Watercolor and colored pencil on wood panel

In his 1859 diary entry, Thoreau wrote: “Can you ever be sure that you have heard the very first wood frog in the township croak? Ah! How weather-wise must he be! There is no guessing at the weather with him. He makes the weather in his degree – he encourages it to be mild. The weather, what is it but the temperament of the earth – and he is wholly of the earth, sensitive as its skin in which he lives, and of which he is a part.”

Watercolor and colored pencil on wood panel

In his 1857 diary entry, Thoreau wrote: “First notice the ring of the toad…The bell was ringing for the town meeting...but none heard...[the] sound from amid the waves of the aerial sea.”

Watercolor and colored pencils on wood panel

In his 1858 diary entry, Thoreau wrote “I hear...the low dumping notes of awakened bullfrogs…the first regular bullfrog’s trump…It is enough for the day to have heard only the first half trump of an early awakened one.”

Watercolor and colored pencil on wood panel

In his 1853 diary entry, Thoreau wrote: “What was that sound that came on the softened air? It was the warble of the first bluebird...When this is heard then has spring arrived.”

Watercolor and colored pencil on wood panel

In his April 18, 1858 diary entry, Henry David Thoreau ponders “Frogs are strange creatures. One would describe them as peculiarly wary and timid – another equally bold and imperturbably. All that is required in studying them is patience.”

Watercolor and colored pencil on wood panel

In his 1853 diary entry, Thoreau wrote: “Rowing past… we heard a singular note of distress as it were from a catbird. A loud vibrating catbird sort of note—as if [its] mew were imitated by a smart vibrating spring.”

Watercolor and colored pencil on 140lb paper

In his 1858 diary entry, Henry David Thoreau wrote “Every resounding step on the frozen earth is a vain knocking at the door of what was lately genial Nature...Of birds only the chickadees seem really at home. Where they are is a hearth and a bright fire constantly burning.”

Watercolor and colored pencils on 140lb paper

In his April 10, 1852 diary entry, Henry David Thoreau ponders “We being to see ducks which we have scared flying low over the water – always with a striking parallelism in the direction of their flight. They like regulars. They are like rolling-pins with wings.”

Watercolor and colored pencils on 140lb cold paper

In his February 19, 1852 diary entry, Thoreau wrote: “The strains from my muse are as rare nowadays, or late years, as the notes of birds in the winter—the faintest occasional tinkling sound, and mostly of the woodpecker kind, or the harsh Jay or crow. It never melts into song. Only the day-day-day of an inquisitive titmouse.