Log Search Results

  On a pitch [pine] on side of J. Hosmer’s river hill, a pine warbler, by ventriloquism sounding farther off than it was, which was seven or eight feet, hopping and flitting from twig to twig, apparently picking the small flies at and about the base of the needles at the extremities of the twigs . . .

  Small light-brown lizards, about five inches long, with somewhat darker tails, and some a light line along back, are very active, wiggling off, in J. P. Brown’s ditch, with pollywogs. Beyond the desert, hear the hooting owl, which, as formerly, I at first mistook for the hounding of a dog,—a squealing eee followed by hoo hoo hoo deliberately, and particularly sonorous and ringin. This at 2 P.M . . . That willow by H.’s Bridge is very brittle at base of stem, but hard to break above . . . Evening.—Hear the snipe a short time at early starlight.

  I am surprised to find Walden completely open. When did it open? According to all accounts, it must have been between the 6th and 9th . . .

  Fine clear morning, but still cold enough for gloves. A slight frost, and mist as yesterday curling over the smooth water. I see half a dozen crows on an elm within a dozen rods of the muskrats’ bodies, as if eying them. I see thus often crows very early in the morning near the houses, which soon after sunrise take their way across the river to the woods again. It is a regular thing with them.

  8 A. M.—By boat to V. palmata Swamp for white birch sap . . .

  As I walk in the woods where the dry leaves are just laid bare, I see the bright-red berries of the Solomon’s-seal still here and there above the leaves, affording food, no doubt, for some creatures . . .

  When I return to my boat, I see the snow-fleas like powder, in patches on the surface of the smooth water, amid the twigs and leaves… There is no wind, and the water was perfectly smooth,—a Sabbath stillness till 11 A.M. . . .

  P.M.—Up railroad . . .

  The thermometer at 5 P.M. is 66º+ . . .

  At 4.30 P.M. to West Meadow Field . . .

  I hear the booming of snipe this evening, and Sophia says she heard them on the 6th. The meadows having been bare so long, they may have begun yet earlier. Persons walking up or down our village street in still evenings at this season hear this singular winnowing sound in the sky over the meadows and know not what it is. This “booming” of the snipe is our regular village serenade. I heard it this evening for the first time, as I sat in the house, through the window . . .

  R. Rice tells me that he has seen the pickerel-spawn hung about in strings on the brush, especially where a tree had fallen in . . .

  We sit by the side of Little Goose Pond, which C. [William Ellery Channing] calls Ripple Lake or Pool, to watch the ripples on it . . . (Journal, 12:127-131).