Cold and windy – osiers surprise me.

March 25.

March 25, 2017

Cold and windy.

Down river in boat to Great Meadows. Freezes on oars. Too cold and windy almost for ducks. They are in the smoother open water (free from ice) under the lee of hills.

Got a boat-load of driftwood, — rails, bridge timber, planks, etc.

White maple buds bursting, making trees look like some fruit trees with blossom-buds.

Is not the small duck or two I see one at a time and flying pretty high a teal?

Willow osiers near Mill Brook mouth I am almost certain have acquired a fresher color; at least they surprise me at a distance by their green passing through yellowish to red at top.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 25, 1854

Too cold and windy almost for ducks. They are in the smoother open water (free from ice) under the lee of hills. See  March 21, 1854 ("At sunrise to Clamshell Hill . . .Think I should find ducks cornered up by the ice; they get behind this hill for shelter. Look with glass and find more than thirty black ducks asleep with their heads on their backs, motionless, and thin ice formed about them. ");March 22, 1854 ("Still very cold . . . Scare up my flock of black ducks and count forty together. ");.March 24, 1854 ("The same ducks under Clamshell Hill "); March 25, 1858 ("Cold northwest wind as yesterday and day before . . .There are so many sportsmen out that the ducks have no rest); and see March 28, 1858 ("Apparently they improve this warm and pleasant day, with little or no wind, to continue their journey northward.. . . It is a wildlife that is associated with stormy and blustering weather"); .March 29, 1858 ("I infer that waterfowl travel in pleasant weather") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Black Duck

White maple buds bursting, making trees look like some fruit trees with blossom-buds. See March 23, 1853 (“The white maple . . . has opened unexpectedly, and a rich sight it is, looking up through the expanded buds to the sky.”) See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, White Maple Buds and Flowers

Is not the small duck or two I see one at a time and flying pretty high a teal? See March 18, 1855 ("Meanwhile a small dark-colored duck, all neck and wings, a winged rolling-pin, went over,--perhaps a teal"); March 24, 1857 ("Humphrey Buttrick . . . shot three black ducks and two green-winged teal, – though the latter had no green on their wings, it was rather the color of his boat, but Wesson assured him that so they looked in the spring. "); April 15, 1855 ("We scare up but few ducks — some apparently black, which quacked—and some small rolling-pins, probably teal.")

I am almost certain osiers have acquired a fresher color. See February 24, 1855 ("You will often fancy that they look brighter before the spring has come, and when there has been no change in them"); March 2, 1860 ("This phenomenon, whether referable to a change in the condition of the twig or to the spring air and light, or even to our imaginations,is not the less a real phenomenon, affecting us annually at this season"); March 14, 1856 ("They certainly look brighter now and from this point than I have noticed them before this year,. . . Yet I think that on a close inspection I should find no change. Nevertheless, it is, on the whole, perhaps the most springlike sight I have seen."); March 16, 1856 ("There is, at any rate, such a phenomenon as the willows shining in the spring sun, however it is to be accounted for."); March 22, 1854("C. thinks some willow osiers decidedly more yellow."); March 24, 1855 ("I am not sure that the osiers are decidedly brighter yet"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Osier in Winter and early Spring

Willow osiers

surprise me at a distance –

green, yellowish, red!

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Willow Osiers Surprise Me

 "A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2024

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