They are now getting back earlier than our permanent summer residents.

March 14. 

P. M. – I see a Fringilla hyemalis, the first bird, perchance, — unless one hawk, – which is an evidence of spring, though they lingered with us the past unusual winter, at least till the 19th of January. They are now getting back earlier than our permanent summer residents. It flits past with a rattling or grating chip, showing its two white tail-feathers. 

The sleighing which began the 4th of March is now done, the only sleighing since the winter of ’56–7. 

I hear that many cherry-birds have been seen. 

I think I have seen many more tracks of skunks within two or three weeks than all the winter before; as if they were partially dormant here in the winter, and came out very early, i. e., perhaps some of them are more or less dormant.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 14, 1858

This past unusual winter. See March 1, 1858 ("We have just had a winter with absolutely no sleighing, which I do not find that any one distinctly remembers the like of."); January 23, 1858 ("The wonderfully mild and pleasant weather continues. The ground has been bare since the 11th. . . .I have not been able to walk up the North Branch this winter, nor along the channel of the South Branch at any time")

A Fringilla hyemalis, the first bird which is an evidence of spring, now getting back earlier than our permanent summer residents. See March 15, 1854 ("Hear on the alders by the river the lill lill lill lill of the first F. hyemalis, mingled with song sparrows and tree sparrows."); March 18, 1857 ("I hear the chill-lill or tchit-a-tchit of the slate-colored sparrow, and see it"); March 20, 1852 ("And now, within a day or two, I have noticed the chubby slate-colored snowbird. . . and I drive the flocks before me on the railroad causeway as I walk. It has two white feathers in its tail."); March 20, 1855 ("Four or five song sparrows are flitting along amid the willows by the waterside. Probably they came yesterday with the bluebirds. At my landing I hear the F. hyemalis, in company with a few tree sparrows. They take refuge from the cold wind,. . . and there plume themselves with puffed-up feathers"); March 28, 1854 ("A flock of hyemalis drifting from a wood over a field incessantly for four or five minutes, — thousands of them, notwithstanding the cold.")


~According to Thoreau's observations, the dark-eyed junco arrives in Concord in early spring on its way north to breed and returns in early fall, but does not over-winter. See March 23, 1853 (" Apparently they sing with us in the pleasantest days before they go northward. "); . April 8, 1854("Methinks I do not see such great and lively flocks of hyemalis and tree sparrows in the morning. . . Perchance after the warmer days, . . . the greater part of them leave for the north and give place to newcomers"); April 24, 1855 (" Have not seen the F. hyemalis for a week. "); October 5, 1857 ( "It is evident that some phenomena which belong only to spring and autumn here, lasted through the summer in that latitude [Maine], as. . .the myrtle-bird and F. hyemalis which breed there, but only transiently visit us in spring and fall.") In June 1858 he discovers them nesting on Modadanock. June 2, 1858 (“It is the prevailing bird now up there, i.e. on the summit. They are commonly said to go to the fur countries to breed . . . The ancestors of this bird had evidently perceived on their flight northward that here was a small piece of arctic region, containing all the conditions they require. . . They discerned arctic isles sprinkled in our southern sky.”).See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Dark-eyed Junco

I think I have seen many more tracks of skunks within two or three weeks than all the winter before. See February 24, 1857 (" I have seen the probings of skunks for a week or more.. . .They are very busy these nights."); February 26, 1860 ("For a day or two past I have seen in various places the small tracks apparently of skunks. They appear to come out commonly in the warmer weather in the latter part of February"); March 6, 1854 ("I see . . . what looks like the first probing of the skunk."); March 10, 1854 ("Its track is small, round, showing the nails, a little less than an inch in diameter, alternate five or six inches by two or two and a half, sometimes two feet together. . . .I have no doubt they have begun to probe already where the ground permits, — or as far as it does. But what have they eat all winter? ")