3 April 1854 – 9 April 1854

Saw from window with glass seven ducks on meadow-water,— only one or two conspicuously white, — these, black heads, white throats and breasts and along sides, — the rest of the ducks, brownish, probably young males and females. Probably the golden-eye. Jardine says it is rare to see more than one full-plumaged male in a flock. P. M. — To Cliffs by boat. Did I see crow blackbirds with the red-wings and hear their harsher chattering? The water has gone down so much that I have to steer carefully to avoid the thick hummocks left here and there on the meadow by the ice. I see the deep holes they were taken out of. A muskrat has just built a small cabin, — apparently a bushel of mouth- fuls on one. No clams up yet. I see a very little snow ice still, at a distance on the north sides of hills and walls. The wind is southeasterly. ‘This is methinks the first hazy day, though not so warm as the 17th of March. The aspect of the woods reminds me of landscapes, and the sough of the wind in the pines sounds warmer, whispering of summer. I think I may say that Flint’s broke up entirely on the first wet day after the cold spell, — 7. e. the 31st of March, — though I have not been there lately. Fair Haven will last some days yet.

All day surveying a wood-lot in Acton for Abel Hosmer. He says that he has seen the small slate- colored hawk pursue and catch doves, 7. e. the sharp- shinned. Has found some trouble in driving off a large slate-colored hawk from a hen in his yard, at which he pounced again close by him, — undoubtedly a goshawk. Has also noticed the butcher-bird catch- ing other birds. Calls him the “mock-bird.” I ob- serve that all the farmers have pretty much the same stories of this kind to tell. They will describe a large, bold slate-colored hawk (the goshawk) about here some two years ago, which caught some of their hens, . and the like. The afternoon very pleasant.

This morning heard a familiar twittering over the house; looked up and saw white-bellied swal- lows. Another saw them yesterday. Surveying all day for Mr. Hoar in Carlisle, near Hitchinson’s and near I. [?] Green’s. See many hawks about yesterday and to-day, — marsh hawks and perhaps hen-hawks, these being pleasant days. It proved very pleasant and warm, and, while surveying in the woods with my greatcoat off, I heard a few stertorous sounds from the croaking frog. Also, as we rode along to Green’s, we saw many of the large butterfly, dark with buff-edged wings, and also small reddish ones, in the dry sprout-lands. The same warm and pleasant weather brings them out to flut- ter along the roadside in sprout-lands, that does the hawks to sail along the meadow-side and over the wood. Saw the first frog by the roadside, —I believe a speckled, i. e. palustris, — and, at the Green lot, heard the hyla. These days, when a soft west or southwest wind blows and it is truly warm, and an outside coat is oppressive, — these bring out the butterflies and the frogs, and the marsh hawks which prey on the last. Just so sim- ple is every year. Whatever year it may be, I am sur- veying, perhaps, in the woods; I have taken off my out- side coat, perhaps for the first time, and hung it on a tree; the zephyr is positively agreeable on my cheek; I am thinking what an elysian day it is, and how I seem always to be keeping the flocks of Admetus such days — that is my luck; when I hear a single, short, well- known stertorous croak from some pool half filled with dry leaves. You may see anything now — the buff- edged butterfly and many hawks — along the meadow; and hark! while I was writing down that field note, the shrill peep of the hylodes was borne to me from afar through the woods. I rode with my employer a dozen miles to-day, keep- ing a profound silence almost all the way as the most simple and natural course. I treated him simply as if he had bronchitis and could not speak, just as I would a sick man, a crazy man, or an idiot. The disease was only an unconquerable stiffness in a well-meaning and sensible man. | Begin to look off hills, and see the landscape again through a slight haze, with warm wind on the cheek.

P. M. — Up Assabet. A still warmer day than yesterday —a warm, moist rain-smelling west wind. I am surprised [to] find so much of the white maples already out. The light-col- ored stamens show to some rods. Probably they be- gan as early as day before yesterday. They resound with the hum of honey-bees, heard a dozen rods off, and you see thousands of them about the flowers against the sky. They know where to look for the white maple and when. This susurrus carries me forward some months toward summer. I was reminded before of those still warm summer noons when the breams’ nests are left dry, and the fishes retreat from the shallows into the cooler depths, and the cows stand up to their bellies in the river. The reminiscence came over me like a summer’s dream. The alders, both kinds, just above the hemlocks, have just begun to shed their pollen. They are hardly as forward as the white maples, but these are not in so warm a position as some. I am in doubt which (alder or maple) may be earliest this year. Have not looked so closely as last year. In clearing out the Assabet Spring, disturbed two small speckled (palustris) frogs just beginning to move. Saw flying over what I at first thought a gull, then a fish hawk. Heard the snipe over the meadows this evening; prob- ably to be heard for a night or two; sounds on dif- ferent days as if approaching or receding ; — over the meadows recently become bare. Apri 7. 6 a. M. — Down railroad to Cliffs. The Populus tremuloides in a day or two. The hazel stigmas are well out and the catkins loose, but no pollen shed yet. On the Cliff I find, after long and careful search, one sedge above the rocks, low amid the with- ered blades of last year, out, its little yellow beard amid the dry blades and few green ones, — the first herba- ceous flowering I have detected. Fair Haven is com- pletely open. It must have been so first either on the 5th or 6th.

Saturday. 6 a. M.— 'To Clamshell Hill. Am surprised to find the skunk-cabbage out, shed- ding pollen (a few). This was probably the case in some places on the 5th and 6th. There has been very little growth visible in its spathes for a month. Its spring seems to be in the fall partly. This spring it has suffered more than usual, owing to the severe cold of the last half of March. Did I see a grass finch ? Cheney’s elm begins to show stamens. That remarkably warm first half of March appears to have advanced the plants very much, and as soon as the cold last half was past they burst out almost together. Spearers’ lights two or three nights past: P. M. — To Lee’s Chiff via Clamshell. Methinks I do not see such great and lively flocks of hyemalis and tree sparrows in the morning since the warm days, the 4th, 5th, and 6th. Perchance after the warmer days, which bring out the frogs and butter- flies, the alders and maples, the greater part of them leave for the north and give place to newcomers. At the Lyceum the other night I felt that the lec- turer had chosen a theme too foreign to himself and so failed to interest me as much as formerly. He described things not in or near to his heart, but toward his ex- tremities and superficies. The poet deals with his privatest experience. ‘There was no central nor central- izing thought in the lecture. Some southward banks and hillsides are now con- siderably tinged with green, not observed at a distance. I see the celandine and catnep (?) beginning to look green along the graveyard fence. The stigmas of the hazels (beyond Clamshell) are a splendid crimson star when brought between me and the light. I cannot find any of their catkins shedding pollen‘yet, but they may to-morrow. On the 5th saw a man sowing rye. Heard a prolonged dream from frog (?) in the river meadow; or was it a toad ?* See black ducks and hear their hoarse quacking. They commonly rise sixty rods off. They feed as often on the land as in the water, and look as clumsy there as the tame do. At Nut Meadow Brook saw, or rather heard, a muskrat plunge into the brook before me, and saw him endeavoring in vain to bury himself in the sandy bottom, looking like an am- phibious animal. I stooped and, taking him by his tail, which projected, tossed him ashore. He did not lose the points of compass, but turned directly to the brook again, though it was toward me, and, plunging in, buried himself in the mud, and that was the last I saw of him. I see many yellow-spot tortoises to-day, — some of them quite rusty-looking. The alders are pretty generally [sic]; they are either yellowish, greenish, or reddish. At Heart-leaf Pond the croaking frogs are in full blast. I saw many on the surface, — small, fer- ruginous or dark brown, bodies two inches long, spread out on the surface and from time to time swimming about and toward each other, or diving. Most utter a short croak several times. Others use a peculiar squirming and nasal variation hard to imitate, some- what like er-wah (not broad war or wor) er-wah er- wah er-wah, faster and faster, the nasal between the two syllables, something like what what what what spoken nasally. Then all will be silent. They have spells at it. Did I see their spawn? A turtle dove — went off with a slight whistling note. The willow near Miles’s to-morrow or next day, if fair. That at the bridge equally early. The poplar catkins (P. tremu- loides) on Conantum are beginning to curve downward, with their red anthers not yet open within the down, — mublberry-like. Apparently will open to-morrow, if warm; say the 10th. The polypody and marginal (?) shield fern and the spleenwort are evergreens at Lee’s Cliff. The slippery elm, apparently in two or three days. Am surprised to find two crowfoot blossoms withered. They undoubtedly opened the 5th or 6th; say the last. They must be earlier here than at the Cliffs, where I have observed them the last two years. They are a little earlier than the saxifrage around them here, of which last I find one specimen at last, in a favorable angle of the rock, just opening. I have not allowed enough for the difference of localities. The columbine shows the most spring growth of any plant. What is that plant with narrow toothed leaves which has already shot up so straight four or five inches on the shelves of the rock? Arabis levigata ? Saw a large bird sail along over the edge of Wheeler’s cranberry meadow just below Fair Haven, which I at first thought a gull, but with my glass found it was a hawk and had a perfectly white head and tail and broad or blackish wings. It sailed and circled along over the low cliff, and the crows dived at it in the field of my glass, and I saw it well, both above and beneath, as it turned, and then it passed off to hover over the Cliffs at a greater height. It was undoubtedly a white- headed eagle. It was to the eye but a large hawk. Saw several yellow redpolls (Sylvia petechia) on the willows by the Hubbard Bridge. Am not sure I heard their note. May have mistaken it formerly for the pine warbler. Its chestnut crown would distinguish it. Hazel, the very first male, open. I find that I can criticise my composition best when I stand at a little distance from it, — when I do not see it, for instance. ‘I make a little chapter of contents which enables me to recall it page by page to my mind, and judge it more impartially when my manuscript is out of the way. The distraction of surveying enables me rapidly to take new points of view. A day or two surveying is equal to a journey. Pickerel have darted in shallows for nearly a week. : Some poets mature early and die young. Their fruits have a delicious flavor like strawberries, but do not keep till fall or winter. Others are slower in coming to their growth. Their fruits may be less delicious, but are a more lasting food and are so hardened by the sun of summer and the coolness of autumn that they keep sound over winter. The first are June-eatings, early but soon withering; the last are russets, which last till June again.

I have not noticed any fox-colored sparrows for a week.! A large-catkined sallow (?) by the railroad, ten rods this side the jog on the west, just bursting out, with its pinkish-orange (before bursting) anthers. There is a little ice:snow [sic] still under the north side of hills. Saw several more redpolls with their rich, glowing yellow breasts by the causeway sides. Saw a wren on the edge of Nathan Stow’s wood and field, with some of the habits of a creeper, lurking along a fallen pine and birch, in and out in a restless manner with tail up, a snuff-colored bird with many white spots and a fine chirping note. Can it be the winter or the wood wren? Callitriche just started from bottom; pollywogs two inches long. Chrysosplentum out, —a few, — perhaps a day or two, where they rest just on the surface of the water. Cowslip in Hubbard’s Close will open the first warm and sunny hour. Perhaps — already at Second Division.2? The skunk-cabbage leaves are unfolding at Brister’s Hill edge, and a grass- like, groove-leaved plant three or four inches high. Nosing of skunks nowadays, and since frost out in spots. The beaked hazel stigmas out; put it Just after the common. Lycopodium lucidulum is as green as ever. I am surprised to find Walden completely open. When did it open? According to all accounts, it must have been between the 6th and 9th. Fair Haven must have opened entirely the 5th or 6th, and Walden very nearly at the same time. ‘This proves how steadily it has been melting, notwithstanding the severe cold of the last half of March; 7. ¢., it is less affected by tran- sient heat or cold than most ponds. The flowers have blossomed very suddenly this year as soon as the long cold spell was over, and almost all together. As yet the landscape generally wears its November russet. . Apri 10. April rain. How sure a rain is to bring the tree sparrows into the yard, to sing sweetly, canary- like! I bought me a spy-glass some weeks since. I buy but few things, and those not till long after I begin to want them, so that when I do get them I am prepared to make a perfect use of them and extract their whole sweet. Saw a dead sucker yesterday. P. M. — To Great Meadows by boat, and sail back. There are many snipes now feeding in the meadows, which you come close upon, and then they go off with hoarse er-r-r-ack er-r-r-ack. 'They dive down suddenly from a considerable height sometimes when they alight. A boy fired at a blue-winged teal a week ago. A great many red-wings along the water’s edge in the meadow. Some of these blackbirds quite black, and some apparently larger than the rest. Are they all red-wings? ‘The crimson stigmas, like the hazel, of the white maple, generally by themselves, make handsome show.