Get a glimpse of a hawk, the first of the season.

March 8. 

P. M. - To Hill. 

When I cut a white pine twig the crystalline sap instantly exudes. How long has it been thus?

Get a glimpse of a hawk, the first of the season. 

The tree sparrows sing a little on this still sheltered and sunny side of the hill, but not elsewhere. 

A partridge goes off from amid the pitch pines. It lifts each wing so high above its back and flaps so low, and withal so rapidly, that they present the appearance of a broad wheel, almost a revolving sphere, as it whirs off like a cannon-ball shot from a gun. 

Minott told me again the reason why the bushes were coming in so fast in the river meadows. Now that the mower takes nothing stronger than molasses and water, he darsn’t meddle with anything bigger than a pipe-stem.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 8, 1857

. . .the crystalline sap instantly exudes. . . .See March 9, 1855 ("bedewed with crystal drops of turpentine, . . . each one reflecting the world, colorless as light, like drops of dew heaven-distilled and trembling to their fall.")March 9, 1855

Get a glimpse of a hawk, the first of the season. See February 16, 1854 ("See two large hawks circling over the woods by Walden, hunting, — the first I have seen since December 15th."); March 15, 1856  ("Hear two hawks scream. There is something truly March-like in it, like a prolonged blast or whistling of the wind . . ."); March 15, 1860("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."); March 19, 1855 ("I see a hawk circling over a small maple grove through this calm air, ready to pounce on the first migrating sparrow that may have arrived. "); March 29, 1854 ("See two marsh hawks, white on rump . . . A hen-hawk, - two - circling over Cliffs."); March 30, 1853("The motions of a hawk correcting the flaws in the wind by raising his shoulder from time to time, are much like those of a leaf yielding to them. For the little hawks are hunting now. You have not to sit long on the Cliffs before you see one.")

It whirs off like a cannon-ball shot from a gun. See April 22, 1852 (" Our dog sends off a partridge with a whir, far across the open field and the river, like a winged bullet."); January 31, 1855 (".At length, on some signal which I did not perceive, they go with a whir, as if shot, off over the bushes."); December 14, 1855 ("They shoot off swift and steady . . .whirs off like a cannon-ball shot from a gun."); September 18, 1857 ("We started a pack of grouse, which went off with a whir like cannon-balls."). See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge.