Getting ice out of Loring's Pond.

March 17. 

Channing says he saw blackbirds yesterday; F. C. Brown, that they were getting ice out of Loring's Pond yesterday.

P. M . – Rode to Lexington with Brown. 

Saw, on the corner of a wall by a house about three quarters of a mile from the monument on the Bedford road, a stone apparently worn by water into the form of a rude bird-like idol, which I thought, as I rode by, to be the work of the Indians. It was probably discovered and used by them. 

It was as near as nature might come by accident to an eagle, with a very regular pedestal such as busts have, on which it stood  — in all about two and a half feet high. Whitewashed as well as the wall. Found not near water. It is one of those stones which Schoolcraft describes as found among the Chippeways. 

The ways are mostly settled, frozen dry.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 17, 1853


Channing says he saw blackbirds yesterday. See March 11, 1852 ("I believe that I saw blackbirds yesterday."); March 17, 1858 ("Now I hear, when passing the south side of the hill, or first when threading the maple swamp far west of it, the tchuck tchuck of a blackbird, and after, a distinct conqueree. So it is a red-wing? Thus these four species of birds have all come in one day, no doubt to almost all parts of the town.") See also note to March 17, 1860 ("How handsome a flock of red-wings,").

It is one of those stones which Schoolcraft describes as found among the Chippeways. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (March 28, 1793 – December 10, 1864) was an American ethnologist noted for his early studies of Native American cultures, as well as for his 1832 expedition to the source of the  Mississippi River. He is also noted for his major six-volume study of Native Americans published in the 1850s. ~Wikipedia

The ways are mostly settled, frozen dry. See March 15, 1860 ("Though it is pretty dry and settled travelling on open roads, it is very muddy still in some roads through woods"); March 19, 1860 ("The road and paths are perfectly dry and settled in the village, except a very little frost still coming out on the south side the street.");  March 21, 1858 ("This first spring rain . . .helps take the remaining frost out and settles the ways.")