P. M. — Up river to Fair Haven Pond; return via Andromeda Ponds and railroad.
Overcast, but some clear sky in southwest horizon; mild weather still.
Where the sedge grows rankly and is uncut, as along the edge of the river and meadows, what fine coverts are made for mice, etc., at this season! It is arched over, and the snow rests chiefly on its ends, while the middle part is elevated from six inches to a foot and forms a thick thatch, as it were, even when all is covered with snow, under which the mice and so forth can run freely, out of the way of the wind and of foxes.
After a pretty deep snow has just partially melted, you are surprised to find, as you walk through such a meadow, how high and lightly the sedge lies up, as if there had been no pressure upon it. It grows, perhaps, in dense tufts or tussocks, and when it falls over, it forms a thickly thatched roof. Nature provides shelter for her creatures in various ways.
If the musquash, etc., has no longer extensive fields of weed and grass to crawl in, what an extensive range it has under the ice of the meadows and river sides! for, the water settling directly after freezing, an icy roof of indefinite extent is thus provided for it, and it passes almost its whole winter under shelter, out of the wind and invisible to men.
The ice is so much rotted that I observe in many places those lunar-shaped holes, and dark places in the ice, convex up-stream, some times double-lunar.
I perceive that the open places in the river do not preserve the same relative importance that they had December 29th. Then the largest four or five stood in this order: (1) below boat's place, (2) below junction, (3) Barrett's Bar, (4) Clamshell or else Hubbard's large as Hubbard's Bath. Which of the others is largest I am not quite sure.
In other words, below junction and Hubbard's Bath (if not also Clamshell, not seen) retain about their former size, while below boat's place and Barrett's Bar have been diminished, especially below boat's place.
Birds are commonly very rare in the winter. They are much more common at some times than at others. I see more tree sparrows in the beginning of the winter (especially when snow is falling) than in the course of it. I think that by observation I could tell in what kind of weather afterward these were most to be seen.
Crows come about houses and streets in very cold weather and deep snows, and they are heard cawing in pleasant, thawing winter weather, and their note is then a pulse by which you feel the quality of the air, i. e., when cocks crow.
For the most part, lesser redpolls and pine grosbeaks do not appear at all.
Snow buntings are very wandering. They were quite numerous a month ago, and now seem to have quit the town. They seem to ramble about the country at will.
C. says that he followed the track of a fox all yesterday afternoon, though with some difficulty, and then lost it at twilight. I suggested that he should begin next day where he had left off, and that following it up thus for many days he might catch him at last.
"By the way," I asked, "did you go the same way the fox did, or did you take the back track?"
"Oh," said he, "I took the back track. It would be of no use to go the other way, you know."
Minott says that a hound which pursues a fox by scent cannot tell which way he is going; that the fox is very cunning and will often return on its track over which the dog had already run. It will ascend a high rock and then leap off very far to one side; so throw the dogs off the scent for a while and gain a breathing-spell.
I see, in one of those pieces of drifted meadow (of last spring) in A. Wheeler's cranberry meadow, a black willow thus transplanted more than ten feet high and five inches in diameter. It is quite alive.
The snow-fleas are thickest along the edge of the wood here, but I find that they extend quite across the river, though there are comparatively few over the middle. There are generally fewer and fewer the further you are from the shore. Nay, I find that they extend quite across Fair Haven Pond. There are two or three inches of snow on the ice, and thus they are revealed. There are a dozen or twenty to a square rod on the very middle of the pond. When I approach one, it commonly hops away, and if it gets a good spring it hops a foot or more, so that it is at first lost to me. Though they are scarcely the twentieth of an inch long they make these surprising bounds, or else conceal themselves by entering the snow. We have now had many days of this thawing weather, and I believe that these fleas have been gradually hopping further and further out from the shore.
To-day, perchance, it is water, a day or two later ice, and no fleas are seen on it. Then snow comes and covers the ice, and if there is no thaw for a month, you see no fleas for so long. But, at least soon after a thaw, they are to be seen on the centre of ponds at least half a mile across. Though this is my opinion, it is by no means certain that they come here thus, for I am prepared to believe that the water in the middle may have had as many floating on it, and that these were afterward on the surface of the ice, though unseen, and hence under the snow when it fell, and ready to come up through it when the thaw came.
But what do they find to eat in apparently pure snow so far from any land? Has their food come down from the sky with the snow? They must themselves be food for many creatures. This must be as peculiarly a winter animal as any. It may truly be said to live in snow.
I see some insects, of about this form on the snow:
I scare a partridge that was eating the buds and ends of twigs of the Vaccinium vacillans on a hillside.
At the west or nesaea end of the largest Andromeda Pond, I see that there has been much red ice, more than I ever saw, but now spoiled by the thaw and snow.
The leaves of the water andromeda are evidently more appressed to the twigs, and showing the gray under sides, than in summer.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 22, 1860
See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Birds
The water settling directly after freezing, an icy roof of indefinite extent is thus provided for it, and it passes almost its whole winter under shelter, out of the wind and invisible to men. Compare January 22, 1859 (".Many are out in boats, steering outside the ice of the river over the newly flooded meadows, shooting musquash."); January 22, 1855 ("The muskrats driven out of their holes by the water are exceedingly numerous . . .We saw fifteen or twenty, at least, between Derby's Bridge and the Tarbell Spring, either swimming with surprising swiftness up or down or across the stream to avoid us, or sitting at the water's edge, or resting on the edge of the ice.") See also January 3, 1860 ("Melvin thinks that the musquash eat more clams now than ever, and that they leave the shells in heaps under the ice. As the river falls it leaves them space enough under the ice along the meadow's edge and bushes. I think he is right. He speaks of the mark of the tail, which is dragged behind them, in the snow."); January 24, 1856 ("I have not been able to find any tracks of muskrats this winter. I suspect that they very rarely venture out in winter with their wet coats "); January 27, 1860 (" I occasionally hear a musquash plunge under the ice next the shore.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash
Crows are heard cawing in pleasant, thawing winter weather, and their note is then a pulse by which you feel the quality of the air, i. e., when cocks crow. See January 12, 1855 ("Perhaps what most moves us in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer. . . .It is in the cawing of the crow, the crowing of the cock, the warmth of the sun on our backs. I hear faintly the cawing of a crow far, far away, echoing from some unseen wood-side. What a delicious sound! It is not merely crow calling to crow, for it speaks to me too. I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls."); . March 16, 1858 ("The crowing of cocks and the cawing of crows tell the same story. The ice is soggy and dangerous to be walked on.")
At the west end of the largest Andromeda Pond, I see that there has been much red ice, more than I ever saw. See January 24, 1855 ("I was surprised to find the ice in the middle of the last [Andromeda] pond a beautiful delicate rose-color for two or three rods, deeper in spots. . . .This beautiful blushing ice! What are we coming to?"); January 25, 1855 ("I have come with basket and hatchet to get a specimen of the rose-colored ice.. . . The redness is all about an inch below the surface, the little bubbles in the ice there for half an inch vertically being coated interruptedly within or without with what looks like a minute red dust when seen through a microscope. . ."); March 4, 1855 ("Returning by the Andromeda Ponds, I am surprised to see the red ice visible still . . .It is melted down to the red bubbles, and I can tinge my finger with it there by rubbing it in the rotted ice.")
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