19 April 1858 – 25 April 1858

Spend the day hunting for my boat, which was stolen. As I go up the riverside, I see a male marsh hawk hunting. He skims along exactly over the edge of the water, on the meadowy side, not more than three or four feet from the ground and winding with the shore, looking for frogs, for in such a tortuous line do the frogs sit. They probably know about what time to expect his visits, being regularly decimated. Particular hawks farm particular meadows. It must be easy for him to get a breakfast. Far as I can see with a glass, he is still tilting this way and that over the water-line. At Fair Haven Pond I see, half a mile off, eight large water-fowl, which I thought at first were large ducks, though their necks appeared long. Studying them ori. patiently with a glass, I found that they had gray backs, black heads and necks with perhaps green re- flections, white breasts, dark tips to tails, and a white spot about eyes on each side of bill. At first the whole bird had looked much darker, like black ducks. I did not know but they might be brant or some very large ducks, but at length inclined to the opinion that they were geese. At 5.30, being on the Common, I saw a small flock of geese going over northeast. Being reminded of the birds of the morning and their number, I looked again and found that there were eight of them, and probably they were the same I had seen. Viola ovata on bank above Lee’s Cliff. Edith Emer- : son found them there yesterday; also columbines and the early potentilla April 13th!!!

P. M. — Rain-storm begins, with hail.

George Melvin says that Joshua Haynes once saw a perch depositing her spawn and the male following behind and devouring it! (?) Garlick in his book on pisciculture says that the perch spawn in May. Melvin says that those short-nosed brook pickerel are caught in the river also, but rarely weigh more than two pounds. The puddles have dried off along the road and left thick deposits or water-lines of the dark-purple anthers of the elm, coloring the ground like sawdust. You could collect great quantities of them. The arbor-vite is apparently effete already. Ed. Hoar says he heard a wood thrush the 18th. P. M. — To Easterbrooks’s and Bateman’s Pond. The benzoin yesterday and possibly the 19th, so much being killed. It might otherwise have been earlier yet. Populus grandidentata some days at least. The Cornus florida flower-buds are killed. The rocks on the east side of Bateman’s Pond are a very good place for ferns. I see some very large leather- apron umbilicaria there. They are flaccid and unrolled now, showing most of the olivaceous-fuscous upper side. This side feels cold and damp, while the other, the black, is dry and warm, notwithstanding the warm air. This side, evidently, is not expanded by moisture. It is a little exciting even to meet with a rock covered with these livid (?) green aprons, betraying so much hfe. Some of them are three quarters of a foot in diameter. What a growth for a bare rock!

Hear martins about a box. P. M. — To Hubbard’s Great Meadow. The spawn of April 18th is gone! It was fresh there and apparently some creature has eaten it. I see spawn (ft. halecina-like) in the large pool southeast of this and catch one apparently common-sized (!) R. halecina near it. The general aspect dark-brown, with bronze-colored stripes along sides of back one tenth of an inch wide; spots, roundish with a dull-green halo; a roundish spot on each orbit; no bright spots. I catch apparently another in the Great Meadow, and I think some R. halecina are still spawning, for I see — some fresh spawn there. Andromeda, apparently a day or two, —at least at edge of Island Wood, which I have not seen. I walk along several brooks and ditches, and see a great many yellow-spotted turtles; several couples copulating. The uppermost invariably has a depressed sternum while the other’s is full. The Emys picta are evidently breeding also. See two apparently coupled on the shore. You see both kinds now in little brooks not more than a foot wide, slowly and awkwardly mov- ing about one another. They can hardly make their way against the swift stream. I see one E. picta hold- ing on to a weed with one of its fore feet. Meanwhile a yellow-spotted turtle shoots swiftly down the stream, carried along by the current, and is soon out of sight. The E. picta are also quite common in the shallows on the river meadows. I see many masses of empty or half-empty R. halecina spawn.

I receive to-day Sanguinaria Canadensis from Brattleboro, well in bloom, —how long? —in a large box full of mayflowers. The toads ring now by day, but not very loud nor generally. I see the large head apparently of a bullfrog, by the riverside. Many middle-sized frogs, apparently bull- frogs, green above and more or less dark-spotted, with either yellow or white throats, sitting along the water’s edge now. Catch two Rana palustris coupled.1 They jump to- gether into the river. The male is two and a quarter inches long. This I find to be about an average-sized one of four or five that I distinguish. Above, pale-brown or fawn-brown (another, which I think is a male from the size and the equally bright yellow of the abdomen and inside of limbs, is dusky-brown, and next day both the males are of this color; so you must notice the change of color of frogs), with two rows of very oblong, two or three or more times as long as broad, squarish-ended dark-brown spots with.a light-brown edge, the rear ones becoming smaller and roundish: also a similar row along each side, and, beneath it, a row of smaller roundish spots; as Storer says, a large roundish spot on the upper and inner side of each orbit and one on the top of the head before it; the throat and forward part of the belly, cream-colored; abdo- men and inside of the hmbs bright ochreous-yellow, part of which is seen in looking at the back of the frog. Tympanum slightly convex in middle. The female is about an eighth of an inch longer (another one is three quarters of an inch longer), beside being now fuller (probably of spawn). The pale brown, or fawn-brown, is more brassy or bronze-like and does not become darker next day. She has no very oblong squarish spots on back, but smaller and roundish ones and many fine dusky spots interspersed; is thickly dark- spotted on sides. Throat and belly, white or pale cream-color; sides of abdomen only and inside of limbs, much paler yellow than the male; has no dark spots on orbits or on head in front (another specimen has). Saw a Viola blanda in a girl’s hand.

A cold northwest wind. Igo at 8 A. M. to catch frogs to compare with the R. palustris and bull- frog which I have, but I find it too cold for them. Though I walk more than a mile along the river, I do not get sight of one, and only of one or two turtles. Neither do I find any more frogs (though many Emys picta) at 4 Pp. M., it being still cold. Yet the frogs were quite numerous yesterday. This shows how sensitive they are to changes of temperature. Hardly one puts its head out of the water, if ever he creeps out the grassy or muddy bottom this cold day. That proserpinaca deserves to be named after the frog, — ranunculus, or what-not, — it is so common and pretty at the bot- tom [of] the shallow grassy pools where I go looking for spawn. It is remarkable that I see many E. picta dead along the shore, dead within a few weeks appar- ently, also a sternotherus. One of the last, alive, emitted no odor to-day. I find washed up by the riverside part of a pale-green- ish egg-shell bigger than a hen’s egg, which was prob- ably the egg of a duck laid on the meadow last year or lately. There is an abundance of the R. halecina spawn near the elm at the hill shore north of Dodd’s. It is now semiopaque, greenish, and flatted down and run to- gether, mostly hatched; and a good deal has been killed, apparently by the cold. The water thereabouts is swarming with the young pollywogs for a rod about, but where have all the frogs hidden themselves ? EK. Hoar saw the myrtle-bird to-day. The pollywogs must be a long time growing, for I see those of last year not more than two inches long, also some much larger. The hatched frog-spawn is quite soft and apparently dissolving at last in the water. Yet possibly that mass of jelly once brought me on a stake was this jelly con- solidated. I find that my fish ova were not all killed some weeks ago in the firkin, as I supposed, for many that were accidentally left in it have hatched, and they bore the cold of last night better than those hatched earlier and kept in the larger vessel (tub), which froze but thinly, while the firkin froze a quarter of an inch thick last night.

P. M. — To Assabet. Approaching the Island, I hear the phe phe, phe phe, phe phe, phe phe, phe, the sharp whistling note, of a fish hawk, and, looking round, see him just afterward launching away from one of the swamp white oaks southwest of the Island. There is about half a second between each note, and he utters them either while perched or while flying. He shows a great proportion of wing and some white on back. The wings are much curved. He sails along some eighty feet above the water’s edge, looking for fish, and alights again quite near. I see him an hour afterward about the same spot. See a barn swallow. Also see one myrtle-bird, and Goodwin says he heard a stake-driver several days ago.