Here is the first fair, and at the same time calm and warm, day.

March 15. 

I hear that there was about one acre of ice only at the southwest corner (by the road) of Flint's Pond on the 13th. It will probably, then, open entirely to-day, with Walden. 

Though it is pretty dry and settled travelling on open roads, it is very muddy still in some roads through woods, as the Marlborough road or Second Division road. 

2 P. M. – To Lee's Cliff. Thermometer 50°. 

March 15, 2020

On the whole the finest day yet (the thermometer was equally high the 3d), considering the condition of the earth as well as the temperature of the air. Yet I think I feel the heat as much if not more than I did on the 23d of February, when the thermometer rose to 58º. Is it because there was more snow lying about then? The comparative stillness, as well as the absence of snow, has an effect on our imaginations, I have no doubt. Our cold and blustering days this month, thus far, have averaged about 40°. Here is the first fair, and at the same time calm and warm, day.

Looking over my Journal, I find that the -

• 1st of March was rainy.
• 2 at 2 P. M.         56°
• 3                         50
• 4                         44
• 5 ( probably as low )
• 6 at 3 P . M .     44
• 7 at 3 P . M       34
• 8 2 P. M.           50
• 9 2 P. M.           41
• 10                     30
• 11                     44
• 12                     40
• 13                     36
• 14                     39
• 15                     50

The temperature has been as high on three days this month, and on the 2nd considerably higher, and yet this has seemed the warmest and most summer-like, evidently owing to the calmness and greater absence of snow. 

How admirable in our memory lies a calm warm day amid a series of cold and blustering ones! The 11th was cold and blustering at 40; to-day delightfully warm and pleasant (being calm) at 50°.

I see those devil's-needle-like larvæ in the warm pool south of Hubbard's Grove (with two tails) swimming about and rising to the top. 

What a difference it makes whether a pool lies open to the sun or is within a wood, — affecting its breaking up. This pool has been open at least a week, while that three or four rods from it in the woods is still completely closed and dead. 

It is very warm under the south edge of the wood there, and the ground, as for some time, — since snow went off, — is seen all strewn with the great white pine cones which have been blown off during the winter, — part of the great crop of last fall, — of which apparently as many, at least, still remain on the trees. 

A hen-hawk sails away from the wood southward. I get a very fair sight of it sailing overhead. What a perfectly regular and neat outline it presents! an easily recognized figure anywhere. Yet I never see it represented in any books. The exact correspondence of the marks on one side to those on the other, as the black or dark tip of one wing to the other, and the dark line mid way the wing. 

I have no idea that one can get as correct an idea of the form and color of the undersides of a hen-hawk's wings by spreading those of a dead specimen in his study as by looking up at a free and living hawk soaring above him in the fields. The penalty for obtaining a petty knowledge thus dishonestly is that it is less interesting to men generally, as it is less significant. 

Some, seeing and admiring the neat figure of the hawk sailing two or three hundred feet above their heads, wish to get nearer and hold it in their hands, not realizing that they can see it best at this distance, better now, perhaps, than ever they will again. What is an eagle in captivity! — screaming in a courtyard! I am not the wiser respecting eagles for having seen one there. I do not wish to know the length of its entrails. 

How neat and all compact this hawk! Its wings and body are all one piece, the wings apparently the greater part, while its body is a mere fullness or protuberance between its wings, an inconspicuous pouch hung there. It suggests no insatiable maw, no corpulence, but looks like a larger moth, with little body in proportion to its wings, its body naturally more etherealized as it soars higher. 

These hawks, as usual, began to be common about the first of March, showing that they were returning from their winter quarters. 

I see a little ice still under water on the bottom of the meadows by the Hubbard's Bridge causeway. The frost is by no means out in grass upland. 

I see to-day in two places, in mud and in snow, what I have no doubt is the track of the woodchuck that has lately been out, with peculiarly spread toes like a little hand. 

Am surprised to hear, from the pool behind Lee's Cliff, the croaking of the wood frog. It is all alive with them, and I see them spread out on the surface. Their note is somewhat in harmony with the rustling of the now drier leaves. It is more like the note of the classical frog, as described by Aristophanes, etc. How suddenly they awake! yesterday, as it were, asleep and dormant, to-day as lively as ever they are. The awakening of the leafy woodland pools. They must awake in good condition. 

As Walden opens eight days earlier than I have known it, so this frog croaks about as much earlier. 

Many large fuzzy gnats and other insects in air. 

It is remarkable how little certain knowledge even old and weather-wise men have of the comparative earliness of the year. They will speak of the passing spring as earlier or later than they ever knew, when perchance the third spring before it was equally early or late, as I have known.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 15, 1860


I hear that there was about one acre of ice only at the southwest corner (by the road) of Flint's Pond on the 13th. It will probably, then, open entirely to-day, with Walden. Compare April 1, 1852 (" I am surprised to find Flint's Pond frozen still, which should have been open a week ago. How unexpectedly dumb and poor and cold does Nature look, when, where we had expected to find a glassy lake reflecting the skies and trees in the spring, we find only dull, white ice!")

A hen-hawk sails away from the wood southward. See March 4, 1860 ("A hen-hawk rises and sails away over the Holden Wood as in summer.")

Many large fuzzy gnats and other insects in air. See March 2, 1860 ("We see one or two gnats in the air."); March 7, 1860 ("C. says that he saw a swarm of very small gnats in the air yesterday."). See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fuzzy Gnats

Am surprised to hear, from the pool behind Lee's Cliff, the croaking of the wood frog. . . . As Walden opens eight days earlier than I have known it, so this frog croaks about as much earlier. See March 14, 1860 ("I am surprised to find Walden almost entirely open. . . . I have not observed it to open before before the 23d of March."); March 30, 1858 ("Later, in a pool behind Lee's Cliff, I hear them, – the waking up of the leafy pools.");/ See also March 23, 1859 ("I hear a single croak from a wood frog. . . . Thus we sit on that rock, hear the first wood frog's croak"); March 24, 1859 ("I am sitting in Laurel Glen, listening to hear the earliest wood frogs croaking. . . .. Now, when the leaves get to be dry and rustle under your feet, dried by the March winds, the peculiar dry note, wurrk wurrk wur-r-r-k wurk of the wood frog is heard faintly by ears on the alert, borne up from some unseen pool in a woodland hollow which is open to the influences of the sun. "); March 26, 1857 ("I hear a faint, stertorous croak from a frog in the open swamp; at first one faint note only, which I could not be sure that I had heard"); March 26, 1860 (“The wood frog [first] may be heard March 15, as this year, or not till April 13, as in '56,”); March 27, 1853 ("Tried to see the faint-croaking frogs at J. P. Brown's Pond in the woods. They are remarkably timid and shy; had their noses and eyes out, croaking, but all ceased, dove, and concealed themselves, before I got within a rod of the shore."); March 28, 1858 ("Coming home, I hear the croaking frogs in the pool on the south side of Hubbard’s Grove. It is sufficiently warm for them at last."); March 30, 1858 ("I do not remember that I ever hear this frog in the river or ponds. They seem to be an early frog, peculiar to pools and small ponds in the woods and fields.");  March 31, 1855 (“I go listening for the croak of the first frog, or peep of a hylodes."); March 31, 1857 (“As I rise the east side of the Hill, I hear the distant faint peep of hylodes and the tut tut of croaking frogs from the west of the Hill.”); April 13, 1856 ("As I go by the Andromeda Ponds, I hear the tut tut of a few croaking frogs,"); See also April 18, 1856 ("Walden is open entirely to-day for the first time.")