May 16, 1860. P. M. To Copan and Beck Stow's.
2 P. M. 56 degrees, with a cold east wind. ....
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;
then flies across 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 summer yellowbird [yellow warbler], 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 hundred (?) species of birds. Each is visited by many kinds, and thus the equilibrium of the insect and vegetable kingdom is preserved. Perhaps I may say that each opening bud is thus visited before it has fully expanded. .... 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 conceal 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. ....
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 samarae 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 samarae. There are some time three samarae together.
-H.D.T.
May 16, 2021.
At 5:50 a.m. I stop by a roadside stand of large-leafed lupine near Nashawtuct. A long flower bud grows from the top of one larger plant, and will apparently open soon.
It’s 51 degrees with a still-whitish, opening morning sky at 6 a.m. when I depart from the main parking lot of Great Meadows following the Edge Trail. Amid other numerous bird songs, I hear a wood thrush greet me as I step out of the car. The birds within the cattails and reeds of the lower impoundment, particularly the red-winged black birds, with their chirping, chucking, and buzzing, are very active. Goose honking filters in. Along the Reformatory Branch Trail, several two-toned gray catbirds, with their black caps and tails, move about between the ground and nearby shrubs.
I take a left up the Timber Trail into Thoreau's “Copan,” a forested upland peninsula that juts northward into the impoundment and wetland just downgradient. Again, I hear the beautiful, full, sweet song of a thrush, louder and clearer now as it is very close nearby. At the tip of Copan, near a thick stand of mayflowers and larger rocks I take in a view of the impoundment and Punkatasset Hill to the north, framed through two budding black tupelo trees with youthful, emerging leaflets. A beaver on the pond’s edge retreats into the water and swims through the reeds and cattails, many fresh and green, growing up to replace last year’s brittle brown stalks. Two beaver dams lie just beyond. On the light-brown toned Dike Path leading to the river, I see the darker figures of two Canada geese walking several small, fuzzy goslings, framed by the higher green grasses on each side.
I continue on the Timber Trail, visiting here for the first time, and find several spur trails to the swamps behind the river. At my first location, just past an relic granite post marking the town boundaries of Concord and Bedford. I watch and listen to a hairy woodpecker noisily creep about the trunks of the red maples in search of food. Other tiny warbler-size birds also move about the branches, but far too quickly and high up for me to identify. I hear thrashing and splashing on the river just behind the trees, where Ball’s Hill stands further back still - probably the common carp, as I saw on May 2, searching the bottom of the shallower waters for food.
Along a second spur trail, I jump over a mucky inlet of water and cross through some brush, carefully avoiding ripe, shiny poison ivy to get to the low hanging crescent keys of a red maple tree. While some are still growing, most of the seeds are already blown down on the ground. The samarae are exactly as Thoreau describes, scarlet pink (albeit multi-toned with scarlets and pinks sometimes overlapping and blending, and yellow and green at the top), and hanging in twos and threes from slightly darker peduncles that gracefully rise first before they drop downward. Kaleidoscopic and exquisite, as if bouquets of flowers, the bundles enliven these dimmer, soggy quarters. I agree with Thoreau; these are even more beautiful than the tree's flowers.
On my return, I find about four tiny brown creepers moving quickly in and among the lower branches. I use my phone app to verify the species and call out to the birds with the app's pre-recorded creeper song. While the birds had previously been using different notes, I now hear them repeat back an imitation of the song I just played. Further along, again, I hear the again thrush singing joyously. White wood anemone and fuchsia annual honesties - rather than Thoreau's wild pinks - decorate the trailsides.
At 7:30 a.m. I revisit yesterday’s Beeches Spring with my wife hoping to share a glimpse of the barred owl I saw yesterday. She spots a big nest in the crook of a tree overhead, but today there is no sign of the owl. At the Thoreau Institute grounds, we examine an impressive blooming horse-chestnut tree with stacks of tall flowers all over its branches. On the way out of the woods, a small American toad, barely noticeable due to its camouflage, hops in the dry leaves.
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