P. M. — To Fair Haven Pond by river.
Israel Rice says that he does not know that he can remember a winter when we had as much snow as we have had this winter. Eb. Conant says as much, excepting the year when he was twenty-five, about 1803.
It is now fairly thawing, the eaves running; and puddles stand in some places. The boys can make snowballs, and the horses begin to slump occasionally. I thought it would be a thawing day by the sound, the peculiar sound, of cock-crowing in the morning.
See a partridge by the riverside, opposite Fair Haven Hill, which at first I mistake for the top of a fence-post above the snow, amid some alders. I shout and wave my hand four rods off, to see if it is one, but there is no motion, and I think surely it must be a post.
Nevertheless I resolve to investigate.
Within three rods, I see it to be indeed a partridge, to my surprise, standing perfectly still, with its head erect and neck stretched upward. It is as complete a deception as if it had designedly placed itself on the line of the fence and in the proper place for a post.
It finally steps off daintily with a teetering gait and head up, and takes to wing.
It will indicate what steady cold weather we have had to say that the lodging snow of January 13th, though it did not lodge remarkably, has not yet completely melted off the sturdy trunks of large trees.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 11, 1856
See a partridge which at first I mistake for the top of a fence-post,.standing perfectly still, with its head erect and neck stretched upward. It is as complete a deception as if it had designedly placed itself on the line of the fence and in the proper place for a post. See January 31, 1855 ("They sit and stand, three of them, perfectly still with their heads erect, some darker feathers like ears, methinks, increasing their resemblance to scrags, as where a small limb is broken off. I am much surprised at the remarkable stillness they preserve, instinctively relying on the resemblance to the ground for their protection.”) See also February 11, 1855 ("The dog scares up some partridges out of the soft snow under the apple trees in the Tommy Wheeler orchard."); February 11, 1859 ("The south side of Ball’s Hill, which is warm and half bare, is tracked up with partridges. ") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge
what steady cold weather... . Compare February 11, 1852 (Perhaps the best evidence . . . that the snows are less deep than formerly - is the snow-shoes which still lie about in so many garrets, now useless. No man ever uses them now, yet the old men used them in their youth.)
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