Buffle-headed or spirit ducks.

 

December 14. 

 P. M. -- With C. up north bank of Assabet to bridge.

Good sleighing still, with but little snow.

A warm, thawing day.

The river is open almost its whole length. It is a beautifully smooth mirror within an icy frame.

It is well to improve such a time to walk by it.

This strip of water of irregular width over the channel, between broad fields of ice, looks like a polished silver mirror, or like another surface of polished ice, and often is distinguished from the surrounding ice only by its reflections.

I have rarely seen any reflections --  of weeds, willows, and elms, and the houses of the village -- so distinct, the stems so black and distinct; for they contrast not with a green meadow but clear white ice, to say nothing of the silvery surface of the water.  Your eye slides first over a plane surface of smooth ice of one color to a water surface of silvery smoothness, like a gem set in ice, and reflecting the weeds and trees and houses and clouds with singular beauty.

The reflections are particularly simple and distinct. These twigs are not referred to and confounded with a broad green meadow from which they spring, as in summer, but, instead of that dark-green ground, absorbing the light, is this abrupt white field of ice.

We see so little open and smooth water at this season that I am inclined to improve such an opportunity to walk along the river, and moreover the meadows, being more or less frozen, make it more feasible than in summer.

I am singularly interested by the sight of the shrubs which grow along rivers, rising now above the snow, with buds and catkins,-- the willows, alders, sweetgale, etc.

At our old bathing-place on the Assabet, saw two ducks, which at length took to wing. They had large dark heads, dark wings, and clear white breasts. I think they were buffle-headed or spirit ducks. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 14, 1854

Large dark heads, dark wings, and clear white breasts. I think they were buffle-headed or spirit ducks. See January 7, 1853 ("He shows me the spirit duck of the Indians, of which Peabody says the Indians call it by a word meaning spirit, "because of the wonderful quickness with which it disappears at the twang of a bow.""); 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. . .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?"); April 22, 1861 (" [Mann] obtained to-day the buffle-headed duck, diving in the river near the Nine-Acre Corner bridge. I identify it at sight as my bird seen on Walden. ")

See also J J Audubon (The bufflehead, being known in different districts by the names of Spirit Duck, Butter-box, Marrionette, Dipper, and Die-dipper,") Compare December 26, 1853 ("Saw in [Walden] a small diver, probably a grebe or dobchick, dipper, or what-not, ... It had a black head, a white ring about its neck, a white breast, black back, and apparently no tail.”); September 27, 1860 ("[The little dipper] 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