How does the partridge drum?

February 22.

February 22, 2015

— To J. Farmer’s. 

Remarkably warm and pleasant weather, perfect spring. I even listen for the first bluebird. I see a seething in the air over clean russet fields. The westerly wind is rather raw, but in sheltered places it is deliciously warm. 

The water has so far gone down that I get over the Hunt Bridge causeway by going half a dozen rods on the wall in one place. This water must have moved two or three hundred cartloads of sand to the side of the road. This damage would be avoided by raising the road. 

J. Farmer showed me an ermine weasel he caught in a trap three or four weeks ago. They are not very common about his barns. All white but the tip of the tail; two conspicuous canine teeth in each jaw. He says their track is like that of the mink: as if they had only two legs. They go on the jump. Sometimes make a third mark. 

He had seen a partridge drum standing on a wall. Said it stood very upright and produced the sound by striking its wings together behind its back, as a cock often does, but did not strike the wall nor its body. This he is sure of, and declares that he is mistaken who affirms the contrary, though it were Audubon himself. 

Wilson says he “begins to strike with his stiffened wings” while standing on a log, but does not say what he strikes, though one would infer it was either the log or his body. Peabody says he beats his body with his wings.

You see fresh upright green radical leaves of some plants —the dock, probably water dock, for one — in and about water now the snow is gone there, as if they had grown all winter. 

The sun goes down to-night under clouds, - a round red orb, - and I am surprised to see that its light, falling on my book and the wall, is a beautiful purple, like the poke stem or perhaps some kinds of wine.

Pitch pine cones must be taken from the tree at the right season, else they will not open or “blossom” in a chamber. I have one which was gnawed off by squirrels, apparently of full size, but which does not open. Why should they thus open in the chamber or else where? I suppose that under the influence of heat or dryness the upper side of each scale expands while the lower contracts, or perhaps only the one expands or the other contracts. I notice that the upper side is a lighter, almost cinnamon, color, the lower a dark (pitchy ?) red.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 22, 1855

Pitch pine cones must be taken from the tree at the right season. See February 27, 1853 ("The expanding of the pine cones, that, too, is a season.")

...listen for the first bluebird. See February 9, 1854 ("It is such a warm, moist, or softened, sunlit air as we are wont to hear the first bluebird's warble in"); February 18, 1857 ("I am excited by this wonderful air and go listening for the note of the bluebird . . .”); February 27, 1861 ("It occurs to me that I have just heard a bluebird"); March 7, 1854 ("Heard the first bluebird"); March 10, 1852 ("I see flocks of a dozen bluebirds together"); March 19, 1855 (“ I hear my first bluebird”).