Black Fruit

March 16.

2 P. M. — Thermometer 55; wind slight, west by south. To Abner Buttrick's Hill. 

The buttercup radical leaves are many of them now a healthy dark green, as if they had acquired new life. I notice that such are particularly downy, and probably that enables them to endure the cold so well, like mulleins. Those and thistles and shepherd's-purse, etc., have the form of rosettes on the brown ground.

Here is a flock of red-wings. I heard one yesterday, and I see a female among these. How handsome as they go by in a checker, each with a bright-scarlet shoulder! They are not so very shy, but mute when we come near. They cover the apple trees like a black fruit.

The air is full of song sparrows and bluebirds to-day. The minister asked me yesterday: “What birds are they that make these little tinkling sounds? I haven't seen one.” Song sparrows. 

C  saw a green fly yesterday. 

Saw a flock of sheldrakes a hundred rods off, on the Great Meadows, mostly males with a few females, all intent on fishing. They were coasting along a spit of bare ground that showed itself in the middle of the meadow, sometimes the whole twelve apparently in a straight line at nearly equal distances apart, with each its head under water, rapidly coasting along back and forth, and ever and anon one, having caught something, would be pursued by the others.

It is remarkable that they find their finny prey on the middle of the meadow now, and even on the very inmost side, as I afterward saw, though the water is quite low. Of course, as soon as they are seen on the meadows there are fishes there to be caught. I never see them fish thus in the channel. Perhaps the fishes lie up there for warmth already.

I also see two gulls nearly a mile off. One stands still and erect for three quarters of an hour, or till disturbed, on a little bit of floated meadow-crust which rises above the water, — just room for it to stand on, — with its great white breast toward the wind. Then another comes flying past it, and alights on a similar perch, but which does not rise quite to the surface, so that it stands in the water. Thus they will stand for an hour, at least. They are not of handsome form, but look like great wooden images of birds, bluish-slate and white. But when they fly they are quite another creature. 

The grass is covered with gossamer to-day, though I notice no floating flocks. This, then, is a phenomenon of the first warm and calm day after the ground is bare. 

See larks about, though I have heard of them in the winter.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal , March 16, 1860

They cover the apple trees like a black fruit. See March 6, 1854 ("Hear and see the first blackbird, flying east over the Deep Cut, with a tchuck, tchuck, and finally a split whistle."); March 12, 1854 ("This is the blackbird morning. Their sprayey notes and conqueree ring with the song sparrows' jingle all along the river. Thus gradually they acquire confidence to sing."); March 19, 1855 (" I hear at last the tchuck tchuck of a blackbird and, looking up, see him flying high over the river southwesterly in great haste to reach somewhere."); March 22, 1855 ("[T]he blackbirds already sing o-gurgle ee-e-e from time to time on the top of a willow or elm or maple, but oftener a sharp, shrill whistle or a tchuck.”); April 30, 1855 ("Red-wing blackbirds now fly in large flocks, covering the tops of trees—willows, maples, apples, or oaks—like a black fruit , and keep up an incessant gurgling and whistling, — all for some purpose; what is it? ”; April 25, 1860 ("I  hear the greatest concerts of blackbirds, – red wings and crow blackbirds nowadays. . .They look like a black fruit on the trees, distributed over the top at pretty equal distances.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: The Red-Wing Arrives

Saw a flock of sheldrakes a hundred rods off, on the Great Meadows. See March 16, 1854 ("I see ducks afar, sailing on the meadow, leaving a long furrow in the water behind them.Watch them at leisure without scaring them, with my glass; observe their free and undisturbed motions. They dive and are gone some time, and come up a rod off. At first I see but one, then, a minute after, three. "); March 16, 1855 ("Scare up two large ducks . . . I think it the goosander or sheldrake. ") See also March 5, 1857 ("I scare up six male sheldrakes, with their black heads, in the Assabet,—the first ducks I have seen"); March 12, 1855 ("Two ducks in river, good size, white beneath with black heads, as they go over."); March 22, 1858 ("We go along to the pitch pine hill off Abner Buttrick's, and, finding a sheltered and sunny place, we watch the ducks from it with our glass. There are not only gulls, but about forty black ducks and as many sheldrakes . . . I see two of these very far off on a bright-blue bay where the waves are running high. They are two intensely white specks, which yet you might mistake for the foaming crest of waves. Now one disappears, but soon is seen again, and then its companion is lost in like manner, having dived.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, Ducks Afar, Sailing on the Meadow and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Goosander, Merganser)

Thus they will stand for an hour. . . like great wooden images of birds. See March 18, 1855 ("Like a wooden image of a bird he stands there, heavy to look at; head, breast, beneath, and rump pure white; slate-colored wings tipped with black and extending beyond the tail,— the herring gull.")

But when they fly they are quite another creature. See March 29, 1854 ("A gull of pure white, - a wave of foam in the air. How simple and wave-like its outline, two curves, - all wing - like a birch scale."); see also March 22, 1858 ("They look bright-white, like snow on the dark-blue water. It is surprising how far they can be seen, how much light they reflect, and how conspicuous they are")