14 May 1860 – 20 May 1860

The heat continues. It is remarkably hazy; wind still northeast. You can hardly see the horizon at all a mile off. The mornings for some time past have been misty rather than foggy, and now it lasts through the day and becomes a haze. The sunlight is yellow through it. In the afternoon it is cooler, much cooler at about 60, and windier. Some Salix discolor down shows itself before mouse- ear. The order is, then, dandelion, elm seed, willow, and next, probably, mouse-ear down, 7. e. of the more noticeable seeds. At Stow’s meadow by railroad I see Carex stipata, maybe five days out. C. vulgaris, five to eight inches high and done’ (the short scattered dark-scaled one). At Smith’s shore the C. Buabaumii is nearly done. Put, then, in the order (the meadow carices observed) till I know better: C. vulgaris, May Ist; C. stricta, May 3d;? Buxbaumi, May 6th; C. stipata, say 9th; or per- haps the first two together. Flowering fern is a foot high. C. sees the chestnut-sided warbler and the tanager to-day, and heard a whip-poor-will last night. The early sedges, even in the meadows, have blos- somed before you are aware of it, while their tufts and bases are still mainly brown.

P. M. — To sedge path and Cliffs. Yesterday afternoon and to-day the east wind has been quite cool, if not cold, but the haze thicker than ever. Too cool, evidently, and windy for warblers, except in sheltered places; too cool in tops of high exposed trees. The Carex stricta and C. vulgaris both are common just beyond the English brook cress, and many of both are still in bloom. I noticed on the 13th my middle-sized orange butter- fly with blackish spots. Noticed on the 6th the largest shrub oak that I know in the road by White Pond, just before getting to the lane. The Salix humilis is going to seed as early as the dis- color, for aught I see; now downy. Oaks are just coming into the gray. Deciduous woods now swarm with migrating war- blers, especially about swamps. Did I not hear part of a grosbeak’s strain ? Lousewort flower some time, and frost-bitten. Under the Cliffs, edge of Gerardia quercifolia Path, the C. varia, gone to seed (vide press), and, on top of Cliffs near staghorn sumach, C. Pennsylvanica, gone to seed and ten or more inches high, also still apparently in bloom (vide press). Looking from the Cliffs through the haze, the decidu- ous trees are a mist of leafets, against which the pines are already darkened. At this season there is thus a mist in the air and a mist on the earth. Rye is a foot or more high, and some [ ?] two feet, — the early. The springing sorrel, the expanding leafets, the already waving rye tell of June. Sun goes down red, and did last night. A hot day does not succeed, but the very dry weather continues. It is shorn of its beams in the mist-like haze. Ranunculus bulbosus begins in churchyard to-day.

P. M. — To Copan and Beck Stow’s. 2 p.m. — 56°, with a cold east wind. Many people have fires again. Near Peter’s I see a small creeper hopping along the branches of the oaks and pines, ever turning this way and that as it hops, making various angles with the bough; ep OR eee then flies across me to another bough, or to the base of another tree, and traces that up, zigzag and prying into the crevices. Think how thoroughly the trees are thus explored by various birds. You can hardly sit near one for five minutes now, but either a woodpecker or creeper comes and examines its bark rapidly, or a warbler — a sum- mer yellowbird, for example — makes a pretty thorough exploration about all its expanding leafets, even to the topmost twig. The whole North American forest is being thus explored for insect food now by several hun- dred (?}) species of birds. Each is visited by many kinds, and thus the equilibrium of the insect and vegeta- ble kingdom is preserved. Perhaps I may say that each opening bud is thus visited before it has fully expanded. The golden robin utters from time to time a hoarse or grating cr-r-ack. ‘The creepers are very common now. Now that the warblers are here in such numbers is the very time on another account to study them, for the leaf- buds are generally but just expanding, and if you look toward the light you can see every bird that flits through a small grove, but a few weeks hence the leaves will con- ceal them. The deciduous trees are just beginning to invest the evergreens, and this, methinks, is the very midst of the leafing season, when the oaks are getting into the gray. A lupine will open to-day. One wild pink out. Red cherry apparently in prime. A golden-crowned thrush keeps the trunks of the young trees between me and it as it hops away. Are those poplars the tremuliformis which look so dead south of Holbrook’s land, not having leafed out? Menyanthes, apparently a day or two. Andromeda Polifolia, how long? Andromeda calyculata much past prime. Nemopanthes, maybe a day or two out. The swamps are exceedingly dry. On the 13th I walked wherever I wanted to in thin shoes in Kalmia Swamp, and to-day I walk through the middle of Beck Stow’s. The river meadows are more wet, compara- tively. I pass a young red maple whose keys hang down three inches or more and appear to be nearly ripe. This, being in a favorable light (on one side from the sun) and being of a high color, — a pink scarlet, — is a very beautiful object, more so than when in flower. Masses of double samarze unequally disposed along the branches, trembling in the wind. Like the flower of the shad-bush, so this handsome fruit is seen for the most part now against bare twigs, it is so much in advance of its own and of other leaves. The peduncles gracefully rise a little before they curve downward. They are only a little darker shade than the samarsze. There are some- times three samaree together. Sun goes down red.

Quite a fog till 8 a. m., and plowed ground blackened with the moisture absorbed. J. Farmer sends me to-day what is plainly Cooper’s hawk. It is from eighteen to nineteen inches long, and from flexure of wing eleven inches (alar extent thirty- four). The tail extends four or five inches beyond the wings. ‘Tarsus about three inches long and with feet yel- low. The bird above is nearly a uniform dark brown, or dark chocolate-brown, with bluish reflections; head darker. Tail with four blackish bands, and narrowly tipped with whitish. Cere greenish. Breast transversely barred with pale rusty, centred longitudinally with darker-brown lines. Under wing-coverts like breast, without the transverse bars. Vent white. Wings beneath (secondaries and primaries) thickly barred with black- ish brown and light, — white. Iris yellow. There is attached to the breast fragments of a bluish-white egg. No ruff about eye as in the harrier. (Vide the large Falco fuscus of August 29, 1858.) It was shot on its nest (a female, then) in a white pine north of Ponkaw- tasset, on the 16th, and had four eggs which may have been sat on one week.! It agrees very well with Nuttall’s account (q. v. in my scrap in Giraud), except that the second primary is not equal to the sixth and the tail is full nine inches long; also sufficiently with Giraud’s account, except that the tarsus is about three inches long. It is a large bird, but rather slender, with a very long tail. This makes the tenth species of the hawk kind that I have seen in Concord. The egg which Farmer saved is one and ten twelfths inches by one and five and a half twelfths, of a regular oval form, bluish-white with a few large, rough dirty spots. P. M. — To J. Farmer’s. Is not that little fern which I have seen unrolling four or five days, scattered along the low meadow-edge next the river, the Aspidium Thelypteris ? Now five or six inches high. A nighthawk with its distinct white spots. Early aspen down has just begun (before mouse-ear). Carex crinita just out, or say a day, on the grassy island. The C. stricta is common yet there, and inter- esting, in large thick tufts with its brown spikes. That island is thickly covered with white violets. Common cress out, how long? Many flowers fallen, showing minute pods. The river is seven and one eighth inches below sum- mer level. See the sium pushing up near the waterside. It smells, when broken off, like a parsnip. Standing in the meadow near the early aspen at the island, I hear the first fluttering of leaves, —a peculiar sound, at first unaccountable to me. The breeze causes the now fully expanded aspen leaves there to rustle with a pattering sound, striking on one another. It is much like a gentle surge breaking on a shore, or the rippling of waves. This is the first softer music which the wind draws from the forest, the woods generally being comparatively bare and just bursting into leaf. It was delicious to behold that dark mass and hear that soft rippling sound. Tupelo buds just expanding, but inconspicuous as yet. Round-leafed cornel leafets, one inch wide. Salix sericea, half an inch wide. Lambkill leaf, a day or two. Sarsaparilla flower, apparently yesterday. Polygala paucifolia common, how long? Rhodora generally out. Eleocharis tenuis, probably two or three days (some of it) in river meadows, as near mouth of Dakin’s Brook. May be earlier in midst of Hubbard’s Close. By Sam Barrett’s meadow-side I see a female Mary- land yellow-throat busily seeking its food amid the dan- gling fruit of the early aspen, in the top of the tree. Also a chestnut-sided warbler, —the handsome bird, — with a bright-yellow crown and yellow and black striped back and bright-chestnut sides, not shy, busily picking about the expanding leaves of a white birch. I find some minute black flies on them. Rye two and a half to three feet high. It is so dry that much of the sidesaddle leaf has no water in it. Old brown rocks in the river and mill-ponds show by their water-lines how high the water has formerly stood. Hear of a hummingbird on the 12th. Willow (alba) catkins are in the midst of their fall. Hear the first bullfrog’s trump.

P. M. — To Walden. The creak of the cricket has been common on all warm, dry hills, banks, etc., for a week, — inaugurating the summer. Gold-thread out, — how long? — by Trillium Wood- side. Trientalis. The green of the birches is fast losing its prominence amid the thickening cloud of reddish-brown and yellow- ish oak Jeafets. The last and others [?] are now like a mist enveloping the dark pines. Apple trees, now, for two or three days, generally bursting into bloom (not in full bloom), look like whitish rocks on the hillsides, — somewhat even as the shad-bush did. The sand cherry flower is about in prime. It grows on all sides of short stems, which are either upright or spreading, forming often regular solid cylinders twelve to eighteen inches long and only one and a half inches in diameter, the flowers facing out every way, of uniform diameter, determined by the length of the peduncles. Pretty wands of white flowers, with leafets intermingled. The remarkably dry weather has been both very favorable and agreeable weather to walkers. We have had almost constant east winds, yet generally accom- panied with warmth, —none of the rawness of the east wind commonly. We have, as it were, the bracing air of the seashore with the warmth and dryness of June in the country. The night-warbler is a powerful singer for so small a bird. It launches into the air above the forest, or over some hollow or open space in the woods, and challenges the attention of the woods by its rapid and impetuous warble, and then drops down swiftly into the tree-tops like a performer withdrawing behind the scenes, and he is very lucky who detects where it alights. That large fern (is it Aspidiwm spinulosum ?) of Brister Spring Swamp is a foot or more a It is partly evergreen. A hairy woodpecker betrays its hole in an apple tree by its anxiety. The ground is strewn with the chips it has made, over a large space. The hole, so far as I can see, is exactly like that of the downy woodpecker, — the entrance (though not so round) and the conical form within above, — only larger. The bird scolds at me from a dozen rods off. Now for very young and tender oak leaves and their colors.

A. M. — River seven inches below summer level. Wind south, and a gentle intermittent warm rain at last begins. This has been the longest drought that I remember. The last rain was April 16th, except that some detected a few drops falling on the 9th; was literally the last drop we had. If this had occurred a month later, after the crops were fairly growing, it would have been a great calamity. As it is, there has been very little growth. My potatoes, planted May Ist, are but just beginning to peep here and there. My corn, planted the 2d, has not a quarter part showed itself, and grass seed sown ten days ago has not ger- minated. But weeds have not grown as much as usual. It must have been a severe trial for young fruit and other trees. Plowing and planting have been uncom- monly dirty work, it has been so dusty. 2 p.M. — To Second Division. Thermometer 72°. It cleared up at noon, to our disappointment, and very little rain had fallen. There is a strong southwest wind after the rain, rather novel and agreeable, blowing off some apple blossoms. The grass, especially the meadow-grasses, are seen to wave distinctly, and the shadows of the bright fair-weather cumuli are sweeping over them like the shades of a watered or changeable stuff, — June- like. The grass and the tender leaves, refreshed and expanded by the rain, are peculiarly bright and yellow- ish-green when seen in a favorable light. This occurrence of pretty strong southwest winds near the end of May, three weeks after the colder and stronger winds of March and April have died away, after the first heats and perhaps warm rain, when the apple trees and upland buttercups are in bloom, is an annual phenomenon. Not being too cold, they are an agreeable novelty and excitement now, and give life to the landscape. Sorrel just begins to redden some fields. I have seen for a week a smaller and redder butterfly than the early red or reddish one. Its hind wings are chiefly dark or blackish. It is quite small. The forward wings, a pretty bright scarlet red with black spots. See a green snake, a very vivid yellow green, of the same color with the tender foliage at present, and as if his colors had been heightened by the rain. White thorn in bloom at Tarbell’s Spring, consider- able of it; possibly a little yesterday. What they say of the 19th of April, "75, — that “the apple trees were in bloom and grass was waving in the fields,” — could only have been said within a week past this early year. This is the season when the meadow- grass is seen waving in the wind at the same time that the shadows of clouds are passing over it. At the Ministerial Swamp I see a white lady’s-slipper almost out, fully grown, with red ones. By the path-side near there, what I should call a veery's nest with four light-blue eggs, but I have not heard the veery note this year, only the yorrick. It is under the projecting edge or bank of the path, —a large mass of fine grass-stubble, pine-needles, etc., but not leaves, and lined with pine-needles. In Second Division Meadow, Eriophorum polysta- chyon, apparently two or three days, though only six or eight inches high at most. The Second Division rush is not quite in bloom yet. The panicle is quite fresh, one eighth to one quarter inch long, but the sepals are not green but light-brown. Is it a new species? Going along the Second Division road, this side the brooks, where the woods have been extensively cut off, I smell now, the sun having come out after the rain of the morning, the scent of the withered pine boughs which cover and redden the ground. They part with their tea now. You see now, on all sides, the gray-brown, lumber- ing woodchucks running to their subterranean homes. They are but poor runners, and depend on their watchfulness and not being caught far from their burrows. The reddish-brown loosestrife is seen springing up in dry woods, six or eight inches high. Nov, sitting on the bank at White Pond, I do not see a single shad-bush in bloom across the pond, where they had just fairly begun on the 6th. The small Populus grandidentata, with their silvery leafets not yet gener- ally flattened out, represent it there now, —are the most like it. I see some tall shad-bush without the red- dish leaves — what I think I have thought a variety of the Botryapium — still well in bloom apparently with the oblongifolium. Is it the last? The largest shrub oak that I have noticed grows by the north side of the White Pond road, not far from the end of the lane. It measures sixteen inches in circum- ference at two feet from the ground, and looks like a Cape Cod red oak in size and form, — a scraggly small tree (maybe a dozen feet high). Pyrus arbutifolia out. Beach plum by Hubbard’s wall, perhaps a day. Lilac, the 17th. The fresh shoots of the white pine are now perpendicular whitish marks about two inches long, about six inches apart on a glaucous-green ground. IT measure a bear’s foot which F. Monroe brought from Vermont, where it was killed in a trap within a few years. It was formed very much like a boy’s foot, with its five toes, and the solid part measured seven a and one half inches in length by three and three quarters. The claws extended one inch further, and with the fur (not allowing anything for shrinkage all this while) it must have made a track nine by four and a half inches at least. The fur came down thick all around to the ground. There was a seam or joint across the middle of the sole. River raised one and a half inches at night by rain of forenoon, — 72. é. five and a half inches below summer level.

A strong, cold west wind. 60° at 2 P. M. To Walden. The Carex vulgaris is more glaucous than the séricta. Mouse-ear down at last. Scirpus planifolius — how long? — apparently in prime in woods about the bottom of the long south bay of Walden, say two rods southwest. Judging from Hind’s Report of his survey of the region between the Assiniboine and Saskatchewan Rivers, the prevailing trees — and they are small — are aspens and willows, which, if let alone, z. ¢., if the prairies were not burned by the Indians, might at last make a soil for nobler forests. No wonder that these small trees are so widely dispersed; their abundant fine and light seed, being buoyed up and wafted far through the atmosphere, speedily clothe the burnt tracts of British America. Heavy-seeded trees are slow to spread themselves, but both air and water combine to transport the seeds of these trees.