The few signs of spring are more reliable.

March 14. 

A warmer day at last. 

It has been steadily cold and windy, with repeated light snows, since February 26th came in. This afternoon is comparatively warm, and the few signs of spring are more reliable. 

I go down the bank of the river in the Great Meadows. Many of those small, slender insects, with long, narrow wings (some apparently of same species without), are crawling about in the sun on the snow and bark of trees, etc. 

The maples, apple trees, etc., have been barked by the ice, and show light-colored bands one or two feet from the ground about their trunks. I find on examination that in these cases the bark has not been worn off by the floating ice rubbing against them, as happens when they are directly on the edge of the stream, for this light and barked surface occurs often when the trunk is surrounded by a hedge of sprouts or of other twigs only six inches distant, which show no marks of attrition; and the inner or true bark of the tree is not injured, only the thick epidermis or scaly outer bark has been detached, though that may have been very firmly attached to the trunk. 

The ice has evidently frozen to this, and when the water fell, has taken it off with itself; but the smaller twigs appear to have been and recovered again. Tough outer scales, which you could not possibly detach nor begin to detach with your hands, will be taken off quite clean, leaving exposed the yellowish surface of the inner bark. 

I see that some white maple buds apparently opened a little in that warm spell before the 26th of February, for such have now a minute orifice at the apex, through which you can even see the anthers.

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, March 14, 1857

White maple buds . . .have now a minute orifice at the apex, through which you can even see the anthers. See March 17, 1855 ("White maple blossom-buds look as if bursting . . .”); March 31, 1856 ("I see the scarlet tops of white maples nearly a mile off, down the river, the lusty shoots of last year.")