Where a partridge took to wing.

December 18. 

P. M. —Down railroad via Andromeda Ponds to river.

Snowed a little finely last night and this forenoon. I see a few squirrels’ tracks in the woods and, here and there in one or two places, where a mouse’s gallery approached the surface. The powdery surface is broken by it. 

I am surprised to find in the Andromeda Ponds, especially the westernmost one, north side, an abundance of decodon, or swamp loosestrife. 

Where a partridge took to wing I find the round red buds of the high blueberry plucked about the swamps.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 18, 1854

Where a partridge took to wing I find the round red buds of the high blueberry plucked about the swamps. See February 24, 1854 ("Observe in one of the little pond-holes between Walden and Fair Haven where a partridge had travelled around in the snow . . . and had paused at each high blueberry bush, fed on its red buds and shaken down fragments of its bark on the snow.”) See also November 6, 1853 (“The remarkable roundish, plump red buds of the high blueberry.”) and note to January 12, 1855 (“Well may the tender buds attract us at this season, no less than partridges, for they are the hope of the year, the spring rolled up. The summer is all packed in them.”)