April 30, 1857. Thursday. A.M. Surveying for Farrar and Heywood by Walden.
Hear a kingfisher at Goose Pond. Hear again the same bird heard at Conantum April 18th, which I think must be the ruby-crowned wren. As we stood looking for a bound by the edge of Goose Pond, a pretty large hawk alighted on an oak close by us. It probably has a nest near by and was concerned for its young.
-H.D.T.
April 30, 2021. 12:30 p.m
It’s 61 degrees and blustery today with 20 m.p.h. winds. The sky is covered with huge billowing clouds of varying colors from white to dark gray. The woods here today on the steep trail down to the western shore of Goose Pond are filled with many yellow-rumped warblers that flit in and among the branches so quickly that I find it hard to get a good look. With much delight, I quickly give up trying to count up the number of these birds as I realize they are part of a very large migrating flock visiting here today.
I walk down the peninsula into the pond and see countless swallows (thicker on the northern lobe of the pond) swooping and diving above the water in pursuit of insects. While some are red-bellied, indicating that they are barn swallows, the majority are white-bellied, distinguishing them as tree swallows. They remind me of bats as they energetically swoop and dance in and among each other from and to every direction.
I hear a red-tailed hawk call from the woods behind and walk forward on the peninsula. From above me, a huge brown raptor flies up and across the pond to the east. It's so big and instantly recognizable that I hear myself swear outloud - broad wingspan, white tail and head : a bald eagle! I fumble for my binoculars, but my view is now from afar as it disappears to the eastern woods beyond the pond. My blood moves faster with thrill.
I look up almost immediately and see the red-tailed hawk I just heard soaring up high, bobbing and swooping as if a swallow itself. Six ducks acrobatically fly laps around the pond to eventually land on the southern lobe of the water to my right, letting out much quacking after they land - mallards. The wind makes interesting fan patterns on the water that is full of waterlilies.
At the peninsula’s edge, I get even better view of the countless swallows at work, and see two hooded-mergansers, which take off up and over the peninsula. I find a new willow to me here, what I believe to be a white willow - with thick catkins only barely showing cottony fluff, which will eventually cover them, and thin leaves, already out. Roots grow out of the tree’s grey trunk above the ground indicating how often its base is water-logged with higher water than today.
Thoreau was here this calendar day to survey woodlots for Farrar and Heywood. W. Barksdale Maynard provides a fantastic plat map for the pond in Walden Pond, a History, based on old surveys showing the lot lines surveyed by Thoreau (see my adaptation below). As Thoreau did on this day, I wander along the southwestern shore to try to find a survey marker, like a granite post, that may still exist. (I have seen many other granite markers in these woods, including on the eastern side of Goose Pond. Were these other survey markers placed by Thoreau himself?)
During my search, I find no survey markers, but discover a different form of marker to the past - the dried skeletal remains of a creature unknown.
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