Irregular thawing of snow and ice.

March 25.

P. M. —To Walden. 

The willow and aspen catkins have pushed out considerably since the 1st of February in warm places. 

I have frequently seen the sap of maples flow in warm days in the winter, in warm localities. This was in twigs. Would it in the trunks of large trees? And if not, is not this an evidence that this sap did not come up from the roots? 

The meadow east of the railroad causeway is bare in many spots, while that on the west is completely and deeply covered; yet a few weeks ago it was deepest on the east. I think of no reason for this, except that the causeway may keep off the cold northwest winds from the former meadow. For thirty rods distant there are no bare spots. Why is the eastern slope, now, as every spring, (almost completely) bare, long before the western? 

The road runs north and south, and the sun lies on the one side as long as on the other. Is it more favorable that the frozen snow be acted on by the warmed air before the sun reaches it than after it has left it? Another and second reason is probably that there is less snow on that side or on the west slope of a hill than on the eastern. Snow drifting from the northwest lodges under the west bank. 

So I observe to-day that the hills rising from the north and west (and this seems to give weight to the second reason urged above) sides of Walden are partially bare, while those on the south and east are deeply and completely covered with snow. 

Mr. Bull tells me that his grapes grow faster and ripen sooner on the west than the east side of his house.

There have been few if any small migratory birds the past winter. I have not seen a tree sparrow, nuthatch, creeper, nor more than one redpoll since Christmas. They probably went further south. 

I now slump from two to four inches into Walden, though there has been no rain since I can remember. I cannot cut through, on account of the water in the softened ice flowing into the hole. At last, in a drier place, I was not troubled with water, till I had cut about a foot, or through the snow ice, when two or three streams of water half an inch or more in diameter spurted up through holes in the disorganized, partly honeycombed clear ice; so I failed to get through. 

Probably the clear ice is thus riddled all over the pond, for this was a drier place than usual. Is it the effect of the melted snow and surface working down? or partly of water pressing up? 

The whole mass in the middle is about twenty-four inches thick, but I scrape away about two inches of the surface with my foot, leaving twenty-two inches. For about a rod from the shore, on the north and west sides (I did not examine the others), it is comparatively firm and dry, then for two rods you slump four inches or more, then, and generally, only about two. Is that belt the effect of reflection from the hills? 

Hear the hurried and seemingly frightened notes of a robin and see it flying over the railroad lengthwise, and afterwards its tut tut at a distance. This and the birds of yesterday have come, though the ground generally is covered deep with snow. They will not only stay with us through a storm, but come when there are but resting-places for them. It must be hard for them to get their living now.

The tallest water andromedas now rise six or eight inches above the snow in the swamp.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 25, 1856

The willow and aspen catkins have pushed out considerably since the 1st of February in warm places. See March 9, 1853 ("The relaxed and loosened (?) alder catkins and the extended willow catkins and poplar catkins are the first signs of reviving vegetation which I have witnessed."); March 10, 1853 ("The early poplars are pushing forward their catkins, though they make not so much display as the willows"); March 18, 1854 ("The willow catkins this side M. Miles's five eighths of an inch long and show some red. Poplar catkins nearly as large, color somewhat like a gray rabbit"); March 21, 1855 ("Early willow and aspen catkins are very conspicuous now."); March 22, 1854 ("The now silvery willow catkins shine along the shore over the cold water,"); March 22, 1860 ("The phenomena of an average March . . . willow catkins become silvery, aspens downy."); March 24, 1856 ("The early aspen buds down very conspicuous, half an inch long; yet I detect no flow of sap."); March 29, 1853 ("The catkins of the Populus tremuloides are just beginning to open, — to curl over and downward like caterpillars. Yesterday proved too cold, undoubtedly, for the willow to open, and unless I learn better, I shall give the poplar the precedence, dating both, however, from to-day.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aspens and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

I observe to-day that the hills rising from the north and west . . . sides of Walden are partially bare, while those on the south and east are deeply and completely covered with snow. See April 10, 1856 (“We may now say that the ground is bare, though we still see a few patches or banks of snow on the hillsides at a distance, especially on the northeast sides of hills. You see much more snow looking west than looking east. Thus does this remarkable winter disappear at last.”)

 

There have been few if any small migratory birds the past winter. I have not seen a tree sparrow, nuthatch, creeper, nor more than one redpoll since Christmas.  March 17, 1855 ("I hear the lesser redpolls yet."); March 20, 1853 ("The red polls are still numerous."); March 22, 1860 ("The phenomena of an average March . . .About twenty-nine migratory birds arrive (including hawks and crows), and two or three more utter their spring notes and sounds, as nuthatch and chickadee"); March 25, 1853 ("I see the white-breasted nuthatch, head downward, on the oaks. First heard his rapid and, as it were, angry gnah gnah gna, and a faint, wiry creaking note about grubs as he moved round the tree");  March 25, 1859 ("I heard the what what what what of the nuthatch this forenoon. Do I ever hear it in the afternoon?  "); March 26, 1860 ("I think I heard the last lesser redpolls near the beginning of this month; say about 7th "); March 28, 1853 ("I saw in Dodd's yard and flying thence to the alders by the river what I think must be the tree sparrow, — a ferruginous crowned, or headed, and partly winged bird, light beneath, with a few of the F . hyemalis in company. It sang sweetly, much like some notes of a canary. One pursued another . . . Perhaps I have seen it before within the month."); March 30, 1854 ("Great flocks of tree sparrows and some F. hyemalis on the ground and trees on the Island Neck"); April 6, 1856 ("Heard there a nuthatch’s faint vibrating tut-tut. . . Anon it answered its mate with a gnah gnah.");  April 16, 1856 ("I have not seen a tree sparrow, I think, since December.");   See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Brown Creeper

They probably went further south.  See March 27, 1856 ("People do not remember when there was so much old snow on the ground at this date."); also Donald Sutherland, The Long, Hard Winter of 1855-56 ("The Winter of 1855-56 was the coldest winter of the 1850s.")

Hear the hurried and seemingly frightened notes of a robin. See March 8, 1855 (“I hear the hasty, shuffling, as if frightened, note of a robin from a dense birch wood . . . This sound reminds me of rainy, misty April days in past years”);. March 18, 1858 (“The robin does not come singing, but utters a somewhat anxious or inquisitive peep at first”); March 24, 1858 (“The robin's peep, which sounds like a note of distress, is also a chip, or call-note to its kind. ”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: the anxious peep of the early robin