Sheltered in shadow of ferns in the meadow on the cool mud in the hot afternoon.

July 18. 

July 18

P. M. — To Wheeler meadow to look at willows. 

Again scare up a woodcock, apparently seated or sheltered in shadow of ferns in the meadow on the cool mud in the hot afternoon. 

Rosa Carolina, some time, at edge of Wheeler meadow near Island Neck. 

You see almost everywhere on the muddy river bottom, rising toward the surface, first, the coarse multifid leaves of the Ranunculus Purshii, now much the worse for the wear; second, perhaps, in coarseness, the ceratophyllum, standing upright; third, perhaps, the Bidens Beckii, with its leafets at top; then the Utricularia vulgaris, with its black or green bladders, and the two lesser utricularias in many places.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 18, 1856

Again scare up a woodcock. See July 3, 1856 ("I scare up one or two woodcocks in different places by the shore, where they are feeding, and in a meadow. They go off with a whistling flight. Can see where their bills have probed the mud. ");  July 16, 1854 ("Woodcock by side of Walden in woods."); July 18, 1856  ("Again scare up a woodcock, apparently seated or sheltered in shadow of ferns in the meadow on the cool mud in the hot afternoon.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The American Woodcock

July 18. See A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 18

A Book of 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 © 2009-2021

As he looked at my sail, I listened to his singing.

May 19. 

Thick fog in the morning, which lasted late in the forenoon and left behind it rainy clouds for the afternoon. 

P. M. — To Cedar Swamp. 

Landed at Island Neck, and saw a small striped snake in the act of swallowing a Rana palustris, within three feet of the water. The snake, being frightened, released his hold, and the frog hopped off to the water. 

Hear and see a yellow-throated vireo, which methinks I have heard before. Going and coming, he is in the top of the same swamp white oak and singing indolently, ullia — eelya, and sometimes varied to eelyee. 

The tanager is now heard plainly and frequently. 

Louisiana Water Thrush

I see running along the water’s edge on the Island Neck, amid the twigs, a new bird, slender and somewhat warbler-like, but plainly a Turdus, with a deep, dark chocolate-brown back (apparently uniformly) , apparently cream-colored beneath, handsomely and abundantly spotted with dark brown, vent white, light flesh-colored legs, yellowish or cream-colored line over eyes. Me thinks it teetered or wagged its tail. Flew soon and was quite shy. I think it must have been the Turdus aquaticus from its dark chocolate-brown back and running along the water’s edge. Feel pretty sure, yet that is said to have white (?) over eye. I lost it before I had examined fully. Quite a discovery. Vide golden-crowned thrush carefully. 

Apple in bloom; some, no doubt, earlier. Night hawk’s squeak. Red-Wing’s nest made, and a robin's without mud, on black willow four feet above water. 

As I sail up the reach of the Assabet above Dove Rock with a fair wind, a traveller riding along the highway is watching my sail while he hums a tune. How inspiring and elysian it is to hear when the traveller or the laborer from a call to his horse or the murmur of ordinary conversation rises into song! It paints the landscape suddenly as no agriculture, no flowery crop that can be raised. It is at once another land, the abode of poetry. I am always thus affected when I hear in the fields any singing or instrumental music at the end of the day. It implies a different life and pursuits than the ordinary. As he looked at my sail, I listened to his singing. Perchance they were equally poetic, and we repaid each other. Why will not men oftener advertise me of musical thoughts? The singer is in the attitude of one inviting the muse, — aspiring. 

The Maryland yellow-throat amid the alders sings now, whit-we-chee whit-we-chee whit-we-chee whit-whit, the last two fast, or whit alone, or none. 

Wood pewee. 

Woolly aphides on alder. 

The Smilacina trifolia will apparently bloom to-morrow or next day.

Returning, stopped at Barrett’s sawmill while it rained a little. Was also attracted by the music of his saw. He was sawing a white oak log; was about to saw a very ugly and knotty white oak log into drag plank, making an angle. Said that about as many logs were brought to his mill as ten years ago, — he did not perceive the difference, — but they were not so large, and perhaps they went further for them. 

I observed that he was not grinding. No, he said, it was the first day he had not had a grist, though he had plenty of water; probably because the farmers were busy planting. There were white oak, pine, maple, and walnut logs waiting to be sawed. 

A bullfrog, sluggish, by my boat’s place. 

On the 13th I saw washed up to the edge of the ' meadow, this side of Clamshell, portions of one or two large bluish-white eggs, apparently a size larger than hens’ eggs, which may have been laid last year by some wild fowl in the meadow. 

May 19, 2016

If my friend would take a quarter part the pains to show me himself that he does to show me a piece of roast beef, I should feel myself irresistibly invited. He says, — 

“ Come and see
Roast beef and me.”

I find the beef fat and well done, but him rare.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 19, 1856

Saw a small striped snake in the act of swallowing a Rana palustris . . .. The snake, being frightened, released his hold, and the frog hopped off to the water. See  August 23, 1851 ("He had a toad in his jaws, which he was preparing to swallow with his jaws distended to three times his width, but he relinquished his prey in haste and fled"); July 23, 1856 ("Saw . . . a small bullfrog in the act of swallowing a young but pretty sizable apparently Rana palustris, . . . I sprang to make him disgorge, but it was too late to save him. ")

Hear and see a yellow-throated vireo, which methinks I have heard before. . . . See May 27, 1854 ("I see and hear the yellow-throated vireo. It is somewhat similar (its strain) to that of the red-eye, prelia pre-li-ay, with longer intervals and occasionally a whistle like tlea tlow, or chowy chow, or tully ho on a higher key.”)

A traveller riding along the highway is watching my sail while he hums a tune. See March 26, 1855 ('"Sail down to the Great Meadows. A strong wind with snow driving from the west and thickening the air. The farmers pause to see me scud before it."); April 18, 1856 ("The farmer neglects his team to watch my sail."); September 27, 1858 ("The farmers digging potatoes on shore pause a moment to watch my sail and bending mast.")

May 19.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 19

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 © 2009-2021

Winter now first fairly commenced.

December 30

December 30, 2016

The snow which began last night has continued to fall very silently but steadily, and now it is not far from a foot deep, much the most we have had yet; a dry, light, powdery snow. 

When I come down I see it in miniature drifts against the panes, alternately streaked dark and light as it is more or less dense. A remarkable, perfectly regular conical peak, a foot high, with concave sides, stands in the fireplace under the sink-room chimney. The pump has a regular conical Persian(?) cap, and every post about the house a. similar one. It is quite light, but has not drifted. 

About 9 A. M. it ceases, and the sun comes out, and shines dazzlingly over the white surface. Every neighbor is shovelling out, and hear the sound of shovels scraping on door-steps. Winter now first fairly commenced, I feel. 

The places which are slowest to freeze in our river are, first, on account of warmth as well as motion, where a brook comes in, and also probably where are springs in banks and under bridges; then, on account of shallowness and rapidity, at bends. I perceive that the cold respects the same places every winter. In the dark, or after a heavy snow, I know well where to cross the river most safely. Where the river is most like a lake, broad with a deep and muddy bottom, there it freezes first and thickest. The open water at a bend seems to be owing to the swiftness of the current, and this to the shallowness, and this to the sands taken out of the opposing bank and deposited there. 

There was yesterday eight or ten acres of open water at the west end of Walden, where is depth and breadth combined. 

What a horrid shaggy and stiff low wilderness were the Andromeda Ponds yesterday! What then must they have been on the 21st! As it was, it was as if I walked through a forest of glass (with a tough woody core) up to my middle. That dense tufted grass with a greenish tinge was still stiffly coated with ice, as well as everything else, and my shoes were filled with the fragments, but here I and there the crimson sphagnum blushed through the crust beneath. Think of that dense grass, a horrid stiff crop, each stem as big as your finger, firm but brittle and about two feet high, and the countless birds’ nests filled even with ice!

P. M. - Across river and over Hill. 

The wind has been blowing and the snow drifting. The paths are filled up again. The surface of the snow is coarsely waved and rough now, as if it caught at every straw and faced its windy foe again. It appears a coarser grain now. By the river are conspicuous the now empty and spread pods of the water milkweed, gray-brown without, silky—white within, — in some a seed or two left still; also the late rose corymbs of red hips; also the eupatorium some with brown fuzz and seeds still; the sium sometimes, with its very flat cymes; and that light-brown sedge or rush. Some black ash keys still hang on amid the black abortions(?)

For a few days I have noticed the snow sprinkled with alder and birch scales. I go now through the birch meadow southwest of the Rock. The high wind is scattering them over the snow there. 

See one downy woodpecker and one or two chickadees. 

The track of a squirrel on the Island Neck. Tracks are altered by the depth of the snow. 

Looking up over the top of the hill now,  southwest, at 3.30 P.M., I see a few mother-o’-pearl tints, and methinks the same or rainbow tints in the drifting snow there, against the bright light of the unseen sun. 

December 30, 2025 

Only in such clear cold air as this have the small clouds in the west that fine evanishing edge. It requires a state of the air that quickly dissipates all moisture. It must be rare in summer. In this rare atmosphere all cloud is quickly dissipated and mother-o’-pearl tinted as it passes away. 

The snow is too deep and soft yet for many tracks. No doubt the mice have been out beneath it.

Recrossing the river behind Dodd’s, now at 4 P. M., the sun quite low, the open reach just below is quite green, a vitreous green, as if seen through a junk-bottle. Perhaps I never observed this phenomenon but when the sun was low. 

He who would study birds’ nests must look for them in November and in winter as well as in midsummer, for then the trees are bare and he can see them, and the swamps and streams are frozen and he can approach new kinds. He will often be surprised to find how many have haunted where he little suspected, and will receive many hints accordingly, which he can act upon in the summer. I am surprised to find many new ones (i. e. not new species) in groves which I had examined several times with particular care in the summer. 

This was not a lodging snow, and the wind has already blown most of it off the trees, yet the long-limbed oak on the north of the hill still supports a ridge of its pure white as thick as its limbs. They lie parallel like the ulna and radius, and one is a bare white bone. 

Beside the other weeds on the last page, I might have shown the tall rough goldenrod, still conspicuous. 

Found, in the Wheeler meadow southwest of the Island, a nest in the fork of an alder about eight feet from ground, partly saddled on, made apparently chiefly of fine grass and bark fibres, quite firm and very thick bottomed, and well bound without with various kind of lint. This is a little oval, three by three and a half inches within and seven eighths deep, with a very firm, smooth rim of fine grass and dark shreds, lined with the same and some lint. A few alder leaves dangle from the edge, and, what is remarkable, the outer edge all around is defiled, quite covered, with black and white caterpillar like droppings of the young birds. It is broader and shallower than a yellowbird’s and larger than a wood pewee’s. Can it be a redstart’s? I should think it too large.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 30, 1855

Not far from a foot deep, much the most we have had yet. See December 30, 1859 ("I awake to find it snowing fast. Perhaps seven or eight inches have fallen, - the deepest snow yet.”); December 30, 1853 (“I carried a two-foot rule and measured the snow of yesterday. . . it varied from fourteen to twenty-four inches.”) and note to January 16, 1856 ("With this snow the fences are scarcely an obstruction to the traveller; he easily steps over them. Often they are buried. I suspect it is two and a half feet deep in Andromeda Swamps now.")

The track of a squirrel . . .The snow is too deep and soft yet for many tracks. No doubt the mice have been out beneath it. See December 30, 1853 ("I see the tracks of mice, and squirrels, probably gray ones, leading straight to or from the feet of the largest pines and oaks, which they had plainly ascended.")

Winter now first fairly commenced, I feel.  See December 29, 1853 ("The thoughts and associations of summer and autumn are now as completely departed from our minds as the leaves are blown from the trees.") See also March 16, 1859 ("A new phase of the spring is presented; a new season has come.. . . The earth has cast off her white coat and come forth in her clean-washed sober russet early spring dress . . .This first sight of the bare tawny and russet earth, seen afar, perhaps, over the meadow flood in the spring, affects me as the first glimpse of land, his native land, does the voyager who has not seen it a long time."); March 20, 1853 ("It is glorious to behold the life and joy of this ribbon of water sparkling in the sun. . . There is the difference between winter and spring. The bared face of the pond sparkles with joy."); March 26, 1860 ("The brown season extends from about the 6th of March ordinarily into April. . . Tried by various tests, this season fluctuates more or less.") ; April 25, 1859 ("I got to-day and yesterday the first decided impression of greenness beginning to prevail. . .Even the grass begins to wave . . . and I am suddenly advertised that a new season has arrived. This is the beginning of that season which, methinks, culminates with the buttercup and wild pink and Viola pedata. It begins when the first toad is heard.");  May 14, 1858 ("To-day, for the first time, it appears to me summerlike and a new season. There is a tender green on the meadows and just leafing trees."); May 17, 1852  ("Does not summer begin after the May storm? "); May 27, 1853 ("A new season has commenced - summer - leafy June.”); May 30, 1852 (Now is the summer come.  . . . A day for shadows, even of moving clouds, over fields in which the grass is beginning to wave."); July 18, 1854 ("A hot midsummer day with a sultry mistiness in the air and shadows on land and water beginning to have a peculiar distinctness and solidity."); July 28, 1854 ("Methinks the season culminated about the middle of this month, — that the year was of indefinite promise before, but that, after the first intense heats, we postponed the fulfillment of many of our hopes for this year, and, having as it were attained the ridge of the summer, commenced to descend the long slope toward winter, the afternoon and down-hill of the year."); August 5, 1854 ("It is one long acclivity from winter to midsummer and another long declivity from midsummer to winter."); August 9, 1853 ("How fatally the season is advanced toward the fall! I am not surprised now to see the small rough sunflower. There is much yellow beside now in the fields.");August 26, 1859 ("The first fall rain is a memorable occasion, when the river is raised and cooled, and the first crop of sere and yellow leaves falls. The air is cleared; the dog-days are over; sun-sparkles are seen on water; crickets sound more distinct."); September 20, 1857 ("This is our first fall rain, and makes a dividing line between the summer and fall."); November 10, 1858 ("The season of brilliant leaves may be considered over, — say about the 10th; and now a new season begins, the pure November season of the russet earth and withered leaf and bare twigs and hoary withered goldenrods, etc. ")

The countless birds’ nests filled even with ice! See December 24, 1851 (Now and long since the birds' nests have been full of snow.“); December 29, 1855 (“I find in the andromeda bushes in the Andromeda Ponds a great many nests apparently of the red-wing suspended after their fashion amid the twigs of the andromeda, each now filled with ice.”); January 7, 1856 ("I go along the edge of the Hubbard Meadow woods, the north side, where the snow is gathered, light and up to my middle, shaking down birds’ nests"); January 24, 1856 (“The snow is so deep along the sides of the river that I can now look into nests which I could hardly reach in the summer. . . .They have only an ice egg in them now.”); February 16, 1860 ("Also all the birds' nests in the blueberry bushes are revealed, by the great snow-balls they hold.")

There was yesterday eight or ten acres of open water at the west end of Walden, where is depth and breadth combined. See December 21, 1855 (“Walden is skimmed over, all but an acre, in my cove.”);  December 29, 1855 ("Am surprised to find eight or ten acres of Walden still open, notwithstanding the cold of the 26th, 27th, and 28th and of to-day. It must be owing to the wind partly.”);  January 1, 1856 (“Walden is covered with white snow ice six inches thick, for it froze while it was snowing, though commonly there is a thin dark beneath. . . . A very small patch of Walden, frozen since the snow, looks at a little distance exactly like open water by contrast with the snow ice, the trees being reflected in it, and indeed I am not certain but a very small part of this patch was water.”) Compare December 30, 1853 ("The pond not yet frozen entirely over; about six acres open, the wind blew so hard last night. “) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Annual ice-in at Walden

Recrossing the river behind Dodd’s, now at 4 P. M., the sun quite low, the open reach just below is quite green, a vitreous green, See  .February 19, 1852 ("Returning across the river just as the sun was setting behind the Hollowell place, the ice eastward of me a few rods, where the snow was blown off, was as green as bottle glass, seen at the right angle, though all around, above and below, was one unvaried white, — a vitreous glass green. Just as I have seen the river green in a winter morning. This phenomenon is to be put with the blue in the crevices of the snow"); January 7, 1856 (" Returning, just before sunset, the few little patches of ice look green as I go from the sun (which is in clouds). It is probably a constant phenomenon in cold weather when the ground is covered with snow and the sun is low, morning or evening, and you are looking from it."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, when the ice turns green

Snow began last night 

now light powdery snow not 

far from a foot deep.

 In this clear cold air 

 that fine evanishing edge

of clouds in the west. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Winter now first fairly commenced.

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-551230

A red-eyed vireo nest.

July 21.

July 21, 2015
9:05 PM

A red-eyed vireo nest on a red maple on Island Neck, on meadow-edge, ten feet from ground; one egg half hatched and one cowbird’s egg, nearly fresh, a trifle larger. The first white (the minute brown dots washing off), sparsely black-dotted at the large end. Have them.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 21, 1855

A red-eyed vireo nest on a red maple. See January 13, 1856 ("What a wonderful genius it is that leads the vireo to select the tough fibres of the inner bark, instead of the more brittle grasses, for its basket, the elastic pine-needles and the twigs, curved as they dried to give it form, and, as I suppose, the silk of cocoons, etc., etc., to bind it together with!”); February 24, 1858 ("What art in the red-eye to make these two adjacent maple twigs serve for the rim of its pensile basket, inweaving them! Surely it finds a place for itself in nature between the two twigs of a maple.");  May 27, 1854 ("I find the pensile nest of a red-eye between a fork of a shrub chestnut near the path. It is made, thus far, of bark and different woolly and silky materials.”); June 12, 1855 ("In the thick swamp behind the hill I look at the vireo’s nest which C. found on the 10th, within reach on a red maple forked twig, eight feet from ground. He took one cowbird’s egg from it, and I now take the other, which he left. There is no vireo’s egg"); June 18, 1858 (“To Walden to see a bird's nest, a red-eye's, in a small white pine; nest not so high as my head; still laying ”)  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Red-eyed Vireo

But what is that bird I hear?

May 29, 2015

May 29

P. M. —To Island Neck. 

That willow by the rock south of Island (of May 2d) appears to be without doubt the Salix sericea, — the leaves beginning to turn black quite soon, and the bark is very bitter. 

There is, then, another small willow or sallow with narrower and shining leaves, very common along river, with longer catkins and very long tapering smooth pods, —I mean the one I have associated with the S. alba. 

Azalea nudiflora in garden. 

There are a great many birds now on the Island Neck. 

• The red-eye, its clear loud song in bars continuously repeated and varied; all tempered white beneath and dark yellow olive above and on edge of wings, with a dark line on side-head or from root of bill; dusky claws, and a very long bill. The long bill and the dark line on the side of the head, with the white above and beneath, or in the midst of the white, giving it a certain oblong, swelled-cheek look, would distinguish on a side view. 

• There is also the warbling vireo, with its smooth-flowing, continuous, one-barred, shorter strain, with methinks a dusky side-head. 

• Also the yellow-throated vireo—its head and shoulders as well as throat yellow (apparently olive-yellow above), and its strain but little varied and short, not continuous. It has dusky legs and two very distinct white bars on wings (the male). 

• I see the first swamp sparrow of the season, and probably heard its loud song; clear, broad, undivided chestnut or bay (?) crown and clear dark-ash throat and breast, and light, perhaps yellowish, line over eye, dark bill, and much bay (?) on wings. Low, amid the alders.

But what is that bird I hear much like the first part of the yellowbird’s strain, only two thirds as long and varied at end, and not so loud, — a-che che che, che-a, or tche tche tche, tche-a, or ah tche tche tche, chit-i-vet? 

It is very small, not timid, but incessantly changing its position on the pitch pines, etc. Some a pure dull white, some tawny-white, beneath; some cinereous, others more dusky still, above; with a flycatcher or muscicapa bill and head (head rounded ?), but — what is most remarkable —a very deeply forked or divided tail with a broad black tip beneath, and toward the roots a fire—brick-color, this last color much brighter on the sides of the breast, and some of it on the wings in a broad bar, though some perhaps have not the last mark. 

Did I see some of the yellowish on rump? Dark ash above and some reddish-brown (?). One is very inquisitive; hops down toward me lower and lower on the pitch pine twigs, while I hold out my hand till within five feet, but in such a light that I cannot distinguish its colors. 

There are at least half a dozen of them about; continually flitting about, sometimes in a circle of a few rods’ diameter, one pursuing another, both male and female, back to near the same spot, but I can hardly bring my glass to bear on them before they change their position.

It is undoubtedly young males and the females of the redstart, described by Wilson, — very different from the full-plumaged black males. 

American Redstart
(the full-plumaged black male )

The young males of this species do not possess the brilliancy and richness of plumage which the old birds display, until the second year, the first being spent in the garb worn by the females . . . Notwithstanding their want of full plumage, they breed and sing the first spring like the old males . . .  Female with the upper parts yellowish-brown; the head grey; the quills greyish-brown; the tail darker; the parts yellow which in the male are bright orange; the rest of the lower parts white, tinged with yellow.  ~ J.J. Audubon

I see on the first limb of a white oak, close to the trunk and about eight feet from the ground, squatting as if asleep, a chipping squirrel two thirds grown. The hole it came out of, apparently, is four or five feet from the base of the tree. When I am about to put my hand on it, it runs feebly up the tree and rests again as much higher in a similar place. When C. climbs after, it runs out quite to the end of a limb, where it can hardly hold on, and I think it will drop every moment with the shaking of the tree.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 29, 1855

That willow by the rock south of Island (of May 2d) appears to be without doubt the Salix sericea. See May 2, 1855 ('That small native willow now in flower, or say yesterday, just before leaf.") See also May 11, 1856 ("The Salix sericea at Island rock is out . . .  I think I can pretty well distinguish the sericea by the grayness of the female catkins.")

Azalea nudiflora in garden. See May 31, 1853 ("I am going in search of the Azalea nudiflora."); May 25, 1856 ("Azalea nudiflora in garden"); June 2, 1855 ("The Azalea nudiflora now in its prime.”); June 2, 1856 ("To Azalea nudiflora, which is in prime.") See also  The Significance of the Hunter's Azalea and Expecting the Hunter's Azalea:  

  We cross the river

Melvin and I and his dog

to the azalea.

I see the first swamp sparrow of the season . . .clear, broad, undivided chestnut or bay (?) crown and clear dark-ash throat and breast. See April 11, 1853 ("At Natural History Rooms . . .The swamp sparrow is ferruginous-brown (spotted with black) and ash above about neck; brownish-white beneath; undivided chestnut crown.")

But what is that bird I hear? It is undoubtedly young males and the females of the redstart. See 

May 28, 1855 ("I have seen within three or four days two or three new warblers which I have not identified; one to-day, in the woods, all pure white beneath, with a full breast, and greenish-olive-yellow (?) above, with a duskier head and a slight crest muscicapa-like, on pines, etc., high; very small.(Perhaps young and female redstarts."); April 11, 1853 ("Female dark ashy and fainter marks") See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The American Redstart

A chipping squirrel two thirds grown . . . When I am about to put my hand on it, it runs feebly up the tree. See June 16, 1855 (" See young and weak striped squirrels nowadays, with slender tails, asleep on horizontal boughs above their holes, or moving feebly about; might catch them."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Striped Squirrel

A pigeon woodpecker at the hollow poplar

March 30.

6 a. m. — To Island. First still hour since the afternoon of the 17th.

Very severe cold and high winds cold enough to skim the river over in broad places at night, and commencing with the greatest and most destructive gale for many a year,  has never ceased to blow since till this morning. 

The ground these last cold (thirteen) days has been about bare of snow, but frozen.

At the Island I see and hear this morning the cackle of a pigeon woodpecker at the hollow poplar; had heard him tapping distinctly from my boat's place. 

Great flocks of tree sparrows and some F. hyemalis on the ground and trees on the Island Neck, making the air and bushes ring with their jingling.

The river early is partly filled with thin, floating, hardly cemented ice, occasionally turned on its edge by the wind and sparkling in the sun.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 30, 1854

At the Island I see and hear this morning the cackle of a pigeon woodpecker at the hollow poplar; had heard him tapping distinctly from my boat's place. See March 29, 1853 (" On approaching the Island, I am surprised to hear the scolding, cackle-like note of the pigeon woodpecker, a prolonged loud sound somewhat like one note of the robin. This was the tapper, on the old hollow aspen which the small woodpeckers so much frequent. Unless the latter make exactly the same sound with the former, then the pigeon woodpecker has come!! "); April 14, 1856 ("Hear the flicker’s cackle on the old aspen, and his tapping sounds afar over the water. Their tapping resounds thus far, with this peculiar ring and distinctness, because it is a hollow tree they select to play on, as a drum or tambour. It is a hollow sound which rings distinct to a great distance, especially over water.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Woodpecker (flicker).

Great flocks of tree sparrows.  See March 28, 1853 ("I saw in Dodd's yard and flying thence to the alders by the river what I think must be the tree sparrow, — a ferruginous crowned, or headed, and partly winged bird, light beneath, with a few of the F. hyemalis in company. It sang sweetly, much like some notes of a canary."); April 1, 1854 ("The birds sing this warm, showery day after a fortnight's cold with a universal burst and flood of melody. The tree sparrows, hyemalis, and song sparrows are particularly lively and musical in the yard this rainy and truly April day. The air rings with them"); April 4, 1853 ("I hear the twitter of tree sparrows from fences and shrubs in the yard and from alders by meadows and the riverside every day"); April 4, 1855 ("A fine morning, still and bright, with smooth water and singing of song and tree sparrows and some blackbirds"); April 8, 1854 ("Methinks I do not see such great and lively flocks of hyemalis and tree sparrows in the morning since the warm days, the 4th, 5th, and 6th. Perchance after the warmer days, which bring out the frogs and butterflies, the alders and maples, the greater part of them leave for the north and give place to newcomers."); April 17, 1855 ("A sudden warm day, like yesterday and this, takes off some birds and adds others. . . . I suspect that most of the tree sparrows and F. hyemalis, at least, went yesterday.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis)

Ice turned on its edge by the wind and sparkling in the sun. See March 29, 1854 ("Thin cakes of ice at a distance now and then blown up on their edges glistening in the sun."). See also February 12, 1851 ("I see at a distance thin cakes of ice forced upon their edges and reflecting the sun like so many mirrors, whole fleets of shining sails, giving a very lively appearance to the river. ");  March 10, 1859 ("The strong northwest wind of last night broke the thin ice just formed, and set the irregular triangular pieces on their edges quite perpendicular and directed northwest and southeast and pretty close together, about nine inches high, for half a dozen rods, like a dense fleet of schooners with their mainsails set."); March 4, 1860 ("Ice will occasionally be lifted up on its edge two feet high and very conspicuous afar.")

Trees in foggy woods

appearing one at a time

clear my foggy mind.

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