I see the water looking blue on the meadows.

March 5.

Channing , talking with Minott the other day about his health, said, "I suppose you'd like to die now." "No," said Minott, "I've toughed it through the winter, and I want to stay and hear the bluebirds once more."

The patches of bare ground grow larger and larger, of snow less and less; even after a night you see a difference. It is a clear morning with some wind beginning to rise, and for the first time I see the water looking blue on the meadows.

See a small blackish caterpillar on the snow. Where do they come from? 

And crows, as I think, migrating northeasterly. They come in loose, straggling flocks, about twenty to each, commonly silent, a quarter to a half a mile apart, till four flocks have passed, perhaps more. Methinks I see them going southwest in the fall.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 5, 1854

Said Minott,  "I've toughed it through the winter, and I want to stay and hear the bluebirds once more." See March 23, 1854 ("When I asked if he would like to go to Boston, he answered he was going to another Boston."); January 28, 1858 (""He thought that the back of the winter was broken, — if it had any this year, — but he feared such a winter would kill him too.); and note to October 4, 1851 ("Minott is, perhaps, the most poetical farmer — who most realizes to me the poetry of the farmer's life — that I know . . . He loves to walk in a swamp in windy weather and hear the wind groan through the pines.")

And for the first time I see the water looking blue on the meadows. See March 2, 1860 (“he great phenomenon these days is the sparkling blue water, — a richer blue than the sky ever is. ”); April 5, 1856 ("The first sight of the blue water in the spring is exhilarating."); April 9, 1856 ("The water on the meadows now, looking with the sun, is a far deeper and more exciting blue than the heavens.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blue waters in Spring

 
See a small blackish caterpillar on the snow. Where do they come from? See March 8, 1855 ("I see of late more than before of the fuzzy caterpillars, both black and reddish—brown.”)

And crows, as I think, migrating northeasterly. They come in loose, straggling flocks . . . Methinks I see them going southwest in the fall.  See March 5, 1859 (" I see a crow going north or northeast, high over Fair Haven Hill, and, two or three minutes after, two more, and so many more at intervals of a few minutes. This is apparently their spring movement."); March 7, 1855 ("Did I not see crows flying northeasterly yesterday toward night? "); October 6, 1860 (The crow . . . hovers and circles about in flocks in an irregular and straggling manner, filling the air over your head and sporting in it as if at home here. They often burst up above the woods where they were perching, like the black fragments of a powder-mill just exploded.”); October 20, 1859 ("I see a large and very straggling flock of crows fly southwest from over the hill behind Bull's and contending with the strong and cold northwest wind. This is the annual phenomenon. They are on their migrations."); November 1, 1853 ("As I return, I notice crows flying southwesterly in a very long straggling flock, of which I see probably neither end.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow