9 April 1855 – 15 April 1855

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 mid-afternoon 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.

Still falls a little snow and rain this morn- ing, 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 saw 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 saw one man paddling in the stern and another in white pantaloons stand- ing up in the bow, ready to shoot. Presently I saw the last raise his gun, take aim, and fire into the bushes, though I heard no sound from over the dashing waves, but merely saw the smoke as in a picture. There was a strong wind from the northwest, while I was looking southwest. ‘The gunner then pointed out the course while his companion paddled and struck the game in the water with a paddle, and I distinctly saw him lift up a muskrat by the tail. In a few moments, very nearly the same actions were repeated, though this time I did not see the rat raised. Then, turning my glass down the stream, I saw, on the Miles meadow shore about half a mile distant, a man whom I knew empty- ing his boat of fat pine roots which he had got for spear- ing, while his dog was digging 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 percep- tibly 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 Hub- bard’s Close."

P. M.— To Second Division cowslips. A fair day, but a cool wind still, from the snow- covered country in the northwest. It is, however, pleasant to sit in the sun in sheltered places. The small croaking frogs are now generally heard in all those stagnant ponds or pools in woods floored with leaves, which are mainly dried up in the summer. At first, perhaps, you hear but one or two dry croaks, but, if you sit patiently, you may hear quite a concert of them at last, — er-wah er-wah er-wah, with a nasal twang and twist, — and see them dimpling the surface here and there by their movements. But if you approach the pond-side, they suddenly cease. We hear them at J. P. Brown’s Pond, which is edged with ice still on the north. The water must be smooth and the weather pretty warm. There is still some icy snow in hollows under the north sides of woods. I see the feathers, apparently of a fox-colored sparrow, completely covering a stump, where some creature has devoured it. At a great ant-hill, the common half- red, half-black ants are stirring, apparently clearing out rubbish from their nest. Great quantities of odor- iferous sweet-gale seed are collected with the scum at the outlet of Nut Meadow, for they float. The Alnus incana blossoms begin generally to show. The serru- lata will undoubtedly blossom to-morrow in some places.* The pine on the Marlborough road which I saw from my window has been sawed down the past winter. I try to count its circles; count sixty-one from centre to sap, but there the pitch conceals the rest completely. I guessed there were fifteen more, at least. The tree was probably quite eighty years old. It was about two and a quarter feet in diameter. The common hazel just out. It is perhaps the pret- tiest flower of the shrubs that have opened. A little bunch of (in this case) half a dozen catkins, one and three quarters inches long, trembling in the wind, shedding golden pollen on the hand, and, close by, as many minute, but clear crystalline crimson stars at the end of a bare and seemingly dead twig. For two or three days in my walks, I had given the hazel catkins a fillip with my finger under their chins to see if they were in bloom, but in vain; but here, on the warm south side of a wood, I find one bunch fully out and completely relaxed. They know when to trust themselves to the weather. At the same time I hear through the wood the sharp peep of the first hylodes I have chanced to hear. Many cowslip buds show a little yellow, but they will not open there for two or three days. The road is paved with solid ice there.

6 a. mM. — To Island. An overcast and moist day, but truly Apml— no sun all day — like such as began methinks on Fast- Day, or the 5th. You cannot foretell how it will turn out. The river has been steadily rising since the first of April, though you would not think there had been rain enough to cause it. It now covers the meadows pretty respectably. It is perhaps because the warm rain has been melting the frost in the ground. This may be the great cause of the regular spring rise. I see half a dozen crow blackbirds uttering their coarse rasping char char, like great rusty springs, on the top of an elm by the riverside; and often at each char they open their great tails. They also attain to a clear whistle with some effort, but seem to have some dif- ficulty in their throats yet. The Populus tremuloides by the Island shed pollen —a very few catkins — yesterday at least; for some anthers are effete and black this morning, though it [sic] is hardly curved down yet an is but an inch and a half long at most. White maples are now generally in bloom. The musk tortoise stirring on the bottom. Most of the stellaria has been winter-killed, but I find a few flowers on a protected and still green sprig, probably not blossomed long. At 8 a. M. — Took caterpillars’ eggs from the apple trees at the Texas house and found about thirty. It being completely overcast, having rained a little, the robins, etc., sing at 4.30 as at sundown usually. The waters, too, are smooth and full of reflections.

9 a. M.— To Atkins’s boat-house. No sun till setting. Another still, moist, overcast day, without sun, but all day a crescent of light, as if breaking away in the north. The waters smooth and full of reflections. A still cloudy day like this is per- haps the best to be on the water. To the clouds, per- haps, we owe both the stillness and the reflections, for the light is in great measure reflected from the water. Robins sing now at 10 a. M. as in the morning, and the phoebe; and pigeon woodpecker’s cackle is heard, and many martins (with white-bellied swal- lows) are skimming and twittering above the water, perhaps catching the small fuzzy gnats with which the air is filled. ‘The sound of church bells, at various dis- tances, in Concord and the neighboring towns, sounds very sweet to us on the water this still day. It is the song of the villages heard with the song of the birds.