Log Search Results

  I come out to hear a spring bird, the ground generally covered with snow yet and the channel of the river only partly open. On the Rill I hear first the tapping of a small woodpecker. I then see a bird alight on the dead top of the highest white oak on the hilltop, on the topmost point. It is a shrike . . .

  A lady tells me that she saw, last Cattle-Show Day, — — putting up a specimen of hairwork in a frame (by his niece) in the exhibition hall . . .

  P.M.—To Ministerial Swamp.

  I hear of two who saw bluebirds this morning, and one says he saw one yesterday. This seems to have been the day of their general arrival here, but I have not seen one in Concord yet.

  It is a good plan to go to some old orchard on the south side of a hill, sit down, and listen, especially in the morning when all is still. You can thus often hear the distant warble of some bluebird lately arrived, which, if you had been walking, would not have been audible to you. As I walk, these first mild spring days, with my coat thrown open, stepping over tinkling rills of melting snow, excited by the sight of the bare ground, especially the reddish subsoil, where it is exposed by a cutting, and by the few green radical leaves, I stand still, shut my eyes, and listen from time to time, in order to hear the note of some bird of passage just arrived . . .

  3 P.M.—34º.

  A little sleety snow falling all day, which does not quite cover the ground,—a sugaring. Song sparrow heard through it; not bluebird . . .

  Has been a dew, which wets the feet, and I see a very thin fog over the low ground, the first fog, which must be owing to the warm weather. Heard a robin singing powerfully an hour ago, and song sparrows, and the cocks. No peeping frogs in the morning, or rarely . . .

  I would fain see the sun as a moon, more weird. The sun now rises in a rosaceous amber. Methinks the birds sing more some mornings than others, when I cannot see the reason. I smell the damp path, and derive vigor from the earthy scent between Potter’s and Hayden’s . . .

  P.M.—To Nawshawtuct.

  The vireo comes with warm weather, midwife to the leaves of the elms. I see little ant-hills in the path, already raised How long have they been? The first small pewee sings now che-vet, or rather chirrups chevet, tche-vet—a rather delicate bird with a large head and two white bars on wings. The first summer yellowbirds on the willow causeway. The birds I have lately mentioned come not singly, as the earliest, but all at once, i.e. many yellowbirds all over town. Now I remember the yellowbird comes when the willows begin to leave out. (And the small pewee on the willows also.) So yellow. They bring summer with them and the sun, tche-tche-tchc-tcha tch.a-tchar . . .

  A white-throated sparrow (Fringilla Pennsylvanica) died in R.W.E.’s garden this morning . . .

  Riding through Lincoln, found the peach bloom now in prime . . .

  At sunset across the flooded meadow to Nawshawtuct. The water becoming calm. The sun is just disappearing as I reach the hilltop, and the horizon’s edge appears with beautiful distinctness. As the twilight approaches or deepens, the mountains, those pillars which point the way to heaven, assume a deeper blue. As yet the aspect of the forest at a distance is not changed from its-winter appearance, except where the maple-tops in blossom in low lands tinge it red . . .