The song sparrows begin to sing hereabouts.

March 5.

March 5, 2020

The meadows skim over at night. 

White pine cones half fallen. 

The old naturalists were so sensitive and sympathetic to nature that they could be surprised by the ordinary events of life. It was an incessant miracle to them, and therefore gorgons and flying dragons were not incredible to them. The greatest and saddest defect is not credulity, but our habitual forgetfulness that our science is ignorance. 

Chickweed and shepherd's-purse in bloom in C.'s garden, and probably all winter, or each month.

The song sparrows begin to sing hereabouts. 

I see some tame ducks in the river, six of them. It is amusing to see how exactly perpendicular they will stand, with their heads on the bottom and their tails up, plucking some food there, three or four at once. Perhaps the grass, etc., is a little further advanced there for them. 

George Buttrick thinks that forty musquash have been killed this spring between Hunt's and Flint's Bridge. The best time to hunt them is early morning and evening. His father goes out at daybreak, and can kill more in one hour after that than from that time to near sunset. He says that he has found eleven young in one musquash, and that Joel Barrett observed that one pair near his house bred five times in one year. Thought it would hardly pay to shoot them for their fur alone, but would if you owned river-meadow banks, they undermine them so. 

So far as the natural history is concerned, you often have your choice between uninteresting truth and interesting falsehood. 

As the ancients talked about ”hot and cold, moist and dry,” so the moderns talk about ”electric” qualities. 

As we sat under Lupine Promontory the other day, watching the ripples that swept over the flooded meadow and thinking what an eligible site that would be for a cottage, C. declared that we did not live in the country as long as we lived on that village street and only took walks into the fields, any more than if we lived in Boston or New York. We enjoyed none of the immortal quiet of the country as we might here, for instance, but per chance the first sound that we hear in the morning, instead of the tinkling of a bird, is your neighbor hawking and spitting.

Our spiræas have been considerably unfolded for several days. 

Ways fairly settled generally.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 5, 1860

White pine cones half fallen. See February 25, 1860 (“ The white pine cones have been blowing off more or less in every high wind ever since the winter began, and yet perhaps they have not more than half fallen yet.”); March 7, 1855 ("Picked up a very handsome white pine cone some six and a half inches long by two and three eighths near base and two near apex, perfectly blossomed. It is a very rich and wholesome brown color, of various shades as you turn it in your hand, —a light ashy or gray brown, somewhat like unpainted wood. as you look down on it, or as if the lighter brown were covered with a gray lichen, seeing only those parts of the scales always exposed, —with a few darker streaks or marks and a drop of pitch at the point of each scale. Within, the scales are a dark brown above (i.e. as it hangs) and a light brown beneath, Very distinctly being marked beneath by the same darker brown, down the centre and near the apex somewhat anchor wise. “) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines

Gorgons and flying dragons. See February 18, 1860 ("The old writers have left a more lively and lifelike account of the gorgon than modern writers give us of real animals.")

Chickweed in bloom in C.'s garden, and probably all winter. See February 2, 1853 ("The Stellaria media is full of frost-bitten blossoms, containing stamens, etc., still and half-grown buds. Apparently it never rests.")

The song sparrows begin to sing hereabouts. See March 2, 1860 ("Looking up a narrow ditch in a meadow, I see a modest brown bird flit along it furtively, — the first song sparrow, -- and then alight far off on a rock. Ed. Hoar says he heard one February 27th.");  March 3, 1860 (" The first song sparrows are very inconspicuous and shy on the brown earth. You hear some weeds rustle, or think you see a mouse run amid the stubble, and then the sparrow flits low away.");  March 11, 1854 ("On Tuesday, the 7th, I heard the first song sparrow chirp, and saw it flit silently from alder to alder. This pleasant morning after three days' rain and mist, they generally forthburst into sprayey song from the low trees along the river. The developing of their song is gradual but sure, like the expanding of a flower. This is the first song I have heard.”);  March 11, 1859 ("By riverside I hear the song of many song sparrows, the most of a song of any yet. . . .The birds anticipate the spring; they come to melt the ice with their songs.") See also note to February 24, 1857 ("I am surprised to hear the strain of a song sparrow from the riverside.") and A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)

George Buttrick thinks that forty musquash have been killed this spring between Hunt's and Flint's Bridge.  See February 24, 1860 ("The river risen and quite over the meadows yesterday and to-day, and musquash begun to be killed."); March 2, 1860 ("Men shooting musquash these days.")

The last three have been true March days for wind.

March 4

Sunday. 2 P. M. – To Conantum via Clamshell. 

Thermometer 44; very strong and gusty northwest wind, with electric-looking wind-clouds. One spits a · little rain, but mostly clear. The frost is all out of the upper part of the garden. These wind-clouds come up and disappear fast, and have a more or less perpendicular fibre. 

Sit under Lupine Promontory again, to see the ripples. The wind is too strong, the waves run too high and incessantly, to allow the distinct puffs or gusts that drop from over the hill to be seen distinctly enough on tumultuous surface. Yet it is interesting. It spreads and runs as a bird spreads its tail suddenly, or it is as if a gust fell on a head of dark hair and made dimples or “crowns” in it, or it is as when dust before a brisk sweeper curls along over a floor. 

There is much less of that yellowish anchor ice than on the 2d. Cakes of it successively rise, being separated by warmth from the bottom, and are driven off to the leeward shore. In some places that shore is lined with such cakes now, which have risen and been blown clear across the meadow and river, — large masses. Some portions of them are singularly saturated, of a yellowish or clay-color, and an uneven upper surface, with a finely divided perpendicular grain, looking (in form) just like some kinds of fungi (that commonly yellowish kind). There strike against one another and make a pleasant musical, or tinkling, sound. 

Some of the ice will occasionally be lifted up on its edge two feet high and very conspicuous afar. 

That reddish-purple tinge in the meadow ripples appears to be owing to a reflection in some cases from the somewhat russet bottom. 

I see some curled dock, just started. 

The earth is never lighter - colored than now, — the hillsides reflecting the sun when first dried after the winter, — especially, methinks, where the sheep's fescue grows(?). It contrasts finely with the rich blue of the water. 

I saw half a dozen crows on a cake of ice in the middle of the Great Meadows yesterday, evidently looking for some favorite food which is washed on to it, - snails, or cranberries perhaps. 

I see a bush of the early willow — by wall far in front of the C. Miles house — whose catkins are conspicuous thirty rods off, very decidedly green, three eighths of an inch by measure. The bush at this distance had quite a silvery look, and the catkins show some redness within. Many of the scales as usual had fallen. 

A hen-hawk rises and sails away over the Holden Wood as in summer. Saw and heard one scream the 2d. 

I notice, where (ice or) snow has recently melted, a very thin dirty-white web like a dense cobweb, left flat on the grass, such as I saw some years ago. 

There is a broad and very black space extending through Fair Haven Pond over the channel, visible half a mile off, where the ice is thinnest and saturated with water. The channel is already open a little way at the upper end of the pond. This pond at its outlet contracts gradually into the river, so that you could hardly tell where the pond left off and the river began. I see that the ice at present extends that way only so far as I last year assumed that the pond did. In this sense the river hence to the Hubbard Bridge is pond-like compared with the portion below. 

See two apparently sternothærus eggs dropped in a slight hollow in the grass, evidently imperfectly planted by the turtle; still whole. 

The last three have been true March days for wind. 

The handsome and neat brown (pale-brown yet distinct on the lighter withered sod) of the lechea is now conspicuous as a shading in the drying fields.

See no ducks to-day, though much water. Nights too cold? 

Aspen down a quarter of an inch out.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 4, 1860

There is a broad and very black space extending through Fair Haven Pond over the channel, visible half a mile off, where the ice is thinnest and saturated with water. See March 30, 1852 (" From the Cliffs I see that Fair Haven Pond is open over the channel of the river, - which is in fact thus only revealed, of the same width as elsewhere, running from the end of Baker's Wood to the point of the Island. The slight current there has worn away the ice. I never knew before exactly where the channel was.") See also February 28, 1857 ("Nearly one third the channel is open in Fair Haven Pond. ");. March 26, 1860 ("Fair Haven Pond may be open by the 20th of March, as this year [1860], or not till April 13 as in '56, or twenty-three days later"); March 29, 1854 ("Fair Haven half open; channel wholly open. Thin cakes of ice at a distance now and then blown up on their edges glistening in the sun.").

I see a bush of the early willow . . . whose catkins are conspicuous thirty rods off, very decidedly green, three eighths of an inch by measure.  See February 19, 1857 ("Some willow catkins have crept a quarter of an inch from under their scales and look very red, probably on account of the warm weather"); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

I saw half a dozen crows on a cake of ice in the middle of the Great Meadows yesterday, evidently looking for some favorite food which is washed on to it, - snails, or cranberries perhaps. See March 22, 1854 ("See crows along the water's edge. What do they eat?"): March 22, 1855 (" I have noticed crows in the meadows ever since they were first partially bare, three weeks ago "); March 22, 1856 ("Many tracks of crows in snow along the edge of the open water against Merrick’s at Island. They thus visit the edge of water—this and brooks —before any ground is exposed. Is it for small shellfish?"); March 20, 1856 ("Perhaps these [Paludina decisa] make part of the food of the crows which visit this brook and whose tracks I now see on the edge, and have all winter. Probably they also pick up some dead frogs"); March 5, 1859 (" I see crows walking about on the ice half covered with snow in the middle of the meadows, where there is no grass, apparently to pick up the worms and other insects left there since the midwinter freshet ."). See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:  The crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows

A hen-hawk rises and sails away over the Holden Wood as in summer. Saw and heard one scream the 2d. See March 15, 1856 ("Hear two hawks scream. There is something truly March-like in it, like a prolonged blast or whistling of the wind"); March 15, 1860 ("A hen-hawk sails away from the wood southward.  

  

These hawks, as usual, began to be common about the first of March, showing that they were returning from their winter quarters.").  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: the Hawks of March

 Aspen down a quarter of an inch out. See February 6, 1856 (" The down is just peeping out from some of the aspen buds"); February 27. 1852 ("The buds of the aspen show a part of their down or silky catkins.")

March 4. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 4

A hen-hawk rises 

and sails over Holden Wood 

as in the summer.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, True March days for wind. 

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 © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-600304

These are ripple days begun.

March 2

Notice the brightness of a row of osiers this morning. This phenomenon, whether referable to a change in the condition of the twig or to the spring air and light, or even to our imaginations, is not the less a real phenomenon, affecting us annually at this season. This is one compensation for having them lopped so often along the causeways, that it is only these new and vigorous growths which shine thus. 

Frequently within ten days it has been uncomfortable walking in a greatcoat. 

March 2, 2025

2 P. M. — Thermometer 50°. To Witherell Glade via Clamshell; thence to Hubbard’s Close. 

Thinking to look at the cabbage as I pass under Clamshell, I find it very inconspicuous. Most would have said that there was none there. The few tallest and slenderest but tender ones were frost-bitten and far from blooming, but I found three or four more, broad and stout, – a hardy mahogany-colored one, but very low, half covered with the withered sedge, which it lifted up with it, and not apparently open. Putting my finger into one, the broadest and lowest, which opened about half an inch and stood with its back to the west (while they are all sheltered by the hill on the north), I was surprised when I drew it forth to see it covered with pollen. It was fairly in bloom, and probably yesterday too. Evidently some buds are further advanced than others even when the winter comes, and then these are further expanded and matured in advance of the others in the very warm days in the winter. No doubt it may have bloomed in some places in this neighborhood in the last day or two of February this year. Unusually warm weather in February, with bare ground where they grow, may cause them to bloom before February is over. Most would not have detected any change in it since the fall.

The grass has evidently sprung and grown a little, a very little, of late, say the very last of February, in warm wet places at the south base of hills, like this. It has a healthy but dark-green look. The (apparently) Epilobium coloratum has conspicuous green radical leaves there. 

I see several minute glaucous sort of grasshoppers-skipping over the grass and water. 

Men shooting musquash these days. 

All the grass-stubble in fields not mown is conspicuous pointed eastward, and reflects the light from a thousand parallel lances. Probably blown thus by the prevailing winds through the winter. 

Now and for some days look for arrowheads where it is not too soft. 

There is a strong westerly wind to-day, though warm, and we sit under Dennis’s Lupine Promontory, to observe the water. 

The great phenomenon these days is the sparkling blue water, — a richer blue than the sky ever is. The flooded meadows are ripple lakes on a large scale. 

The landscape, though no growth is visible in it, is bright and springlike. There is the tawny earth (almost completely bare) of different shades, lighter or darker, the light very light in this air, more so than the surface of the earth ever is (i. e. without snow), bleached as it were; and, in the hollows of it, set round by the tawny hills and banks, is this copious living and sparkling blue water of various shades. 

It is more dashing, rippling, sparkling, living, this windy but clear day; never smooth, but ever varying in its degree of motion and depth of blue as the wind is more or less strong, rising and falling.

All along the shore next us is a strip a few feet wide of very light and smooth sky-blue, for so much is sheltered even by the lowest shore, but the rest is all more or less agitated and dark-blue. In it are, floating or stationary, here and there, cakes of white ice, the least looking like ducks, and large patches of water have a dirty-white or even tawny look, where the ice still lies on the bottom of the meadow. Thus even the meadow flood is parded, and of various patches of color. 

Ever and anon the wind seems to drop down from over the hill in strong puffs, and then spread and diffuse itself in dark fan shaped figures over the surface of the water. It is glorious to see how it sports on the watery surface. You see a hundred such nimble-footed puffs drop and spread on all sides at once, and dash off, sweeping the surface of the water for forty rods in [ a ] few seconds, as if so many invisible spirits were playing tag there. It even suggests some fine dust swept along just above the surface, and reminds me of snow blowing over ice and vapor curling along a roof,-meandering like that, often. Like hair, like the crown of the head, curling various ways. The before dark blue is now diversified with much darker or blackish patches with a suggestion of red,-purplish even. 

Then the wind blows with stronger gust down the Nut Meadow valley on our right, and I am surlprised to see that the billows which it makes are concentric curves apparently reaching round from shore to shore of this broad bay, forty rods wide or more :-

This is conspicuously the form of them. For which two things may account, — the greater force of the wind in the middle and the friction of the shores. And when it blows hardest, each successive billow (four or five feet apart or more) is crowned with yellowish or dirty white foam. 

The wind blows around each side of the hill, the opposite currents meeting perchance, or it falls over the hill. So you have a field of ever-varying color,-dark blue, blackish, yellowish, light blue, and smooth sky-blue, and purplish, and yellowish foam, all at once. 

Sometimes the wind visibly catches up the surface and blows it along and about in spray four or five feet high. Now and then, when the gust increases, there comes a top of fly-away grass from over the hill, goes dancing over the waves, and soon is lost. The requisites are high water mostly clear of ice, ground bare and sufficiently dry, weather warm enough, and wind strong and gusty; then you may sit or stand on a hill and watch this play of the wind with the water. 

I know of no checker-board more interesting to watch. The wind, the gusts, comb the hair of the water nymphs. You never tíre of seeing it drop, spread, and sweep over the yielding and sensitive surface. The water is so full of life, now rising into higher billows which would make your mast crack if you had any, now subsiding into lesser, dashing against and wearing away the still anchored ice, setting many small cakes adrift. How they entertain us with ever-changing scenes, in the sky above or on the earth below ! If the plowman lean on his plow-handle and look up or down, there is danger that he will forget his labor on that day. 

These are ripple days begun, — not yet in woodland pools, where is ice yet. 

I see a row of white pines, too, waving and reflecting their silvery light.

The red maple sap flows freely, and probably has for several days. 

I begin to notice the reddish stems of moss on low ground, not bright yet. 

C. has seen good bæomyces (?) lately. There is none however at Bæomyces Bank. 

In Hosmer’s ditches in the moraine meadow, the grass just peeps above the surface, apparently begun to grow a little. 

I see on [sic] a small round last year’s turtle with a yellowish spot on each scale and a yellow-pink breast centred with black. 

Also see a yellow-spot turtle there. 

Some of those tufts of andropogon radical leaves make excellent seats now when the earth is moist.

We see one or two gnats in the air. 

See thirty or more crows come flying in the usual irregular zigzag manner in the strong wind, from over M. Miles’s, going northeast, — the first migration of them, — without cawing.

See a little conferva in ditches.

Looking up a narrow ditch in a meadow, I see a modest brown bird flit along it furtively, — the first song sparrow, -- and then alight far off on a rock. Ed. Hoar says he heard one February 27th. 

Hayden thinks he has seen bluebirds for a fortnight!! Say that he has possibly for a week (?), and that will agree with Wheeler. Ed. Hoar says he heard one February 27th. 

At Brister Spring, and especially below, at the cowslip, the dense bedded green moss is very fresh and handsome, and the cowslip leaves, though unfolded, rise to the surface. 

See a little frog in one of the spring-holes. 

See a hen-hawk. 

Two or three tufts of carex have shot up in Hosmer’s cold spring ditch and been frost-bitten. 

Ed. Hoar says he heard a phebe February 27th.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 2, 1860

Notice the brightness of a row of osiers this morning. This phenomenon, whether referable to a change in the condition of the twig or to the spring air and light, or even to our imaginations, is not the less a real phenomenon, affecting us annually at this season.  See February 24, 1855 ("The brightening of the willows or of osiers, —that is a season in the spring,. . ., I remember it as a prominent phenomenon affecting the face of Nature, a gladdening of her face. You will often fancy that they look brighter before the spring has come, and when there has been no change in them"); March 20, 1859 (" This is, methinks, the brightest object in the landscape these days. Nothing so betrays the spring sun. I am aware that the sun has come out of a cloud first by seeing it lighting up the osiers. Such a willow-row, cut off within a year or two, might be called a heliometer, or measure of the sun's brightness."). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  the Osier in Winter and early Spring

Evidently some buds are further advanced than others even when the winter comes, and then these are further expanded and matured in advance of the others in the very warm days in the winter. See March 2, 1859  ("Under the alders at Well Meadow I see a few skunk- cabbage spathes fairly open on the side, and these may bloom after a day or two of pleasant weather."); see also  February 27, 1860 (" I noticed yesterday that the skunk-cabbage had not started yet at Well Meadow, and had been considerably frost-bitten. "); and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Skunk Cabbage

These are ripple days begun. See March 9, 1860 (“March began warm, and I admired the ripples made by the gusts on the dark-blue meadow flood, and the light-tawny color of the earth, and was on the alert to hear the first birds.”); April 9, 1859 ("Watching the ripples fall and dash across the surface of low-lying and small woodland lakes is one of the amusements of these windy March and April days.”)

See thirty or more crows come flying in the usual irregular zigzag manner in the strong wind, from over M. Miles’s, going northeast, — the first migration of them, — without cawing. See March 5, 1854 ("See crows, as I think, migrating northeasterly. They come in loose, straggling flocks, about twenty to each, commonly silent, a quarter to a half a mile apart, till four flocks have passed, perhaps more. "); March 7, 1855 (". Did I not see crows flying northeasterly yesterday toward night?"); March 5, 1859 (" I see a crow going north or northeast, high over Fair Haven Hill, and, two or three minutes after, two more, and so many more at intervals of a few minutes. This is apparently their spring movement. ")

The red maple sap flows freely, and probably has for several days. See February 21, 1857 ("Am surprised to see this afternoon a boy collecting red maple sap from some trees behind George Hubbard's. It runs freely. The earliest sap I made to flow last year was March 14th "); March 3, 1857 ("The red maple sap, which I first noticed the 21st of February, is now frozen up in the auger-holes ."); March 4, 1852 (I see where a maple has been wounded the sap is flowing out. Now, then, is the time to make sugar."); March 7, 1855 ("To-day, as also three or four days ago, I saw a clear drop of maple sap on a broken red maple twig, which tasted very sweet.")

Also see a yellow-spot turtle there. See March 26, 1860 ("The yellow-spotted tortoise may be seen February 23, as in '57, or not till March 28, as in '55, — thirty-three days."); February 23, 1857 ("What mean these turtles, these coins of the muddy mint issued in early spring? The bright spots on their backs are vain unless I behold them. The spots seem brighter than ever when first beheld in the spring, as does the bark of the willow. I have seen signs of the spring. I have seen a frog swiftly sinking in a pool, or where he dimpled the surface as he leapt in. I have seen the brilliant spotted tortoises stirring at the bottom of ditches. I have seen the clear sap trickling from the red maple. ")

See a little conferva in ditches. See January 29, 1858 ("In the ditches on Holbrook's meadow near Copan, I see a Rana palustris swimming, and much conferva greening all the water. Even this green is exhilarating, like a spring in winter. I am affected by the sight even of a mass of conferva in a ditch")

I see a modest brown bird flit along it furtively, — the first song sparrow. See note to February 24, 1857 ("I am surprised to hear the strain of a song sparrow from the riverside. ")

I begin to notice the reddish stems of moss on low ground, not bright yet. At Brister Spring the dense bedded green moss is very fresh and handsome. See March 7 , 1855 ("At Brister’s Spring there are beautiful dense green beds of moss, which apparently has just risen above the surface of the water, tender and compact."); April 2, 1853 (" See the fine moss in the pastures with beautiful red stems even crimsoning the ground. This is its season.")

See a hen-hawk.  See; 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.”);  March 2, 1856 ("I can hardly believe that hen-hawks may be beginning to build their nests now. ")

March 2.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 2

A puff of wind spreads

in dark fan-shaped figures

over the the water.

It is more dashing

rippling sparkling living this 

windy but clear day.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,   These are ripple days begun.

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 ©  2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-600302