A Book of the Seasons, The Cherry-Bird (cedar waxwing)

 

I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.

Observe all kinds of coincidences,

as what kinds of birds come with what flowers.

Henry Thoreau

April 18, 1852

The mountain-ash tree

 and note of the cherry-birds 

coming and going. 

September 22, 1859

The Cherry-Bird 

See how artfully the seed of a cherry is placed 

in order that a bird may be compelled to transport it. 

It is placed in the very midst of a tempting pericarp, 

so that the creature that would devour a cherry

 must take a stone into its mouth.

The bird is bribed with the pericarp 

to take the stone with it and do this little service for Nature. 

Thus a bird's wing is added to the cherry-stone which was wingless, 

and it does not wait for winds to transport it.

September 1, 1860

March 14.  I hear that many cherry-birds have been seen.  March 14, 1858

March 20.  On that same tree by Conant's orchard, I see a flock of cherry-birds with that alert, chieftain-like look, and hear their seringo note, as if made by their swift flight through the air. They have been seen a week or two.  March 20, 1858 

May 14. Flood tells me he saw cherry-birds on the 12th of April in Monroe's garden. May 14, 1856

May 18.   In the yellow birch and ash swamp west of big yellow birch, I hear the fine note of cherry-birds, much like that of young partridges, and see them on the ash trees.   May 18, 1857

May 26.   Cherry-birds.  May 26, 1859

May 26.   Cherry-birds.  May 26, 1860

May 29.   Cherry-birds on the apple trees. May 29, 1856

May 30.   Cherry-bird on a cherry; also pecking at the apple blossoms.  May 30, 1855   

June 2.  Cherry-birds are the only ones I see in flocks now. I can tell them afar by their peculiar fine springy note. June 2, 1853

June 6.  Still see cherry-birds in flocks of five or six.  June 6, 1856 

June 9.  For a day or two I have heard the fine seringo note of the cherry-birds, and seen them flying past, the only (?) birds, methinks, that I see in small flocks now, except swallows . . . It is twilight . . . Chimney and bank swallows are still hovering over the river, and cherry-birds fly past. June 9, 1854

June 14.  Mr. Bacon thinks that cherry-birds are abundant where cankerworms are. June 14, 1854

June 14.   A cherry-bird’s nest and two eggs in an apple tree fourteen feet from ground. One egg, round black spots and a few oblong, about equally but thinly dispersed over the whole, and a dim, internal, purplish tinge about the large end. It is difficult to see anything of the bird, for she steals away early, and you may neither see nor hear anything of her while examining the nest, and so think it deserted. June 14, 1855

June 16. Cherry-birds numerous, the bold, combative-looking fellows, - etc., etc . . .The note of the cherry-bird is fine and ringing, but peculiar and very noticeable. With its crest it is a resolute and combative-looking bird. June 16, 1854

June 16.  The cherry-bird’s egg was a satin color, or very pale slate, with an internal or what would be called black-and-blue ring about large end.  June 16, 1855

June 21.  Cherry-birds. I have not seen, though I think I have heard them before, — their fine seringo note, like a vibrating spring in the air. They are a handsome bird, with their crest and chestnut breasts. There is no keeping the run of their goings and comings, but they will be ready for the cherries when they shall be ripe. June 21, 1852

June 21.  Still see cherry-birds in flock. June 21, 1853

June 25.  An unusual quantity of amelanchier berries . . . I never saw nearly so many before. It is a very agreeable surprise. I hear the cherry-birds and others about me, no doubt attracted by this fruit. June 25, 1853

June 29. The cherry-bird's note is like the fine peep of young partridges or woodcocks. June 29, 1854

July 5.  It is growing warm again, but the warmth is different from that we have had. We lie in the shade of locust trees. Haymakers go by in a hay-rigging. I am reminded of berrying. I scent the sweet-fern and the dead or dry pine leaves. Cherry-birds alight on a neighboring tree. The warmth is something more normal and steady, ripening fruits . . . It begins to be such weather as when people go a-huckle-berrying. Nature offers fruits now as well as flowers. We have become accustomed to the summer. It has acquired a certain eternity. July 5, 1852

July 10.  Cherry-bird commonly heard . . . The singing birds at present are: —Rural: Song sparrow, seringos, flicker, kingbird, goldfinch, link of bobolink, cherry-bird.  July 10, 1854

July 19. The cherry-birds are making their seringo sound as they flit past.  July 19,1851

July 28.  Cherry-bird common.  July 28, 1854

August 12.  Cherry-bird heard.  August 12, 1854

August 14.   The fine note of the cherry-bird, pretty often.  August 14, 1858 

August 19. Saw cherry-birds flying lower over Heywood meadow like swallows, apparently for flies, and heard them, cricket-like.  August 19, 1854

August 29. Many birds nowadays resort to the wild black cherry tree, as here front of Tarbell's. I see them continually coming and going directly from and to a great distance, — cherry birds, robins, and kingbirds. August 29, 1854 

August 26.   I saw a cherry-bird peck from the middle of its upright (vertical) web on a bush one of those large (I think yellow-marked) spiders within a rod of me. It dropped to the ground, and then the bird picked it up. It left a hole or rent in the middle of the web. The spider cunningly spreads his net for feebler insects, and then takes up his post in the centre, but perchance a passing bird picks him from his conspicuous station.  August 26, 1859 

September 1. In the sprout-land behind Britton's Camp, I came to a small black cherry full of fruit, and then, for the first time for a long while, I see and hear cherry-birds — their shrill and fine seringo — and the note of robins, which of late are scarce. We sit near the tree and listen to the now unusual sounds of these birds, and from time to time one or two come dashing from out the sky toward this tree, till, seeing us, they whirl, disappointed, and perhaps alight on some neighboring twigs and wait till we are gone. The cherry-birds and robins seem to know the locality of every wild cherry in the town. You are as sure to find them on them now, as bees and butterflies on the thistles. If we stay long, they go off with a fling, to some other cherry tree, which they know of but we do not.  September 1, 1859

 

September 10. Cherry-birds common. September 10, 1854

September 22.  The mountain-ash trees are alive with robins and cherry-birds nowadays, stripping them of their fruit (in drooping clusters). It is exceedingly bitter and austere to my taste. Such a tree fills the air with the watch-spring-like note of the cherry-birds coming and going. September 22, 1859

October  5.  See a cherry-bird.  October 5, 1857

 

December 22. In a (apparently kingbird's?) nest on this island I saw three cherry-stones, as if it had carried home this fruit to its young. It was, outside, of gnaphalium and saddled on a low limb. Could it have been a cherry-bird? December 22, 1859

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Cherry-Bird (cedar waxwing)

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 ©  2009-2026

A Book of the Seasons, Signs of the Spring: the note of the dark-eyed junco going northward

No mortal is alert enough 

to be present at the first dawn of the spring. 

Henry Thoreau, March 17, 1857

I see a Fringilla hyemalis 

the first bird, perchance, –unless one hawk– 

which is an evidence of spring.

March 14, 1858

They sing with us in 

the pleasantest days before

 they go northward.

March 23, 1852

February 23.   I have seen signs of the spring.  February 23, 1857

March 3. Going to Acton this morning, I saw some sparrows on the wall, which I think must have been the F. hyemalis (?). March 3, 1859

March 6.  Going by Messer's, I hear the well-known note and see a flock of F. hyemalis flitting in a lively manner about trees, weeds, walls, and ground, by the roadside, showing their two white tail-feathers. They are more fearless than the song sparrow. These attract notice by their numbers and incessant twittering in a social manner.  March 6, 1860

March 8. Saw the F. hyemalis March 4th. March 8, 1861

March 14.  I see a Fringilla hyemalis, the first bird, perchance, – unless one hawk, – which is an evidence of spring, though they lingered with us the past unusual winter, at least till the 19th of January. They are now getting back earlier than our permanent summer residents. It flits past with a rattling or grating chip, showing its two white tail-feathers. March 14, 1858 

March 15. Pleasant morning, unexpectedly. Hear on the alders by the river the lill lill lill lill of the first F. hyemalis, mingled with song sparrows and tree sparrows. March 15, 1854

March 18.  I hear the chill-lill or tchit-a-tchit of the slate-colored sparrow, and see it. March 18, 1857

March 19.  Hear the pleasant chill-lill of the F. hyemalis, the first time have heard this note. This, too, suggests pleasant associations. March 19, 1858

March 20.  And now, within a day or two, I have noticed the chubby slate-colored snowbird (Fringilla hyemalis?), and I drive the flocks before me on the railroad causeway as I walk. It has two white feathers in its tail. It is cold as winter to-day, the ground still covered with snow, and the stars twinkle as in winter night. March 20, 1852

March 20.  At my landing I hear the F. hyemalis, in company with a few tree sparrows. They take refuge from the cold wind, half a dozen in all, behind an arbor-vitae hedge, and there plume themselves with puffed-up feathers. March 20, 1855

March 20. The note of the F. hyemalis, or chill-lill, is a jingle, with also a shorter and drier crackling or shuffling chip as it flits by. March 20, 1858 

March 20. I see under the east side of the house amid the evergreens, where they were sheltered from the cold northwest wind, quite a parcel of sparrows, chiefly F. hyemalis, two or three tree sparrows, and one song sparrow, quietly feeding together. I watch them through a window within six or eight feet. They evidently love to be sheltered from the wind, and at least are not averse to each other's society . . . The F. hyemalis is the largest of the three. They   have remarkably distinct light-colored bills, and when they stretch, show very distinct clear-white lateral tail-feathers. This stretching seems to be contagious among them, like yawning with us. They have considerable brown on the quill-feathers. March 20, 1859

March 21.  Why are the early birds found most along the water? These song sparrows are now first heard commonly. The blackbirds , too , create some melody. And the bluebirds, how sweet their warble in the soft air, heard over the water! The robin is heard further off, and seen flying rapidly, hurriedly through the orchard. And now the elms suddenly ring with the chill - lill - lill and canary-like notes of the Fringilla hyemalis, which fill the air more than those of any bird yet , — a little strange they sound be cause they do not tarry to breed with us , — a ringing sound. March 21, 1853

March 22.  I hear the lively jingle of the hyemalis and the sweet notes of the tree sparrow. . .. Both species in considerable numbers, singing together as they flit along, make a very lively concert. They sing as loud and full as ever now. March 22, 1859

March 23.  I heard, this forenoon, a pleasant jingling note from the slate-colored snowbird on the oaks in the sun on Minott's hillside. Apparently they sing with us in the pleasantest days before they go northward.  March 23, 1852

March 23.  The birds which are merely migrating or tarrying here for a season are especially gregarious now. March 23, 1853 

March 23.  The birds in yard active now, — hyemalis, tree sparrow, and song sparrow. The hyemalis jingle easily distinguished. March 23, 1854

March 24. Great flocks of hyemalis drifting about with their jingling note.March 24, 1854

March 24. The F. hyemalis has been seen two or three days. March 24, 1856 

*****

So I came in and

shut the door and passed my first

spring night in the woods.

Walden, Spring

*****

See also Signs of the Spring:

• A Sunny Nook in Spring
• A Change in the Air
• Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding
• Braided Ripples of Melting Snow Shine in the Ruts
• Bright Blue Water
• Buzzing Flies
• Ducks Afar, Sailing on the Meadow
• First silvery sheen from needles of the white pine waving in the wind
• Frogs, and Turtles Stirring
• Geese Overhead
• Greening Grasses and Sedges
• I begin to think that my wood will last
• Insects and Worms Come Forth and are Active
• Listening for the Bluebird
• March is famous for its Winds
• Mosses Bright Green
• My Greatcoat on my Arm
• Perla-like Insects Appear
• Red Maple Sap Flows
• Ripples made by Fishes
• Skunks Active
• The Anxious Peep of the Early Robin
• The crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows
• The Days have grown Sensibly Longer
• The Eaves Begin to Run
• The Gobbling of Turkeys
• The Grackle Arrives
• The Hawks of March
• The New Warmth of the Sun
• The Note of the Dark-eyed Junco Going Northward
• The Red-Wing Arrives
• The Skunk Cabbage Blooms
• The Softened Air of these Warm February Days
• The Song Sparrow Sings
• The Spring Note of the Chickadee
• The Spring Note of the Nuthatch
• The Striped Squirrel Comes Out
• The Water Bug (Gyrinus)
• The Woodchuck Ventures Out
• Walking without Gloves
• Woodpeckers Tapping

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,

Signs of the Spring, the note of the dark-eyed junco going northward

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 ©  2009-2023

A Book of the Seasons: March 14 (Early ice-out on Walden)

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

March 14

Ice the next moment 

is as perfect water as if

melted a million years.

March 14, 1860

Rain, rain, rain; but even this is fair weather after so much snow. The ice on Walden has now for some days looked white like snow, the surface being softened by the sun. I see a flock of blackbirds and hear their conqueree. The ground is mostly bare now. Again I hear the chickadee's spring note. March 14, 1852

High winds, growing colder and colder, ground stiffening again. My ears have not been colder the past winter . . . March is rightly famous for its winds. March 14, 1853

Threatening rain after clear morning.  Great concert of song sparrows in willows and alders along Swamp Bridge Brook by river. Alder scales are visibly loosened, their lower edges (i. e. as they hang) showing a line of yellowish or greenish.. . . P. M. — To Great Meadows. Raw thickening mists, as if preceding rain . . . From within the house at 5.30 p. m. I hear the loud honking of geese, throw up the window, and see a large flock in disordered harrow flying more directly north or even northwest than usual. Raw, thick, misty weather. March 14, 1854

Three inches of snow in the morning, and it snows a little more during the day, with occasional gleams of sunshine. Winter back again in prospect, and I see a few sparrows, probably tree sparrows, in the yard. March 14, 1855

Quite warm. Thermometer 46° . . . As I return by the old Merrick Bath Place, on the river,—for I still travel everywhere on the middle of the river, — the setting sun falls on the osier row toward the road and attracts my attention. They certainly look brighter now and from this point than I have noticed them before this year, — greenish and yellowish below and reddish above, — and I fancy the sap fast flowing in their pores. Yet I think that on a close inspection I should find no change. Nevertheless, it is, on the whole, perhaps the most springlike sight I have seen. March 14, 1856

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 . . . 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. March 14, 1857

I think I have seen many more tracks of skunks within two or three weeks than all the winter before; as if they were partially dormant here in the winter.  March 14, 1858

I see a Fringilla hyemalis, the first bird, perchance, — unless one hawk, – which is an evidence of spring . . . It flits past with a rattling or grating chip, showing its two white tail-feathers.The sleighing which began the 4th of March is now done, the only sleighing since the winter of ’56–7. March 14, 1858

I see a large flock of grackles searching for food along the water's edge . . .It must be something just washed up that they are searching for, for the water has just risen and is still rising fast. . . . The river is still rising. It is open [?] and generally over the meadows. The meadow ice is rapidly breaking up. Great cakes half a dozen rods long are drifted down against the bridges. March 14, 1859

The Peterboro Hills are covered with snow, though this neighborhood is bare. We thus see winter retiring for some time after she has left us, commonly. March 14, 1860

I am surprised to find Walden almost entirely open . . . I may say it opens to-morrow. I have not observed it to open before before the 23d of March. [March 19, 1856, it was twenty-six inches thick! !] . . . No sooner has the ice of Walden melted than the wind begins to play in dark ripples over the surface of the virgin water . . . Ice dissolved is the next moment as perfect water as if it had been melted a million years . . . What if our moods could dissolve thus completely? . . . It seems as if it must rejoice in its own newly acquired fluidity, as it affects the beholder with joy. Often the March winds have no chance to ripple its face at all. March 14, 1860

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Ice-out 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Mountains in the Horizon

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  the Osier in Winter and early Spring

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:

 Insects appear

Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

The Note of the Dark-eyed Junco Going Northward

The Song Sparrow Sings

The Red-Wing Arrives

The Spring Note of the Chickadee

Geese Overhead

The Grackle Arrives

Skunks Active

March is famous for its Winds

Bright Blue Water

*****

This pond never breaks up so soon as the others in this neighborhood, 

on account both of its greater depth and its having no stream passing through it to melt or wear away the ice. I never knew it to open in the course of a winter, not excepting that of ’52–3, which gave the ponds so severe a trial. It commonly opens about the first of April, a week or ten days later than Flint’s Pond and Fair-Haven, beginning to melt on the north side and in the shallower parts where it began to freeze. It indicates better than any water hereabouts the absolute progress of the season, being least affected by transient changes of temperature . . . 

On the 13th of March, after I had heard the bluebird, song-sparrow, and red-wing, the ice was still nearly a foot thick. As the weather grew warmer it was not sensibly worn away by the water, nor broken up and floated off as in rivers, but, though it was completely melted for half a rod in width about the shore, the middle was merely honey-combed and saturated with water, so that you could put your foot through it when six inches thick; but by the next day evening, perhaps, after a warm rain followed by fog, it would have wholly disappeared, all gone off with the fog, spirited away. One year I went across the middle only five days before it disappeared entirely.In 1845 Walden was first completely open on the 1st of April; in ’46, the 25th of March; in ’47, the 8th of April; in ’51, the 28th of March; in ’52, the 18th of April; in ’53, the 23d of March; in ’54, about the 7th of April.

Walden

March 14, 2022

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

March 13 <<<<< March 14  >>>>> March 15

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 14

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/hdt14March

March 14. The first bird of spring shows two white tail feathers. Slate-colored junco.

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

Journal, March 14, 1852:

Again I hear the chickadee's spring note. See note to March 10, 1852 ("Hear the phoebe note of the chickadee to-day for the first time. , , , [T]hey too have become spring birds; they have changed their note. Even they feel the influence of spring.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

 Journal, March 14, 1853:

Repairing my boat. See February 24, 1857 ("Get my boat out the cellar."); February 26, 1857 ("Paint the bottom of my boat"); March 3, 1860 ("I should have launched my boat ere this if it had been ready. "); March 8, 1855 ("This morning I got my boat out of the cellar and turned it up in the yard to let the seams open before I calk it."); March 9, 1855 ("Painted the bottom of my boat."); March 15, 1854 ("Paint my boat."); March 16, 1859 ("Launch my boat and sail to Ball's Hill"); March 16, 1860 ("As soon as I can get it painted and dried, I launch my boat and make my first voyage for the year up or down the stream, on that element from which I have been debarred for three months and a half.") See also December 5, 1856 ("I love to have the river closed up for a season and a pause put to my boating, to be obliged to get my boat in. I shall launch it again in the spring with so much more pleasure. I love best to have each thing in its season only, and enjoy doing without it at all other times.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Boat in. Boat out.

Journal, March 14, 1854:

Great concert of song sparrows by river. Hardly hear a distinct strain. See March 11, 1854 ("On Tuesday, the 7th, I heard the first song sparrow chirp, and saw it flit silently from alder to alder. This pleasant morning after three days' rain and mist, they generally forthburst into sprayey song from the low trees along the river. The developing of their song is gradual but sure, like the expanding of a flower. This is the first song I have heard."); See March 18, 1852 ("I hear the song sparrow's simple strain, most genuine herald of the spring.”) See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)

I hear the loud honking of geese throw up the window, and see a large flock in disordered harrow . . .. Raw, thick, misty weather. See March 10, 1854 ("We always have much of this rainy, drizzling, misty weather in early spring, after which we expect to hear geese."); March 24, 1859 ("How commonly they are seen in still rainy weather like this! ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring, Geese Overhead

 Journal, March 14, 1855:

Rice tells me that a great many young white pines in a swamp of his in Sudbury have been barked. See March 14, 1857 ("The maples, apple trees, etc., have been barked by the ice.")

Journal, March 14, 1856:

One red maple limb was moistened by sap trickling along the bark. . . Where the sap had dried on the bark, shining and sticky, it tasted quite sweet. See March 15, 1856 ("Put a spout in the red maple of yesterday, and hang a pail beneath to catch the sap.”) See also February 21, 1857 (" The earliest sap I made to flow last year was March 14th."); March 4, 1852 (I see where a maple has been wounded the sap is flowing out. Now, then, is the time to make sugar."); March 5, 1852 ("As I sit under their boughs, looking into the sky, I suddenly see the myriad black dots of the expanded buds against the sky. Their sap is flowing.”); March 7, 1855 ("To-day, as also three or four days ago, I saw a clear drop of maple sap on a broken red maple twig, which tasted very sweet.")

The blacksmith of Sudbury has two otter skins taken in that town. See note to January 21, 1853 ("Otter are very rare here now. I have not heard of any killed here abouts for twenty or thirty years till, within two years, two or three of them.")

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.")

Journal, March 14, 1858:

This past unusual winter. See March 1, 1858 ("We have just had a winter with absolutely no sleighing, which I do not find that any one distinctly remembers the like of."); January 23, 1858 ("The wonderfully mild and pleasant weather continues. The ground has been bare since the 11th. . . .I have not been able to walk up the North Branch this winter, nor along the channel of the South Branch at any time")

A Fringilla hyemalis, the first bird which is an evidence of spring, now getting back earlier than our permanent summer residents. See March 15, 1854 ("Hear on the alders by the river the lill lill lill lill of the first F. hyemalis, mingled with song sparrows and tree sparrows."); March 18, 1857 ("I hear the chill-lill or tchit-a-tchit of the slate-colored sparrow, and see it"); March 20, 1852 ("And now, within a day or two, I have noticed the chubby slate-colored snowbird. . . and I drive the flocks before me on the railroad causeway as I walk. It has two white feathers in its tail."); March 20, 1855 ("Four or five song sparrows are flitting along amid the willows by the waterside. Probably they came yesterday with the bluebirds. At my landing I hear the F. hyemalis, in company with a few tree sparrows. They take refuge from the cold wind,. . . and there plume themselves with puffed-up feathers"); March 28, 1854 ("A flock of hyemalis drifting from a wood over a field incessantly for four or five minutes, — thousands of them, notwithstanding the cold.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis)

~According to Thoreau's observations, the dark-eyed junco arrives in Concord in early spring on its way north to breed and returns in early fall, but does not over-winter. See October 5, 1857 ( "It is evident that some phenomena which belong only to spring and autumn here, lasted through the summer in that latitude [Maine], as. . .the myrtle-bird and F. hyemalis which breed there, but only transiently visit us in spring and fall.") In June 1858 he discovers them nesting on Modadanock. June 2, 1858 (“It is the prevailing bird now up there, i.e. on the summit. They are commonly said to go to the fur countries to breed . . . The ancestors of this bird had evidently perceived on their flight northward that here was a small piece of arctic region, containing all the conditions they require. . . They discerned arctic isles sprinkled in our southern sky.”). 

I think I have seen many more tracks of skunks within two or three weeks than all the winter before. See February 24, 1857 (" I have seen the probings of skunks for a week or more.. . .They are very busy these nights."); February 26, 1860 ("For a day or two past I have seen in various places the small tracks apparently of skunks. They appear to come out commonly in the warmer weather in the latter part of February"); March 6, 1854 ("I see . . . what looks like the first probing of the skunk."); March 10, 1854 ("Its track is small, round, showing the nails, a little less than an inch in diameter, alternate five or six inches by two or two and a half, sometimes two feet together. . . .I have no doubt they have begun to probe already where the ground permits, — or as far as it does. But what have they eat all winter? ")

Journal, March 14, 1859:

The cowslip in pitcher has fairly blossomed to-day. See March 5, 1859 ("The cowslip there Well Meadow] is very prominently flower-budded, lifting its yellow flower-buds above water in one place. The leaves are quite inconspicuous when they first come up, being rolled up tightly."); March 24, 1855 ("It is too cold to think of those signs of spring which I find recorded under this date last year. The earliest signs of spring in vegetation noticed thus far are the maple sap, the willow catkins, grass on south banks, and perhaps cowslip in sheltered places") ; March 26, 1857 ("The buds of the cowslip are very yellow, and the plant is not observed a rod off, it lies so low and close to the surface of the water in the meadow. It may bloom and wither there several times before villagers discover or suspect it"); March 27, 1855 ("Am surprised to see the cowslip so forward, showing so much green, in E. Hubbard’s Swamp, in the brook, where it is sheltered from the winds. The already expanded leaves rise above the water. If this is a spring growth, it is the most forward herb I have seen"); April 8, 1856 ("There, in that slow, muddy brook near the head of Well Meadow, within a few rods of its source, where it winds amid the alders, which shelter the plants somewhat, while they are open enough now to admit the sun, I find two cowslips in full bloom, shedding pollen") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau; Signs of Spring: the Cowslip

Journal, March 14, 1860:

I have not observed Walden to open before before the 23d of March. [March 19, 1856, it was twenty-six inches thick! !] See March 14, 1852 ("The ice on Walden has now for some days looked white like snow"); Walden, Chapter 17 (Spring) (" It commonly opens about the first of April, a week or ten days later than Flint's Pond and Fair Haven, beginning to melt on the north side and in the shallower parts where it began to freeze."); Walden ("In 1845 Walden was first completely open on the 1st of April;

• in '46, the 25th of March;
• in '47, the 8th of April;
• in '51, the 28th of March;
• in '52, the 18th of April;
• in '53, the 23rd of March;
• in '54, about the 7th of April."
•  [In Thoreau’s records, ice out occurred as early as March 15 and as late as April 18])

Fair Haven Pond is wholly clear, on an average, two or three days before Walden. See March 26, 1860 ("Fair Haven Pond may be open by the 20th of March, as this year, or not till April 13 as in '56, or twenty-three days later.")

No sooner has the ice of Walden melted than

the wind begins to

play in dark ripples over

the virgin water.

 See . March 27, 1851 ("Walden is two-thirds broken up. It will probably be quite open by to-morrow night"); April 19, 1852 ("Walden is clear of ice. The ice left it yesterday, then, the 18th.; ")March 20, 1853 ("It is glorious to behold the life and joy of this ribbon of water sparkling in the sun. The wind ... raises a myriad brilliant sparkles on the bare face of the pond, an expression of glee, of youth, of spring, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it and of the sands on its shore. It is the contrast between life and death. There is the difference between winter and spring. The bared face of the pond sparkles with joy."); April 9, 1854 ("I am surprised to find Walden completely open. When did it open? According to all accounts, it must have been between the 6th and 9th."); March 31, 1855 ("Yesterday the earth was simple to barrenness, and dead, —bound out. Out-of-doors there was nothing but the wind and the withered grass and the cold though sparkling blue water, and you were driven in upon yourself. Now you would think that there was a sudden awakening in the very crust of the earth, as if flowers were expanding and leaves putting forth... We feel as if we had obtained a new lease of life. Looking from the Cliffs I see that Walden is open to-day first."); April 18, 1856 ("Walden is open entirely to-day for the first time, owing to the rain of yesterday and evening. I have observed its breaking up of different years commencing in ’45, and the average date has been April 4th."); March 29, 1857 ("Walden open, say to-day, though there is still a little ice in the deep southern bay and a very narrow edging along the southern shore."); March 28, 1858 ("Walden is open. When? On the 20th it was pretty solid. C. sees a very little ice in it to-day, but probably it gets entirely free to-night."); March 29, 1859 ("Driving rain and southeast wind, etc. Walden is first clear after to-day.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-out. In Thoreau’s records, March 14th was the earliest ice out; April 18th was the latest with the average date April 4th. From 1995 to 2015,  ice out ranged from Jan. 29 (!) to  April 12 with the median ice out date March 21.

March 14

The first bird of spring

shows two white tail feathers.

Slate-colored junco.

March 14, 1858

 

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