When the woodpeckers visit your woods in great numbers.

March 3.

Wednesday. 

Moore's larch trees beyond Sleepy Hollow cut this winter. They were much decayed. 

The woodpeckers had stripped many of bark in pursuit of grubs. When the woodpeckers visit your woods in great numbers, you may suspect that it is time to cut them. 

The chopper does not complain of cutting the larch, but when he comes to the splitting there's the rub. The grain runs almost round a four-foot stick sometimes. They make good posts.

 

Are those poplars whose buds I have seen so much expanded for a week or more a new species to me ? The river poplar ? [No.]

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 3, 1852

Cut this winter. December 14, 1851 ("I hear the small woodpecker whistle as he flies to ward the leafless wood on Fair Haven, doomed to be cut this winter."); January 21, 1852 ("This winter they are cutting down our woods more seriously than ever,--Fair Haven hill, Walden, Linnaea, Borealis Wood, etc., etc. Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds!"); January 22, 1852 ("It concerns us all whether these proprietors choose to cut down all the woods this winter or not"); March 11, 1852 (The woods I walked in in my youth are cut off. Is it not time that I ceased to sing?")

Moore's larch trees beyond Sleepy Hollow. See June 6, 1853 ("The larch grows in both Moore's and Pedrick’s swamps. Do not the trees that grow there indicate the depth of the swamp?")