17 May 1852 – 23 May 1852

My seringo-bird is reddish-brown with a spot on the breast and other marks, two whitish lines on back, and some white in tail; runs in the grass, so that you see nothing of it where the grass is very low; and sings standing on a tuft of grass and holding its head up the while. P. M.— To Loring’s Pond. Decidedly fair weather at last; a bright, breezy, flowing, washing day. I see that dull-red grass whose blades, having risen above the surface of the water, lie flat on it in close and conspicuous flakes, making a right angle with the part in the water. Perhaps a shghtly rosaceous tint to it. The different color of the water at different times would be worth observing. To-day it is full of light and life, the breeze presenting many surfaces to the sun. There is a sparkling shimmer on it. It is a deep, dark blue, as the sky is clear. The air everywhere is, as it were, full of the rippling of waves. This pond is the more interesting for the islands in it. The water is seen running behind them, and it is pleasant to know that it penetrates quite behind and isolates the land you see, or to see it apparently flowing out from behind an island with shining ripples. To-day the cinquefoils (the earliest one) on the hill- sides shine in the sun. Their brightness becomes the day. That is a beautiful footpath through the pitch pines on the hillside north of this pond, over a carpet of tawny pine leaves, so slippery under your feet. Why do not men sprinkle these over their floors instead of sand? The sun on the young foliage of birches, alders, etc., on the opposite side of the pond has an enchant- ing effect. The sunshine has a double effect. The new leaves abet it, so fresh and tender, not apprehending their insect foes. Now the sun has come out after the May storm, how bright, how full of freshness and tender promise and fragrance is the new world! The woods putting forth new leaves; it is a memorable season. So hopeful! These young leaves have the beauty of flowers. The shrub oaks are just beginning to blossom. The forward leaves and shoots of the meadow-sweet, beneath the persistent dead flowers, make a very rich and conspicuous green now along the fences and walls. The conspicuous white flowers of the two kinds of shad-blossom spot the hillsides at a dis- tance. This is the only bush or tree whose flowers are sufficiently common and large at this time (to-day), except the Salix alba and the peach (the choke-cherry Is rare), to make a show now, as the apples will soon. I see dark pines in the distance in the sunshine, contrast- ing with the light fresh green of the deciduous trees. There is life in these fresh and varied colors, life in the motion of the wind and the waves; all make it a flowing, washing day. It isa good day to saunter. The female crimson flowers of the sweet-gale are still con- spicuous. Is that the shepherd’s-purse and the speed- well! that- I found in blossom? Those commonest cockle(?)-shells are holding on to the rocks under water by their feet in Fort Pond Brook. Wood tor- toises are numerous in the fields to-day. Saw a young one two and a half inches diameter. Do I smell the young birch leaves at a distance? Most trees are beau- tiful when leafing out, but especially the birch. After a storm at this season, the sun comes out and lights up the tender expanding leaves, and all nature is full of light and fragrance, and the birds sing without ceasing, and the earth is a fairyland. The birch leaves are so small that you see the landscape through the tree, and they are like silvery and green spangles in the sun, fluttering about the tree. Bridged the brook with help of an alder loop and a rider. Are they not grandiden- tatas on Annursnack which show so white at this dis- . tance like shad-blossoms? Does not summer begin after the May storm? What is that huckleberry with sticky leaf-buds and just expanding leaves covered with a yellow waxy matter? The first veery note. Methinks they were turtle doves which I saw this afternoon baited to a pigeon-place. They fly like a pigeon, —a slender, darting bird. I do not surely know them apart. To-night I hear a new dreamer, a frog, — that sprayey note which perhaps I have referred to the midsummer frog. That praying or snoring sound also I hear. ’ It is either the smooth or the procumbent, probably the first.

The rhodora in blossom, a delicate-colored flower. P. M.— To Cliffs. Frog or toad spawn in a pool in long worm-like or bowel-like strings, sometimes coiled up spirally. It is fine clear atmosphere, only the mountains blue. A slight seething but no haze. Shall we have much of this weather after this? There 1s scarcely a flock of cloud in the sky. The heaven is now broad and open to the earth in these longest days. The world can never be more beautiful than now, for, combined with the tender fresh green, you have this remarkable clearness of the air. I doubt if the landscape will be any greener. The landscape is most beautiful looking towards the sun (in the orchard on Fair Haven) atfour. First, there is this green slope on which I sit, looking down between the rows of apple trees just being clothed with tender green, — sometimes underneath them to the sparkling water, or over through them, or seeing them against the sky. Secondly, the outline of this bank or hill is drawn against the water far below; the river still high, a beau- tifully bright sheen on the water there, though it is elsewhere a dull slaty-blue color, a sober rippled sur- face. A fine sparkling shimmer in front, owing to the remarkable clearness of the atmosphere (clarified by the May storm ?). Thirdly, on either side of the wood beyond the river are patches of bright, tender, yellow- ish, velvety green grass in meadows and on hillsides. It is like a short furred mantle now and bright as if it had the sun on it. Those great fields of green affect me as did those early green blades by the Corner Spring, — like a fire flaming up from the earth. The earth proves itself well alive even in the skin. No scurf on it, only a browner color on the barren tops of hills. Fourthly, the forest, the dark-green pines, wonderfully distinct, near and erect, with their distinct dark stems, spiring tops, regularly disposed branches, and silvery light on their needles. They seem to wear an aspect as much fresher and livelier as the other trees, — though their growth can hardly be perceptible yet, — as if they had been washed by the rains and the air. They are now being invested with the light, sunny, yellowish-green of the deciduous trees. This tender foliage, putting so much light and life into the landscape, is the remark- able feature at this date. ‘The week when the deciduous trees are generally and conspicuously expanding their leaves. ‘The various tints of gray oaks and yellowish- green birches and aspens and hickories, and the red or scarlet tops where maple keys are formed (the blossoms are now over), —these last the high color (rosaceous ?) in the bouquet. And fifthly, I detect a great stretch of high-backed, mostly bare, grassy pasture country be- tween this and the Nashua, spotted with pines and forests, which I had formerly taken for forest uninter- rupted. And finally, sixthly, Wachusett rising in the background, slightly veiled in bluish mist, — toward which all these seem to slope gradually upward, — and those grassy hillsides in the foreground, seen but as patches of bare grassy ground on a spur of that distant mountain. This afternoon the brown thrashers are very numer- ous and musical. They plunge downward when they leave their perch, in a peculiar way. It is a bird that appears to make a business of singing for its own amusement. There is great variety in its strains. It is not easy to detect any repetition. The wood thrush, too, is pretty sure to be heard in a walk. Some shrub oaks are beginning to blossom. I hear my second cricket on the face of the Cliffs, clear and distinct, — only one. The shrub oaks on the plain show a little red with their buds and young leaves. The crowfoot shines on the rocks. At evening the water is quite white, reflecting the white evening sky, and oily smooth. I see the willows reflected in it, when I cannot see their tops in the twilight against the dark hillside. The first bat by the riverside. The praying or snoring frog, the peepers (not so common as lately), the toads (not many), and sometimes my midsummer frog, — all together. The spearers are out to-night. These days the golden robin is the important bird in the streets, on the elms.

Up to about the 14th of May I watched the progress of the season very closely, — though not so carefully the earliest birds, — but since that date, both from poor health and multiplicity of objects, I have noted little but what fell under my observation. The pear trees are in bloom before the apples. The cherries appear to have been blasted by the winter. The lilac has begun to blossom. There was the first lightning we have noticed this year, last Sunday even- ing, and a thunder-storm in Walpole, N. H. Light- ning here this evening and an aurora in form of a seg- ment of a circle.

P. M.— To Corner Spring. So many birds that I have not attended much to any of late. A barn swallow accompanied me across the Depot Field, methinks attracted by the insects which I started, though I saw them not, wheeling and tack- ing incessantly on all sides and repeatedly dashing within a rod of me. It is an agreeable sight to watch one. Nothing lives in the air but is in rapid motion. Now is the season of the leafing of the trees and of planting. The fields are white with houstonias, as they will soon be yellow with buttercups. Perchance the beginning of summer may be dated from the fully formed leaves, when dense shade (?) begins. I will see. High blueberries at length. It is unnecessary to speak of them.. All flowers are beautiful. The Salzx alba is about out of bloom. Pads begin to appear, though the river is high over the meadows.' A caterpillars’ nest on a wild cherry. Some apple trees in blossom; most are just ready to burst forth, the leaves being half formed. I find the fever-bush in bloom, but apparently its blos- soms are now stale. I must observe it next year. They were fresh perhaps a week ago. Currants in bloom by Conant’s Spring. Are they natives of America? A lady’s-slipper well budded and now white. The Viola ovata is of a deep purple blue, is darkest and has most of the red in it; the V. pedata is smooth and pale-blue, delicately tinged with purple reflections; the cucullata is more decidedly blue, slaty-blue, and darkly striated. The white violets by the spring are rather scarce now. The red oak leaves are very pretty and finely cut, about an inch and three quarters long. Like most young leaves, they are turned back around the twig, . parasol-like. The farmers apprehend frosts these nights. A purplish gnaphalium with three-nerved leaves.

Morning by river. A song sparrow’s nest and eggs so placed in a bank that none could tread on it; bluish-white, speckled. Also a robin’s nest and eggs in the crotch of a maple. Methinks birds that build amid the small branches of trees wait for the leaves to expand.’ The dew hangs on the grass like globules of quicksilver. Can I tell by it if it has rained in the night? I hear that it has. P. M. — The black oak is just beginning to blossom. The earlier apple trees are in bloom, and resound with the hum of bees of all sizes and other insects. To sit under the first apple tree in blossom is to take another step into summer. The apple blossoms are so abundant and full, white tinged with red; a rich-scented Pomona fragrance, telling of heaps of apples in the autumn, perfectly innocent, wholesome, and delicious. On hill- sides cut off two years ago, the red oaks now contrast at a little distance with the yellowish-green birches. The latter are covered with green lice, which cover me. The catbird sings like a robin sometimes, sometimes like a blackbird’s sprayey warble. There is more of squeak or mew, and also of clear whistle, than in the thrasher’s note. | Nemopanthes in bloom; leaves three quarters of an . inch. Sand cherry also, fully. Young blueberries every- where in bloom, and Viola pedata along the woodland paths, in high land. Sorrel in bloom, beginning. I am eager to taste a handful.

Saturday. On my way to Plymouth, looked at Audubon in the State-House. Saw painted the red berries of the Arum triphyllum. The pigeon is more red on the breast and more blue than the turtle dove. The female (and male?) wood thrush spotted the whole length of belly; the hermit thrush not so. The seringo-bird cannot be the Savannah sparrow. The piping plover has a big head, white breast, and ring neck. Two kinds of bluets in New York Report. 5 p. mM. — Plymouth. The hill whence Billington discovered the pond. The field plantain in blossom and abundant here. A chick- weed in bloom in Watson’s garden. Is it the same that was so early? A yellow flower, apparently a hieraceum, just ready to blossom. The four-leaved loosestrife, with dark leaves, shows its flower-buds on the ends of its threads. The mayweed is ready to blossom.'! The German forget-me-not reminded me of my little blue flower in the brook.

To Billington Sea at sunrise. The purple finch sings like a canary and like a robin. Huckleberry leaves here, too, are sticky, and yellow my fingers. Pyrus arbutifolia in bloom. The low, spread- ing red cedars which come abruptly to naught at top suggest that they be used for posts with the stubs of branches left, as they often are. The bayberry is late, just beginning to leaf. The buttercup season has ar- rived here. Mrs. Watson says they have no bluets nor wild pinks (catchfly) here. Some ponds have outlets; some have not. So some men. Singular that so many ponds should have connection with the sea. The ink- berry is late. The red-eyed vireo is a steady singer, sitting near the top of a tree a long time alone, — the robin of the woods,—as the robin sings at morning and evening on an elm in the village. It is worth the while to go a little south to anticipate nature at home. I am now covered with down from the tender foliage, walking in the woods in the morn- ing. Hear the hollow, spitting, tunk tunk sound of frogs in the morning, which tells of sultry nights, though we have not had them yet. The Vola lanceolata here. Corema Conradii in the cemetery, just out of bloom, — broom crowberry, from xdpypa, a broom, — a rare plant which I have seen at Provincetown. The Empetrum nigrum, or black crowberry, is found at the White Mountains. The buck-bean in bloom. What is that linear-leaved, small pink-purple flower which they say grows about the stones in a walk? Beach plum ready to bloom. Young oak leaves red above and light be- low, with a red edge only, handsome as flowers. P. M. — To Great South Pond. A brown spotted snake, two feet or more long, light- colored beneath, with blotchy dark - brown spots above like C} [ ( } this :!— The trientalis in bloom. The dandelions close at eve, so that you cannot find those that starred the meadow. Woods extensive but small and low, soil sandy; no variety in the landscape. Woods and deer because the soil is sandy and unfit for cultivation.