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, 2022
There are no tracks about the stump, for they are not abroad by day, i.e. since the last of this snow, but probably there will be tracks to-morrow morning. Thus it is generally. If it ceases snowing in the morning, you see few, if any, tracks in your walk, but the next morning many.
It is the first and last snows - especially the last - that blind us most, when the sun is most powerful and our eyes are unused to them.
I observe the tracks of sparrows leading to every little sprig of blue-curls amid the other weeds which (its seemingly empty pitchers) rises above the snow. There seems, however, to be a little seed left in them. This, then, is reason enough why these withered stems still stand, – that they may raise these granaries above the snow for the use of the snowbirds.
That ice of February has destroyed almost the whole of Charles Hubbard’s young red maple swamp in front of the Hollowell place. Full an acre of thrifty young maples, as well as alders and birches four to ‘seven feet high, is completely destroyed, being pulled and broken down (broken near the ground) as the ice sank after the water went down. It is all flat, and looks at a little distance as if one had gone through with a bush-whack and done his work faithfully.
R. Rice tells me that a great many young white pines in a swamp of his in Sudbury have been barked, the bark rubbed down several inches completely bare by the ice.
Thus the river from time to time asserts its authority over its swamps to a great distance.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 14, 1855
Thus the river from time to time asserts its authority over its swamps to a great distance.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 14, 1855
Winter back again in prospect, and I see a few sparrows, probably tree sparrows, in the yard. See February 9, 1855 ("Tree sparrows, two or three only at once, come into the yard, the first I have distinguished this winter. I was so sure this storm would bring snowbirds into the yard that I went to the window at ten to look for them, and there they were."); April 10, 1854 ("How sure a rain is to bring the tree sparrows into the yard, to sing sweetly, canary-like!"); April 27, 1855 ("I hear the sweet warble of a tree sparrow in the yard."); May 4, 1855 ("See no gulls, nor F. hyemalis nor tree sparrows now."); May 5, 1854 ("Have not observed a tree sparrow for four or five days.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Tree Sparrow
At one of the holes under the stump of March 7th, caught a Mus leucopus (deer mouse). See March 7, 1855 ("Saw, about a hemlock stump on the hillside north of the largest Andromeda Pond, very abundant droppings of some kind of mice, on that common green moss . . . They must have fed very extensively on this moss the past winter."); February 20, 1855 ("It [Mus leucopus ] is a very pretty and neat little animal for a mouse, with its wholesome reddish - brown sides distinctly bounding on its pure white belly, neat white feet , large slate - colored ears which suggest circumspection and timidity, — ready to earth itself on the least sound of danger, long tail, and numerous whiskers.) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse
These granaries above the snow for the use of the snowbirds. See December 4, 1856 ("How many thousand acres are there now of pitchered blue-curls and ragged wormwood rising above the shallow snow? The granary of the birds."); December 14, 1851 ("The now dry and empty but clean-washed cups of the blue-curls spot the half snow-covered grain-fields. Where lately was a delicate blue flower, now all the winter are held up these dry chalices!"); December 14, 1852 ("The dried chalices of the Rhexia Virginica stand above the snow, and the cups of the blue-curls."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blue-Curls
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,")
Three inches of snow,
winter again in prospect –
sparrows in the yard.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Late snows blind us most.
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-550314
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