Not cold; sky somewhat overcast.
One of these pigweeds in the yard lasts the snow-birds all winter, and after every new storm they re-visit it. How inexhaustible their granary!
I see where the squirrels have been eating the pitch pine cones since the last snow.
The tracks of partridges are more remarkable in this snow than usual, it is so light, being at the same time a foot deep.
In one place, when alighting, the primary quills, five of them, have marked the snow for a foot.
I see where many have dived into the snow, apparently last night, on the side of a shrub oak hollow. In four places they have passed quite underneath it for more than a foot; in one place, eighteen inches.
They appear to have dived or burrowed into it, then passed along a foot or more underneath and squatted there, perhaps, with their heads out, and have invariably left much dung at the end of this hole.
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| February 17, 2013 |
I found as many as twenty or thirty places where partridges had lodged in the snow, apparently the last night or the night before . You could see commonly where their bodies had first struck the snow and furrowed it for a foot or two , and six inches wide, then entered and gone underneath two feet and rested at the further end, where the manure is left . Is it not likely that they remain quite under the snow there, and do not put their heads out till ready to start? In many places they walked along before they went under the snow. They do not go under deep, and the gallery they make is mostly filled up behind them, leaving only a thin crust above. Then invariably , just beyond this resting-place, you could see the marks made by their wings when they took their departure. These distinct impressions made by their wings, in the pure snow, so common on all hands , though the bird that made it is gone and there is no trace beyond , affect me like some mystic Oriental symbol, — the winged globe or what-not , as if made by a spirit . In some places you would see a furrow and hollow in the snow where there was no track for rods around, as if a large snowball or a cannon-ball had struck it, where apparently the birds had not paused in their flight. It is evidently a regular thing with them thus to lodge in the snow.
I scared one from its hole only half a rod in front of me now at 11 A.M.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 13, 1855
I found as many as twenty or thirty places where partridges had lodged in the snow. See February 11, 1855 ("The dog scares up some partridges out of the soft snow under the apple trees in the Tommy Wheeler orchard"); February 12, 1855 ( I see at Warren’s Crossing where, last night perhaps, some partridges rested in this light, dry, deep snow. They must have been almost completely buried. They have left their traces at the bottom. They are such holes as would be made by crowding their bodies in backwards, slanting-wise, while perhaps their heads were left out."); February 16, 1855 ("I find in the leavings of the partridges numerous ends of twigs . . .It is surprising what a quantity of this wood they swallow with their buds. What a hardy bird, born amid the dry leaves, of the same color with them, that, grown up, lodges in the snow and lives on buds and twigs!") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge
One of these pigweeds
lasts the snow-birds all winter --
after every storm.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Partridges in the snow
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 © 2009-2025
https://tinyurl.com/hdt-550213
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