March 27. The hazel is out at this cold leafless season greeting the spring.

 

Walden is two-thirds broken up. Journal, March 27, 1851

It will probably be quite open by to-morrow night. See note to 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  April 18, 1856 ("Walden is open entirely to-day for the first time, owing to the rain of yesterday and evening. I have observed its breaking up of different years commencing in ’45, and the average date has been April 4th.") and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-out In Thoreau’s records, March 14th was the earliest ice out; April 18th was the latest. From 1995 to 2015, ice out ranged from Jan. 29 (!) to April 12 with the median ice out date March 21.

The hazel is fully out, Journal , March 27, 1853

The hazel is fully out., though so minute that only an observer of nature, or one who looked for them, would notice it.See March 27, 1859 ("Of our seven indigenous flowers which begin to bloom in March, four, i. e. the two alders, the aspen, and the hazel, are not generally noticed so early, if at all."); March 31, 1853 ("The catkins of the hazel are now trembling in the wind and much lengthened, showing yellowish and beginning to shed pollen.”); April 13, 1855 ("The common hazel just out. It is perhaps the prettiest flower of the shrubs that have opened. A little bunch of (in this case) half a dozen catkins, one and three quarters inches long, trembling in the wind, shedding golden pollen on the hand, and, close by, as many minute, but clear crystalline crimson stars at the end of a bare and seemingly dead twig. For two or three days in my walks, I had given the hazel catkins a fillip with my finger under their chins to see if they were in bloom, but in vain; but here, on the warm south side of a wood, I find one bunch fully out and completely relaxed. They know when to trust themselves to the weather.”) May 7, 1854 ("Flowers are self-registering indicators of fair weather. I remember how I waited for the hazel catkins to become relaxed and shed their pollen, but they delayed, till at last there came a pleasanter and warmer day and I took off my greatcoat while surveying in the woods, and then, when I went to dinner at noon, hazel catkins in full flower were dangling from the banks by the roadside and yellowed my clothes with their pollen. If man is thankful for the serene and warm day, much more are the flowers.”). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Hazel

 My Aunt Maria . . . was heard through the partition shouting to my Aunt Jane, who is deaf, "Think of it! He stood half an hour to-day to hear the frogs croak, and he wouldn't read the life of Chalmers." See April 8, 1852( "To-day I hear the croak of frogs in small pond-holes in the woods, and see dimples on the surface, which I suppose that they make, for when I approach they are silent and the dimples are no longer seen."); May 9, 1860:  (“We sit by the shore of Goose Pond. … After sitting there a little while, I count noses of twenty frogs. It is a still, cloudy, thoughtful day.”); See also July 17, 1854: ("I watch them [white lillies] for an hour and a half.")

A hawk by meadow, Journal, March 27, 1854

Saw a hawk -- probably marsh hawk -- by meadow. See March 27, 1855 ("See my frog hawk. . . . It is the hen-harrier, i.e. marsh hawk, male. Slate-colored; beating the bush; black tips to wings and white rump"); March 17, 1860 (" Was not that a marsh hawk, a slate-colored one which I saw flying over Walden Wood with long, slender, curving wings, with a diving, zigzag flight? "); March 21, 1859 ("I see a female marsh hawk sailing and hunting over Potter's Swamp. I not only see the white rump but the very peculiar crescent-shaped curve of its wings."); Marsh 24, 1860 (". I see a male frog hawk beating a hedge, scarcely rising more than two feet from the ground for half a mile."); March 29, 1853 (" I believe I saw the slate-colored marsh hawk to-day. "); March 29, 1854 ("See two marsh hawks, white on rump.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)

The river is now open, Journal, March 27, 1856

The river is now open in reaches of twenty or thirty rods, where the ice has disappeared by melting. Elijah Wood does not remember that the river was ever frozen so long. See March 20, 1856 ("The river has just begun to open at Hubbard’s Bend. It has been closed there since January 7th, i. e. ten weeks and a half"); March 24, 1856 ("Go everywhere on the North Branch — it is all solid Yet last year I paddled my boat to Fair Haven Pond on the 19th of March! "); April 2, 1856.(" I returned down the middle of the river to near the Hubbard Bridge without seeing any opening. "); April 7, 1856 ("Launched my boat, through three rods of ice on the riverside, . . . . Surprised to find the river not broken up just above [Hubbard] bridge and as far as we can see, probably through Fair Haven Pond. Probably in some places you can cross the river still on the ice. . "); April 8, 1856 (" the pond and river still frozen over for the most part as far down as Cardinal Shore. "). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A Book of the Seasons: Ice out

I do not know at first what it is that charms me, Journal, March 27, 1857

I would fain make two reports in my Journal,. . . The men and things of to-day are wont to lie fairer and truer in to-morrow’s memory. See notes to March 24, 1857 ("If you are describing any occurrence, or a man, make two or more distinct reports at different times.");  and March 28, 1857 ("Often I can give the truest and most interesting account of any adventure I have had after years have elapsed, for then I am not confused, only the most significant facts surviving in my memory. Indeed, all that continues to interest me after such a lapse of time is sure to be pertinent, and I may safely record all that I remember. ")

Having crawled over the hill through the woods on our stomachs we watch various water-fowl for an hour, Journal, March 27,1858

J J Audubon Fuligula albeola Buffle-headed Duck:"
The bufflehead, being known in different districts by the names of
Spirit Duck, Butter-box, Marrionette, Dipper, and Die-dipper, "

Sheldrakes. See March 22, 1858 ("I see two of these very far off on a bright-blue bay where the waves are running high. They are two intensely white specks, which yet you might mistake for the foaming crest of waves. Now one disappears, but soon is seen again, and then its companion is lost in like manner, having dived."); March 5, 1857 ("I scare up six male sheldrakes, with their black heads, in the Assabet,—the first ducks I have seen"); March 16, 1855 ("Scare up two large ducks . . . I think it the goosander or sheldrake."); March 16, 1854 ("I see ducks afar, sailing on the meadow, leaving a long furrow in the water behind them.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

Can this be the Fuligula albeola, and have I commonly seen only the female? Or is it a grebe? See January 15, 1858 ("At Natural History Rooms, Boston. Looked at the little grebe. Its feet are not webbed with lobes on the side like the coot, and it is quite white beneath."); December 26, 1857 ("The little dipper must, therefore, be different from a coot. Is it not a grebe?); April 19, 1855 ("A little duck, asleep with its head in its back, exactly in the middle of the pond. It has a moderate-sized black head and neck, a white breast, and seems dark-brown above, with a white spot on the side of the head, not reaching to the out side, from base of mandibles, and another, perhaps, on the end of the wing, with some black there. . . .I think it is the smallest duck I ever saw. Floating buoyantly asleep on the middle of Walden Pond. Is it not a female of the buffle-headed or spirit duck?"); December 26, 1853 ("Saw in it a small diver, probably a grebe or dobchick, dipper, or what-not, with the markings, as far as I saw, of the crested grebe, but smaller. It had a black head, a white ring about its neck, a white breast, black back, and apparently no tail.”); September 27, 1860 (" I see a little dipper in the middle of the river.. . .It has a dark bill and considerable white on the sides of the head or neck, with black between it, no tufts, and no observable white on back or tail.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Little Dipper

They must begin to die late in the winter. See note to March 28, 1857 ("Every spring there are many dead suckers floating belly upward on the meadows. This phenomenon of dead suckers is as constant as the phenomenon of living ones; nay, as a phenomenon it is far more apparent.")

Signs of Spring. Geese overhead, Journal, March 27 and 28, 1860

March 27, 2020

If you scan the horizon at this season of the year
you are very likely to see
the undulating line
of migrating geese against the sky.

March 28, 1859

Louis Minor tells me he saw some geese about the 23d. See  March 23, 1856 ("I spend a considerable portion of my time observing the habits of the wild animals, my brute neighbors. By their various movements and migrations they fetch the year about to me. Very significant are the flight of geese"); March 24, 1859 ("C. sees geese go over again this afternoon. How commonly they are seen in still rainy weather like this! He says that when they had got far off they looked like a black ribbon almost perpendicular waving in the air"); March 27, 1857 (" Farmer says that he heard geese go over two or three nights ago."); March 28, 1858 ("After a cloudy morning, a warm and pleasant afternoon. I hear that a few geese were seen this morning. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring, Geese Overhead

March 27.

The hazel is out

at this cold leafless season

greeting the spring.

March 27, 1853

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021