A dead maple in Hubbard’s swamp

February 26.

To Hubbard’s Close. 

I see at bottom of the mill brook, below Emerson’s, two dead frogs. The brook has part way yet a snowy bridge over it. Were they left by a mink, or killed by cold and ice? 

In Hubbard’s maple swamp beyond, I see the snow under a dead maple, where a woodpecker has drilled a handsome round hole. Excepting the carrying it downward within, it is ready for a nest. May they not have a view to this use even now?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 26, 1856

Two dead frogs. See March 8, 1860 ("I saw, in Monroe's well by the edge of the river, the other day, a dozen frogs, chiefly shad frogs, which had been dead a good while."); March 28, 1852 ("See . . .dead frogs, and the mud stirred by a living one, in this ditch, and afterward in Conantum Brook a living frog, the first of the season")