2 May 1859 – 8 May 1859

Small pewee and young lackey caterpillars. I see on the Salix rostrata by railroad many honey- bees laden with large and peculiarly orange-colored pellets of its pollen. P. M. — Up Assabet. Those swarms of small miller-like insects which fly low over the surface of the river, sometimes constantly falling to and touching the surface and then rising again. When at rest they are seen to be blackish-winged, but flying they look light-colored. They flutter low and continuously over the same place. Theirs is a sort of dance. A peetweet and its mate at Mantatuket Rock. The river seems really inhabited when the peetweet is back and those little light-winged millers (?). This bird does not return to our stream until the weather is decidedly pleasant and warm. He is perched on the accustomed rock. Its note peoples the river, like the prattle of children once more in the yard of a house that has stood empty. I am surprised by the tender yellowish green of the aspen leaf just expanded suddenly, even like a fire, seen in the sun, against the dark-brown twigs of the wood, though these leafets are yet but thinly dispersed. It is very enlivening. I heard yesterday, and perhaps for several days, the soft purring sound of what I take to be the Rana pa- lustris, breeding, though I did not this time see the frog. I feel no desire to go to California or Pike’s Peak, but I often think at night with inexpressible satisfac- tion and yearning of the arrowheadiferous sands of Concord. I have often spent whole afternoons, espe- cially in the spring, pacing back and forth over a sandy field, looking for these relics of a race. This is the gold which our sands yield. The soil of that rocky spot on Simon Brown’s land is quite ash-colored — now that the sod is turned up — by Indian fires, with numerous pieces of coal in it. There is a great deal of this ash-colored soil in the country. We do literally plow up the hearths of a people and plant in their ashes. The ashes of their fires color much of our soil.

Surveying the Bedford road. Hear the te-e-e of a white-throat sparrow.

Wednesday. P. M.—To Lee’s Cliff on foot. This the fourth warm day. The cassandra (in full bloom) swarms with little bees, and amid them is one bumblebee which they ap- pear to molest from time to time, and afterward I see one flying high overhead at Holden Swamp. Notice the white willows on Hubbard’s Bridge cause- way, — quite a mass of green when seen aslant from this side, and have been two or three days, but as yet no bloom there nor hum of bees. Also their freshest osiers are very bright, yet I think most of it is due to the height at which the sun runs. They are priests of the sun, report his brightness, — heliometers. We do not realize how much more light there is in the day than in winter. If the ground should be covered with snow, the reflection would dazzle us and blister our faces. This willow begins to be green before the aspens, — say five or six days ago. It is now quite dry, especially the leaves in the woods, and this is the time for fires in the woods. I have seen the smoke of several within a week or ten days. A small willow inside wall just beyond Conant’s bars has begun to leaf two or three days. It is either discolor or humilis, having large and old fertile cat- kins. Crossing that first Conantum field, I perceive a pecu- liar fragrance in the air (not the meadow fragrance), like that of vernal flowers or of expanding buds. The ground is covered with the mouse-ear in full bloom, and it may be that in part. It is a temperate southwest breeze, and this is a scent as of willows (flowers and leafets), bluets, violets, shad-bush, mouse-ear, etc., combined; or perhaps the last chiefly; at any rate it is very per- ceptible. The air is more genial, laden with the fra- grance of spring flowers. I, sailing in the spring ocean, getting in from my winter voyage, begin to smell the land. Such a scent perceived by a mariner would be very exciting. I not only smell the land breeze, but I perceive in it the fragrance of spring flowers. I draw near to the land; I begin to lie down and stretch my- self on it. After my winter voyage I begin to smell the land. I came out expecting to see the redstart or the parti- colored warbler, and as soon as I get within a dozen rods of the Holden wood I hear the screeper note of the tweezer-bird, 2. e. parti-colored warbler, which also I see, but not distinctly. Two or three are flitting from tree-top to tree-top about the swamp there, and you have only to sit still on one side and wait for them to come round. The water has what you may call a summer ripple and sparkle on it; 2. e., the ripple does not suggest coldness in the breeze that raises it. It is a hazy day; the air is hazed, you might fancy, with a myriad expanding buds. After crossing the Arrowhead Fields, we see a wood- chuck run along and climb to the top of a wall and sit erect there, — our first. It is almost exactly the color of the ground and the wall and the bare brown twigs, all together. And when in the Miles Swamp Field we see two, one chasing the other, coming very fast down the lilac field hill straight toward [us], while we squat still in the middle of the field. The foremost is a small gray or slaty-colored one, the other two or three times as heavy and a warm tawny, decidedly yellowish in the sun, a very large and fat one, pursuing the first. I think this must be the male in pursuit of the female. Suddenly the foremost, when thirty or forty rods off, perceives us, and tries as it were to sink into the earth, and finally gets behind a low tuft of grass and peeps out. Also the other (which at first appears to fondle the earth, inclining his cheek to it and dragging his body a little along it) tries to hide himself, and at length gets behind an apple tree and peeps out on one side in an amusing manner. This makes three that we see. They are clumsy runners, with their short legs and heavy bodies, —run with an undulating or wob- bling motion, jerking up the hind quarters. ‘Their tails were dark-tipped. They can run pretty fast, however. Their tails are low when running. Looking up through this soft and warm southwest wind, I notice the conspicuous shadow of Middle Co- nantum Cliff, now at 3 P. M., and elsewhere the shade of a few apple trees, —their trunks and boughs. Through this warm and hazy air the sheeny surface of the hill, now considerably greened, looks soft as velvet, and June is suggested to my mind. It is remarkable that shadow should only be noticed now when decidedly warm weather comes, though before the leaves have ex- panded, 7. e., when it begins to be grateful to our senses. The shadow of the Cliff is hke a dark pupil on the side of the hill. This first shadow is as noticeable and mem- orable as a flower. I observe annually the first shadow of this cliff. When we begin to pass from sunshine into shade for our refreshment; when we look on shade with yearning as on a friend. That cliff and its shade suggests dark eyes and eyelashes and overhanging brows. Few things are more suggestive of heat than this first shade, though now we see only the tracery of tree-boughs on the greening grass and the sandy street. This I notice at the same time with the first bumblebee, when the Rana palustris purrs in the meadow generally, the white willow and aspen dis- play their tender green full of yellow light, the parti- colored warbler is first heard over the swamp, the woodchuck, who loves warmth, is out on the hillsides in numbers, the jingle of the chip-bird is incessantly heard, the thrasher sings incessantly, the first cricket is heard in a warm rocky place, and that scent of ver- nal flowers is in the air. ‘This is an intenser expres- sion of that same influence or aspect of nature which I began to perceive ten days ago (vide 25th), — the same lieferung. These days we begin to think in earnest of bathing in the river, and to sit at an open window. Life out of doors begins. It would require a good deal of time and patience to study the habits of woodchucks, they are so shy and watchful. They hear the least sound of a footstep on the ground, and are quick to see also. One should go clad in a suit somewhat like their own, the warp of tawny and the woof of green, and then, with a painted or well-tanned face, he might lie out on a sunny bank till they appeared. We hear a thrasher sing for half an hour steadily, —a very rich singer and heard a quarter of a mile off very distinctly. This is first heard commonly at plant- ing-time. He sings as if conscious of his power. See little apple trees just springing up in cow-dung. Under Lee’s Cliff, a phoebe’s nest and one egg, with apparently a cowbird’s egg,— which is here, then, — but unusually long with a very broad ring of chestnut- brown about the larger end, contrasting with the smaller flesh-colored egg of the phcebe. The grass of the river meadows shooting up is now a glaucous green, while that of the uplands is dark- green. The former, or sedge, is[a] very erect and stiff spear, while the latter is an inclined and flexible blade. Hear the exact note of the pe-pe once, but at the same time with the thrasher at Bittern Cliff. Could it have been the last? ? A carex at Lee’s, say May Ist, at least, with broadish flaccid glaucous leaves. Call it C. laxiflora-like. I can find but one tuft that has not been nibbled off by rab- bits or woodchucks, so fond are they of this early grass. Two grasses are almost in flower there.’ Gather an apparent Viola cucullata (vide press), but close under the rocks. Can it be a distinct variety ?

Thursday. P. M.—To Melvin’s Preserve. Red-wings fly in flocks yet. Near the oak beyond Jarvis land, a yellow butterfly, — how hot! this meteor dancing through the air. Also see a scalloped-edge dark- colored butterfly resting on the trunk of a tree, where, both by its form and color, its wings being closed, it resembles a bit of bark, or rather a lichen. Evidently their forms and colors, especially of the under sides of their wings, are designed to conceal them when at rest with their wings closed. Am surprised to find the Viola Muhlenbergii quite abundant beyond the bayberry and near the wall. Ac- cording to my observation this year, it now stands thus with the violets: the V. ovata is the commonest, but not abundant in one spot; the V. Muhlenbergit is most abundant in particular spots, coloring the hummocks with its small pale flowers; the V. blanda and cucullata are, equally, less abundant than the former, or rather rare; V. pedata and lanceolata rarer yet, or not seen. I noticed lately where middle-sized ants, half black and half sorrel, had completely removed the pine-needles from the crown of their large hills, teaving them bare like a mountain-top. Am struck by the beauty of the yellow birches, now fairly begun to be in bloom, at Yellow Birch, or Bo- trychium, Swamp. It is perhaps the handsomest tree or shrub yet in bloom (apparently opened yesterday), of similar character to the alders and poplars, but larger and of higher color. You see a great tree all hung with long yellow or golden tassels at the end of its slender, drooping spray, in clusters at intervals of a few inches or a foot. These are all dangling and incessantly waving in the wind, — a great display of lively blossoms (lively both by their color and motion) without a particle of leaf. Yet they are dense enough to reveal the outline of the tree, seen against the bare twigs of itself and other trees. The tassels of this one in bloom are elongated to two or three times the length of those of another not in bloom by its side. These dancing tassels have the effect of the leaves of the tremble. Those not quite open have a rich, dark, speckled or braided look, almost equally handsome. Golden tassels all trembling in the gentlest breeze, the only signs of life on the trees. A careless observer might not notice them at all. The re- awakened springy life of the swamp, the product of its golden veins. These graceful pendants, not in too heavy or dense masses, but thinly dispersed with a noble mod- eration. Great vegetable chandeliers they stand in the swamps. ‘The unopened catkins, some more golden, others brown or coppery, are like living worms ready to assume a winged life. These trees, which cannot stir their stumps, thus annually assume this lively color and motion. I see and am bitten by little black flies, — I should say the same with those of Maine, — here on the Melvin Preserve. One eighth of an inch long. Brakes are five inches high. Poa annua (small and flat spreading in Pratt’s garden), say a week. The sun sets red (first time), followed by a very hot and hazy day. The wilderness, in the eyes of our forefathers, was a vast and howling place or space, where a man might roam naked of house and most other defense, exposed to wild beasts and wilder men. They who went to war with the Indians and French were said to have been “out,” and the wounded and missing who at length returned after a fight were said to have ‘‘got in,” to Berwick or Saco, as the case might be. Veronica peregrina, Pratt’s garden.

Surveying for Willis & Damon at the fac- tory. Hear the tea-lee of the white-throat sparrow. It is suddenly very warm and oppressive, especially in the woods with thick clothing. Viola pedata begins to be common about white pine woods there. While surveying this forenoon behind Willis’s house on the shore of the mill-pond, I saw remarkable swarms of that little fuzzy gnat (Tzpulide). Hot as it was, — oppressively so, — they were collected in the hollows in the meadow, apparently to be out of the way of the little breeze that there was, and in many such places in the meadow, within a rod of the water, the ground was perfectly concealed by them. Nay, much more than that. I saw one shallow hollow some three feet across which was completely filled with them, all in motion but resting one upon another, to the depth, as I found by measurement with a stick, of more than an inch, — a living mass of insect life. There were a hun- dred of these basins full of them, and I then discovered that what I had mistaken for some black dye on the wet shore was the bodies of those that were drowned and washed up, blackening the shore in patches for many feet together like so much mud. We were also troubled by getting them into our mouths and throats and eyes. This insect resembles the plate of the Charo- nomus plumosus (“Library of Entertaining Knowledge, Insect Transformations,” page 305), also the Corethra plumicornis (page 287), both of which live at first in the water, like the mosquito. Young red maples suddenly bursting into leaf are very conspicuous now in the woods, among the most promi- nent of all shrubs or trees. The sprouts are reddish. Hear yellow-throat vireo, and probably some new warblers. See the strong-scented wood ants in a stump. Black suckers, so called, are being speared at the factory bridge. This is about the last of the very dry leaves in the woods, for soon the ground will be shaded by expanded green leaves. It is quite hazy, if not smoky, and I smell smoke in the air, this hot day. My assistants, being accustomed to work indoors in the factory, are quite overcome by this sudden heat. The old Jeaves and earth are driest now, just before the new leaves expand and when the heat is greatest. I see the black traces of many a recent fire in the woods, especially in young woods. At evening I hear the first sultry buzz of a fly in my chamber, telling of sultry nights to come.

Saturday. Surveying Damon’s Acton lot. It is hotter still,—88° or more, as I hear in the afternoon. I frequently see pigeons dashing about in small flocks, or three or four at a time, over the woods here. Theirs is a peculiarly swift, dashing flight. The mayflower is still sparingly in bloom on what I will call Mayflower Path in this lot. It is almost the prevailing undershrub here. I think I hear the redstart. To-day and yesterday the sunlight is peculiarly yel- low, on account of the smoky haze. I notice its peculiar yellowness, almost orange, even when, coming through a knot-hole in a dark room, it falls on the opposite wall. Such is the first hot weather.

Sunday. Hotter still than the last two days, — 90° and more. Summer yellowbird. C. sees a chim- ney swallow. Indeed, several new birds have come, and many new insects, with the expanding leafets. Cat- bird. The swollen leaf-buds of the white pine — and yet more the pitch pine — look whitish, and show life in the tree. Go on the river. The sweet flags, both pads, and equisetum and pontederia are suddenly becoming conspicuous, also the Arum peltandrum. Grackles here yet. Tree-toad is heard. Apple trees begin to make a show with their green. See two great devil’s-needles go by coupled, the foremost blue, the second brown. Hear a dor-bug in the house at evening.