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memory of the'sight of a male purple finch systematically eating apple blossoms surged up from my sprouting years in North Carolina. After all, I, like many others who live in the Virginia Piedmont, know apple trees and orchards well; we live in the midst of them.
The difference between apple orchards in 1860 and 2000 — 140 years ago — is that apple trees are planted closer now. I learned that from a certified apple tree grower. Pesticides are widely used today; that would certainly alter the ecology — the natural life swirling around an orchard. Pruning is commonly practiced, so there would not be so many hollow limbs for birds and mammals to use for hiding and nesting.
The reference to Indians perplexes me. No doubt there was a reference to Native Americans and apple orchards in the journal. My edition of the jourrtals is restricted to Thoreau’s comments on birds.
I will quote all of Thoreau’s entry for Jan. 29 and confine my comments to italics. “As it (the apple tree) grew apace, the bluebird, robin, cherry- * bird (cedar waxwing), kingbird ... came with a rush and built their nests in it and so became orchard-birds'. The woodpecker found such a savory morsel under its bark that he perforated it in a ring quite round the tree. (Thoreau is here referring to the yellowbellied sapsucker, a kind of woodpecker.)
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