Sail down to the Island

April 3,  2015

April 3.

It is somewhat warmer, but still windy, and I go to sail down to the Island and up to Hubbard’s Causeway.

Most would call it cold to-day. I paddle without gloves. It is a coolness like that of March 29th and 30th, pleasant to breathe, and, perhaps, like that, presaging decidedly warmer weather. It is an amelioration, as nature does nothing suddenly.

The shores are lined with frozen spray-like foam, with an abrupt edge, a foot high often on the waterside. Occasionally where there are twigs there is a nest of those short, thick bulls’-horn icicles, pointing in every direction.

I see many hens feeding close to the river’s edge, like the crows, - and robins and blackbirds later, - and I have no doubt they are attracted by a like cause. The ground being first thawed there, not only worms but other insect and vegetable life is accessible there sooner than elsewhere.

See several pairs of ducks, mostly black.

Returning, when off the hill am attracted by the noise of crows, which betray to me a very large hawk, large enough for an eagle, sitting on a maple beneath them. Now and then they dive at him, and at last he sails away low round the hill, as if hunting.

The hillside is alive with sparrows, red-wings, and the first grackles I have seen.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 3, 1855

Most would call it cold to-day. I paddle without gloves. See  April 3, 1852 ("It is very cold and windy, and I miss my gloves, left at home. Colder than the last moon")

The noise of crow, . . . betray to me a very large hawk, large enough for an eagle . . . See April 6, 1856 ("The crows had betrayed to me some large bird of the hawk kind which they were buffeting.); April 8, 1854 ("I sailed and circled along over the low cliff, and the crows dived at it in the field of my glass,. . . It was undoubtedly a white-headed eagle.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow