A very warm and pleasant day -- a new season has arrived.

March 30.

A very warm and pleasant day (at 2 P.M., 63° and rising).

The afternoon so warm -- wind southwest -- you take off coat. The streets are quite dusty for the first time.

The earth is more dry and genial, and you seem to be crossing the threshold between winter and summer.  As I walk the street I realize that a new season has arrived.

It is time to begin to leave your greatcoat at home, to put on shoes instead of boots and feel lightfooted.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 30, 1860

It is time to begin to leave your greatcoat at home, to put on shoes instead of boots and feel light-footed. See . March 31, 1855 ("I am uncomfortably warm, gradually unbutton both my coats, and wish that I had left the outside one at home");  April 17, 1855 ("It is worth the while to walk so free and light, having got off both boots and greatcoat.”). Compare November 28, 1850 ("Within a day or two the walker finds gloves to be comfortable, and begins to think of an outside coat and of boots."); December 3, 1856 ("The man who has bought his boots feels like him who has got in his winter's wood.”); December 6, 1859 ("hat is an era, when, in the beginning of the winter, you change from the shoes of summer to the boots of winter.")

The Brown Season

March 26. 

A pleasant day. 

I think I heard the last lesser redpolls near the beginning of this month; say about 7th. 

The top of a white maple swamp had a reddish tinge at a distance day before yesterday. Was it owing to any expansion of the buds?

2 P. M. — Thermometer 4 [sic]. To Second Division Brook. 

Though there is very considerable greenness on the warmest southerly banks, there is no change perceptible in the aspect of the earth's surface generally, or at a little distance. It is as bare and dead a brown as ever. 

When the sun comes out of a cold slate-colored cloud, these windy days, the bleached and withered pastures reflect its light so brightly that they are almost white. They are a pale tawny, or say fawn-color, without any redness.

The brown season extends from about the 6th of March ordinarily into April. 

The first part of it, when the frost is rapidly coming out and transient snows are melting, the surface of the earth is saturated with moisture. The latter part is dry, the whitish-tawny pastures being parded with brown and green mosses (that commonest one) and pale-brown lecheas, which mottle it very pleasingly. This dry whitish-tawny or drab color of the fields — withered grass lit by the sun — is the color of a teamster’s coat. 

It is one of the most interesting effects of light now, when the sun, coming out of clouds, shines brightly on it. It is the fore-glow of the year. 

There is certainly a singular propriety in that color for the coat of a farmer or teamster or shepherd or hunter, who is required to be much abroad in our landscape at this season. It is in harmony with nature, and you are less conspicuous in the fields and can get nearer to wild animals for it. For this reason I am the better satisfied with the color of my hat, a drab, than with that of my companion, which is black, though his coat is of the exact tint and better than mine; but again my dusty boots harmonize better with the landscape than his black and glossy india-rubbers. 

I had a suit once in which, methinks, I could glide across the fields unperceived half a mile in front of a farmer's windows. It was such a skillful mixture of browns, dark and light properly proportioned, with even some threads of green in it by chance. It was of loose texture and about the color of a pasture with patches of withered sweet-fern and lechea. I trusted a good deal to my invisibility in it when going across lots, and many a time I was aware that to it I owed the near approach of wild animals. 

No doubt my dusty and tawny cowhides surprise the street walkers who wear patent-leather or Congress shoes, but they do not consider how absurd such shoes would be in my vocation, to thread the woods and swamps in. Why should I wear Congress who walk alone, and not where there is any congress of my kind? 

C. was saying, properly enough, the other day, as we were making our way through a dense patch of shrub oak:

 “I suppose that those villagers think that we wear these old and worn hats with holes all along the corners for oddity, but Coombs, the musquash hunter and partridge and rabbit snarer, knows better. He understands us. He knows that a new and square-cornered hat would be spoiled in one excursion through the shrub oaks.” 

The walker and naturalist does not wear a hat, or a shoe, or a coat, to be looked at, but for other uses. When a citizen comes to take a walk with me I commonly find that he is lame, — disabled by his shoeing. He is sure to wet his feet, tear his coat, and jam his hat, and the superior qualities of my boots, coat, and hat appear. 

I once went into the woods with a party for a fortnight. I wore my old and common clothes, which were of Vermont gray. They wore, no doubt, the best they had for such an occasion, of a fashionable color and quality. I thought that they were a little ashamed of me while we were in the towns. They all tore their clothes badly but myself, and I, who, it chanced, was the only one provided with needles and thread, enabled them to mend them. When we came out of the woods I was the best dressed of any of them.

One of the most interesting sights this afternoon is the color of the yellow sand in the sun at the bottom of Nut Meadow and Second Division Brooks. The yellow sands of a lonely brook seen through the rippling water, with the shadows of the ripples like films passing over it. 

By degrees you pass from heaven to earth up the trunk of the white pine. See the flash of its boughs reflecting the sun, each light or sunny above and shaded beneath, even like the clouds with their dark bases, a sort of mackerel sky of pine boughs. 

The woodchoppers are still in the woods in some places, splitting and piling at least. 

I hear that mayflowers brought from Fitchburg last Thursday (22d) have blossomed here. They are evidently much earlier than any of ours. Ours at Second Division (first lot) are under the icy snow. 

The rare juncus there is five and six inches high and red (from the cold ?) on the bare meadow, — much the most growth of anything of the kind hereabouts. Very little water; only at the cowslip. The equisetum has risen above water at first Nut Meadow crossing. 

The earliest willows are now in the gray, too advanced to be silvery, — mouse or maltese-cat color. 

The Second Division Spring is all covered with a brown floating gelatinous substance of the consistency  of frog-spawn, but with nothing like spawn visible in it. It is of irregular longish, or rather ropy, form, and is of the consistency of frog-spawn without the ova. I think it must be done with. It quite covers the surface. I also find near by a green zigzag, wormy, spawn-like substance in strings under the water, in which I feel a sort of granule, spawn-like. Can this be the excrement of any creature? Can it turn and swell to that brown and floating jelly? Are these the productions of lizards or the Rana fontinalis? 

Tried by various tests, this season fluctuates more or less. 

For example, we may have absolutely no sleighing during the year. There was none in the winter months of ’58 (only from March 4 to 14). '52 –’53 was an open winter. Or it may continue uninterrupted from the beginning of winter to the 3d of April, as in ’56, and the dependent phenomena be equally late. 

The river may be either only transiently closed, as in ’52 – 53 and '57 – 58, or it may not be open entirely (up to pond) till April 4th. 

As for cold, some years we may have as cold days in March as in any winter month. March 4, 1858, it was -14, and on the 29th, 1854, the pump froze so as to require thawing. 

The river may be quite high in March or at summer level. 

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. 

Tried by the skunk-cabbage, this may flower March 2 (‘60) or April 6 or 8 (as in ’55 and                           ’54), or some five weeks later,  — say thirty-six days. 

The bluebird may be seen February 24, as in ’50, ‘57, and ’60, or not till March 24, as in ’56, — say twenty eight days. 

The yellow-spotted tortoise may be seen February 23, as in ’57, or not till March 28, as in’ 55, — thirty-three days. 

The wood frog may be heard March 15, as this year, or not till April 13, as in ’56, — twenty-nine days. 

That is, tried by the last four phenomena, there may be about a month’s fluctuation, so that March may be said to have receded half-way into February or advanced half-way into April, i. e., it borrows half of February or half of April.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  March 26, 1860


I think I heard the last lesser redpolls near the beginning of this month. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

The top of a white maple swamp had a reddish tinge at a distance day before yesterday. Was it owing to any expansion of the buds? See March 23, 1853 (“The white maple may perhaps be said to begin to blossom to-day, — the male, — for the stamens, both anthers and filament, are conspicuous on some buds. It has opened unexpectedly, and a rich sight it is, looking up through the expanded buds to the sky.”); March 24, 1855 (“The white maple buds, too, show some further expansion methinks.”); March 25, 1854 ("White maple buds bursting, making trees look like some fruit trees with blossom-buds. "); March 27, 1857 ("The white maple is well out with its pale [?] stamens on the southward boughs, and probably began about the 24th.”)See also A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, White Maple Buds and Flowers

See the flash of its boughs reflecting the sun, each light or sunny above and shaded beneath, even like the clouds with their dark bases, a sort of mackerel sky of pine boughs. See February 16, 1859 (" I look back through the sun, this soft afternoon, to some white pine tops near Jenny Dugan’s. Their flattish boughs rest stratum above stratum like a cloud, a green mackerel sky")

I wore my old and common clothes, which were of Vermont gray. See October 16, 1859 ("As nature generally, on the advent of frost, puts on a russet and tawny dress, so is not man clad more in harmony with nature in the fall in a tawny suit or the different hues of Vermont gray?")

The skunk-cabbage may flower March 2 (‘60) or April 6 or 8 (as in ’55 and’54). See February 18, 1851 (" See the skunk-cabbage in flower.”); March 2, 1860 ("It was fairly in bloom, and probably yesterday too.. . . No doubt it may have bloomed in some places in this neighborhood in the last day or two of February this year."); March 18, 1860 (“ Skunk-cabbage, now generally and abundantly in bloom all along under Clamshell.”) March 21, 1858 (“The skunk-cabbage at Clamshell is well out, shedding pollen. The date of its flowering is very fluctuating.”); March 26, 1857 (“At Well Meadow Head, am surprised to find the skunk-cabbage in flower, . . .The first croaking frogs, the hyla, the white maple blossoms, the skunk-cabbage, and the alder’s catkins are observed about the same time.”); April 7, 1855 ("The skunk-cabbage open yesterday, — the earliest flower this season.")

The bluebird may be seen February 24, as in ’50, ‘57, and ’60, or not till March 24, as in ’56. See February 24, 1857 ("As I cross from the causeway to the hill, thinking of the bluebird, I that instant hear one's note from deep in the softened air. It is already 40°, and by noon is between 50° and 60°. As the day advances I hear more bluebirds and see their azure flakes settling on the fence-posts. Their short, rich, crispy warble curls through the air."); March 24 1856 (" Spend the forenoon on the river at the white maples. I hear a bluebird’s warble and a song sparrow’s chirp. So much partly for being out the whole forenoon. Bluebirds seen in all parts of the town to-day for first time, as I hear.") See also  A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau,  The Bluebird in Spring. 

The yellow-spotted tortoise may be seen February 23, as in '57, or not till March 28, as in ’55. See February 23, 1857 (“See two yellow-spotted tortoises in the ditch south of Trillium Wood. . . .I have seen signs of the spring.”); March 10, 1853 ("I find a yellow-spotted tortoise (Emys guttata) in the brook.”); March 18, 1854 (" C. has already seen a yellow-spotted tortoise in a ditch.”); ; March 28, 1852 (“ a yellow-spotted tortoise by the causeway side in the meadow near Hubbard's Bridge.”); March 23, 1858 (“Something stirring amid the dead leaves in the water at the bottom of a ditch., in two or three places, and presently see the back of a yellow-spotted turtle. ”); March 28, 1855 (“A yellow-spotted tortoise in a still ditch, which has a little ice also. It at first glance reminds me of a bright freckled leaf, skunk-cabbage scape, perhaps. They are generally quite still at this season, or only slowly put their heads out (of their shells).”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow-Spotted Turtle

The wood frog may be heard March 15, as this year, or not till April 13, as in ’56. See March 15, 1860  ("Am surprised to hear, from the pool behind Lee's Cliff, the croaking of the wood frog. It is all alive with them, and I see them spread out on the surface. . . . How suddenly they awake! yesterday, as it were, asleep and dormant, to-day as lively as ever they are. The awakening of the leafy woodland pools"); March 26, 1857 ("The notes of the croaking frog and the hylodes are not only contemporary with, but analogous to, the blossoms of the skunk-cabbage and white maple. "); April 13, 1856  ("As I go by the Andromeda Ponds, I hear the tut tut of a few croaking frogs.")

The yellow sands of a lonely brook seen through the rippling water, with the shadows of the ripples like films passing over it. See March 10, 1853 ("At Nut Meadow Brook . . . gazing into the eddying stream. The ripple-marks on the sandy bottom [and].the shadows of the invisible dimples reflecting prismatic colors on the bottom,") October 18, 1857 ("The shadows of these bugs on the bottom, half a dozen times as big as themselves, are very distinct and interesting, with a narrow and well-defined halo about them. , , , I also see plainly the shadows of ripples they make, which are scarcely perceptible on the surface."); August 13, 1858 ("Such endless and varied play of light and shadow is on the river bottom!")

In the dark

There is always some accident in the best things.

 
What we do best or most perfectly is only partly ours.

Without our notice      it is past.

Zphx (per H.D.T.  3/11/1859)

The flower expects the bee.

March 18.

Examining the skunk-cabbage, now generally and abundantly in bloom all along under Clamshell, I hear the hum of honeybees in the air, attracted by this flower. They circle about the bud at first hesitatingly, then alight and enter at the open door and crawl over the spadix, and reappear laden with the yellow pollen.

What a remarkable instinct it is that leads them to this flower! The first sunny and warmer day in March the honeybee leaves its home, probably a mile off, and wings its way to this warm bank. There is but one flower in bloom in the town, and this insect knows where to find it. You little think that it knows the locality of early flowers better than you. You have not dreamed of them yet. Yet it knows a spot a mile off under a warm bank-side where the skunk-cabbage is in bloom. No doubt this flower, too, has learned to expect its winged visitor knocking at its door in the spring.

I think there would be no surer way to tell when a flower has bloomed than to keep bees and watch when they first returned laden with pollen. Probably with a microscope you could tell exactly when each of the bee-frequented flowers began to bloom throughout the year.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 18, 1860

No doubt this flower, too, has learned to expect its winged visitor knocking at its door in the spring. See September 29, 1856 ("How surely . . .the bidens, on the edge of a pool, prophesy the coming of the traveller. . . that will transport their seeds on his coat."); February 19, 1854 ("The mind of the universe . . ., which we share, has been intended upon each particular object. All the wit in the world was brought to bear on each case to secure its end.”); July 29, 1853 (“The insect that comes after the honey or pollen of a plant is necessary to it and in one sense makes a part of it”)

All along under that bank I heard the hum of honeybees in the air, attracted by this flower. Especially the hum of one within a spathe sounds deep and loud. They circle about the bud at first hesitatingly, then alight and enter at the open door and crawl over the spadix, and reappear laden with the yellow pollen. What a remarkable instinct it is that leads them to this flower. . .  This is the only indigenous flower in bloom in this town at present, and probably I and my companion are the only men who have detected it this year; yet this foreign fly has left its home, probably a mile off, and winged its way to this warm bank to the only indigenous flower that has been in flower for a fortnight past . . .  There is but one indigenous flower in bloom in the town, and has been but one for sixteen days past, and probably this is the only one which the honey- bee can use, and this has only been detected hitherto by the botanist; yet this imported insect knows where to find it, and is sure to be heard near it . . .The first sunny and warmer day in March the honeybee comes forth, stretches its wings, and goes forth in search of the earliest flower . . . You see a fly come forth from its hibernaculum in your yard, stretch its wings in the sun and set forth on its flowery journey. You little think that it knows the locality of early flowers better than you. You have not dreamed of them yet. It knows a spot a mile off under a warm bank-side where the skunk-cabbage is in bloom. No doubt this flower, too, has learned to expect its winged visitor knocking at its door in the spring.

To Walden and Goose Pond.

March 17.

P. M. – To Walden and Goose Pond. 

Thermometer 56; wind south, gentle; somewhat overcast. 

There is still perhaps a half-acre of ice at the bottom of the deep south bay of Walden. Also a little at the southeast end of Goose Pond. Ripple Lake is mostly covered yet. 

I see a large flock of sheldrakes, which have probably risen from the pond, go over my head in the woods. A dozen large and compact birds flying with great force and rapidity, spying out the land, eyeing every traveller, fast and far they “steam it” on clipping wings, over field and forest, meadow and flood; now here, and you hear the whistling of their wings, and in a moment they are lost in the horizon. Like swift propellers of the air. 

Whichever way they are headed, that way their wings propel them. What health and vigor they suggest!

The life of man seems slow and puny in comparison, — reptilian. 

The cowslip leaves are now expanded. 

The rabbit and partridge can eat wood; therefore they abound and can stay here all the year. 

The leaves on the woodland floor are already getting to be dry. 

How handsome a flock of red-wings, ever changing its oval form as it advances, by the rear birds passing the others!

Was not that a marsh hawk, a slate-colored one which I saw flying over Walden Wood with long , slender, curving wings, with a diving, zigzag flight? [No doubt it was, for I see another, a brown one, the 19th.]

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 17, 1860

There is still perhaps a half-acre of ice at the bottom of the deep south bay of Walden. See note to March 14, 1860 ("I am surprised to find Walden open. There is only about an acre of ice at the southeast end . . . and a little old and firm and snowy in the bottom of the deep south bay.")

 A little ice at the southeast end of Goose Pond. See March 11, 1861 ("Goose Pond is to-day all ice.");  March 21, 1855 ("Crossed Goose Pond on ice.");  March 24, 1854 (" Goose Pond half open.")

Ripple Lake is mostly covered yet. See March 14, 1860 ("I see some dark ripples already drop and sweep over the surface of [Walden], as they will ere long over Ripple Lake and other pools in the wood."); April 9, 1859 ("We sit by the side of Little Goose Pond, which C. calls Ripple Lake or Pool, to watch the ripples on it.")

I see a large flock of sheldrakes . . .See March 16, 1854 "I see ducks afar. . . bright white breasts, etc., and black heads about same size or larger . . .Probably both sheldrakes.”); March 16, 1855 ("scare up two large ducks . . .. One very large; white beneath, breast and neck; black head and wings and aft. . . . I think it the goosander or sheldrake.");   March 23, 1859 ("As we sit there, we see coming, swift and straight, northeast along the river valley, not seeing us and therefore not changing his course, a male goosander, . . .. He looks like a paddle-wheel steamer, so oddly painted up, black and white and green, and moves along swift and straight like one."); See also Henry Thoreau, A Book of the Seasons, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

How handsome a flock of red-wings, ever changing its oval form as it advances. See March 13, 1859 (" I see a small flock of blackbirds flying over, some rising, others falling, yet all advancing together, one flock but many birds, some silent, others tchucking, — incessant alternation. This harmonious movement as in a dance, this agreeing to differ, makes the charm of the spectacle to me. One bird looks fractional, naked, like a single thread or ravelling from the web to which it belongs. Alternation! Alternation! Heaven and hell ! Here again in the flight of a bird, its ricochet motion, is that undulation observed in so many materials, as in the mackerel sky."):  March 16, 1860 ("Here is a flock of red-wings. . . . How handsome as they go by in a checker, each with a bright-scarlet shoulder!."); May 5, 1859 ("Red-wings fly in flocks yet.").

I see another, a brown one.  See April 23, 1855 ("I have seen also for some weeks occasionally a brown hawk with white rump, flying low, which I have thought the frog hawk in a different stage of plumage; but can it be at this season? and is it not the marsh hawk? . . . -- probably female hen-harrier."); October 18, 1855 ("A large brown marsh hawk comes beating the bush along the river, and ere long a slate-colored one (male), with black tips, is seen circling against a distant wood-side");

May 14, 1857 ("See a pair of marsh hawks, the smaller and lighter-colored male, with black tips to wings, and the large brown female, sailing low . . .apparently looking for frogs or the like.");. March 21, 1859 ("I see a female marsh hawk sailing and hunting over Potter's Swamp. I not only see the white rump but the very peculiar crescent-shaped curve of its wings"). See also  April 5, 1854 ("These days, when a soft west or southwest wind blows and it is truly warm, and an outside coat is oppressive, — these bring out the butterflies and the frogs, and the marsh hawks which prey on the last. Just so simple is every year.")

Black Fruit

March 16.

2 P. M. — Thermometer 55; wind slight, west by south. To Abner Buttrick's Hill. 

The buttercup radical leaves are many of them now a healthy dark green, as if they had acquired new life. I notice that such are particularly downy, and probably that enables them to endure the cold so well, like mulleins. Those and thistles and shepherd's-purse, etc., have the form of rosettes on the brown ground.

Here is a flock of red-wings. I heard one yesterday, and I see a female among these. How handsome as they go by in a checker, each with a bright-scarlet shoulder! They are not so very shy, but mute when we come near. They cover the apple trees like a black fruit.

The air is full of song sparrows and bluebirds to-day. The minister asked me yesterday: “What birds are they that make these little tinkling sounds? I haven't seen one.” Song sparrows. 

C  saw a green fly yesterday. 

Saw a flock of sheldrakes a hundred rods off, on the Great Meadows, mostly males with a few females, all intent on fishing. They were coasting along a spit of bare ground that showed itself in the middle of the meadow, sometimes the whole twelve apparently in a straight line at nearly equal distances apart, with each its head under water, rapidly coasting along back and forth, and ever and anon one, having caught something, would be pursued by the others.

It is remarkable that they find their finny prey on the middle of the meadow now, and even on the very inmost side, as I afterward saw, though the water is quite low. Of course, as soon as they are seen on the meadows there are fishes there to be caught. I never see them fish thus in the channel. Perhaps the fishes lie up there for warmth already.

I also see two gulls nearly a mile off. One stands still and erect for three quarters of an hour, or till disturbed, on a little bit of floated meadow-crust which rises above the water, — just room for it to stand on, — with its great white breast toward the wind. Then another comes flying past it, and alights on a similar perch, but which does not rise quite to the surface, so that it stands in the water. Thus they will stand for an hour, at least. They are not of handsome form, but look like great wooden images of birds, bluish-slate and white. But when they fly they are quite another creature. 

The grass is covered with gossamer to-day, though I notice no floating flocks. This, then, is a phenomenon of the first warm and calm day after the ground is bare. 

See larks about, though I have heard of them in the winter.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal , March 16, 1860

They cover the apple trees like a black fruit. See March 6, 1854 ("Hear and see the first blackbird, flying east over the Deep Cut, with a tchuck, tchuck, and finally a split whistle."); March 12, 1854 ("This is the blackbird morning. Their sprayey notes and conqueree ring with the song sparrows' jingle all along the river. Thus gradually they acquire confidence to sing."); March 19, 1855 (" I hear at last the tchuck tchuck of a blackbird and, looking up, see him flying high over the river southwesterly in great haste to reach somewhere."); March 22, 1855 ("[T]he blackbirds already sing o-gurgle ee-e-e from time to time on the top of a willow or elm or maple, but oftener a sharp, shrill whistle or a tchuck.”); April 30, 1855 ("Red-wing blackbirds now fly in large flocks, covering the tops of trees—willows, maples, apples, or oaks—like a black fruit , and keep up an incessant gurgling and whistling, — all for some purpose; what is it? ”; April 25, 1860 ("I  hear the greatest concerts of blackbirds, – red wings and crow blackbirds nowadays. . .They look like a black fruit on the trees, distributed over the top at pretty equal distances.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: The Red-Wing Arrives

Saw a flock of sheldrakes a hundred rods off, on the Great Meadows. See March 16, 1854 ("I see ducks afar, sailing on the meadow, leaving a long furrow in the water behind them.Watch them at leisure without scaring them, with my glass; observe their free and undisturbed motions. They dive and are gone some time, and come up a rod off. At first I see but one, then, a minute after, three. "); March 16, 1855 ("Scare up two large ducks . . . I think it the goosander or sheldrake. ") See also March 5, 1857 ("I scare up six male sheldrakes, with their black heads, in the Assabet,—the first ducks I have seen"); March 12, 1855 ("Two ducks in river, good size, white beneath with black heads, as they go over."); March 22, 1858 ("We go along to the pitch pine hill off Abner Buttrick's, and, finding a sheltered and sunny place, we watch the ducks from it with our glass. There are not only gulls, but about forty black ducks and as many sheldrakes . . . I see two of these very far off on a bright-blue bay where the waves are running high. They are two intensely white specks, which yet you might mistake for the foaming crest of waves. Now one disappears, but soon is seen again, and then its companion is lost in like manner, having dived.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, Ducks Afar, Sailing on the Meadow and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Goosander, Merganser)

Thus they will stand for an hour. . . like great wooden images of birds. See March 18, 1855 ("Like a wooden image of a bird he stands there, heavy to look at; head, breast, beneath, and rump pure white; slate-colored wings tipped with black and extending beyond the tail,— the herring gull.")

But when they fly they are quite another creature. See March 29, 1854 ("A gull of pure white, - a wave of foam in the air. How simple and wave-like its outline, two curves, - all wing - like a birch scale."); see also March 22, 1858 ("They look bright-white, like snow on the dark-blue water. It is surprising how far they can be seen, how much light they reflect, and how conspicuous they are")

To Lee's Cliff.

March 15. 

A hen-hawk sails away from the wood southward. 
These hawks, as usual, began to be common about the first of March, showing that they were returning from their winter quarters.

I get a very fair sight of it sailing overhead. What a perfectly regular and neat outline it presents! An easily recognized figure anywhere. How neat and all compact this hawk! Its wings and body are all one piece, the wings apparently the greater part, while its little body is a mere fullness hung between its wings as it soars higher.

Some, seeing and admiring the neat figure of the hawk sailing two or three hundred feet above their heads, wish to get nearer and hold it in their hands, not realizing that they can see it best at this distance, better now, perhaps, than ever they will again.

H.D.Thoreau, Journal, March 15, 1860

These hawks, as usual, began to be common about the first of March, showing that they were returning from their winter quarters. . . . What a perfectly regular and neat outline it presents! An easily recognized figure anywhere. See March 23, 1859 (“[W]e saw a hen-hawk perch on the topmost plume of one of the tall pines at the head of the meadow. Soon another appeared, probably its mate, but we looked in vain for a nest there. It was a fine sight, their soaring above our heads, presenting a perfect outline and, as they came round, showing their rust-colored tails with a whitish rump, or, as they sailed away from us, that slight teetering or quivering motion of their dark-tipped wings seen edgewise, now on this side, now that, by which they balanced and directed themselves.”) 

What HDT calls the “hen-hawk” is the red-tailed hawk. ~ zphx

I am surprised to find Walden open

March 14.

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 melted a million years. 

What if our moods could dissolve thus completely?

2 P. M. — Thermometer 39. Overcast, with a flurry of snow and a little rain, till 4. 30 P. M.

To Walden and Cliffs.

I am surprised to find Walden almost entirely open. There is only about an acre of ice at the southeast end, north of the Lincoln bound, drifted there, and a little old and firm and snowy in the bottom of the deep south bay. 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! !] But Fair Haven Pond has not yet a channel through it, nor half through, though it is wholly clear, on an average, two or three days before Walden.

However, it is clear enough why Walden has broken up thus early this year. It does not ordinarily freeze till near the end of December (average of twelve observations , December 25th º), while Fair Haven Pond freezes about December 2d. But this past winter our cold weather was mostly confined to December, which was remarkable for its uniform cold, while January and February were very open and pleasant. So that Fair Haven Pond, having more than three weeks the start, and that being almost all the cold weather that we had, froze much the thickest. Walden did not freeze so thick as usual. If we have an average winter up to January, but a particularly warm one afterward, Walden will break up early, not having had any chance to freeze thick.

You must look sharp to see if the pond is wholly clear of ice. Standing on the northerly shore, I did not detect any, but, having ascended the peak, I saw a field of an acre which had drifted to the southeast corner, beside some in the deep south bay. As I stand there, I see some dark ripples already drop and sweep over the surface of the pond, as they will ere long over Ripple Lake and other pools in the wood.

No sooner has the ice of Walden melted than the wind begins to play in dark ripples over the surface of the virgin water. It is affecting to see Nature so tender, however old, and wearing none of the wrinkles of age. Ice dissolved is the next moment as perfect water as if it had been melted a million years.

To see that which was lately so hard and immovable now so soft and impressible! What if our moods could dissolve thus completely? It is like a flush of life in a cheek that was dead. 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.

I see on the peak several young English cherry trees six or eight feet high, evidently planted by birds and growing well. I have seen a pretty large one formerly on Fair Haven Hill. If the stone falls in a sprout - land like this they may attain to be sizable trees . These grew nearly a foot last year and look quite healthy . The bird must have brought the stone far to this locality.

Every craftsman looks at his own objects with peculiar eyes. I thought of this on seeing these young cherry trees and remembering how I used to distinguish the erect and lusty shoots when I cultivated a small nursery, for budding. One eye will mark how much the twigs grew last year, another the lichens on the trunk.

Standing on the Cliffs, I see that the young oaks on the plain beneath now look thin-leaved, showing the upright gray stems. The steady March winds have blown off so many leaves.

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.

I see that the Indians have got their black ash and made a basket or two, the large kind, — one a bushel basket, the rim of white oak, — and they have hung them on the trees, as if to exhibit their wares. May not that size and style of basket be an Indian invention?


H.. D. Thoreau, 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.")

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. See 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 ealiest, ice out.  April 18th  was the latest with  the average date April 4th.   From 1995 to 2015, in contrast  ice out ranged from Jan. 29 in the record-breaking warm winter of 2012 to as late as April 12. The median ice out date over that period was March 21.

Snows this forenoon, whitening the ground again

March 9.

As I recall it, February began cold, with some dry and fine driving snow, making those shell-shaped drifts behind walls, and some days after were some wild but low drifts on the meadow ice. I walked admiring the winter sky and clouds.

March began warm, and I admired the ripples made by the gusts on the dark-blue meadow flood, and the light-tawny color of the earth, and was on the alert to hear the first birds. 

For a few days past it has been generally colder and rawer, and the ground has been whitened with snow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 9, 1860

On the alert to hear the first birds. See April 9, 1856 ("You have only to come forth each morning to be surely advertised of each newcomer into these broad meadows. [A] cunning ear detects the arrival of each new species of bird.“)