A rainy night with a little snow and a song sparrow!

February 2.

Still rains, after a rainy night with a little snow, forming slosh. 

As I return from the post-office, I hear the hoarse, robin-like chirp of a song sparrow on Cheney's ground, and see him perched on the top most twig of a heap of brush, looking forlorn and drabbled and solitary in the rain.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 2, 1858

Slosh. See January 23, 1853 ("Rain, carrying off the snow and making slosh of the lower half of it. It is perhaps the wettest walking we ever have.")

A song sparrow looking forlorn and drabbled and solitary in the rain. See January 15, 1857 ("I saw, to my surprise, that it must be a song sparrow, . . .taken refuge in this shed"); January 21, 1857 ("I noticed that several species of birds lingered late this year. . . . What does it mean?"); January 22, 1857 ("Minott tells me that Sam Barrett told him once when he went to mill that a song sparrow took up its quarters in his grist-mill and stayed there all winter."); January 28, 1857 ("Am again surprised to see a song sparrow sitting for hours on our wood-pile in the yard, in the midst of snow in the yard. It is unwilling to move. People go to the pump, and the cat and dog walk round the wood-pile without starting it. I examine it at my leisure through a glass.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)