30 April 1855 – 6 May 1855

Horse-chestnut begins to leaf, — one of them. | Another, more still, cloudy, almost drizzling day, in which, as the last three, I wear a greatcoat. P. M. —@ortLes’s Clim: Privet begins to leaf. (Viburnwm nudum and Len- tago yesterday.) I observed yesterday that the barn swallows con- fined themselves to one place, about fifteen rods in diameter, in Willow Bay, about the sharp rock. They kept circling about and flying up the stream (the wind easterly), about six inches above the water, — it was cloudy and almost raining, — yet I could not perceive any insects there. Those myriads of little fuzzy gnats mentioned on the 21st and 28th must afford an abun- dance of food to insectivorous birds. Many new birds should have arrived about the 21st. There were plenty of myrtle-birds and yellow redpolls where the gnats Barn Swallows were. ‘The swallows were confined to this space when I passed up, and were still there when I returned, an hour and a half later. I saw them nowhere else. They uttered only a slight twitter from time to time and when they turned out for each other on meeting. Getting their meal seemed to be made a social affair. Pray, how long will they continue to circle thus without resting ? The early willow by Hubbard’s Bridge has not begun to leaf. This would make it a different species from that by railroad, which has. Hear a short, rasping note, somewhat tweezer-bird- like, I think from a yellow redpoll. Yellow dor- bug. I hear from far the scream of a hawk circling over the Holden woods and swamp. This accounts for those two men with guns just entering it. What a dry, shrill, angry scream! I see the bird with my glass resting upon the topmost plume of a tall white pine. Its back, re- flecting the light, looks white in patches; and now it circles again. It is a red-tailed hawk. The tips of its wings are curved upward as it sails. How it scolds at the men beneath! I see its open bill. It must have a nest there. Hark! there goes a gun, and down it tumbles from a rod or two above the wood. So I thought, but was mistaken. In the meanwhile, I learn that there is a nest there, and the gunners killed one this morning, which I examined. They are now getting the young. Above it was brown, but not at all reddish- brown except about head. Above perhaps I should call it brown, and a dirty white beneath; wings above thickly barred with darker, and also wings beneath. The tail of twelve reddish feathers, once black-barred near the end. ‘The feet pale-yellow and very stout, with strong, sharp black claws. ‘The head and neck were remarkably stout, and the beak short and curved from the base. Powerful neck and legs. The claws pricked me as I handled it. It measured one yard and three eighths plus from tip to tip, 2. e. four feet and two inches." Some ferruginous on the neck; ends of wings nearly black. Columbine just out; oneanther sheds. Also turritis will to-morrow apparently ; many probably, if they had not been eaten. Crowfoot and saxifrage are now in prime at Lee’s; they yellow and whiten the ground. I see a great many little piles of dirt made by the worms on Conantum pastures. The woodchuck has not so much what I should call a musky scent, but exactly that peculiar rank scent which I perceive in a menagerie. The musky at length becomes the regular wild-beast scent. Red-wing blackbirds now fly in large flocks, cover- ing the tops of trees — willows, maples, apples, or oaks — like a black fruit, and keep up an incessant gurgling and whistling, — all for some purpose; what is it? White pines now show the effects of last year’s drought in our yard and on the Cliffs, the needles faded and turning red to an alarming extent. I now see many Juniperus repens berries of a handsome light blue above, being still green beneath, with three hoary pouting lips. The Garfields had found a burrow of young foxes. How old?! I see the black feathers of a blackbird by the Miles Swamp side, and this single bright-scarlet one shows that it belonged to a red- wing, which some hawk or quadruped devoured. * Saw the old and tracks of young; thinks they may be one month old.

Rained some in the night; cloudy in the forenoon; clears up in the afternoon. P. M. — By boat with Sophia to Conantum, a may- ing. The water has gone down very fast and the grass has sprung up. There is a strong, fresh marsh scent wafted from the meadows, much like the salt marshes. We sail with a smart wind from the northeast, yet it is warm enough. MHorse-mint is seen springing up, and for two or three days at the bottom of the river and on shore. At Hill Shore the Anemone nemoralis to-morrow. See none wide open. The myrtle-bird is one of the commonest and tamest birds now. It catches insects like a pewee, darting off from its perch and returning to it, and sings something like a-chill chill, chill chill, chill chill, a-twear, twill twill twee, or it may be all tw — not loud; a little like the F’. hyemalis, or more like pine warbler, — rapid, and more and more intense as it advances. There is an unaccount- able sweetness as of flowers in the air, — a true May- day. Raw and drizzling in the morning. The grackle still. What various brilliant and evanescent colors on the surface of this agitated water, now, as we are crossing Willow Bay, looking toward the half-con- cealed sun over the foam-spotted flood! It reminds me of the sea. At Clamshell, the Viola blanda. I do not look for pollen. I find a clamshell five inches long (wanting one sixteenth) and more than two and a half inches broad and two inches thick. What that little dusky- colored lichen on the ground at Clamshell end ditch, with a sort of triangular green fruit? or marchantia? The maples of Potter’s Swamp, seen now nearly half a mile off against the russet or reddish hillside, are a very dull scarlet, like Spanish brown, but one against a green pine wood is much brighter. Thalictrum anemonotides at Conant Cliff. Did not look for pollen. Why have the white pines at a distance that silvery (dewy ?) look around their edges or thin parts? Is it owing to the wind showing the under sides of the needles? Methinks you do not see it in the winter. Went to Garfield’s for the hawk of yesterday. It was nailed to the barn in terrorem and as a trophy. He gave it to me with an egg. He called it the female, and probably was right, it was so large. He tried in vain to shoot the male, which I saw circling about just out of gunshot and screaming, while he robbed the nest. He climbed the tree when I was there yes- terday afternoon, the tallest white pine or other tree in its neighborhood, over a swamp, and found two | young, which he thought not more than a fortnight old, — with only down, at least no feathers, — and one addled egg, also three or four white-bellied or deer mouse (Mus leucopus), a perch, and a sucker,’ 1 | think these must have been dead fish they found. and a gray rabbit’s skin. He had seen squirrels, etc., in other nests. These fishes were now stale. I found the remains of a partridge under the tree. The reason I did not see my hawks at Well Meadow last year was that he found and broke up their nest there, containing five eggs. The hawk measures exactly 22} inches in length and 4 feet 43 inches in alar extent, and weighs 3} pounds. The ends of closed wings almost two inches short of end of tail. General color above of wings and back an olivaceous brown, thickly barred with waving lines of very dark brown, there being a much broader bar next to the tip of the secondaries and tertiaries; and the first five primaries are nearly black toward the ends. A little white appears, especially on the ter- tiaries. The wing-coverts and scapulars glossed with purple reflections. The twelve tail-feathers (which MacGillivray says is the number in all birds of prey, 1. e. the Falconine and Sérigine) showing five and three quarters inches a clear brown red, or rather fox- color, above, with a narrow dark band within half an inch of the end, which is tipped with dirty white. A slight inclination to dusky bars near the end of one side feather. Lower tail-coverts for nearly an inch white, barred with fox-color. Head and neck a paler, inclining to ferruginous, brown. Beneath, breast and wing-linings brown and white, the feathers of first centred with large dark-brown hastate spots, and the wing-linings streaked with ferruginous. Wings white, barred with dusky. “Vent and femorals,” as Nuttall says, “pale ochreous.” ‘Tail white, softened by the superior color. I do not perceive that the abdomen is barred. Bill very blue black, with a short, stout curved tip, — curving from the cere more than a quarter of a cir- cle, extends not quite a quarter of an inch beyond the lower mandible, — and is proportionally stouter at tip than in any of his Falconine, judging from plates of heads; whole visible, including cere, 14 inches long, and 1 inch deep at base; cere yellowish-green. Tarsus and toes very pale yellow; claws blue-black. As MacGillivray says of Buteo, claws flattened beneath, “that of the middle toe with an inner sharp edge.” (He says, as I gather, that all the diurnal birds of prey of Great Britain, 2. e. Falconine, have claws either flattened or concave beneath, except Pandion, the inner edge of the middle one being more or less sharp, but least so in Circus, or harrier.) Tarsus feathered in front one third the way down. The toes for length stand in this order,—the first (or hind), second, fourth, third, the first being the shortest ; for stoutness thus, — one, two, three, four. Claws for stoutness follow the same order with the toes. Utmost spread of toes and claws 44 inches. A considerable web be- tween third and fourth toes.'. Toes with papillee not rigid beneath. The wing extends nearly two feet from the body, and is 10? inches wide; from flexure is 15? inches. When fully expanded it has a rounded outline and a ragged appearance owing to the separation of the first five or six primaries, as I noticed the male bird while resting. The first primary short; they stand, first and eighth, seventh, sixth, second, fifth, third, fourth. The fifth and third are about the same length, and the fourth only a quarter of an inch longer than the third. As in the Buteo vulgaris of MacGillivray, found in Europe and in our north, the four first pri- maries “abruptly cut out on the inner web;” the second, third, fourth, and fifth, but not the first and sixth, “slightly so on the outer.” There are ten primaries and there are fourteen secondaries. (MacGillivray says the primaries of the Falconine are ten, the sec- ondaries from thirteen to eighteen.) The wing, I see, naturally opens at the primaries. This is evidently very closely allied to the Buteo vulgaris, but apparently the wings are not so long com- pared with the tail, and there is a difference in the comparative length and stoutness of the toes; the feet of this are not “bright yellow,” and the upper mandible is much stouter and more recurved at tip, judging from his plate of the head and his descrip- tion. It is recurved as much as his osprey’s. The ear looked like a large round hole in the side of the head behind the eye. The egg is a very dirty brownish white, with brown spots about the smaller end, though one end is about as large as the other. It is Sane than a hen’s egg, — 2% inches by 2. MacGillivray describes the Buteo, as “body full, broad and muscular anteriorly;” “wings long, broad, 1855| THE WINGS OF HAWKS 349 rounded, the third or fourth quill longest, the first very short.”” Of Haliaétus he says, “wings very long, broad, rounded, the fourth and fifth quills longest;” Aquzla, like last, omitting the “very;” Pandion, “wings very long, comparatively narrow, rounded, with thirty quills, the third primary longest, the second nearly equal, the fourth not much shorter, the first longer than the fifth;” Falco, “wings very long, pointed, the sec- ond quill longest, the first almost as long; primaries ten;” Accipiter, “wings long, much rounded; primary quills ten, fourth and fifth longest, first very short;” Pernis, ‘wings very long, broad, rounded, the third quill longest, the first about the length of the sixth;” Milvus, “wings extremely long, broad, and pointed, the fourth quill longest ... first much shorter;” Circus, “wings long, much rounded; primary quills ten, the fourth and third longest, the first about equal to the seventh.” These the genera of Great Britain. Says of Buteo: “In form and plumage they are very intimately allied to the eagles and sea-eagles, as well as in the form of the bill, which is, however, shorter and less deep towards the end, and of the feet, which differ, notwithstanding, in being proportionally less robust, and in having the claws smaller. . . . Usually fly low, and with less rapidity than the falcons and hawks; sail in circles, like the eagles and some other species, and prey on heavy-flying birds, small quad- rupeds, reptiles, and even insects.”” He says the Buteo vulgaris “greatly resembles the golden eagle in his mode of flying,” so that he has mistaken them for it at a distance; that he “rarely gives chase to a bird on wing.” Neither he, in this case, nor Wilson nor Nuttall, in the case of the red-tail, speaks of their feeding on fishes. MacGillivray says the Falconine lay from two to five eggs, and their cries are “seldom heard except | during the breeding ‘season.” “When the young have longitudinal spots on the breast, the old have them transverse.” I do not find much in MacGillivray about the breeding-season of the Falconine. He says the white- tailed sea eagle (Haliaétus albicilla) begins to pre- pare a nest some time in March, and the kestrel near the end of March, and the young of the golden eagle “are fledged about the end of July.” Nuttall says the white-headed eagle begins to lay early in February, that with Falco peregrinus incubation “commences in winter, or very early in the spring,” and that the osprey begins to lay early in May. ‘This is all to the purpose about the season of incubation of hawks and eagles. Early in spring I occasionally see hen-hawks perched about river, and approach quite near them, but never at any other time. This hawk’s flesh had a very disagreeable rank scent, as I was cutting it up, though fresh, — cutting off the wings, etc., etc. I found the feathers of a partridge under the tree where the nest was. What I have called the frog hawk is probably the male hen-harrier, Nuttall’s Circus cyaneus, which he says is the same with the European. MacGillivray refers to C. Americanus (?) and says the question of identity is undecided, and the large brown bird with white rump is the female.! (Probably my small brown hawk is the Falco fuscus, or sharp-shinned. ) MacGillivray says the harrier occasionally eats dead fish and also will catch a chicken, not a hen. Sometimes catches its prey in open flight. Will hunt on the same beat at the same hour, for many days, ac- cording to Jardine (MacGillivray says that the golden eagle “seeks for lie prey at a small height over the surface”); sail in circles. “The male, after the first - autumnal moult, acquires in a considerable degree the plumage of the adult.” “The change of plumage is effected in the autumn of the year after it leaves the nest, and not in the same year.” ‘The female used to be regarded as a distinct species called the “ Ring- tail. Country people name it Blue Kite, Blue Hawk, Ring-tail, Brown Kite, or Gled; and the Highlanders call it Breid-air-toin (rag-on-rump), on account ‘of the white tail-coverts conspicuous in both sexes.”

P. M.— By boat up Assabet. Quince begins to leaf, and pear; perhaps some of last earlier. Aspen leaves of young trees — or twenty to twenty-five feet high—an inch long suddenly; say yesterday began; not till the 11th last year. Leaf- ing, then, is differently affected by the season from flowering. The leafing is apparently comparatively earlier this year than the flowering. The young aspens are the first of indigenous trees conspicuously leafed. Diervilla, say began to leaf with viburnums. Ame- lanchier Botryapium yesterday leafed. That small native willow now in flower, or say yesterday, just before leaf, — for the first seem to be bracts, — two to seven or eight feet high, very slender and curving. Apparently has three or four lanceolate toothed bracts at base of petioled catkin; male three quarters and female one inch long; scales black and silky-haired; ovary oblong-oval, stalked, downy, with a small yellow- ish gland not so long as its stalk. See leaf by and by. Saw many crow blackbirds day before yesterday. Vigorous look the little spots of triangular sedge (?) springing up on the river-banks, five or six inches high, yellowish below, glaucous and hoary atop, straight and rigid. Many clamshells have round brassy-colored spots as big as a fourpence. Found one opened by rats last winter, almost entirely the color of tarnished brass within. Open the Assabet spring. The anemone is well named, for see now the nemorosa, amid the fallen brush and leaves, trembling in the wind, so fragile. Hellebore seems a little later than the cabbage. Was that a harrier seen at first skimming low then soaring and circling, with a broad whiteness on the wings beneath ?

P. M. — To Assabet Bath. Small pewee; tchevet, with a jerk of the head. Hard- hack leafed two or maybe three days in one place. Early pyrus leafed yesterday or day before, if I have not named it. The skull of a horse, — not a mare, for I did not see the two small canine teeth in the upper jaw, nor in the under, — six molars on each side, above and below, and six incisors to each jaw. I first observed the stillness of birds, ete., at noon, with the increasing warmth, on the 23d of April. Sitting on the bank near the stone-heaps, I see large suckers rise to catch insects, — sometimes leap. A butterfly one inch in alar extent, dark velvety brown with slate- colored tips, on dry leaves. On the north of Groton Turnpike beyond Abel Hosmer’s, three distinct ter- races to river; first annually overflowed, say twenty-five or thirty rods wide, second seven or eight feet higher and forty or sixty wide, third forty feet higher still. Sweet-fern opened apparently yesterday. Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum began to leaf yesterday. Young red maple leaf to-morrow; also some white birch, and per- haps sugar maple. Humphrey Buttrick, one of eight who alone returned from Texas out of twenty-four, says he can find wood- cock’s eggs; now knows of several nests; has seen them setting with snow around them; and that Melvin has seen partridges’ eggs some days ago. He has seen crows building this year. Found in a hen-hawk’s nest once the legs of a cat. Has known of several goshawks’ nests (or what he calls some kind of eagle; Garfield called it the Cape eagle); one in a shrub oak, with eggs. Last year his dog caught seven black ducks so far grown that he got sixty cents a pair for them; | takes a pretty active dog to catch such. He frequently finds or hears of them. Knew of a nest this year. Also finds wood ducks’ nests. Has very often seen par- tridges drum close to him. Has watched one for an hour. They strike the body with their wings. He shot a white-headed eagle from Carlisle Bridge. It fell in the water, and his dog was glad to let it alone. He suggested that my fish hawks found pouts in holes made by ice.

A robin sings when I, in the house, cannot distinguish the earliest dawning from the full moon- light. His song first advertises me of the daybreak, when I thought it was night, as I lay looking out into the full moonlight. I heard a robin begin his strain, and yielded the point to him, believing that he was better acquainted with the springs of the day than I, — with the signs of day. 5 a. M.— To Hill. Many red-wings and grackles feeding together on meadows. They still fly in flocks. Some dark-ash; are they female grackles? Hear a brown thrasher. Yellow lily pads are just beginning to show themselves on the surface, the first noticeable on the water. All kinds of young maples, and some limbs of large white, begin to leaf. Red maple blossoms begin to cover ground. Ostrya will leaf to-morrow. The second | amelanchier, sweet-fern, and early thorn begin to leaf to-day. Small white-barked shrub (andromeda ?) on Island Neck begins to leaf to-morrow.' I think I hear a warbling vireo.” Birds. Still see three or four crows together, though some at least are building. Jays do not scream as early. Chickadee, spring notes still. Partridges setting. Have noticed no ducks for some days. All the black blackbirds as plenty as ever, and in flocks. Have not noticed robins in flocks for two or three days. See no gulls, nor Ff. hyemalis' nor tree sparrows now. Red- tail hawk young fourteen days old. Snipes feeding in numbers on the 29th April. Yellow redpolls in numbers May Ist. Woodcocks setting. Purple finch sings steadily. Myrtle-birds numerous, and sing their tea lee, tea lee in morning. White-throated sparrows here, and numerous. No goldfinches for long time. The water is now generally off the meadows. P. M. — To beeches. In cut woods a small thrush, with crown inclining to rufous, tail foxy, and edges of wings dark-ash; clear white beneath. I think the golden-crowned? See more white-throated sparrows than any other bird to- day in various parts of our walk, generally feeding in numbers on the ground in open dry fields and mead- ows next to woods, then flitting through the woods. Hear only that sharp, lisping chip (?) from them. A partridge’s grayish tail- feather, with a subterminal dark band. Several larger thrushes on low limbs and on ground, with a dark eye (not the white around it of the wood thrush) and, I think, the nankeen spot on the secondaries. A hermit thrush? Sitting in Abel Brooks’s Hollow, see a small hawk go over high in the air, with a long tail and distinct from wings. It advanced by a sort of limping flight yet rapidly, not circling nor tacking, but flapping briskly at intervals and then gliding straight ahead with rapidity, controlling itself with its tail. It seemed to be going a journey. Was it not the sharp-shinned, or Falco fuscus? I think that what I have called the sparrow hawk falsely, and latterly pigeon hawk, is also the sharp-shinned (vide April 26th and May 8th, 1854, and April 16th, 1855),' for the pigeon hawk’s tail is white-barred. Found a black snake’s skeleton. Remarked the globular protuberance on which the vertebre revolve, and the four (?) sharp, recurved teeth in the lower jaw. Red cherry not generally leafing before yesterday. Sand cherry yesterday leafs. See where a skunk has probed last night, and large black dung with appar- ently large ants’ heads and earth or sand and stubble or insects’ wings in it; probably had been probing a large ants’ hill. Was that a gr? cerasus or prunus on Pine Hill, thus from ‘“ wood-pile? AB two rods west. The beech ? - -‘4 leaf-buds are very handsome ReatiNepicwa* now, some nearly an inch and a half long and very slender, not more than a sixth of an inch in diameter and regularly swelling from each end; will open, apparently, in three or four days. The blossom-buds are still larger; may bloom in eight days. Potentilla out. What that plant in Baker’s Pool, with sessile spatu- late leaves toothed at end, now four or five inches high ? Noticed a perfectly regular circular concavity in a sandy soil in a hollow in birch woods, where appar- ently a partridge had dusted herself. Yesterday a great many spotted and wood tortoises in the Sam Wheeler birch-fence meadow pool, which dries up. One of the former gradually settled itself into the sod by turning round and round and scratch- ing with its claws. A shower.

P. M. — To Beck Stow’s. Cold weather for several days. Canada plum and cultivated cherry and Missouri currant look as if they would bloom to-morrow. The sugar maples on the Common have just begun to show their stamens peep- ing out of the bud, but that by Dr. Barrett’s has them an inch and a half long or more. The trees and shrubs which I observe to make a show now with their green, without regard to the time when they began, are (to put them in the order of their intensity and generalness) : — Gooseberry, both kinds Raspberry Meadow-sweet Choke-cherry shoots Some young trembles Very young apples Red currant, and probably black Pyrus, probably arbutzjolia Young black cherry Thimble-berry Probably wild red cherry in some places Salix alba with bracts (?) Some smal] native willows Cultivated cherry Some mountain-ash (2. e. European) Some horse-chestnut Excepting the S. alba, I am inclined to stop with the Pyrus arbutifolia. The Andromeda Polvfolia will apparently open about the 10th. High blueberry began to leaf in some places yesterday. Larch began to leaf, say when it opened, the 28th of April, but not noticeably till to-day. I find one bundle with needles a quarter of an inch long and spreading. The small andromeda has lost its reddish leaves, probably about the time it blossomed, and I can nei- ther get the red cathedral-window light looking toward the now westering sun in a most favorable position, nor the gray colors in the other direction, but it is all a grayish green. But the patches of cranberry in the swamp, seen at some distance toward the sun, are a beautiful crimson, which travels with you, keeping between you and the sun, like some rare plant in bloom there densely. I could not believe it was cranberry. Looking over my book, I found I had done my errands, and said to myself I would find a crow’s nest. (I had heard a crow scold at a passing hawk a quarter of an hour before.) I had hardly taken this resolution when, looking up, I saw a crow wending his way across an interval in the woods towards the highest pines in the swamp, on which he alighted. I directed my steps to them and was soon greeted with an angry caw, and, within five minutes from my resolve, I detected a new nest close to the top of the tallest white pine in the swamp. A crow circled cawing about it within gunshot, then over me surveying, and, perching on an oak directly over my head within thirty-five feet, cawed angrily. But suddenly, as if having taken a new resolution, it flitted away, and was joined by its mate and two more, and they went off silently a quarter of a mile or more and lit in a pasture, as if they had nothing to concern them in the wood.

The young sugar maples leafing are more conspicuous now than any maples. Black oak buds are large and silvery. Peach leafed yesterday. P. M. — To epigeea. Salix alba opened yesterday. Gilead not leafing yet, but perhaps to-morrow? A robin’s nest with two eggs, betrayed by peeping. On the 30th of April a pheebe flew out from under the arched bridge; prob- ably building.