28 April 1856 – 4 May 1856

Surveying the Tommy Wheeler farm.? 1 | believe it was this morning there was quite a fog. Again, as so many times, I [am] reminded of the advantage to the poet, and philosopher, and naturalist, and whomsoever, of pursuing from time to time some other business than his chosen one, — seeing with the side of the eye. The poet will so get visions which no deliberate abandonment can secure. The philosopher is so forced to recognize principles which long study might not detect. And the naturalist even will stumble upon some new and unexpected flower or animal. Mr. Newton, with whom I rode, thought that there was a peculiar kind of sugar maple which he called the white; knew of a few in the middle of Framingham and said that there was one on our Common. How promising a simple, unpretending, quiet, some-: what reserved man, whether among generals or scholars or farmers! How rare an equanimity and serenity which are an encouragement to all observers! Some youth- fulness, some manliness, some goodness. Like Tarbell, a man apparently made a deacon on account of some goodness, and not on account of some hypocrisy and badness as usual. Is not the Hubbard Ditch plant the same I see in a Nut Meadow pool, and a remarkable evergreen? with much slime and many young snails on it? I hear to-day frequently the seezer seezer seezer of the black and white creeper, or what I have referred to that, from J. P. Brown’s wood bounding on Dugan.’ It is not a note, nor a bird, to attract attention; only suggesting still warmer weather, — that the season has revolved so much further. See, but not yet hear, the familiar chewink amid the dry leaves amid the underwood on the meadow’s edge. Many Anemone nemorosa in full bloom at the further end of Yellow Thistle Meadow, in that warm nook by the brook, some probably a day or two there. I think that they are thus early on account of Miles’s dam having broken away and washed off all the snow for some distance there, in the latter part of the winter, long before it melted elsewhere. It is a warm corner under the south side of a wooded hill, where they are not often, if ever before, flooded. As I was measuring along the Marlborough road, a fine little blue-slate butterfly fluttered over the chain. Even its feeble strength was required to fetch the year about. How daring, even rash, Nature appears, who sends out butterflies so early! Sardanapalus-like, she loves extremes and contrasts.' I began to survey the meadow there early, before Miles’s new mill had been running long this Monday morning and flooded it, but a great stream of water was already rushing down the brook, and it almost rose over our boots in the meadow before we had done. Observing the young pitch pines by the road south of Loring’s lot that was so heavily wooded, George Hubbard remarked that if they were cut down oaks would spring up, and sure enough, looking across the road to where Loring’s white pines recently stood so densely, the ground was all covered with young oaks. Mem. — Let me look at the site of some thick pine woods which I remember, and see what has sprung up; e. g. the pitch pines on Thrush Alley and the white pines on Cliffs, also at Baker’s chestnuts, and the chestnut lot on the Tim. Brooks farm. This was a very pleasant or rather warm day, looking a little rainy, but on our return the wind changed to easterly, and I felt the cool, fresh sea-breeze. This has been a remarkably pleasant, and I think warm, spring. We have not had the usual sprinklings of snow, having had so much in the winter, — none since [that] I can remember. There is none to come down out of the air.

Was awakened early this morning by thunder and some rain, — the second thunder-shower of the season, — but it proved a fair day. At mid- forenoon saw a fish hawk flying leisurely over the house northeasterly. P. M. — To Cedar Swamp. Monroe’s larch staminate buds have now erected and separated their anthers, and they look somewhat withered, as if they had shed a part of their pollen. If so, they began yesterday. It was quite warm when I first came out, but about 3 p.M. I felt a fresh easterly wind, and saw quite a mist in the distance produced by it, a sea-turn. There was the same phenomenon yesterday at the same hour, and on the 24th, later in the day. Yet to-day the air was not much cooled. Your first warning of it may be the seeing a thick mist on all the hills and in the horizon. The wind is southeast. I see great devil’s-needles whiz by, coupled. Do not sail well till I reach Dove Rock, then glide swiftly up the stream. I move upward against the current with a moderate but fair wind, the waves some- what larger, probably because the wind contends with the current. The sun is in my face, and the waves look particularly lively and sparkling. I can steer and write at the same time. They gurgle under my stern, in haste to fill the hollow which I have created. The waves seem to leap and roll like porpoises, with a slight surging sound when their crests break, and I feel an agreeable sense that I am swiftly gliding over and through them, bound on my own errands, while their motion is chiefly but an undulation, and an apparent one. It is pleasant, exhilarating, to feel the boat tossed up a little by them from time to time. Perhaps a wine-drinker would say it was like the effect of wine. It is flattering to a sense of power to make the wayward wind our horse and sit with our hand on the tiller. Sailing is much like flying, and from the birth of our race men have been charmed by it. Near the little larch, scared a small dark-brown hawk from an apple tree, which flew off low to another apple tree beside Barrett’s Pond. Just before he flew again I saw with my glass that his tail was barred with white. Must it not be a pigeon hawk then? He looked a dark slate as he sat, with tawny-white thighs and under head, — far off. He soon started a third time, and a crow seemed to be in chase of him. I think I have not described this white-barred hawk before, but for the black-barred vide May 8, 1854, and April 16, 1855. The white cedar now sheds pollen abundantly. Many flowers are effete, though many are not open. Probably it began as much as three days ago. I strike a twig, and its peculiar pinkish pollen fills the air. Sat on the knoll in the swamp, now laid bare. How pretty a red maple in bloom (they are now in prime), seen in the sun against a pine wood, like these little ones in the swamp against the neighboring wood, they are so light and ethereal, not a heavy mass of color impeding the passage of the hight, and they are of so cheerful and lively a color. The pine warbler is heard very much now at mid- day, when already most birds are quiet. It must be the female which has so much less yellow beneath. Do not the toads ring most on a windy day like this? I heard but few on the still 27th. A pigeon woodpecker alights on a dead cedar top near me. Its cackle, thus near, sounds like eh eh eh eh eh, etc., rapidly and emphatically repeated. Some birch sprouts in the swamp are leafed as much as any shrub or tree. Barn swallows and chimney, with white-bellied swallows, are flying together over the river. I thought before that I distinguished the twitter of the chimney swallow.

Surveying the Tommy Wheeler farm. A fine morning. I hear the first brown thrasher sing- ing within three or four rods of me on the shrubby hill- side in front of the Hadley place. I think I had aglimpse of one darting down from a sapling-top into the bushes as I rode by the same place on the morning of the 28th. This, I think, is the very place to hear them early, a dry hillside sloping to the south, covered with young wood and shrub oaks. I am the more attracted to that house as a dwelling-place. To live where you would hear the first brown thrasher! First, perchance, you have a glimpse of one’s ferruginous long brown back, in- stantly lost amid the shrub oaks, and are uncertain if it was a thrasher, or one of the other thrushes; and your uncertainty lasts commonly a day or two, until its rich and varied strain is heard. Surveying seemed a noble employment which brought me within hearing of this bird. I was trying to get the exact course of a wall thickly beset with shrub oaks and birches, making an opening through them with axe and knife, while the hillside seemed to quiver or pulsate with the sudden melody. Again, it is with the side of the ear that you hear. The music or the beauty belong not to your work itself but some of its accompaniments. You would fain devote yourself to the melody, but you will hear more of it if you devote yourself to your work. Cutting off the limbs of a young white pine in the way of my compass, I find that it strips freely. How long this ? By the time I have run through to the Harvard road, I hear the small pewee’s tche-vet’ repeatedly. The Italian with his hand-organ stops to stare at my compass, just as the boys are curious about his machine. We have exchanged places. As I go along the Assabet, a peetweet skims away from the shore. ‘The canoe birch sap still flows. It is much like that of the white, and is now pink, white, and yellow on the bark. Bluets out on the bank by Tarbell’s spring brook, maybe a day or two. This was a very warm as well as pleasant day, but at one o’clock there was the usual fresh easterly wind and sea-turn, and before night it grew quite cold for the season. The regularity of the recurrence of this phenomenon is remarkable. I have noticed [it], at least, on the 24th late in the day, the 28th and the 29th about 3 p. M., and to-day at 1 p. mM. It has been the order. Early in the afternoon, or between one and four, the wind changes (I suppose, though I did not notice its direction in the forenoon), and a fresh cool wind from the sea produces a mist in the air. About 3.30 p. M., when it was quite cloudy as well as raw, and I was measuring along the river just south of the bridge, I was surprised by the great number of swallows — white-bellied and barn swallows and per- haps republican — flying round and round, or skimming very low over the meadow, just laid bare, only a foot above the ground. Either from the shape of the hollow or their circling, they seemed to form a circular flock three or four rods in diameter and one swallow deep. There were two or three of these centres and some birds equally low over the river. It looked like rain, but did not rain that day or the next. Probably their insect food was flying at that height over the meadow at that time. ‘There were a thousand or more of swallows, and I think that they had recently arrived together on their migration. Only this could account for there being so many together. We were measuring through one little circular meadow, and many of them were not driven off by our nearness. The noise of their wings and their twittering was quite loud.

6 e.m.— To Hill. I judge that the larch blossomed when the anthers began to be loose and dry and yellow on their edges. Say then the 28th. The water on the meadows is rapidly going down. I am now confined to the river for the most part. The water begins to feel as warm or warmer than the air when cool. The scrolls of the ferns clothed in wool at Sassafras Shore, five or six inches high. Thalictrum anemonordes well out, probably a day or two, same shore, by the apple trees. Vola ovata* on southwest side of hill, high up near pines. How pleasing that early purple grass in smooth water! Half a dozen long, straight purple blades of different lengths but about equal width, close together and exactly parallel, resting flat on the surface of the water. There is something agreeable in their parallelism and flatness. From the hilltop I look over Wheeler’s maple swamp. The maple-tops are now, I should say, a bright brick red. It is the red maple’s reign now, as the peach and the apple will have theirs. Looking over the swamps a quarter of a mile distant, you see dimly defined cres- cents of bright brick red above and amid a maze of ash-colored branches.

The tea lee of the yellow-rump warbler ‘ in the street, at the end of a cool, rainy day.

Another cool, rainy day. A staminate balm- of-Gilead poplar by Peter’s path. Many of the catkins fallen and effete in the rain, but many anthers still red and unopen. Probably began five or six days ago.

P. M.— To Cedar Swamp via Assabet. Among others, I see republican swallows flying over river at Island. Again I see, as on the 30th of April, swallows flying low over Hosmer’s meadow, over water, though comparatively few. About a foot above the water, about my boat, are many of those little fuzzy gnats, and I suspect that it is these they are attracted by. (On the 6th, our house being just painted, the paint is peppered with the myriads of the same insects which have stuck to it. They are of various sizes, though all small, and there are a few shad-flies also caught. They are particularly thick on the coping under the eaves, where they look as if they had been dusted on, and dense swarms of them are hovering within a foot. Paint a house now, and these are the insects you catch. I suspect it is these fuzzy gnats that the swallows of the 30th were catching.) The river is gone down so much — though checked by the rain of the 2d and 3d — that I now observe the tortoises on the bottom, a sternothzrus among them. Hear the something like twe twe twe twe twé, ter té te twe twe of the myrtle-bird, and see the bird on the swamp white oaks by Island. The aspen there just begun to leaf; not quite the white maple. I observe that the river meadows, especially Hosmer’s, are divided by two or more ridges and valleys (the latter alone now covered with water and so revealed), parallel with the river. The same phenomenon, but less remarkable, on the Wheeler meadow. Are they the traces of old river-banks, or where, in freshets, the current of the river meets the meadow current, and the sediment is deposited ? See a peetweet on Dove Rock, which just peeps out. As soon as the rocks begin to be bare the peetweet comes and is seen teetering on them and skimming away from me. Having fastened my boat at the maple, met, on the bank just above, Luke Dodge, whom I met in a boat fishing up that way once or twice last summer and pre- vious years. Was surprised to hear him say, “I am in my eighty-third year.” He still looks pretty strong and has a voice like a nutmeg-grater. Within two or three years at most, I have seen him walking, with that re- markable gait. It is encouraging to know that a man may fish and paddle in this river in his eighty-third year. He says he is older than Winn, though not the oldest man in the town. Mr. Tolman is in his eighty- sixth year. Went up. Dodge’s (an Englishman who once lived up it and no relation of the last-named) Brook and across Barrett’s dam. In the Cedar Swamp Andromeda caly- culata abundantly out; how long? Viburnum nudum leafing. Smilacina trifolra recently up; will apparently open in ten or twelve days. At the dam, am amused with the various curves of jets of water which leak through at different heights. According to the pressure. For the most part a thin sheet was falling smoothly over the top and cutting short off some smaller jets from the first crack (or edge of the first plank), leaving them like white spikes seen through the water. The dam leaked in a hundred places between and under the planks, and there were as many jets of various size and curve. Reminds me of the tail-piece in Bewick, of landlord drawing beer (?) from two holes, and knowledge of artist shown. Shad-flies on the water, schooner-like. Hear and see a goldfinch, on the ground.