28 March 1853 – 3 April 1853

My Aunt Maria asked me to read the life of Dr. Chalmers, which however I did not promise to do. Yesterday, Sunday, she was heard through the partition shouting to my Aunt Jane, who is deaf, “Think of it! He stood half an hour to-day to hear the frogs croak, and he would n’t read the life of Chalmers.”’ 6 a. mM. — To Cliffs. Too cold for the birds to sing much. There appears to be more snow on the mountains. Many of our spring rains are snow-storms there. The woods ring with the cheerful jingle of the F’.-hyemalis. This is a very trig and compact little bird, and appears to be in good condition. The straight edge of slate on their breasts contrasts remarkably with the white from beneath; the short, light-colored bill is also very conspicuous amid the dark slate; and when they fly from you, the two white feathers in their tails are very distinct at a good dis- tance. ‘They are very lively, pursuing each other from bush to bush. Could that be the fox-colored sparrow I saw this morning, — that reddish-brown sparrow? ! I do not now think of a bird that hops so distinctly, rapidly, and commonly as the robin, with its head up. Why is the pollen of flowers commonly yellow? I saw yesterday, on the warm pool by Hubbard’s Wood, long, narrow blades of reddish grass, bent nearly at right angles and floating on the water, lighter-colored beneath (lake-colored?). The floating part was from six inches to ten or twelve in length. This is much the greatest growth of grass that I have seen, for it is scarcely anywhere yet visibly green. It is an agreeable surprise, flushing the cheek, this warm color on the surface of some warm pool. P. M. — To Assabet. Saw eleven black ducks near the bathing-place on the Assabet, flying up the stream. Came within three or four rods of me, then wheeled and went down. Their faint quack sounded much [like] the croak of the frogs occasionally heard now in the pools. As they wheeled and went off, made a very fine whistling sound, which yet I think was not made by their wings. Opened an ant-hill about two and a half feet wide and eight inches high, in open land. It was light and dry, and apparently made by the ants; free from stones or sticks for about a foot in depth. The ants, which were red with black abdomens and were about a third of an inch long, crawled about sluggishly on being ex- posed. Their galleries, a quarter of an inch and more in diameter, with ants in them, extended to the depth of two feet in the yellow sand, and how much further I don’t know. Opened another in the woods with black ants of the same size in the same condition. This is a raw, cloudy, and disagreeable day. Yet I think you are most likely to see wild fowl] this weather. I saw in Dodd’s yard and flying thence to the alders by the river what I think must be the tree sparrow,’ — a ferruginous crowned, or headed, and partly winged bird, light beneath, with a few of the F. hyemalis in company. It sang sweetly, much like some notes of a canary. One pursued another. It was not large enough for the fox-colored sparrow. Perhaps I have seen it before within the month. As near as I can make out, the hawks or falcons I am likely to see here are the American sparrow hawk, the fish hawk, the goshawk, the short-winged buzzard (if this is the same with Brown’s stuffed sharp-shinned or slate-colored hawk, — not slate in his specimen; is not this the common small hawk that soars?), the red- tailed hawk (have we the red-shouldered hawk, about the same size and aspect with the last ?), the hen-harrier. (I suppose it is the adult of this with the slate-color over meadows.)

6 a.m. — To Leaning Hemlocks, by boat. The sun has just risen, but there is only a now clear saffron belt next the east horizon; all the rest of the sky is covered with clouds, broken into lighter and darker shades. An agreeable yellow sunlight falls on the west- ern fields and the banks of the river. Whence this yellow tinge? Probably a different light would be reflected if there were no dark clouds above. A somewhat milder morning than yesterday, and the river as usual quite smooth. From Cheney’s boat-house I hear very dis- tinctly the tapping of a woodpecker at the Island about * No doubt of it. a quarter of a mile. Undoubtedly could hear it twice as far at least, if still, over the water. At every stroke of my paddle, small silvery bubbles about the size of a pin-head, dashed from the surface, slide or roll over the smooth surface a foot or two. On approaching the Island, I am surprised to hear the scolding, cackle-like note of the pigeon woodpecker, a prolonged loud sound somewhat like one note of the robin. This was the tapper, on the old hollow aspen which the small woodpeckers so much frequent. Unless the latter make exactly the same sound with the former, then the pigeon woodpecker has come! ! But I could not get near enough to distinguish his size and colors. He went up the Assabet, and I heard him cackling and tapping far ahead. The catkins of the Populus tremuloides are just begin- ning to open, — to curl over and downward like cater- pillars.. Yesterday proved too cold, undoubtedly, for the willow to open, and unless I learn better, I shall give the poplar the precedence, dating both, however, from to-day.' It would be worth the while to attend more to the different notes of the blackbirds. Methinks I may have seen the female red-wing within a day or two; or what are these purely black ones without the red shoulder? It is pleasant to see them scattered about on the drying meadow. The red-wings will stand close to the water’s edge, looking larger than usual, with their red shoulders very distinct and handsome in that position, and sing okolee, or bob-y-lee, or what-not. Others, on the tops of trees over your head, out of a fuzzy beginning spit forth a clear, shrill whistle incessantly, for what purpose I don’t know. Others, on the elms over the water, utter still another note, each time lifting their wings slightly. Others are flying across the stream with a loud char-r, char-r. Looking at the mouth of a woodchuck-hole and at low places, as on the moss, in the meadows, [I see] that those places are sprinkled with little pellets or sometimes salt-shaped masses of frost some inches apart, appar- ently like snow. This is one kind of frost. There is snow and ice still along the edge of the meadows on the north side of woods; the latter even five or six inches thick in some places. | The female flowers of the white maple, crimson stig- mas from the same rounded masses of buds with the male, are now quite abundant. I think they have not come out more than a day or two. I did not notice them the 26th, though I did not look carefully for them: The two sorts of flowers are not only on the same tree and the same twig and sometimes in the same’ bud, but also sometimes in the same little cup. The recent shoot of the white maple is now a yellowish brown, sprinkled with ashy dots. I am in some uncertainty about whether I do not con- found several kinds under the name of the downy wood- pecker. It not only flies volatu undoso, but you hear, as it passes over you, the strong ripple of its wings. Two or three times, when a visitor stayed into evening, and it proved a dark night, I was obliged to conduct him to the cart-path in the rear of my house and then point out to him the direction he was to pursue, and in keeping which he was to be guided rather by his feet than his eyes. One very dark night I directed thus on their way two young men who had been fishing in the pond, who would otherwise have been at a loss what course to take. They lived about a mile off, and were quite used to the woods. A day or two after, one of them told me that they wandered about the greater part of the night, close by their own premises, and did not get home till toward morning, by which time, as there were several heavy showers in the course of the night, and the leaves were very wet, they were drenched to their skins. I have heard of many going astray, even in the village streets, when the darkness was so thick that you could cut it with a knife, as the phrase is. Some who lived in the outskirts, having come to town shopping with their wagons, have been obliged to put up for the night, and gentlemen and ladies making a call have gone half a mile out of their way, feeling the sidewalk only and not knowing when they turned, and were obliged to inquire the way at the first house they discovered. Even one of the village doctors was thus lost in the heart of the village on a nocturnal mission, and spent nearly the whole night feeling the fences and the houses, being, as he said, ashamed to inquire. If one with the vision of an owl, or as in broad daylight, could have watched his motions, they would have been ludicrous indeed. It is a novel and memorable acquaintance one may make thus with the most familiar objects. It is a sur- prising and memorable and, I may add, valuable ex- perience to be lost in the woods, especially at night. Sometimes in a snow-storm, even by day, one will come out upon a well-known road and yet find it impossible to tell which way leads to the village. Though your reason tells you that you have travelled it one hundred times, yet no object looks familiar, but it is as strange to you as if it were in Tartary. By night, of course, the perplexity is infinitely greater. We are constantly steer- ing like pilots by certain well-known beacons and head- lands, though we are not conscious of it, and if we go beyond our usual course we still preserve the bearing of some neighboring cape, and not till we are completely lost or turned round, —for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost, — do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature. Every man has once more to learn the points of compass as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or from any abstraction. In fact, not till we are lost do we begin to realize where we are, and the infinite extent of our relations.’ A pleasant short voyage is that to the Leaning Hem- locks on the Assabet, just round the Island under Naw- shawtuct Hill. The river here has in the course of ages gullied into the hill, at a curve, making a high and steep bank, on which a few bemlocks grow and overhang the deep, eddying basin. For as long as I can remember, one or more of these has always been slanting over the stream at various angles, being undermined by it, until one after another, from year to year, they fall in and are swept away. This is a favorite voyage for ladies to make, down one stream and up the other, plucking the lilies by the way and landing on the Island, and concluding with a walk on Nawshawtuct Hill. This which Gilbert White says of the raven is appli- cable to our crow: “There is a peculiarity belonging to ravens that must draw the attention even of the most incurious — they spend all their leisure time in striking and cuffing each other on the wing in a kind of playful skirmish.” P. M. — To early willow behind Martial Miles’s. A bright, sunny, but yet rather breezy and cool after- noon. On the railroad I hear the telegraph. This is the lyre that is as old as the world. I put my ear to the post, and the sound seems to be in the core of the post, directly against my ear. This is all of music. The utmost refine- ments of art, methinks, can go no further. This is one of those days divided against itself, when there is a cool wind but a warm sun, when there is little or no coolness proper to this locality, but it is wafted to us probably from the snow-clad northwest, and hence in sheltered places it is very warm. However, the sun is rapidly prevailing over the wind, and it is already warmer than when I came out. Four ducks, two by two, are sailing conspicuously on the river. There appear to be two pairs. In each case one two-thirds white and another grayish-brown and, I think, smaller. They are very shy and fly at fifty rods’ distance. Are they whistlers ? The white are much more white than those I saw the other day and at first thought summer ducks.’ Would it not be well to carry a spy-glass in order to watch these shy birds such as ducks and hawks? In some respects, methinks, it would be better than a gun. The latter brings them nearer dead, but the former alive. You can identify the species better by killing the bird, because it was a dead specimen that was so minutely described, but you can study the habits and appearance best in the living specimen. ‘These ducks first flew north, or somewhat against the wind (was it to get under weigh ?), then wheeled, flew nearer me, and went south up-stream, where I saw them afterward. In one of those little holes which I refer to the skunk, I found part of the shell of a reddish beetle or dor-bug. Both hole and beetle looked quite fresh. Saw small ants there active. Under the south side of Clamshell Hill, in the sun, the air is filled with those black fuzzy gnats, and I hear a fine hum from them. The first humming of insects — unless of those honey-bees the other day — of the season. I can find no honey-bees in the skunk- cabbage this pleasant afternoon. I find that many of the oak-balls are pierced, and their inhabitants have left them; they have a small round hole in them. The rest have still thirty or forty small white maggots about one twelfth of an inch long. Thus far I have not seen these balls but on the black oak, and some are still full of them, like apples. Walking along near the edge of the meadow under Lupine Hill, I stumped through the sod into a muskrat’s nest, for the sod was only two inches thick over it, which was enough when it’was frozen. I laid it open with my hands. 'There were three or four channels or hollowed paths, a rod or more in length, not merely worn but made in the meadow, and centring at the mouth of this burrow. ‘They were three or four inches deep, and finally became indistinct and were lost amid the cranberry vines and grass toward the river. The entrance to the burrow was just at the edge of the upland, here a gently sloping bank, and was probably just beneath the sur- face of the water six weeks ago. It was about twenty- five rods distant from the true bank of the river. From this a straight gallery, about six inches in diameter every way, sloped upward about eight feet into the bank just beneath the turf, so that the end was about a foot higher than the entrance. There was a somewhat cir- cular enlargement about one foot in horizontal diameter and the same depth with the gallery; and [in] it was nearly a peck of coarse meadow stubble, showing the marks of the scythe, with which was mixed accidentally a very little of the moss which grew with it. Three short galleries, only two feet long, were continued from this centre somewhat like rays toward the high land, as if they had been prepared in order to be ready for a sudden rise of the water, or had been actually made so far under such an emergency. The nest was of course thoroughly wet and, humanly speaking, uncomfortable, though the creature could breathe in it. But it is plain that the muskrat cannot be subject to the toothache. I have no doubt this was made and used last winter, for the grass was as fresh as that in the meadow (except that it was pulled up), and the sand which had been taken out lay partly in a flattened heap in the meadow, and no grass had sprung up through it.

April weather, alternate rain and bright- ening up. I am not sure my willow will bloom fairly to-day. How warily the flowers open! not to be caught out too early, not bursting into bloom with the first genial heat, but holding back as if foreseeing the transient checks, and yielding only to the absolute progress of the season. However, probably some hardy flowers which are quite ready will open just before a cold snap, while others, which were almost equally advanced, may be retarded a week. Is it not the pollen which the bees seek in the earliest flowers, as the skunk-cabbage (?) and the willow, having occasion for bee-bread first? As usual, the robin sings more this cloudy and showery morning than I have heard it yet. P. M. — To Cliffs. The gooseberry leaves in the garden are just begin- ning to show a little green. Is this the same with the wild? Lilacs have buds equally advanced. Seeing one of those little holes (which I have thought were made by beetles or dor-bugs) in Wheeler’s upland rye-field near the Burying-Ground, the mouth walled about like a well with a raised curb with fragments of dried grass and little bits of wood, I resolved to explore it, but after the first shovelful I lost the trace of it, for I had filled it with sand. Finding another, I stuck a mullein stalk into it to a surprising depth, and then could dig with confidence. At fifteen or sixteen inches from the surface, I found a black spider, nearly three quarters of an inch long in the body, clasping the mullein, but very sluggish, only mov- ing its legs, but not crawling away. In another hole I found another similar spider in exactly the same condition and at the same depth, but in this case my stick went down only one foot and was there stopped by ice, which filled the hole, but after digging through an inch of frozen ground, I found the spider in the dry cavity, three or four inches deeper. How the water stood so as to freeze above him I don’t know. I could see nothing like a nest at the bottom, nor any enlargement of the hole. The soil is very sandy and light. In the sand beneath the frost was a moving common red earthworm. I did not expect to find frost in such a place now. Now commences the season for fires in the woods. The winter, and now the sun and winds, have dried the old leaves more thoroughly than ever, and there are no green leaves to shade the ground or to check the flames, and these high March winds are the very ones to spread them. It is a dry, windy, and withal hazy day, —that blue smoky haze that reminds of fires, which some have thought the effect of distant fires in the woods, which perhaps is only a finer mist, produced by the increased heat of the sun on an earth abounding in moisture. Is not this White’s London smoke (vide Commonplace-Book), and fol- lowed by rain? The woods look peculiarly dry and russet. There is as yet no new greenness in the land- scape. With these thoughts and impressions I had not gone far before 1 saw the smoke of a fire on Fair Haven Hill. Some boys were going sassafrasing, for boys will have some pursuit peculiar to every season. A match came in contact with a marble, nobody knew how, and suddenly the fire flashed up the broad open hillside, consuming the low grass and sweet-fern and leaving a smoking, blackened waste. A few glowing stumps, with spadefuls of fresh earth thrown on them, the white ashes here and there on the black ground, and the not disagreeable scent of smoke and cinders was all that was left when I arrived.

‘The robins sing at the very earliest dawn. I wake with their note ringing in my ear. 6 a. M. — To Island by boat.

Of the small and ambiguous sparrow fam- ily, methinks I have seen only the song sparrow, that one with white feathers in tail seen March 23d, the tree sparrow; and heard the field or rush sparrow. I have for some time noticed the large yellow lily roots. Thus far we have had very little if any freshet this year, — none since spring came in, I believe. The river has been going down a month, at least. P. M. — To Dugan’s. The three spots on breast of the song sparrow seem to mark a difference of sex. At least, the three-spotted is the one I oftenest hear sing of late. The accom- panying one is lighter beneath and one-spotted. One of the former by J. P. Brown’s meadow-side, select- ing the top of a bush, after lurking and feeding under the alders, sang olit oltt olit| (faster) chip chip chip che char| (fast) che wiss wiss wiss.1 The last bar was much varied, and sometimes one olit omitted in the first. This, I have no doubt, is my bird of March 18th. Another three-spotted sang vit chit chit char| weeter char| tee chu.

5.80 a. mM. — Down railroad. Ground white with frost and slippery. Thin ice formed over pools. The beaked hazel pistillate blos- soms (7. e. by Walden road). Do not find its flower de- scribed. Are not its catkins distinct from the common in not being stalked? ‘The tree sparrows and a few blue snowbirds in company sing (the former) very sweetly in the garden this morning. I now see a faint spot on the breast. It says something like a twee twee, chit chit, chit chit chee var-r. Notice still plenty of sumach berries, Juniperus repens (those in shade green, in light turning purplish), green-briar, and a few barberries, etc., etc. The farmers are trembling for their poultry nowa- days. I heard the scream of hens, and a tumult among their mistresses (at Dugan’s), calling them and scaring away the hawk, yesterday. They say they do not lose by hawks in midsummer. White quotes Linnzeus as saying of hawks, “Paciscuntur inducias cum avibus, quamdiu cuculus cuculat,” but White doubts it. “** Beetles, flies, worms, form part of the lion and tiger’s food, as they do that of the fox.’ See Jarrold’s Dis- sert.on Man.” ! (Mitford, Note to White’s “Selborne.”’) Found twenty or thirty of the little brown nuts of the skunk-cabbage deposited on a shelf of the turf under an apple tree by E. Hubbard’s close, as I have done before. What animal uses them? The song sparrows, the three-spotted, away by the meadow-sides, are very shy and cunning: instead of flying will frequently trot along the ground under the bushes, or dodge through a wall like a swallow; and I have observed that they generally bring some object, as a rail or branch, between themselves and the face of the walker, —often with outstretched necks will peep at him anxiously for five or ten minutes. P. M. — To Second Division Brook. The rain cleared away yesterday afternoon, and to- day that haziness is all gone, and the air is remark- ably clear. I can see houses with distinct and sharp outlines at a great distance, though there is a little seething shimmer in the air. Especially I can see far into the pine woods to tree behind tree and one tower behind another of silvery needles, stage above stage, relieved with shade. The edge of the wood is not a plane surface, but has depth. Was that Rana fon- tinalis or pipiens in the pool by E. Wood’s railroad crossing? ‘The first large frog I have seen. C. says a wasp lit on him. A wood tortoise by river above Derby’s Bridge; extreme length of shell seven and three eighths inches, extreme breadth five inches across the back part, fore part about one half inch less, and a trifle less still in middle. ‘The orange-color of its inner parts. It was sluggish, lean, and I judged old from the shell being worn beneath and it not resisting much when I drew out its claws; unlike [in] these respects to one I after found. Irides golden. A singularly flat and broad head with a beak slanting backward much like a snake’s head. ‘There were some hundreds of small dark-colored leeches in masses in the chink over his tail and under his hind quarters, a kind of vermin they are much infested by. The same was the case with second one. Heard and saw what I call the pine warbler, — vetter vetter vetter vetter vet,—the cool woodland sound. The first this year of the higher-colored birds, after the bluebird and the blackbird’s wing; is it not? It so affects me as something more tender. 'To- gether with the driftwood on the shore of the Assabet and the sawdust from Heywood’s mill, I pick up teasel-heads from the factory with the wool still in them. How many tales the stream tells! The poplars by the railroad and near Harrington’s, male aspens, begin to-day. A turtle dove. It sailed like a hawk. Heard the hooting owl in Ministerial Swamp. It sounded somewhat like the hounding or howling of some dogs, and as often as the whistle of the engine sounded, I noticed a resemblance in the tone. A sin- gular kind of squealing introduced into its note. See the larger red-and-black-abdomen ants at work. See the fine moss in the pastures with beautiful red stems even crimsoning the ground. This is its season. The amelanchier buds look more forward than those of any shrub I notice. The cowslip at Second Division shows the yellow in its bud; will blossom in four or five days. I see the skins of many caddis-worms in the water there. Have not the ephemerz already flown? Again I notice the sort of small green ova in the water there like frog’s ova, on the weeds and even on the shells of the snails. ‘The stem, so to speak, of a cocoon, — though it inclosed the leaf-stem of the plant (a viburnum) it was on, and so put on the guise of the leaf, —was still so strongly fastened about the main stem that I broke the latter in getting it off. Cheney’s elm blossomed to-day. Many others scarcely a day behind it. We cannot well afford not to see the geese go over a single spring, and so commence our year regularly. Observed the first female willow just coming out, apparently Salix eriocephala, just beyond woods by Abel Hosmer’s field by railroad. Apparently the female willows, as well as white maples and poplars, are a few days later than the males. The swollen red maple buds now conspicuously tinge the tops of the trees. Methinks some birds are earlier this year because the ground has been bare so long. Observed some plowing yesterday.

Saturday. Nothing is more saddening than an ineffectual and proud intercourse with those of whom we expect sympathy and encouragement. I re- peatedly find myself drawn toward certain persons but to be disappointed. No concessions which are not radi- cal are the least satisfaction. By myself I can live and thrive, but in the society of incompatible friends I starve. To cultivate their society is to cherish a sore which can only be healed by abandoning them. I can- not trust my neighbors whom I know any more than I can trust the law of gravitation and jump off the Cliffs. The last two Tribunes I have not looked at. I have no time to read newspapers. If you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events which make the news transpire, — thinner than the paper on which it is printed, — then these things will fill the world for you; but if you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them.’ No fields are so barren to me as the men of whom I expect everything but get nothing. In their neigh- borhood I experience a painful yearning for society, which cannot be satisfied, for the hate is greater than the love. P. M. — To Cliffs. At Hayden’s I hear hylas on two keys or notes. Heard one after the other, it might be mistaken for the varied note of one. The little croakers, too, are very lively there. I get close to them and witness a great commotion and half hopping, half swimming, about, with their heads out, apparently in pursuit of each other, — perhaps thirty or forty within a few square yards and fifteen or twenty within one yard. There is not only the incessant lively croaking of many together, as usually heard, but a lower, hoarser, squirm- ing, screwing kind of croak, perhaps from the other sex. As I approach nearer, they disperse and bury themselves in the grass at the bottom; only one or two remain outstretched on the surface, and, at an- other step, these, too, conceal themselves. Looking up the river yesterday, in a direction oppo- site to the sun, not long before it set, the water was of a rich, dark blue —while looking at it in a direction diag- onal to this, 7. e. northeast, it was nearly slate-colored. To my great surprise the saxifrage is in bloom. It was, as it were, by mere accident that I found it. I had not observed any particular forwardness in it, when, happening to look under a projecting rock in a little nook on the south side of a stump, I spied one little plant which had opened three or four blos- soms high up the Cliff. Evidently you must look very sharp and faithfully to find the first flower, such is the advantage of position, and when you have post- poned a flower for a week and are turning away, a little further search may reveal it. Some flowers, perhaps, have advantages one year which they have not the next. This spring, as well as the past winter, has been remarkably free from snow, and this rea- son, and the plant being hardy withal, may account for its early blossoming. With what skill it secures moisture and heat, growing commonly in a little bed of moss which keeps it moist, and lying low in some cleft of the rock! The sunniest and most sheltered exposures possible it secures. ‘This faced the south- east, was nearly a foot under the eaves of the rock, had not raised its little strawberry-like cluster of buds in the least above the level of its projecting, calyx-like leaves. It was shelter within shelter. The blasts sweep over it. Ready to shoot upward when it shall be warm. The leaves of those which have been more exposed are turned red. It is a very pretty, snug plant with its notched leaves, one of the neatest and prettiest leaves seen now. A blackberry vine which lay over the rock was begin- ning to leave out, as much or more than the goose- berry in the garden, such was the reflected heat. The Missouri currant is perhaps more advanced than the early gooseberry in our garden. The female Pop- ulus tremuliformis catkins, narrower and at present more red and somewhat less downy than the male, west side of railroad at Deep Cut, quite as forward as the male in this situation. The male P. grandiden- tata’s a little further west are nearly out. I should have noticed the fact that the pistillate flower of the hazel peeps forth gradually.'