A fish hawk sails down the river.

April 6. 

April 6,2012

Another remarkably windy day; cold northwest wind and a little snow spitting from time to time, yet so little that even the traveller might not perceive it. 

For nineteen days, from the 19th of March to the 6th of April, both inclusive, we have had remarkably windy weather. For ten days of the nineteen the wind has been remarkably strong and violent, so that each of those days the wind was the subject of general remark. The first one of these ten days was the warmest, the wind being southwest, but the others, especially of late, were very cold, the wind being northwest, and for the most part icy cold. There have also been five days that would be called windy and only four which were moderate. The last seven, including to-day, have all been windy, five of them remarkably so; wind from northwest.

The sparrows love to flit along any thick hedge, like that of Mrs. Gourgas's. Tree sparrows, F. hyemalis, and fox-colored sparrows in company. 

A fish hawk sails down the river, from time to time almost stationary one hundred feet above the water, notwithstanding the very strong wind. 

I see where moles have rooted in a meadow and cast up those little piles of the black earth.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 6, 1859

For nineteen days, from the 19th of March to the 6th of April, both inclusive, we have had remarkably windy weather. See March 21, 1859 ("From the evening of March 18th to this, the evening of the 21st, we have had uninterrupted strong wind, — till the evening of the 19th very strong south west wind, then and since northwest, — three days of strong wind.”);  April 4, 1852 (" I feel the northwest air cooled by the snow on my cheek.”); April 15, 1854 ("Snow and snowing; four inches deep.”); April 12, 1855 ("the mountains are again thickly clad with snow, and, the wind being northwest, this coldness is accounted for.”); April 15, 1860 ("Strong northwest wind and cold.. . .We are continually expecting warmer weather than we have”)

Tree sparrows, F. hyemalis, and fox-colored sparrows in company. See March 23, 1853 (“The birds which are merely migrating or tarrying here for a season are especially gregarious now, — the redpoll, Fringilla hyemalis, fox-colored sparrow, etc.”); April 8, 1855 ("Also song sparrows and tree sparrows and F. hyemalis are heard in the yard. The fox-colored sparrow is also there”); April 17, 1855 ("A sudden warm day, like yesterday and this, takes off some birds and adds others. It is a crisis in their career. The fox-colored sparrows seem to be gone, and I suspect that most of the tree sparrows and F. hyemalis, at least, went yesterday.”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Tree Sparrow;  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Fox-colored Sparrow;  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco.

A fish hawk sails down the river. See April 7, 1859 ("The fish hawk which you see soaring and sailing so leisurely about over the land . . . may have a fish in his talons all the while and only be waiting till you are gone for an opportunity to eat it on his accustomed perch");  April 14, 1852 ("The streams break up ; the ice goes to the sea. Then sails the fish hawk overhead, looking for his prey.”); April 25, 1858 (“He sails along some eighty feet above the water’s edge, looking for fish, and alights again quite near. ”)  See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau The Osprey (Fish Hawk)