Two ducks on open water.

March 12. 

6.30 A. M. — To Andromeda Ponds. 

Lesser redpolls still. Elbridge Hayden saw a bluebird yesterday. 

P. M. — To Great Meadows. 

Comes out pleasant after a raw forenoon with a flurry of snow, already gone.

Two ducks in river, good size, white beneath with black heads, as they go over. 

They first rise some distance down-stream, and fly by on high, reconnoitering me, and I first see them on wing; then settle a quarter of a mile above by a long slanting flight, at last opposite the swimming-elm below Flint’s. 

I come on up the bank with the sun in my face; start them again. Again they fly down-stream by me on high, turn and come round back by me again with outstretched heads, and go up to the Battle-Ground before they alight. 

Thus the river is no sooner fairly open than they are back again, — before I have got my boat launched, and long before the river has worn through Fair Haven Pond. 

I think I hear a quack or two. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 12, 1855

Two ducks in river, good size, white beneath with black heads, as they go over. See March 12, 1859 ("See two ducks flying over Ministerial Swamp."); March 16, 1855 (“[S]care up two large ducks just above the bridge. . . . I think it the goosander or sheldrake.”); March 17, 1860 ("I see a large flock of sheldrakes, which have probably risen from the pond, flying with great force and rapidity over my head in the woods. Now I hear the whistling of their wings, and in a moment they are lost in the horizon. Like swift propellers of the air.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, Ducks Afar, Sailing on the Meadow

Two ducks on river

before I have launched my boat –

first open water.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Two ducks on open water.

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