21 May 1860 – 27 May 1860

Cold, —at 11 a.m. 50°; and sit by a fire. At 12 it begins to rain. P. M. — To Cambridge. All vegetation is refreshed by the rain. The grass appears to stand perfectly erect and on tiptoe, several inches higher, all [at] once in every field, the fresh green prevailing over the brown ground in every field. The color of the new leaves is surprising. The birches by © the railroad, as I am whirled by them in the cars, flash © upon me yellow as gamboge, their leaves more like flowers than foliage. Wintergreen had started the 18th at least. Noticed the shadows of apple trees yesterday.

Another cold and wet day, requiring fire. Ceases to rain at midday, but continues foul. The princi- pal rain was during last night, and was quite considerable. C. hears a cuckoo, and appears, by his account, to have seen the Sylvia maculosa. . I see the effects of frost (probably the morning of the 21st) on squashes that sowed themselves.

6 a.m. — To Junction. River four and one sixth inches below summer level, having risen about three inches since the morning of the 19th. See hopping along the limbs of a black willow and inspecting its leafets for insects, in all positions, often 1860} A BLACK-POLL WARBLER 307 head downward, the Sylvia striata, black-poll warbler. Black crown or all top of head; a broad white space along side-head and reaching less distinctly over the neck, in a ring; beneath this, from base of mandibles, a streak of black, becoming a stream or streams of black spots along the sides; beneath white; legs yellow; back above slaty-brown, streaked with black; primaries yellowish-dusky, with two white bars or marks; inner tail-feathers more or less white; tail forked; bill black. Not particularly lively. The female is said to be con- siderably different. This at first glance was a chicka- dee-like bird. It was rather tame. I distinguish well the red-eye and the yellow-throat vireo at the Island. It would not be easy to distinguish them always by the note, and I may have been mis- taken sometimes, and before this year, in speaking of the yellow-throat vireo. The red-eye sings as slightly and feebly here now as the other. You can see these here to advantage now on the sunny side of the woods, the sun Just bursting forth in the morning after the rain, for they [are] busily preening themselves, and, though incessantly moving, their heads and bodies remain in the same spot. Myrtle-bird here still. Notice the first lint from new leafets, evidently washed off by the rain, and covering the water like dust. P. M. —69. By boat to Ball’s Hill. Say the sweet-scented vernal grass is in its prime. Interrupted fern fruit probably a day or two, and cin- namon, say the same or Just after. I see on the white maples, and afterward running along the shore close to the water, at different times, three or four water-thrushes (water wagtails, Turdus Noveboracensis). By its lurking along the waterside it might be mistaken by some at first for the song sparrow. It is considerably like the golden-crowned thrush, but it has a distinct buffish-white line over the eye and the breast and sides distinctly striped with dark. All above uniform olive-brown. It may be distinguished at a distance from a sparrow by its wagging motion, teetering on its perch. It persistently runs along the shore, peetweet- and song-sparrow-like, running like a rail around the tussocks and other obstacles and appear- ing again at the water’s edge. It was not very shy. We very easily kept along two rods off it, while it was amid the button-bushes. Started up-two (probably) Totanus solitarius (?), (pos- sibly small yellow-legs???). They utter a faint yellow- leg note, rather than peetweet note, viz. phe, phe, pheet pheet pheet. Are not shy; stand still [on] or be- side a tussock to be looked at. Have peculiarly long, slender, curving wings. Fly like a peetweet, but are considerably larger and apparently uniformly dark- brown above. The belly and vent very bright white; breast (upper part) grayish-brown. When they flew from me saw considerable white, apparently on tail- coverts or sides of tail. Watched one still within three rods, with glass. There was a little speckling of whitish perhaps amid the brown above. I think they were too — small for the lesser yellow-legs. Eleocharis palustris, say three or four days. Critchicrotches some two or three days; now tender to eat. How agreeable and surprising the peculiar fragrance of the sweet flag when bruised! That this plant alone should have extracted this odor surely for so many ages each summer from the moist earth! The pipes in the Great Meadows now show a darker green amid the yellowish of the sedges, like the shadow of a passing cloud. From a hilltop half a mile off you can easily distinguish the limits of the pipes by their dark green. They do not terminate abruptly, but are gradually lost in the sedge. There is very little white maple seed this year, so that I cannot say surely how far advanced it is. What I notice appears to be fully grown, but is on the trees yet, always surprisingly large, like the wings of some lusty moth. Possibly it ripens with mouse-ear. I get sight for a moment of a large warbler on a young oak, — only the under side, which is a clear bright lemon-yellow, all beneath, with a sort of crescent of black spots on the breast. Is it not the Sylvia pardalina ? Methinks it was a rather dark brown above.’ The quarter-grown red oak leaves between you and the sun, how yellow-green! Now, if you look over our Great Meadow from Ball’s Hill, in a warm, fair day like this, you will receive the same impression as from the English grass fields in the middle of June, the sedges are so much more dense and forward. I mark the large white maples, now conspicuous and pretty densely leaved, stand up over the green sea on this edge of the river, so still, with each a speck of shade at its base, as in the noon of a summer day, and a dark line merely of shadow runs along at the base of the hill on the south of the meadow, —the June shadows beginning here. A green canopy held still above the already waving grass. It reminds you of warm, still noons, high grass, and the whetting of the scythe. Most of the corn is planted. Distinguish plainly a swamp sparrow (two to-day) by the riverside, a peculiarly glossy deep-chestnut crown, ash side-head and throat, and a dark or black line through the eye. I find, in skunk hedge below Flint’s, Carex rosea, not long, say three or four days. I should have thought it C. stellulata, but it is plainly staminate above, fertile below.’ Also C. gracilluma, same place, apparently four or five days. River at 6 p.m. about one and two thirds inches below summer level; risen some two and a half inches since 6 A. M. Notice the flags eaten off, probably by musquash.

6 a.m. — Water fallen about one inch. P. M. — To Cliffs. I see in a ditch a painted turtle nibbling the edge of a frost-bitten yellow lily pad (in the water), which has turned white. Other pads have evidently been nibbled ™ by him, having many scallops or notches in their ac edges, just the form of his jaws. That earliest little slender-leaved panic grass will bloom, say in a day (if not now). About a rod from the west spring on Fair Haven Hill, by the wall, stands an English cherry tree three feet high. I think that this was planted there by a bird which came to the spring for water after feeding on cherries in the town (?), for I frequently find the stones dropped in the springs. Those red cedars now ten feet high or more on Fair Haven Hill have all the regular form of the leaf, except a small bunch or two in their midst, yet I remember that when four or five feet high they had only the ace- tate [sic ;= acicular ?] form. It seems, then, that you will see small trees which have only leaves of the acetate [sic] form, but when they get larger they have leaves of the usual form. Looking into the northwest horizon, I see that Wachu- sett is partially concealed by a haze. It is suddenly quite a cool southeast wind. (When I started, at two, it was also southeast, and thermometer 69.) This is one of the values of mountains in the horizon, that they in- dicate the state of the atmosphere. I should not have no- ticed this haze if I had not looked toward the mountains. How perfectly new and fresh the world is seen to be, when we behold a myriad sparkles of brilliant white sunlight on a rippled stream! So remote from dust and decay, more bright than the flash of an eye. I noticed the first shadows of hickories, — not dense and dark shade, but open-latticed, a network of sun and shadow. Just begun to describe their semicircles on the north sides of the trees. The first demonstrations that it will shade the ground, unobserved as yet by the cows in the pasture. I saw yesterday a herd of cows standing in the water of the river, though it was rather cold water. They begin their bathing about the same time that we do. . They splash about till they get into a convenient place, about up to their bellies, and chew the cud there. As I sit just above the northwest end of the Cliff, I see a tanager perched on one of the topmost twigs of a hickory, holding by the tender leafets, now five inches long, and evidently come to spy after me, peeping behind a leafet. He is between me and the sun, and his plumage is incredibly brilliant, all aglow. It is our highest-colored bird, — a deep scarlet (with a yellower reflection when the sun strikes him), in the midst of which his pure-black wings look high-colored also. You can hardly believe that a living creature can wear such colors. A hickory, too, is the fittest perch for him. Hear a wood pewee. A pincushion gall on a black shrub oak (not yet crimson-spotted). Yesterday saw oak-apples (now yel- low) on a black shrub oak, two-thirds grown.

Frost last night in low ground. The yards are now full of little spires of June-grass, with a brownish tinge but not quite in flower, trembling in the breeze. You see a myriad of fine parallel per- pendicular stems about a foot high against the lighter green ground. It has shot up erect suddenly, and gives a new aspect to our yards. The earth wears a new and greener vest. The trees I notice which look late now are not only locusts and Holbrook Hollow aspens but tupelos, white ash, swamp white oaks, buttonwoods, and some elms, and even some red maples. P. M. — To Gowing’s Swamp and Copan. Quite warm, and [I see in the east the first summer shower cloud, a distinct cloud above, and all beneath to the horizon the general slate-color of falling rain, though distant, deepest in the middle. The scheuchzeria out some days apparently, but only in the open pool in the midst of the swamp. I see half a dozen heads of tortoises above the sphag- num there in the pool, and they have vermilion spots on the neck or hindhead, —a sort of orange vermilion. Are they the yellow-spot or wood tortoise ? The European cranberry budded to bloom and grown one inch. Comandra out, not long. Red and white oak leafets handsome now. Pe-pe heard, and probably considerably earlier. It is remarkable that the aspen on Holbrook’s road, though in most places it is the earliest indigenous tree to leaf, is the very latest, and the buds are hardly yet swollen at all. Can it be a distinct variety ? See the effect of frost on the sweet-fern either this morning or the 2Ist. It evidently rains around us, and a little falls here, and the air is accordingly cooled by it, and at 5 Pp. M. the toads ring loud and numerously, as if invigorated by this little moisture and coolness. Euphorbia cyparissias. Cherry-birds. 7 p. M. — River one inch below summer level.

Overcast, rain-threatening; wind northeast and cool. 9 a. M. — To Easterbrooks Country. Carex lanuginosa, Smith’s shore, say three or four days. C. pallescens (?), long-stalked, staminate, Chan- ning’s shore, high. C. pallescens var. undulata, rather spreading, common, as in Clark’s field from opposite my old house. C. polytrichoides well out, say a few days, Botrychium Swamp. Melons have peeped out two or three days. Our pink azalea. 5 p.M. — River five eighths of an inch below sum- mer level.

Fire in house again. The Sylva striata are the commonest bird in the street, as I go to the post-office, for several days past. I see six (four males, two females) on one of our little fir trees; are apparently as many more on another close by. The white bars on the wings of both sexes are almost horizontal. I see them thus early and late on the trees about our houses and other houses the 27th and 28th and 29th also, — peach trees, etc., but especially on the firs. They are quite tame. I stand within seven or eight feet while they are busily pecking at the freshly bursting or extending glaucous fir twigs, deliberately examining them on all sides, and from time to time one utters a very fine and sharp, but faint tse tse, tse tse, tse tse, with more or less of these notes. I hear the same in the woods. Examining the freshly starting fir twigs, I find that there are a great many lice or aphides amid the still appressed leafets or leaves of the buds, and no doubt they are after these. Occasionally a summer yellowbird is in company with them, about the same business. They, the black-polls, are very numerous all over the town this spring. The female has not a black, but rather, methinks, a slate-colored crown, and is a very different bird, — more of a yellowish brown. Eleocharis acicularis, not long, on the low exposed bank of the river; if [?] it is that that greens the very low muddy banks. J. Farmer found a marsh hawk’s nest on the 16th, — near the Cooper’s hawk nest, — with three fresh eggs.