A prelude to the summer’s quire

March 2.

Another still, warm, beautiful day like yesterday. I go listening, but in vain, for the warble of a bluebird from the old orchard across the river.

Hear two hawks scream. There is something truly March-like in it, like a prolonged blast or whistling of the wind through a crevice in the sky, which, like a cracked blue saucer, overlaps the woods. 

Such are the first rude notes which prelude the summer’s quire, learned of the whistling March wind.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 2, 1855

Hear two hawks scream. See March 2, 1856 ("I can hardly believe that hen-hawks may be beginning to build their nests now, yet their young were a fortnight old the last of April last year.")