That sound so often heard in cheerless or else rainy weather.

February 27. 

Before I opened the window this cold morning, I heard the peep of a robin, that sound so often heard in cheerless or else rainy weather, so often heard first borne on the cutting March wind or through sleet or rain, as if its coming were premature. 

P. M. — To the Hill. 

FEBRUARY 27, 2017

The river has skimmed over again in many places. 

I see many crows on the hillside, with their sentinel on a tree. They are picking the cow-dung scattered about, apparently for the worms, etc., it contains. They have done this in so many places that it looks as if the farmer had been at work with his maul. They must save him some trouble thus.

I see cinders two or three inches in diameter, apparently burnt clapboards, on the bank of the North River, which came from the burning Lee house! Yet it was quite a damp night, after rain in the afternoon, and rather still. They are all curled by the heat, so that you can tell which side was first exposed to it. The grain is more distinct than ever. Nature so abhors a straight line that she curls each cinder as she launches it on the fiery whirlwind. 

All the lightness and ethereal spirit of the wood is gone, and this black earthy residuum alone returned. The russet hillside is spotted with them. They suggest some affinity with the cawing crows. 

I see some of those large purplish chocolate-colored puffballs. They grow in dry pastures. They are in various states. I do not understand their changes.

Some are quite pulverulent, and emitting a cloud of dust at every touch. 

Others present a firm, very light ash-colored surface above, in a shallow saucer, with a narrow, wrinkled, crenate border, and beneath this firm skin is a perfectly dry spongy mass, less ashy, more reddish than the last, and fibrous, with very little dust in it but many small ribbed grubs. 

The surface often looks as if it had been pecked by birds in search of these grubs. 

Sometimes there is, above the white skin of the saucer, considerable pulverulent substance, as if in the other case this had been dissipated. 

Sometimes two large ones are joined at the root. 

Was there any portion (now dissipated) above this light-colored skin? Did the portion beneath the skin originally contain more dust, which has escaped? Or will it yet come to dust? 

Are not fungi the best hygrometers?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 27, 1857

The peep of a robin, that sound so often heard in cheerless or else rainy weather, . . . as if its coming were premature. See February 27, 1861 ("Mother hears a robin to-day."); \ See also February 25, 1857 ("Goodwin says he saw a robin this morning.”); February 28, 1860 ("C. saw a dozen robins to-day on the ground on Ebby Hubbard's hill by the Yellow Birch Swamp."); 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 12, 1854 ("I hear my first robin peep distinctly at a distance. No singing yet."); April 2, 1856 ("Robins are peeping and flitting about. Am surprised to hear one sing regularly their morning strain"); April 2, 1854 ("Sitting on the rail over the brook, I hear something which reminds me of the song of the robin in rainy days in past springs."); April 2, 1852 ("The robin now peeps with scared note in the heavy overcast air, among the apple trees. The hour is favorable to thought.").  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring

Crows on the hillside, with their sentinel on a tree. See January 8, 1855 (" I hear a few chickadees near at hand, and hear and see jays further off, and, as yesterday, a crow sitting sentinel on an apple tree. Soon he gives the alarm, and several more take their places near him.. . .")

Are not fungi the best hygrometers? See April 22, 1856 ("It requires wet weather, then, to expand and display them to advantage. They are hygrometers.")