Fair weather after three rainy days.
March 11, 2022
Air full of birds, — bluebirds, song sparrows, chickadee (phoebe notes), and blackbirds. Bluebirds' warbling curls in elms. Song sparrows toward the water, with at least two kinds or variations of their strain hard to imitate.
On Tuesday, the 7th, I heard the first song sparrow chirp, and saw it flit silently from alder to alder.
On Tuesday, the 7th, I heard the first song sparrow chirp, and saw it flit silently from alder to alder.
This pleasant morning after three days' rain and mist, they generally forthburst into sprayey song from the low trees along the river. The developing of their song is gradual but sure, like the expanding of a flower. This is the first song I have heard.
From the hill the river and meadow is about equally water and ice, — rich blue water and islands or continents of white ice — no longer ice in place — blown from this side or that.
The distant mountains are all white with snow while our landscape is nearly bare.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 11, 1854
This is the first song I have heard. See note to February 24, 1857 ("I am surprised to hear the strain of a song sparrow from the riverside”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: the Song Sparrow Sings and March 11, 1859 ("By riverside I hear the song of many song sparrows, the most of a song of any yet . . .The birds anticipate the spring; they come to melt the ice with their songs.")
From the hill the river and meadow is about equally water and ice, — rich blue water and islands or continents of white ice — no longer ice in place — blown from this side or that.
The distant mountains are all white with snow while our landscape is nearly bare.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 11, 1854
This is the first song I have heard. See note to February 24, 1857 ("I am surprised to hear the strain of a song sparrow from the riverside”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: the Song Sparrow Sings and March 11, 1859 ("By riverside I hear the song of many song sparrows, the most of a song of any yet . . .The birds anticipate the spring; they come to melt the ice with their songs.")
The distant mountains are all white with snow while our landscape is nearly bare. See February 21, 1855 ("I look at the Peterboro mountains with my glass from Fair Haven Hill. I think that there can be no more arctic scene than these mountains in the edge of the horizon completely crusted over with snow, with the sun shining on them, seen through a telescope over bare, russet fields and dark forests.“); March 14, 1860 (" The Peterboro Hills are covered with snow, though this neighborhood is bare. We thus see winter retiring for some time after she has left us, commonly.") April 4, 1855 (“[F]ar beyond all, in the north western horizon, my eye rests on a range of snow-covered mountains, glistening in the sun.”); April 4, 1852 ("I see the snow lying thick on the south side of the Peterboro Hills, . . .probably the dividing line at present between the bare ground and the snow-clad ground stretching three thousand miles to the Saskatchewan and Mackenzie and the Icy Sea."); See alsoo A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Mountains in the Horizon
The first sight of
the blue water in the spring
is exhilarating.
April 5, 1856
And for the first time
I see the water looking
blue on the meadows.
March 5, 1854
March 11. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 11.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Air full of Birds
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality.”
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024
https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540311
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