The song sparrows begin to sing hereabouts.

March 5.

March 5, 2020

The meadows skim over at night. 

White pine cones half fallen. 

The old naturalists were so sensitive and sympathetic to nature that they could be surprised by the ordinary events of life. It was an incessant miracle to them, and therefore gorgons and flying dragons were not incredible to them. The greatest and saddest defect is not credulity, but our habitual forgetfulness that our science is ignorance. 

Chickweed and shepherd's-purse in bloom in C.'s garden, and probably all winter, or each month.

The song sparrows begin to sing hereabouts. 

I see some tame ducks in the river, six of them. It is amusing to see how exactly perpendicular they will stand, with their heads on the bottom and their tails up, plucking some food there, three or four at once. Perhaps the grass, etc., is a little further advanced there for them. 

George Buttrick thinks that forty musquash have been killed this spring between Hunt's and Flint's Bridge. The best time to hunt them is early morning and evening. His father goes out at daybreak, and can kill more in one hour after that than from that time to near sunset. He says that he has found eleven young in one musquash, and that Joel Barrett observed that one pair near his house bred five times in one year. Thought it would hardly pay to shoot them for their fur alone, but would if you owned river-meadow banks, they undermine them so. 

So far as the natural history is concerned, you often have your choice between uninteresting truth and interesting falsehood. 

As the ancients talked about ”hot and cold, moist and dry,” so the moderns talk about ”electric” qualities. 

As we sat under Lupine Promontory the other day, watching the ripples that swept over the flooded meadow and thinking what an eligible site that would be for a cottage, C. declared that we did not live in the country as long as we lived on that village street and only took walks into the fields, any more than if we lived in Boston or New York. We enjoyed none of the immortal quiet of the country as we might here, for instance, but per chance the first sound that we hear in the morning, instead of the tinkling of a bird, is your neighbor hawking and spitting.

Our spiræas have been considerably unfolded for several days. 

Ways fairly settled generally.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 5, 1860

White pine cones half fallen. See February 25, 1860 (“ The white pine cones have been blowing off more or less in every high wind ever since the winter began, and yet perhaps they have not more than half fallen yet.”); March 7, 1855 ("Picked up a very handsome white pine cone some six and a half inches long by two and three eighths near base and two near apex, perfectly blossomed. It is a very rich and wholesome brown color, of various shades as you turn it in your hand, —a light ashy or gray brown, somewhat like unpainted wood. as you look down on it, or as if the lighter brown were covered with a gray lichen, seeing only those parts of the scales always exposed, —with a few darker streaks or marks and a drop of pitch at the point of each scale. Within, the scales are a dark brown above (i.e. as it hangs) and a light brown beneath, Very distinctly being marked beneath by the same darker brown, down the centre and near the apex somewhat anchor wise. “) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines

Gorgons and flying dragons. See February 18, 1860 ("The old writers have left a more lively and lifelike account of the gorgon than modern writers give us of real animals.")

Chickweed in bloom in C.'s garden, and probably all winter. See February 2, 1853 ("The Stellaria media is full of frost-bitten blossoms, containing stamens, etc., still and half-grown buds. Apparently it never rests.")

The song sparrows begin to sing hereabouts. 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, -- and then alight far off on a rock. Ed. Hoar says he heard one February 27th.");  March 3, 1860 (" 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.");  March 11, 1854 ("On Tuesday, the 7th, I heard the first song sparrow chirp, and saw it flit silently from alder to alder. This pleasant morning after three days' rain and mist, they generally forthburst into sprayey song from the low trees along the river. The developing of their song is gradual but sure, like the expanding of a flower. This is the first song I have heard.”);  March 11, 1859 ("By riverside I hear the song of many song sparrows, the most of a song of any yet. . . .The birds anticipate the spring; they come to melt the ice with their songs.") 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)

George Buttrick thinks that forty musquash have been killed this spring between Hunt's and Flint's Bridge.  See February 24, 1860 ("The river risen and quite over the meadows yesterday and to-day, and musquash begun to be killed."); March 2, 1860 ("Men shooting musquash these days.")