The blackbird's fine clear whistle.

 

March 19. 

This morning I hear the blackbird's fine clear whistle and also his sprayey note, as he is swayed back and forth on the twigs of the elm or of the black willow over the river. His first note may be a chuck, but his second is a rich gurgle or warble.

 “Coelum non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt.” (Marginal index in Benzo's “History of the West Indies.") [(They change their sky, not their soul, who rush across the sea.)― Horace, The Odes of Horace]

Observed the leaves of a dock in the water, more forward than any vegetation I have noticed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 19, 1853

This morning I hear the blackbird's fine clear whistle and also his sprayey note. See March 19, 1855 ("I hear at last the tchuck tchuck of a blackbird and, looking up, see him flying high over the river southwesterly in great haste to reach somewhere");;March 19, 1858 ("By the river, see distinctly red-wings and hear their conqueree. . . .The red-wing and song sparrow are singing, and a flock of tree sparrows is pleasantly warbling. A new era has come. The red-wing's gurgle-ee is heard when smooth waters begin; they come together."); March 22, 1855 ("The blackbirds already sing o-gurgle ee-e-e from time to time on the top of a willow or elm or maple, but oftener a sharp, shrill whistle or a tchuck.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red-wing in Spring

Observed the leaves of a dock in the water, more forward than any vegetation I have noticed . See February 22, 1855 (“You see fresh upright green radical leaves of some plants — the dock, probably water dock, for one — in and about water now the snow is gone there, as if they had grown all winter.”);March 3, 1859 ("The small reddish radical leaves of the dock, too, are observed flat on the moist ground as soon as the snow has melted there, as if they had grown beneath it..") March 10, 1853 (“The radical leaves of innumerable plants (as here [John Hosmer’s ditch] a dock in and near the water) are evidently affected by the spring influences”)