19 May 1856 – 25 May 1856

‘Thick fog in the morning, which lasted late in the forenoon and left behind it rainy clouds for the afternoon. P. M. — To Cedar Swamp. Landed at Island Neck, and saw a small striped snake in the act of swallowing a Rana palustris, within three feet of the water. The snake, being frightened, released his hold, and the frog hopped off to the water. Hear and see a yellow-throated vireo, which methinks I have heard before. Going and coming, he is in the top of the same swamp white oak and singing indolently, ullia — eelya, and sometimes varied to eelyee. The tanager is now heard plainly and frequently. I see running along the water’s edge on the Island Neck, amid the twigs, a new bird, slender and somewhat warbler-like, but plainly a Turdus, with a deep, dark chocolate-brown back (apparently uniformly), apparently cream-colored beneath, handsomely and abundantly spotted with dark brown, vent white, light flesh-colored legs, yellowish or cream-colored line over eyes. Me- thinks it teetered or wagged its tail. Flew soon and was quite shy. I think it must have been the Turdus aquati- cus from its dark chocolate-brown back and running along the water’s edge. Feel pretty sure, yet that is said to have white (?) over eye. I lost it before I had ex- amined fully. Quite a discovery. Vide golden-crowned thrush carefully. Apple in bloom; some, no doubt, earlier. Night- hawk’s squeak. Red-wing’s nest made, and apparently a kingbird’s (?), on black willow four feet above water.1 As I sail up the reach of the Assabet above Dove Rock with a fair wind, a traveller riding along the high- way is watching my sail while he hums a tune. How inspiring and elysian it is to hear when the traveller or the laborer from a call to his horse or the murmur of ordinary conversation rises into song! It paints the land- scape suddenly as no agriculture, no flowery crop that can be raised. It is at once another land, the abode of poetry. I am always thus affected when I hear in the fields any singing or instrumental music at the end of the day. It implies a different hfe and pursuits than the ordinary. As he looked at my sail, I listened to his sing- ing. Perchance they were equally poetic, and we re- paid each other. Why will not men oftener advertise me of musical thoughts? The singer is in the attitude of one inviting the muse, — aspiring. The Maryland yellow-throat amid the alders sings now, whit-we-chee whit-we-chee whit-we-chee whit-whit, the last two fast, or whit alone, or none. Wood pewee. Woolly aphides on alder. The Smilacina trifolia will apparently bloom to-mor- row or next day.’ Returning, stopped at Barrett’s sawmill while it rained a little. Was also attracted by the music of his saw. He was sawing a white oak log; was about to saw a very ugly and knotty white oak log into drag plank, making an angle. Said that about as many logs were brought to his mill as ten years ago, — he did not per- ceive the difference, — but they were not so large, and perhaps they went further for them. I observed that he was not grinding. No, he said, it was the first day he had not had a grist, though he had plenty of water; probably because the farmers were busy planting. There [were] white oak, pine, maple, and walnut logs waiting to be sawed. A bullfrog, sluggish, by my boat’s place. | On the 13th I saw washed up to the edge of the meadow, this side of Clamshell, portions of one or two large bluish-white eggs, apparently a size larger than hens’ eggs, which may have been laid last year by some wild fowl] in the meadow. If my friend would take a quarter part the pains to show me himself that he does to show me a piece of roast beef, I should feel myself irresistibly invited. He says, — “* Come and see Roast beef and me.” I find the beef fat and well done, but him rare.

Fir-balsam (ours in grove) apparently two or three days, for it [is] almost entirely effete; cones white, one inch long nearly. Was awaked and put into sounder sleep than ever early this morning by the distant crashing of thunder, and now, — P. M. (to Beck Stow’s), — I hear it in mid-afternoon, muttering, crashing in the muggy air in mid-heaven, a little south of the village as I go through it, like the tumbling down of piles of boards, and get a few sprinkles in the sun. Nature has found her hoarse summer voice again, like the lowing of a cow let out to pasture. It is Nature’s rutting season. Even as the birds sing tumultuously and glance by with fresh and brilliant plumage, so now is Nature’s grand- est voice heard, and her sharpest flashes seen. The air has resumed its voice, and the lightning, like a yellow spring flower, illumines the dark banks of the clouds. All the pregnant earth is bursting into life like a mildew, accompanied with noise and fire and tumult. Some oestrus stings her that she dashes headlong against the steeples and bellows hollowly, making the earth tremble. She comes dropping rain like a cow with overflowing udder. The winds drive her; the dry fields milk her. It is the familiar note of another warbler, just arrived, echoing amid the roofs.’ I see, on a locust in the locust [sic] burying-ground, the Sylvia striata, or black-poll warbler, busily picking about the locust buds and twigs. Black head and above, with olive (green) wings and two white bars; white all beneath, with a very distinct black line from throat to shoulders; flesh-colored legs; bill, dark above, light beneath. Hear no note. Saw it well. At Moore’s Swamp on Bedford road, myriads of pollywogs half an inch long darken or blacken the shore, chiefly head as yet. Bank swallows are very lively about the low sand-bank just beyond, in which are fifty holes. I now see distinctly the chestnut-sided warbler (of the 18th and 17th), by Beck Stow’s. It is very lively on the maples, birches, etc., over the edge [of] the swamp. Sings eech eech eech | wichy wichy | ichea or itch itch itch | witty witty | tchea. Yet this note I represented on the 18th by tche tche tche | tchut tchutter we. The andromeda has apparently been out several days, but no buck-bean there yet, nor will for a day or two.' See and hear a stake-driver in the swamp. It took one short pull at its pump and stopped. Two marsh hawks, male and female, flew about me a long time, screaming, the female largest, with ragged wings, as I stood on the neck of the peninsula. This induced me to climb four pines, but I tore my clothes, got pitched all over, and found only squirrel; yet they have, no doubt, a nest thereabouts. Haynes the carpenter calls that large glaucous puff that grows on the Andromeda paniculata, swamp-apple; says he has eaten as much as three bushels (!) of them when he was a boy, and likes them. That is what he was raised on. After I got him home, I observed a large leech on the upper shell of my great turtle. He stoutly resisted being turned over, by sinking his claws into the ground; was aware that that was his weak side, and, when turned, would instantly run out his head and turn himself back. No wonder the Orientals rested the world on such a broad back. Such broad health and strength underlies Nature.

Wednesday. P. M. — To Saw Mill Brook. Chelidonium. Rubus triflorus abundantly out at the Saw Mill Brook; how long? A robin’s nest without mud, on a young white oak in woods, with three eggs. Saw two splendid rose-breasted grosbeaks with females in the young wood in Emerson’s lot. What .strong- colored fellows, black, white, and fiery rose-red breasts! Strong-natured, too, with their stout bills. A clear, sweet singer, like a tanager but hoarse somewhat, and not shy. ‘The redstarts are inquisitive and hop near. The Polygonatum pubescens there, in shade, almost out; per- haps elsewhere already. At the trough near Turnpike, near Hosmer’s Spring, the (perhaps) Stellaria borealis of the 15th. I am still in doubt whether it is a stellaria or cerastium. This is quite smooth, four to five inches high, spreading and forking, with a single flower each fork, on a long peduncle; square-stemmed, oblong-lanceolate leaves, slightly cili- ate and connate: ten stamens, five long, five short. Aspect of a smooth cerastium, but this has four to seven styles, oftenest perhaps five, all apetalous, except one petal shorter than the calyx; leaves one-nerved, sepals three-nerved! ‘The bare and small plants are reddish- stemmed. Can it be Stellaria longipes? The buck-bean in Everett’s Pool abundantly out, say four or five days. It is earlier than at B. Stow’s. Myposotis laxa by ‘Turnpike, near Hosmer Spring, may have been out several days; two or three at least.

P. M.—To Viola Muhlenbergii, which is abundantly out; how long? A small pale-blue flower growing in dense bunches, but in spots a little drier than the V. cucullata and blanda. Veronica peregrina, apparently ‘several days. A yellow butterfly over the middle of the flooded meadow. Polygonatum pubescens at rock. Aralia nudicaulis, apparently a day or two where heat is reflected from the rock on Island. Choke- cherry and crategus there in a day or two. The Cornus florida does not bloom this year. Hemlock and creep- ing juniper, not quite yet. The red and cream-col- ored cone-shaped staminate buds of the black spruce will apparently shed pollen in one to three days? They are nearly half an inch long. I see beds ' | | | A. of (anemones amid or under \| \.. {. [- clumps of hazels, of this form: : a mass of their pretty leaves and flowers, five or six feet in diameter. I see a common Vaccinium vacillans (?), with a leaf much like that of the V. Pennsylvanicum, also the common V. vacillans with more rounded glaucous leaves. I noticed a cobweb the other day, between the thole- pins of my boat, which was perfectly black with those little fuzzy gnats which fly at that height and take shelter from wind in boats and the like. A little clammy hairy cerastium (?) (like a Cerastiwm viscosum, slender and erect), about three inches high, will open in a day or two on the rock near the bass.!

P. M. —'To Heywood Spring. Sorrel well open on west side of railroad causeway against H. Wheeler’s land. Noticed the earliest willow catkins turned to masses of cotton yesterday; also a little of the mouse-ear down begins to be loose. Hear often and distinctly, apparently from H. Wheeler’s black spruce wood-lot, the phe phee-ar of the new mus- cicapa. Red-eye and wood thrush. Houstonias whiten the fields, and looked yesterday like snow, a sugaring of snow, on the side of Lee’s Hill. Heard partridges drum yesterday and to-day. Observed the pads yesterday just begun to spread out on the surface with wrinkled edges and here and there a bullet-like bud; the red white lily pads still more rare as yet. The stellaria at Heywood Spring must be the same with that near the E. Hosmer Spring, though the former has commonly fewer styles and rather slenderer leaves. It appears to be the S. borealis, though the leaves are narrowly lanceolate; has three to seven styles; a few petals (cleft almost to the bottom) or none; pods, some larger than the calyx ? and apparently ten-ribbed; petals, now about the length of the sepals.’ After sunset on river. A warm summer-like night. A bullfrog trumps once. A large devil’s-needle goes by after sundown. The ring of toads is loud and incessant. It seems more prolonged than it is. I think it not more than two seconds in each case. At the same time I hear a low, stertorous, dry, but hard-cored note from some frog in the meadows and along the riverside; often heard in past years but not accounted for. Is it a Rana palustris ? Dor-bugs hum in the yard, — and were heard against the windows some nights ago. The cat is springing into the air for them.

Pratt gave me the wing of a sparrow (?) hawk which he shot some months ago. He was coming from his house to his shop early in the morning when he saw this small hawk, which looked like a pigeon, fly past him over the Common with a sparrow in his clutches, and alight about six feet up the south button- wood in front of Tolman’s. Having a small Maynard’s revolver in his pocket, loaded with a ball size of a pea, he followed, and, standing twenty-two paces from the tree in the road, aimed and brought down both hawk and sparrow at a distance of about six rods, cutting off the wing of the former with the ball. This he con- fessed he could not do again if he should try a hundred times. It must be a sparrow hawk, according to Wilson and Nuttall, for the inner vanes of the primaries and secondaries are thickly spotted with brownish white. Humphrey Buttrick says that he hears the note of the woodcock from the village in April and early in May (too late now); that there were some this year breeding or singing by the riverside in front of Abel Heywood’s. He says that when you see one spring right up straight into the air, you may go to the spot, and he will surely come down again after some minutes to within a few feet of the same spot and of you. Has known a partridge to fly at once from one to two miles after being wounded (tracked them by the blood) without alighting. Says he has caught as many as a dozen partridges in his hands. He lies right down on them, or where he knows them to be, then passes his hands back and forth under his body till he feels them. You must not lift your body at all or they will surely squeeze out, and when you feel one must be sure you get hold of their legs or head, and not feathers merely. To-day is suddenly overpoweringly warm. Ther- mometer at 1 p. M., 94° in the shade! but in the afternoon it suddenly fell to 56, and it continued cold the next two days.

10 a.m.—To Fair Haven Pond with Blake and Brown. I found five arrowheads at Clamshell Hill. Saw, just before, on the flat meadow on the right, feeding on the edge of the meadow just left bare, along with the peetweets, a bird a size larger with an apparently light-brown back, a ring or crescent of black on its breast and side of neck, and a black patch including the eye. Can it be the Charadrius semzpalmatus ? or else Wil- sonius ? It looks like the latter in Wilson’s larger plates. It reminded me of the piping plover, but was not so white; and of the killdeer, but was not so large. Pyrus on side of Fair Haven Hill, yesterday at least. Huckleberry there, yesterday also at least. On the Cliffs, orobanche; Veronica arvensis, the little one on the rocks there, well out. Also low blackberry on the rocks a day or two. Blackburnian warbler and rose- breasted grosbeak. Lupines, apparently yesterday. Young phoebes in the Baker house. The bird flitted out as we entered. I reached to an old shelf and felt the warm but callow young. Azalea nudiflora in garden. Polygala, fringed, by path beyond Hubbard Grove; how long?