Sunday. 8 A.M. — Up railroad.
Cold, and froze in the night.
The sallow will not open till some time to-day.
I hear a bay-wing on the railroad fence sing, the rhythm somewhat like, char char (or here here), che che, chip chip chip (fast), chitter chitter chitter chit (very fast and jingling), tchea tchea (jinglingly). It has another strain, considerably different, but a second also sings the above. Two on different posts are steadily singing the same, as if contending with each other, notwithstanding the cold wind.
P. M. — To Walden and Fair Haven Ponds.
Still cold and windy.
The early gooseberry leaf-buds in garden have burst, -- now like small green frilled horns.
Also the amelanchier flower-buds are bursting.
As I go down the railroad causeway, I see a flock of eight or ten bay-wing sparrows flitting along the fence and alighting on an apple tree. There are many robins about also. Do they not incline more to fly in flocks a cold and windy day like this?
The snow ice is now all washed and melted off of Walden, down to the dark-green clear ice, which appears to be seven or eight inches thick and is quite hard still. At a little distance you would mistake it for water; further off still, as from Fair Haven Hill, it is blue as in summer. You can still get on to it from the southerly side, but elsewhere there is a narrow canal, two or three to twelve feet wide, next the shore. It may last four or five days longer, even if the weather is warm.
As I go by the Andromeda Ponds, I hear the tut tut of a few croaking frogs, and at Well Meadow I hear once or twice a prolonged stertorous sound, as from river meadows a little later usually, which is undoubtedly made by a different frog from the first.
Fair Haven Pond, to my surprise, is completely open. It was so entirely frozen over on the 8th that I think the finishing stroke must have been given to it but by last night’s rain. Say then apparently April 13th (?).
Return over the Shrub Oak Plain and the Cliff.
Still no cowslips nor saxifrage. There were alders out at Well Meadow Head, as large bushes as any. Can they be A. serrulata? Vide leaves by and by.
Standing on the Cliffs, I see most snow when I look southwest; indeed scarcely a particle in any other direction, far or near, from which and from other observations, I infer that there is most snow now under the northeast sides of the hills, especially in ravines there.
At the entrance to the Boiling Spring wood, just beyond the orchard (of Hayden), the northeast angle of the wood, there is still a snow-drift as high as the wall, or three and a half feet deep, stretching quite across the road at that height, and the snow reaches six rods down the road. I doubt if there is as much in the road anywhere else in the town. It is quite impassable there still to a horse, as it has been all winter.
This is the heel of the winter.
Scare up two turtle doves in the dry stubble in Wheeler’s hill field by the railroad. I saw two together once before this year; probably they have paired.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 13, 1856
I hear a bay-wing on the railroad fence sing. . . . Two on different posts are steadily singing the same. See April 2, 1858 (”On the side of Fair Haven Hill I go looking for bay wings, . ..At last I see one, which . . . warbles a peculiar long and pleasant strain, . . .and close by I see another, apparently a bay-wing, though I do not see its white in tail, and it utters while sitting the same subdued, rather peculiar strain.”); April 13, 1855 (“See a sparrow without marks on throat or breast, running peculiarly in the dry grass in the open field beyond, and hear its song, and then see its white feathers in tail; the bay-wing.” ). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bay-Wing Sparrow
As I go by the Andromeda Ponds, I hear the tut tut of a few croaking frogs. See April 13, 1855 ("The small croaking frogs are now generally heard in all those stagnant ponds or pools in woods floored with leaves, which are mainly dried up in the summer.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica)
At Well Meadow I hear once or twice a prolonged stertorous sound, as from river meadows a little later usually, which is undoubtedly made by a different frog from the first. See April 13, 1859 ("To-day is the awakening of the meadows now partly bare. I hear the stuttering note of probably the Rana halecina (see one by shore) come up from all the Great Meadow,"); see also March 31, 1857 ("To-day both croakers and peepers are pretty numerously heard, and I hear one faint stertorous (bullfrog-like ??) sound on the river meadow."; April 15, 1855 ("That general tut tut tut tut, or snoring, of frogs on the shallow meadow heard first slightly the 5th. There is a very faint er er er now and then mixed with it"); April 16, 1856 ("I hear that same stertorous note of a frog or two as was heard the 13th, apparently from quite across all this flood, and which I have so often observed before. What kind is it?"); May 23, 1856 ("At the same time I hear a low, stertorous, dry, but hard-cored note from some frog in the meadows and along the riverside; often heard in past years but not accounted for. Is it a Rana palustris?") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Leopard Frog (Rana Halecina) in Spring
Fair Haven Pond, to my surprise, is completely open . . .
Still no cowslips nor saxifrage. . . . See March 27, 1855 ("Am surprised to see the cowslip so forward, showing so much green, in E. Hubbard’s Swamp, in the brook, where it is sheltered from the winds. The already expanded leaves rise above the water. If this is a spring growth, it is the most forward herb I have seen"); April 13, 1854 ("The saxifrage is pretty common, ahead of the crowfoot now, and its peduncles have shot up.')
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