March winds

March 11. 

Sunday. 2 p.m. — About 40°. 

It is cold and blustering walking in the wind, though the thermometer is at 40; i. e., though the temperature is thus high, the strong and blustering northwest winds of March make this notorious March weather, which is worse to bear than severe cold without wind. 

The farmers say that there is nothing equal to the March winds for drying wood. It will dry more this month than it has in all the winter before.

I see a woodchuck out on the calm side of Lee's Hill (Nawshawtuct). He has pushed away the withered leaves which filled his hole and come forth, and left his tracks in those slight patches of the recent snow which are left about his hole. 

I was amused with the behavior of two red squirrels as I approached the hemlocks. They were as gray as red, and white beneath. I at first heard a faint, sharp chirp  like a bird, within the hemlock, on my account, and then one rushed forward on a descending limb toward me, barking or chirruping at me after his fashion, within a rod. They seemed to vie with one another who should be most bold. 

For four or five minutes at least, they kept up an incessant chirruping or squeaking bark, vibrating their tails and their whole bodies and frequently changing their position or point of view, making a show of rushing forward, or perhaps darting off a few feet like lightning and barking still more loudly, i. e. with a yet sharper exclamation, as if frightened by their own motions; their whole bodies quivering, their heads and great eyes on the qui vive. You are uncertain whether it is not half in sport after all.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 11, 1860