It is worthwhile to hear the wind roar in the woods to-day.

March 9. 

P. M. — To Lee's Cliff with C. 

C. says that he heard and saw a bluebird on the 7th, and R. W. E. the same. This was the day on which they were generally observed. I am doubtful about one having been seen on the 20th of February by a boy, as stated February 23d. 

C. also saw a skater-insect on the 7th, and a single blackbird flying over Cassandra Ponds, which he thought a grackle. 

A true spring day, not a cloud in the sky. The earth shines, its icy armor reflecting the sun, and the rills of melting snow in the ruts shine, too, and water, where exposed in the right light on the river, is a remarkably living blue, just as the osiers appear brighter. 

Yet it is cool and raw and very windy. 

The ice over the channel of the river, when not quite melted, is now generally mackerelled (the water representing the blue portions) with parallel openings, riddling it or leaving a sort of network of ice over it, answering to the ridges of the waves. You can best observe them from bridges. In some cases the snow upon the ice, having lain in successive drifts, might also assist or modify this phenomenon. 

The rain of yesterday has been filling the meadows again, flowing up under the dry ice of the winter freshet, which for the most part rested on the ground, and so this rise is at first the less observed until it shows itself beyond the edge of the ice. At Corner Spring Brook the water reaches up to the crossing and stands over the ice there, the brook being open and some space on each side of it.

When I look, from forty or fifty rods off, at the yellowish water covering the ice about a foot here, it is decidedly purple (though, when close by and looking down on it, it is yellowish merely), while the water of the brook-channel and a rod on each side of it, where there is no ice beneath, is a beautiful very dark blue. 

These colors are very distinct, the line of separation being the edge of the ice on the bottom, and this apparent juxtaposi tion of different kinds of water is a very singular and pleasing sight. You see a light-purple flood, about the color of a red grape, and a broad channel of dark-purple water, as dark as a common blue-purple grape, sharply distinct across its middle. 

I see at Lee's the long, narrow radical leaves of the Turritis striata just beginning to push their shoots, — the most forward-looking plant there. 

We cross Fair Haven Pond on the ice, though it is difficult getting on and off, it being melted about the edges, as well as overflowed there. 

It is worthwhile to hear the wind roar in the woods to-day. It sounds further off than it is.

Came across a stout and handsome woodchopper with a full dark or black beard, but that on his upper lip was a distinct sandy color. It was a very pleasing contrast, suggesting a sympathy with the centre of light and intelligence nearer to which it grew.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 9, 1859

This was the day on which they were generally observed. See March 9, 1852 (“I hear and see bluebirds, come with the warm wind.”); March 9, 1856 (“[T]his is about the date that bluebirds arrive commonly.”)

A true spring day, not a cloud in the sky. The earth shines, its icy armor reflecting the sun, and the rills of melting snow in the ruts shine, too. See March 8, 1853 ("The melting snow, running and sparkling down-hill in the ruts, was quite springlike."):

It is worthwhile to hear the wind roar in the woods to-day. It sounds further off than it is. See March 9, 1852 (“These March winds, which make the woods roar and fill the world with life and bustle, appear to wake up the trees out of their winter sleep and excite the sap to flow.”);   March 9, 1860 ("You incline to walk now along the south side of hills which will shelter you from the blustering northwest and north winds");  See also  March 18, 1858 ("The rather warm but strong wind now roars in the wood — as in the maple swamp — with a novel sound.”);