The duck most common and most identified with the stream at this season.

March 24. 

Cold and rather blustering again, with flurries of snow. 

March 24, 2020

The boatman, when the chain of his boat has been broken with a stone by some scamp, and he cannot easily transport his boat to the blacksmith's to have it mended, gets the latter to bend him a very stout iron wire in the form of an S, then, hooking this to the two broken ends and setting it upright on a rock, he hammers it down till it rests on itself in the form of an 8, which is very difficult to pry open. 

2 P. M. — About 39. To Copan. 

I see a male frog hawk beating a hedge, scarcely rising more than two feet from the ground for half a mile, quite below the level of the wall within it. How unlike the hen-hawk in this! 

They are real wind-clouds this afternoon; have an electric, fibry look. Sometimes it is a flurry of snow falling, no doubt. Peculiar cold and windy cumuli are mixed with them, not black like a thunder cloud, but cold dark slate with very bright white crowns and prominences. 

I find on Indian ground, as to-day on the Great Fields, very regular oval stones like large pebbles, sometimes five or six inches long, water-worn, of course, and brought hither by the Indians. They commonly show marks of having been used as hammers. Often in fields where there is not a stone of that kind in place for a mile or more. 

From Holbrook's clearing I see five large dark-colored ducks, probably black ducks, far away on the meadow, with heads erect, necks stretched, on the alert, only one in water. Indeed, there is very little water on the meadows. For length of neck those most wary look much like geese. They appear quite large and heavy. They probably find some sweet grass, etc., where the water has just receded. 

There are half a dozen gulls on the water near. They are the large white birds of the meadow, the whitest we have. As they so commonly stand above water on a piece of meadow, they are so much the more conspicuous. They are very conspicuous to my naked eye a mile off, or as soon as I come in sight of the meadow, but I do not detect the sheldrakes around them till I use my glass, for the latter are not only less conspicuously white, but, as they are fishing, sink very low in the water. Three of the gulls stand together on a piece of meadow, and two or three more are standing solitary half immersed, and now and then one or two circle slowly about their companions. 

The sheldrakes appear to be the most native to the river, briskly moving along up and down the side of the stream or the meadow, three-fourths immersed and with heads under water, like cutters collecting the revenue of the river bays, or like pirate crafts peculiar the stream. They come the earliest and seem to be most at home. The water is so low that all these birds are collected near the Holt. 

The inhabitants of the village, poultry fanciers, perchance, though they be, [know not] these active and vigorous wild fowl (the sheldrakes) pursuing their finny prey ceaselessly within a mile of them, in March and April. Probably from the hen-yard fence with a good glass you can see them at it. 

They are as much at home on the water as the pickerel is within it. Their serrated bill reminds me of a pickerel's snout. You see a long row of these schooners, black above with a white stripe beneath, rapidly gliding along, and occasionally one rises erect on the surface and flaps its wings, showing its white lower parts  They are the duck most common and most identified with the stream at this season. They appear to get their food wholly within the water. Less like our domestic ducks. 

I saw two red squirrels in an apple tree, which were rather small, had simply the tops of their backs red and the sides and beneath gray! 

Fox-colored sparrows go flitting past with a faint, sharp chip, amid some oaks. 

According to a table in the "American Almanac" for ’49, page 84, made at Cambridge, from May, '47, to May, '48, the monthly mean force of the wind . . . March, April, and May were equal, and were inferior to July and June; for quantity of clouds March and May were equal, and were preceded by December, November, September, January, June, and August. 

For depth of rain, September stood first, and March ninth, succeeded only by May, October, and April. 

The wind's force was observed at sunrise, 9 A. M., 3 P. M., and 9 P. M., and in March the greatest force was at 3 P. M., the least at 9 P. M. So, for the whole year the greatest force was at 3 P. M., but the least at sunrise and 9 P. M. both alike. 

The clouds were observed at the same time, and in March there was the greatest quantity at 9 P. M. and the least at sunrise, but for the year the greatest quantity at 3 P. M. and the least at sunrise and 9 A. M. alike. 

At Mendon, Mass., for the whole year 1847 alone (i. e. a different January, February, March, and April from the last) it stood, for force of wind,. . . March , July , September , November , and December were equal, and were inferior to April , June , August , and October; and for clouds March was sixth . 

The wind's force for March was greatest at 9 A. M. and 3 P. M., which were equal; but for the year greatest at 9 A. M. and least at sunrise. 

For March there was the greatest quantity of clouds at 9 A. M., but for the year at both sunrise and 9 A. M. 

In the last table eight points of the wind were noticed viz. northwest, north, northeast, east, southeast, south, southwest, west. During the year the wind was southwest 130 days, northwest 87, northeast 59, south 33, west 29, east 14, southeast 10, north 3 days.

In March it was northwest 9 days, southwest 8, northeast 5, south 4, west 3, north 2.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 24, 1860

They are real wind-clouds this afternoon; have an electric, fibry look. Peculiar cold and windy cumuli are mixed with them. See March 4, 1860 ("Very strong and gusty northwest wind, with electric-looking wind-clouds");   March 22, 1858 ("I see those peculiar spring clouds, scattered cumuli with dark level bases. No doubt the season is to be detected by the aspect of the clouds no less than by that of the earth."); March 23, 1860 ("Small dark-based cumuli spring clouds, mostly in rows parallel with the horizon.").

I see a male frog hawk beating a hedge, scarcely rising more than two feet from the ground for half a mile. See March 27, 1855 ("See my frog hawk. (C. saw it about a week ago.) It is the hen-harrier, i.e. marsh hawk, male. Slate-colored; beating the bush; black tips to wings and white rump") See Also Henry Thoreau, A Book of the Seasons, The Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)

They are the duck most common and most identified with the stream at this season. See  February 27, 1860 ("This is the first bird of the spring that I have seen or heard of."); and note to March 16, 1860  ("Saw a flock of sheldrakes a hundred rods off, on the Great Meadows, mostly males with a few females, all intent on fishing. ") See also Henry Thoreau, A Book of the Seasons, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

March 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 24

Cold and blustering

again with flurries of snow--

cold dark slate wind-clouds.

March 24, 1860

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Cold and rather blustering again

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024