March 26.
There is a large specimen of what I take to be the
common alder by the poplar at Egg Rock, five inches in diameter. It may be considered as beginning to bloom to-day.
Some white maples appear still as backward as the red.
Saw about 10 A. M. a gaggle of geese, forty-three in number,
in a very perfect harrow flying northeasterly. One side the harrow was a little longer than the other. They appeared to be four or five feet apart.
At first I heard faintly, as I stood by Minott's gate, borne
to me from the southwest through the confused sounds of the village, the
indistinct honking of geese.
I was somewhat surprised to find that Mr. Loring at his
house should have heard and seen the same flock. I should think that the same flock was commonly seen and
heard from the distance of a mile east and west.
It is remarkable that we commonly see geese go over in the
spring about 10 o'clock in the morning, as if they were accustomed to stop for
the night at some place southward whence they reached us at that time.
Goodwin saw six geese in Walden about the same time.
The scales of the alder run to leaves sometimes.
P. M. Up Assabet to stone-heaps, in boat.
A warm, moist, April-like afternoon, with wet-looking sky,
and misty. For the first time I take off my coat.
Everywhere are hovering over the river and floating, wrecked
and struggling, on its surface, a miller-like insect, without mealy wings, very
long and narrow, six- legged with two long feelers and, I believe, two long
slender grayish wings, from my harbor to the heaps, or a couple of miles at
least, food for fishes. This was the degree and kind of warmth to bring them forth.
The tortoises, undoubtedly painted, drop now in several instances from the limbs and floating rails on which they had come out to sun.
I notice by the Island a yellow scum on the water close to
the shore, which must be the pollen of the alders just above. This, too, is perhaps food for fishes.
Up the Assabet, scared from his perch a stout hawk, -- the red-tailed
undoubtedly, for I saw very plainly the cow-red when he spread his wings from
off his tail (and rump?).
I rowed the boat three times within gunshot before he flew,
twice within four rods, while he sat on an oak over the water,-- I think because
I had two ladies with me, which was as good as bushing the boat. Each time, or twice
at least, he made a motion to fly before he started.
The ends of his primaries looked very ragged against the sky.
This is the hen-hawk of the farmer, the same, probably,
which I have scared off from the Cliff so often. It was an interesting eagle-like object, as he sat upright
on his perch with his back to us, now and then looking over his shoulder, the
broad-backed, flat-headed, curve-beaked bird.
Heard a pewee. This, it seems to me, is the first true pewee day, though
they have been here some time.
What is that cress-like weed in and on the edge of the river
opposite Prescott Barrett's? A fresher and more luxuriant growth of green leaf
than I have seen yet; as if it had grown in winter.
I do not perceive any
fresh additions to the stone-heaps, though perhaps I did not examine carefully
enough.
Went forth just after sunset.
A storm gathering, an April-like storm. I hear now in the dusk only the song sparrow along the
fences and a few hylas at a distance. And now the rattling drops compel me to return.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 26, 1853
There is a large specimen of what I take to be the common alder by the poplar at Egg Rock. See
December 30, 1855 ("For a few days I have noticed the snow sprinkled with alder and birch scales. I go now through the birch meadow southwest of the Rock. The high wind is scattering them over the snow there. ")
Saw about 10 A. M. a gaggle of geese, forty-three in number, in a very perfect harrow flying northeasterly. See March 24, 1859 (" C. sees geese go over again this afternoon.");
March 25, 1853 ("A Lincoln man heard a flock of geese, he thinks it was day before yesterday.");
March 27, 1857 ("Farmer says that he heard geese go over two or three nights ago.");
March 27 and 28, 1860 (" Louis Minor tells me he saw some geese about the 23d.");
March 28, 1859 ("I suspect it will be found that there is really some advantage in large birds of passage flying in the wedge form and cleaving their way through the air, — that they really do overcome its resistance best in this way, — and perchance the direction and strength of the wind determine the comparative length of the two sides . . .Undoubtedly the geese fly more numerously over rivers which, like ours, flow northeasterly, — are more at home with the water under them.") See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,
Signs of Spring, Geese Overhead
Everywhere are hovering over the river and floating, wrecked and struggling, on its surface, a miller-like insect . . the degree and kind of warmth to bring them forth. See
March 7, 1859 ("Their appearance is a regular early spring, or late winter, phenomenon");
April 25, 1854 ("Many shad-flies in the air and alighting on my clothes. The summer approaches by almost insensibly increasing lieferungs of heat, . . Each creature awaits with confidence its proper degree of heat.") See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,
Insect Hatches in Spring (millers, perla, shad-flies or ephemera)
Up the Assabet, scared from his perch a stout hawk, -- the red-tailed undoubtedly See March 6, 1858 ("I see the first hen-hawk, or hawk of any kind, methinks, since the beginning of winter. Its scream, even, is inspiring as the voice of a spring bird."); .
March 2, 1855 ("Hear two hawks scream. There is something truly March-like in it, like a prolonged blast or whistling of the wind through a crevice in the sky. which, like a cracked blue saucer, overlaps the woods. Such are the first rude notes which prelude the summer’s quire, learned of the whistling March wind") See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:
the Hawks of March
The first true pewee day, though they have been here some time. See
March 16, 1854. ("
The first phoebe near the water is heard.");
April 2, 1852 ("For a long distance, as we paddle up the river, we hear the two-stanza'd lay of the pewee on the shore, - pee-wet, pee-wee, etc. Those are the two obvious facts to eye and ear, the river and the pewee.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Phoebe
I do not perceive any fresh additions to the stone-heaps, See
April 19, 1854 ("Yesterday, as I was returning down the Assabet, . . . I was surprised to find the river so full of sawdust from the pail-factory and Barrett's mill that I could not easily distinguish if the stone-heaps had been repaired"); May 3, 1855 ("Sitting on the bank near the stone-heaps, I see large suckers rise to catch insects,—sometimes leap."):
June 11, 1858 (""Examine the stone-heaps. One is now a foot above water and quite sharp. They contain, apparently freshly piled up, from a wheelbarrow to a cartload of stones; but I can find no ova in them. ");
July 31, 1859 ("A man fishing at the Ox-Bow said without hesitation that the stone-heaps were made by the sucker,")
