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Nature Seeker

May 9. Keeping a 168-year-old appointment with a bat - Down Sudbury River

Updated: Jan 13

May 9, 1853. At sundown paddled up the river.

The pump-like note of a stake-driver [American bittern] from the fenny place across the Lee meadow.

The greenest and rankest grass as yet is that in the water along the sides of the river. The hylodes [spring peepers] are peeping. I love to paddle now at evening, when the water is smooth and the air begins to be warm. The rich warble of blackbirds about retiring is loud and incessant, not to mention the notes of numerous other birds. The black willow has started, but not yet the button-bush. Again I think I heard the night-warbler. Now, at starlight, that same nighthawk or snipe squeak is heard, but no hovering. The first bat goes suddenly zigzag overhead through the dusky air; comes out of the dusk and disappears into it. That slumbrous, snoring croak, far less ringing and musical than the toad's (which is occasionally heard), now comes up from the meadow’ sedge. I save a floating plank, which exhales and imparts to my hands the rank scent of the muskrats which have squatted on it. I often see their fresh green excrement on rocks and wood. Already men are fishing for pouts.


-H.D.T.


Brooks-Hudson Meadow and canoe house from Sudbury River, concord, Massachusetts.

May 9, 2021. Mother’s Day.

The weekend has been very busy with kids' soccer games, a campout and honoring Mother’s Day. Just before sundown at 7:30 p.m., I put in onto the Sudbury at South Bridge on my kayak and paddle downriver. It's warm at 68 degrees with a slight breeze. The fading light creates a dim grayish white sky above. The water, as it was for Thoreau at this hour, is still, calm and reflective. The busy-ness of a beautiful, active Sunday has faded now to only occasional cars nearby, and a deserted canoe rental shop and parking lot. The chucking and buzzing of red-winged blackbirds among the flooded dogwoods and elsewhere accompanies me. The light sounds of Canada geese honking also filters downriver. Several swallows swoop, dive and skim over the surface of the water by the the three-arched bridge over Elm Street immediately upriver. 


After the river’s turn below Thoreau’s Lee Meadow (Brooks-Hudson Meadow today), I see two ducks swim across the river to the north side. Up close, I am able to get very close to one of them, now roosting on a branch - a brown muscovy with distinct bulbous red beak and face mask, preening its feathers. Happy sounds of families playing and socializing filter down to the river.

I approach the Nashawtuc Road Bridge, built in the late 1800s after Thoreau's time, virtually adjacent to Thoreau's boat launch site across the road from his family home. A single bat dives and swoops, occasionally skimming and touching the water. It’s eerie, as if Thoreau placed an appointment in his calendar for this time and place, and I, finding the appointment book, show up for a rendezvous with this bat some 168 years later! The bat visits only a short while before it departs to higher ground to the south and into the dim of the evening.

At the South Bridge canoe rental as I depart I see a pair of Canada geese with five goslings.



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