I should have launched my boat ere this if it had been ready.

March 3.

2 P. M. — 50°; overcast and somewhat rain-threatening; wind southwest.

To Abner Buttrick and Tarbell Hills.

See a flock of large ducks in a line, — maybe black? - over Great Meadows; also a few sheldrakes.

It was pleasant to hear the tinkling of very coarse brash — broken honeycombed dark ice — rattling one piece against another along the northeast shores, to which it has drifted. Scarcely any ice now about river except what rests on the bottom of the meadows, dirty with sediment.

The first song sparrows are very inconspicuous and shy on the brown earth. You hear some weeds rustle, or think you see a mouse run amid the stubble, and then the sparrow flits low away.

When I read Topsell’s account of the ichneumon eating his way out of the crocodile, I think that, though it be not true in fact, it is very true in fancy, and it is no small gift to be able to give it so good a setting-forth. What a pity that our modern naturalists cannot tell their truths with half this zest and spirit!

Nowadays we have rain, and then high wind directly after it.

C. says that Walden began to be hard to get on to the first of March. 

I saw this afternoon a meadow below Flint’s willow row still frozen over (at 3 P. M.), — frozen last night, — and the frozen part corresponded generally to the anchor ice on the bottom, while there was an open canal all around and beyond the edge of the anchor ice; but when I returned two hours later, the wind had broken up and dissipated every vestige of this surface ice; i. e., it was an ice formed last night which it took the whole day with a strong wind to break up in this rather sheltered place.

Our muddiest and wettest walking thus far was the last week of February.

I should have launched my boat ere this if it had been ready.

The last skating was on Walden the 26th February. The next day it was soft. Sleighing ended February 22d, and there had not been much a long time before.

I see one of those gray-winged (long and slender) perla-like insects by the waterside this afternoon.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 3, 1860

The first song sparrows are very inconspicuous and shy on the brown earth. See March 2, 1860 ("Looking up a narrow ditch in a meadow, I see a modest brown bird flit along it furtively, — the first song sparrow, -"); March 10, 1852 (" See a sparrow, perhaps a song sparrow, flitting amid the young oaks where the ground is covered with snow.") See also note to February 24, 1857 ("I am surprised to hear the strain of a song sparrow from the riverside. ") and A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)

C. says that Walden began to be hard to get on to the first of March. See. Walden, Chapter 17 (Spring) ("This pond never breaks up so soon as the others in this neighborhood, on account both of its greater depth and its having no stream passing through it to melt or wear away the ice. It commonly opens about the first of April," [In Thoreau’s records, ice out occurred as early as March 15 and as late as April 18]); March 7, 1855 ("It is now difficult getting on and off Walden.");  March 11, 1856 ("Cut a hole in the ice in the middle of Walden. It is just 24 1/4 inches thick,"); March 11, 1861 ("C. says that Walden is almost entirely open to-day, so that the lines on my map would not strike any ice, but that there is ice in the deep cove. It will be open then the 12th or 13th. This is earlier than I ever knew it to open.");… Walden, Chapter 17 (Spring) (".On the 13th of March, after I had heard the bluebird, song-sparrow, and red-wing, the ice was still nearly a foot thick. . . .. One year I went across the middle only five days before it disappeared entirely.");  March 14, 1860 (" I am surprised to find Walden open. No sooner has the ice of Walden melted than the wind begins to play in dark ripples over the surface of the virgin water. Ice dissolved is the next moment as perfect water as if melted a million years") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Ice-out

I should have launched my boat ere this if it had been ready. See February 24, 1857 ("Get my boat out the cellar."); February 26, 1857  ("Paint the bottom of my boat"); March 8, 1855 ("This morning I got my boat out of the cellar and turned it up in the yard to let the seams open before I calk it."); March 9, 1855("Painted the bottom of my boat.");  March 15, 1854 ("Paint my boat."); March 16, 1859 ("Launch my boat and sail to Ball's Hill"); March 16, 1860 ("As soon as I can get it painted and dried, I launch my boat and make my first voyage for the year up or down the stream, on that element from which I have been debarred for three months and a half.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Boat in. Boat out.