Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/311

Rh Returning. Saw a pigeon woodpecker flash away, showing the rich golden underside of its glancing wings and the large whitish spot on its back, and presently I heard its familiar, long-repeated, loud note, almost as familiar as that of a barn-door fowl, which it somewhat resembles. The robins, too, now toward sunset, perched on the old apple trees in Tarbel's orchard, twirl forth their evening lays unweariedly To-night, for the first time, I hear the hylas in full blast.

April 6, 1854. A still warmer day than yesterday, a warm, moist, rain-smelling, west wind. I am surprised to find so much of the white maples already out. The light-colored stamens show some rods. Probably they began as early as day before yesterday. They resound with the hum of honey bees heard a dozen rods off, and you see thousands of them about the flowers against the sky. They know where to look for the white maple and when. Their susurrus carries me forward some months toward summer. I was reminded before of those still, warm, summer noons when the breams' nests are left dry, and the fishes retreat from the shallows into the cooler depths, and the cows stand up to their bellies in the rivers The alders, both kincls, just above the hemlocks, have just begun to shed their pollen. They are