I suspect that about all the conspicuous white ducks I see are goosanders

Common  Merganser

April 7. 

In my walk in the afternoon of to-day, I see from Conantum, say fifty rods distant, two sheldrakes, male and probably female, sailing on A. Wheeler’s cranberry meadow. 

I see only the white of the male at first, but my glass reveals the female. The male is easily seen a great distance on the water, being a large white mark. But they will let you come only within some sixty rods ordinarily. I observe that they are uneasy at sight of me and begin to sail away in different directions.

I plainly see the vermilion bill of the male and his orange legs when he flies (but he appears all white above), and the reddish brown or sorrel of the neck of the female, and, when she lifts herself in the water, as it were preparatory to flight, her white breast and belly. She has a grayish look on the sides. 

Soon they approach each other again and seem to be conferring, and then they rise and go off, at first low, down-stream, soon up-stream a hundred feet over the pond, the female leading, the male following close behind, the black at the end of his curved wings very conspicuous. 

I suspect that about all the conspicuous white ducks I see are goosanders. 

I skinned my duck yesterday and stuffed it to-day. It is wonderful that a man, having undertaken such an enterprise, ever persevered in it to the end, and equally wonderful that he succeeded. To skin a bird, drawing backward, wrong side out, over the legs and wings down to the base of the mandibles! Who would expect to see a smooth feather again? This skin was very tender on the breast. I should have done better had I stuffed it at once or turned it back before the skin became stiff. Look out not to cut the ear and eye lid. But what a pot-bellied thing is a stuffed bird compared even with the fresh dead one I found! It looks no longer like an otter, like a swift diver, but a mere waddling duck. How perfectly the vent of a bird is covered! There is no mark externally. 

At six this morn to Clamshell. The skunk-cabbage open yesterday, — the earliest flower this season. I suspect that the spathes do not push up in the spring. This is but three inches high. I see them as high and higher in the fall, and they seem only to acquire color now and gape open. I see but one out, and that sheds pollen abundantly. 

See thirty or forty goldfinches in a dashing flock, in all respects (notes and all) like lesser redpolls, on the trees by Wood’s Causeway and on the railroad bank. There is a general twittering and an occasional mew. Then they alight on the ground to feed, along with F. hyemalis and fox-colored sparrows. 

They are merely olivaceous above, dark about the base of the bill, but bright lemon-yellow in a semicircle on the breast; black wings and tails, with white bar on wings and white vanes to tail. I never saw them here so early before; or probably one or two olivaceous birds I have seen and heard of other years were this. 

Clear, but a cold air. 

P. M. — To Hubbard’s Close and Lee’s Cliff. A mouse-nest of grass, in Stow’s meadow east of railroad, on the surface. Just like those seen in the rye-field some weeks ago, but this in lower ground has a distinct gallery running from it, and I think is the nest of the meadow mouse. 

The pool at Hubbard’s Close, which was full of ice, unbroken gray ice, the 27th of March, is now warm-looking water, with the slime-covered callitriche standing a foot high in it; and already a narrow grass, the lake grass, has sprung up and lies bent nine or ten inches flat on the water. This is very early as well as sudden. 

In ten days there has been this change. How much had that grass grown under the ice? I see many small skaters  in it. 

See a trout as long as my finger, in the ditch dug from Brister’s Spring, which, having no hole or overhanging bank where it could hide, plunged into the mud like a frog and was concealed. 

The female flowers of the hazel are just beginning to peep out. 

At Lee’s Cliff I find the radical leaves of the early saxifrage, columbine, and the tower mustard, etc., much eaten apparently by partridges and perhaps rabbits. They must have their greens in the spring, and earlier than we. 

Below the rocks, the most obviously forward radical leaves are the columbine, tower mustard (lanceolate and petioled and remotely toothed), and catnep, and mullein. Early crowfoot, the butter cup (bulbosa), is a peculiarly sappy, dark pickle-green, decided spring, and none of your sapless evergreens. The little thyme-leaved arenaria, I believe it is, which is evergreen, and some other minute leaves, also, already green the ground. 

The saxifrage on the rocks will apparently open in two days; it shows some white. 

The grass is now conspicuously green about open springs, in dense tufts. The frozen sod, partly thawed in low grounds, sinks under me as I walk.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 7, 1855

I plainly see the vermilion bill of the male and his orange legs when he flies . . .I skinned my duck yesterday and stuffed it to-day. See April 6, 1855 ("It is a perfectly fresh and very beautiful bird, and as I raise it, I get sight of its long, slender vermilion bill (color of red sealing wax) and its clean, bright-orange legs and feet, and then of its perfectly smooth and spotlessly pure white breast and belly, tinged with a faint salmon (or tinged with a delicate buff inclining to salmon)”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

See thirty or forty goldfinches in a dashing flock, in all respects (notes and all) like lesser redpolls, on the trees by Wood’s Causeway and on the railroad bank. There is a general twittering and an occasional mew. See April 15, 1859 ("Hear a goldfinch, after a loud mewing on an apple tree, sing in a rich and varied way, as if imitating some other bird."); April 19, 1858 (Along the wall under the Middle Conantum Cliff, I saw many goldfinches, male and female, the males singing in a very sprightly and varied manner, sitting still on bare trees. Also uttered their watery twitter and their peculiar mewing.")

The female flowers of the hazel are just beginning to peep out. See note to April 7, 1854 ("The hazel stigmas are well out and the catkins loose, but no pollen shed yet.") See also   March 27, 1853 ("The hazel is fully out. . . .It is in some respects the most interesting flower yet, though so minute that only an observer of nature, or one who looked for them, would notice it. It is the highest and richest colored yet, - ten or a dozen little rays at the end of the buds which are at the ends and along the sides of the bare stems. Some of the flowers are a light, some a dark crimson. The high color of this minute, unobserved flower, at this cold, leafless, and almost flowerless season! It is a beautiful greeting of the spring, ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau: the Hazel

At Lee’s Cliff I find the radical leaves of the early saxifrage, columbine, and the tower mustard, etc., See  April 1, 1855 ("At the first Conantum Cliff I am surprised to see how much the columbine leaves have grown in a sheltered cleft; also the cinquefoil, dandelion, yarrow, sorrel, saxifrage, etc., etc. They seem to improve the least warmer ray to advance themselves, and they hold all they get.")