless season! It is a beautiful greeting of the spring, ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau: the Hazel

A mouse-nest of grass, in Stow’s meadow . . . the nest of the meadow mouse. See  March 15, 1855 ("Mr. Rice tells me that . . . he heard a squeaking and found that he was digging near the nest of what he called a " field mouse," – by his description probably the meadow mouse. It was made of grass, etc., and, while he stood over it, the mother, not regarding him, came and carried off the young, one by one, in her mouth, being gone some time in each case before she returned, and finally she took the nest itself.  "); March 22, 1855 ("A (probably meadow) mouse nest in the low meadow by stone bridge, where it must have been covered with water a month ago; probably made in fall. Low in the grass, a little dome four inches in diameter, with no sign of entrance . . .Made of fine meadow-grass.");  August 25, 1858 ("I see . . . evidently the short-tailed meadow mouse, or Arvicola hirsuta. Generally above, it is very dark brown, almost blackish, being browner forward. It is also dark beneath. Tail but little more than one inch long. Its legs must be very short, for I can hardly glimpse them. Its nose is not sharp.") See also  See Thompson (Meadow mouse nests are sometimes constructed in their burrows, and are also found at the season of hay harvest, in great numbers, among the vegetation upon the surface of the ground. They are built of coarse straw, lined with fine soft leaves, somewhat in the manner of a bird's nest, with this difference, that they are covered at the top, and the passage into them is from beneath.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse. Thoreau's e meadow mouse or "short-tailed meadow mouse," Arvicola hirsuta, is now known as Microtus pennsylvanicus, meadow Vole.

At Lee’s Cliff I find the radical leaves of the early saxifrage, columbine, and the tower mustard, etc., See  April 1, 1855 ("At the first Conantum Cliff I am surprised to see how much the columbine leaves have grown in a sheltered cleft; also the cinquefoil, dandelion, yarrow, sorrel, saxifrage, etc., etc. They seem to improve the least warmer ray to advance themselves, and they hold all they get.")

April 7. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, April 7

Sheldrakes sail away

in different directions

uneasy of me.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, all the conspicuous white ducks 

"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-550407

Early April snow.

Early April snow
on the north side of the trees.
I feel the sun's warmth.