10 April 1854 – 16 April 1854

A. M.— Heard the clear, rather loud and rich warble of a purple finch and saw him on an elm. Wilson says they feed on the coverings of the blossoms. It is a distinct and peculiar note, not to be confounded with anything before it. I suspect that I heard one on the Ist of April, q. v. P. M. — Surveying in Lincoln. Large ant-hills in the woods, but no ants. Evening on river. Fine full moon; river smooth. Hear a slight snoring of frogs on the bared meadows. Is it not the R. palus- iris ? "This the first moon to walk by.

Wednesday. Surveying for Parks in Lin- coln. A white frost this morning, after the clear moonlight. Parks says he saw a buff-edged butterfly a month ago, 7. e. before the 17th of March. The hazels are well out to-day, and their pollen yellows my clothes, it being a warm (off-coat) day. When I went to Mr. P.’s house at noon, he addressed me, “Now, what will you have to drink?” and soon appeared stirring a glass of gin for himself. | Waited at Lincoln depot an hour and a half. Heard the telegraph harp. I perceived distinctly that man melts at the sound of music, just like a rock exposed to a furnace heat. They need not have fabled that Orpheus moved the rocks and trees, for there is no- thing more insensible than man; he sets the fashion to the rocks, and it is as surprising to see him melted, as when children see the lead begin to flow in a crucible. I observe that it is when I have been intently, and it may be laboriously, at work, and am somewhat list- less or abandoned after it, reposing, that the muse visits me, and I see or hear beauty. It is from out the shadow of my toil that I look into the light. The music of the spheres is but another name for the Vulcanic force. May not such a record as this be kept on one page of the Book of Life: “A man was melted to-day.”

A clear and pleasant morning. Walked down as far as Moore’s at 8 a. m. and returned along the hill. Heard the first chip-bird, sitting on an apple [tree], with its head up and bill open, jingling tche- tche-tche-tche-tche, etc., very fast. Hear them in various parts of the town. On the hill near Moore’s hear the F. juncorum,— phé-phé-phé-phé-phé, pher-phé-€-€-é- é-é-€-€. How sweet it sounds in a clear warm morning in a wood-side pasture amid the old corn-hills, or in sprout-lands, a [sic] clear and distinct, “like a spoon in a cup,” the last part very fast and ringing. Hear the pine warbler also, and think I see a female red- wing flying with some males. Did I see a bay-wing? Heard a purple finch on an elm, like a faint robin. P. M. — Sail to Bittern Cliff. The surface of the water, toward the sun, reflecting the light with different degrees of brilliancy, is very exhilarating to look at. The red maple in a day or two. I begin to see the anthers in some buds. So much more of the scales of the buds is now uncovered that the tops of the swamps at a distance are reddened. A couple of large ducks, which, because they flew low over the water and appeared black with a little white, I thought not black ducks, — possibly velvet or a mer- ganser. The black ducks rise at once to a considerable height and often circle about to reconnoitre. ‘The golden-brown tassels of the alder are very rich now. The poplar (tremuloides) by Miles’s Swamp has been out — the earliest catkins — maybe two or three days. On the evening of the 5th the body of a man was found in the river between Fair Haven Pond and Lee’s, much wasted. How these events disturb our associa- tions and tarnish the landscape! It is a serious injury done to a stream. One or two crowfoots on Lee’s Cliff, fully out, surprise me like a flame bursting from the russet ground. ‘The saxifrage is pretty common, ahead of the crowfoot now, and its peduncles have shot up. ‘The slippery elm is behind the common, which is fully out beside it. It will open apparently in about two days of pleasant weather.’ I can see the anthers plainly in its great rusty, fusty globular buds. A small brown hawk with white on rump — I think too small for a marsh hawk — sailed low over the meadow.” Heard now, at 5.30 p.m., that faint bullfrog- like note from the meadows,—er-er-er. Many of the button-bushes have been broken off about eighteen inches above the present level of the water (which is rather low), apparently by the ice. Saw a piece of meadow, twelve feet in diameter, which had been dropped on the northwest side of Willow Bay on a bare shore, thickly set with button-bushes five feet high, per- 1 15th, sheds pollen in chamber. Say 18th. Vide 23d. fectly erect, which will no doubt flourish there this sum- mer. Thus the transplanting of fluviatile plants is car- ried on on a very large and effective scale. Even in one year a considerable plantation will thus be made on what had been a bare shore, and its character changed. The meadow cannot be kept smooth. The winter-rye fields quite green, contrasting with the russet. Saw an old log, stripped of bark, either poplar or maple, four feet long, — its whole upper half covered with that handsome winkle-like fungus.t| They are steel-colored and of a velvety appearance, somewhat semicircular, ‘with concentric growths (?) of different shades, passing from quite black within through a slaty-blue to (at present) a buff edge.” Beneath cream- color. There are many minute ones a tenth of an inch in diameter, the shell-like leaf or ear springing from one side. ‘The full-grown are sometimes united into one leaf for eight or nine inches in one level along the log, tier above tier, with a scalloped edge. They are handsomest when two or more are opposed, meet- ing at their bases, and make a concentric circle. They remind you of shells, also of butterflies. The great variety and regularity of the shading are very inter- esting. They spring from a slight base, rising by a narrow neck. They grow on stumps and other dead wood on land, even driftwood left high, just as some marine shells, their relatives, grow on driftwood. ‘They are a sort of dimple. Does not the whole at last fade out to the buff of the edge?

Friday. 6 a. mM. — To Nawshawtuct. There is a general tinge of green now discernible through the russet on the bared meadows and the hills, the green blades just peeping forth amid the withered ones. Can they be red-wings which I have seen for some time with the red-wings, — without red or buff? They have a split note, perhaps no gurgle-ee! ‘There are spider-webs on the meadow lately bared. It is difficult to find the snipe, though you stand near where he alights. Saw yellow redpolls, on Cheney’s elm, — a clear metallic chip and jerks of the tail.

Morning. —Snow and snowing; four inches deep. Yesterday was very cold. Now, I trust, it will come down and out of the air. Many birds must be hard put to it. Some tree sparrows and song sparrows have got close up to the sill of the house on the south side, where there is a line of grass visible, for shelter. When Father came down this morning he found a sparrow squatting in a chair in the kitchen. Doesn’t know how it came there. I examined it a long time, but could not make it out. It was five or six inches long, with a somewhat finch-like bill (bluish-black above and light below); general aspect above pale brown, mottled with buffish and whitish; bay and a little black on the wings; the crown a faint bay, divided by an ashy line, with a broad ashy line over eye and a distincter bay or chestnut line from the angle of the mouth backward; legs pale clear flesh-color, feet black, claws slender; two faint whitish bars on wings (the tips of feathers); the breast ashy-white, with many dark or black spots edged with bay in chains; no yellow about it; a rounded tail, long and of a pretty uniform pale brown or bay, ashy on the inner vanes, but no white nor black in it; a rather slender bird. It made me think of the bay-wing and of the Savannah sparrow. 3 P. M. — This cold, moist, snowy day it is easier to see the birds and get near them. They are driven to the first bare ground that shows itself in the road, and the weather, etc., makes them more indifferent to your approach. The tree sparrows look much stouter and more chubby than usual, their feathers being puffed up and darker also, perhaps with wet. Also the robins and bluebirds are puffed up. I see the white under sides of many purple finches, busily and silently feed- ing on the elm blossoms within a few feet of me, and now and then their bloody heads and breasts. They utter a faint, clear chip. Their feathers are much ruffled. The yellow redpoll hops along the limbs within four or five feet of me. Martins the 13th first. ‘The arrival of the purple finches appears to be coincident with the blossoming of the elm, on whose blossom it feeds. Johnson in his “ Wonder-working Providence ” speaks of “an army of caterpillars” in New England in 1649, so great “that the cart wheels in their passage were painted green with running over the great swarms of them.”

A cold, disagreeable day, — sun not fairly out, — yet the snow of yesterday melts apace; you can almost see it melt. Each time I look out I see more of russet or green. At first the bare ground showed itself in the middle of the road and rapidly widened, giving the birds wider pasture; then the grass in the fields began to peep through and the landscape to ac- quire a russet hue again. The green blades under the south side of the houses and hills appear to have grown wonderfully since the snow fell, and to be several shades darker green. P. M. — To epigea. Saw a fox-colored sparrow still and black ducks. There are four or five cowslips open at the Second Di- vision Meadow, — first probably about the 11th. The buds of the shad-bush are much expanded and show considerable green or yellowish,— more than [any other] native shrub or tree that I think of. The may- flower under the snow will not open for some days at least, — maybe a week. The winkle fungi are arranged either on the upper half of a prostrate log or one above another around a dead stump. Saw some to-day almost completely faded to a dark cream-color (or the buff of the edge of mine), though alternating with some faint steel-colored lines. When I meet one of my neighbors these days who is ridiculously stately, being offended, I say in my mind: “Farewell! I will wait till you get your manners off. Why make politeness of so much consequence, when you are ready to assassinate with a word? I do not like any better to be assassinated with a rapier than to be knocked down with a bludgeon. You are so grand that I cannot get within ten feet of you.”” Why will men so try to impose on one another? Why not be simple, and pass for what they are worth only? O such thin skins, such crockery, as I have to deal with! Do they not know that I can laugh? Some who have so much dig- nity that they cannot be contradicted! Perhaps some- body will introduce me one day, and then we may have some intercourse. I meet with several who cannot afford to be simple and true men, but personate, so to speak, their own ideal of themselves, trying to make the manners supply the place of the man. They are puffballs filled with dust and ashes. Apri 17. Snows again. It is remarkable how the American mind runs to statistics. Consider the number of meteorological ob- servers and other annual phenomena. The Smith- sonian Institution is a truly national institution. Every shopkeeper makes a record of the arrival of the first martin or bluebird to his box. Dod, the broker, told me last spring that he knew when the first blue- bird came to his boxes, he made a memorandum of it: John Brown, merchant, tells me this morning that the martins first came to his box on the 13th, he “made a minute of it.” Beside so many entries in their day-books and ledgers, they record these things. Did not see a linaria the past winter, though they were the prevailing bird the winter before. There are but few F. hyemalis about now; they appear to have gone north mostly on the advent of warmer weather about the 5th of April. I look up, these snowy days, and see purple finches silently feeding on the elms, when I have heard no sound. They sing somewhat like a robin, continuously, with a loud, canary-like twee twee and che che che. The tree sparrow is still the prevailing bird.