A Book of the Seasons, Signs of the Spring: I see ducks afar, sailing on the meadow

No mortal is alert enough 

to be present at the first dawn of the spring. 

Henry Thoreau, March 17, 1857

Now, when the sap of the trees is probably beginning to flow,

the sap of the earth -- the river -- overflows and bursts its icy fetters. 

I must be on the lookout now for the gulls and the ducks.

That dark-blue meadowy revelation.

March 8, 1853

Ducks on the meadow

leave a long furrow in the 

water behind them. 

March 16, 1854

February 23.   I have seen signs of the spring.  February 23, 1857

February 25. I go across the Great Fields to Peter's, but can see no ducks on the meadows. I suspect they have not come yet, in spite of the openness.  February 25, 1857

February 27. I had noticed for some time, far in the middle of the Great Meadows, something dazzlingly white, which I took, of course, to be a small cake of ice on its end, but now that I have climbed the pitch pine hill and can overlook the whole meadow, I see it to be the white breast of a male sheldrake accompanied perhaps by his mate . . .This is the first bird of the spring that I have seen or heard of. February 27, 1860

March 3.  2 P. M. — 50°; overcast and somewhat rain-threatening; wind southwest . . .See a flock of large ducks in a line, — maybe black? — over Great Meadows; also a few sheldrakes. March 3, 1860

March 4. See no ducks to-day, though much water. Nights too cold? March 4, 1860

March 5. I scare up six male sheldrakes, with their black heads, in the Assabet,—the first ducks I have seen. March 5, 1857 

March 5. 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.  March 5, 1860

March 6. Sheldrakes and black ducks are the only ones [Jonas Melvin ] has seen this year. March 6, 1860

March 8. I must be on the lookout now for the gulls and the ducks. March 8, 1853

March 9.  Saw several flocks of large grayish and whitish or speckled ducks, I suppose the same that P. calls sheldrakes. They, like ducks commonly, incline to fly in a line about an equal distance apart. I hear the common sort of quacking from them. It is pleasant to see them at a distance alight on the water with a slanting flight, launch themselves, and sail along so stately. The pieces of ice, large and small, drifting along, help to conceal them supply so many objects on the water.  March 9, 1854

March 12.  Two ducks in river, good size, white beneath with black heads, as they go over . . . Thus the river is no sooner fairly open than they are back again, — before I have got my boat launched, and long before the river has worn through Fair Haven Pond. I think I hear a quack or two. March 12, 1855

March 12. See two ducks flying over Ministerial Swamp. March 12, 1859

March 13.  Garfield says he saw black ducks yesterday. March 13, 1859

March 16. The ducks alight at this season on the windward side of the river, in the smooth water, and swim about by twos and threes, pluming themselves and diving to peck at the root of the lily. March 16, 1840.

March 16.  I see ducks afar, sailing on the meadow, leaving a long furrow in the water behind them. Watch them at leisure without scaring them, with my glass; observe their free and undisturbed motions . . . Others with bright white breasts, etc., and black heads . . . dive and are gone some time, and come up a rod off. At first I saw but one, then, a minute after, three . . . The first phoebe near the water is heard . . . It is warm weather. A thunder-storm in the evening. March 16, 1854

March 16.  Cloudy in the forenoon. Sun comes out and it is rather pleasant in the afternoon . . . Scare up two large ducks just above the bridge. One very large; white beneath, breast and neck; black head and wings and aft. The other much smaller and dark. Apparently male and female. They alight more than a hundred rods south of the bridge, and I view them with glass. The larger sails about on the watch, while the smaller, dark one dives repeatedly. I think it the goosander or sheldrake. March 16, 1855

March 16. Saw a flock of sheldrakes a hundred rods off, on the Great Meadows, mostly males with a few females, all intent on fishing. March 16, 1860

March 17. Hosmer says he has seen black ducks. March 17, 1855

March 18.  The season is so far advanced that the sun, every now and then promising to shine out through this rather warm rain, lighting up transiently with a whiter light the dark day and my dark chamber, affects me as I have not been affected for a long time. I must go forth. How eagerly the birds of passage penetrate the northern ice, watching for a crack by which to enter! Forthwith the swift ducks will be seen winging their way along the rivers and up the coast. They watch the weather more sedulously than the teamster. All nature is thus forward to move with the revolution of the seasons .March 18,1853

March 18.  Hearing a faint quack , I looked up and saw two apparently dusky ducks winging their swift way northward over the course of the river . Channing says he saw some large white - breasted ducks to-day. March 18, 1853

March 18.  R. thinks that the ducks will be seen more numerous, gathering on our waters, just before a storm, like yesterday’s. March 18, 1859

March 19. It blows so hard that you walk aslant against the wind . . . The meadows are all in commotion. The ducks are now concealed by the waves, if there are any floating there. March 19, 1859

 March 20.  We go looking in vain for ducks, – a semiriparial walk. From time to time we are deceived a moment by a shining cake of ice on its edge at a distance . . . At last I see a small, straight flock of ducks going northeast in the distance. March 20,1858

March 20.  A. Buttrick said to-day that the black ducks come when the grass begins to grow in the meadows, i.e. in the water.  March 20, 1860

March 21.  River skimmed over at Willow Bay last night. Think I should find ducks cornered up by the ice; they get behind this hill for shelter.  Look with glass and find  more than thirty black ducks asleep with their heads on their backs, motionless, and thin ice formed about them. 

There was an open space, eight or ten rods by one or two. At first all within a space of apparently less than a rod diameter. Soon one or two are moving about slowly. It is 6.30 a. m., the sun shining on them, but bitter cold.  How tough they are!  I crawl on my stomach and get a near view of them, thirty rods off. At length they detect me and quack. Some get out upon the ice, and when I rise up all take to flight in a great straggling flock. Yet, when you see two or three  the parallelism produced by their necks and bodies steering the same way gives the idea of order. March 21, 1854

March 22.  Launch boat and paddle to Fair Haven. Still very cold . . . Scare up my flock of black ducks and count forty together. March 22, 1854

March 22.  Launch my boat and row downstream. There is a strong and cool northwest wind. Leaving our boat just below N. Barrett's, we walk down the shore . . . and, finding a sheltered and sunny place, we watch the ducks from it with our glass. There are not only gulls, but about forty black ducks and as many sheldrakes, and, I think, two wood ducks. . . .about forty black ducks, pretty close together, sometimes apparently in close single lines, some looking lumpish like decoys of wood, others standing on the bottom and reminding me of penguins. They were constantly diving with great energy, making the water fly apparently two feet upward in a thick shower. Then away they all go, circling about for ten minutes at least before they can decide where to alight. 

The black heads and white breasts, which may be golden-eyes, for they are evidently paired, male and female, for the most part, —and yet I thought that I saw the red bill of the sheldrake (They are sheldrakes), —these are most incessantly and skillfully plunging and from time to time apparently pursuing each other. They are much more active, whether diving or swimming about, than you expect ducks to be. Now, perchance, they are seen changing their ground, swimming off, perhaps, two by two, in pairs, very steadily and swiftly, without diving. I see two of these very far off on a bright-blue bay where the waves are running high. They are two intensely white specks, which yet you might mistake for the foaming crest of waves. Now one disappears, but soon is seen again, and then its companion is lost in like manner, having dived. March 22, 1858

Thirty ducks asleep

with heads on backs, motionless –

ice forms about them.

March 21, 1854

See also

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Goosander, Merganser)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,, the American Black Duck

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Ice-out

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,, Boat in. Boat out.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Phoebe

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 16

And, Signs of the Spring:

• A Change in the Air
• Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding
• Braided Ripples of Melting Snow Shine in the Ruts
• Bright Blue Water
• Buzzing Flies
• Ducks Afar, Sailing on the Meadow
• Frogs, and Turtles Stirring
• Geese Overhead
• Greening Grasses and Sedges
• I begin to think that my wood will last
• Insects and Worms Come Forth and are Active
• Listening for the Bluebird
• March is famous for its Winds
• Mosses Bright Green
• My Greatcoat on my Arm
• Perla-like Insects Appear
• Red Maple Sap Flows
• Ripples made by Fishes
• Skunks Active
• The Anxious Peep of the Early Robin
• The crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows
• The Days have grown Sensibly Longer
• The Eaves Begin to Run
• The Gobbling of Turkeys
• The Grackle Arrives
• The Hawks of March
• The New Warmth of the Sun
• The Note of the Dark-eyed Junco Going Northward
• The Red-Wing Arrives
• The Skunk Cabbage Blooms
• The Softened Air of these Warm February Days
• The Song Sparrow Sings
• The Spring Note of the Chickadee
• The Spring Note of the Nuthatch
• The Striped Squirrel Comes Out
• The Water Bug (Gyrinus)
• The Woodchuck Ventures Out
• Walking without Gloves
• Woodpeckers TappingA Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Osier in Winter and early Spring

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,

Signs of the Spring,  Ducks Afar, Sailing on the Meadow

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 ©  2009-2023

https://tinyurl.com/HDTmarchducks

Three ducks in the river

February 3.

Saw three ducks in the river. 

They resort to those parts necessarily which are open, which are near the houses. I always see them in the fall as long as the river and ponds are open, and, that being the case all this winter (almost), they have not all gone further south. The shallow and curving part of the river behind Cheney's being open all this winter, they are confined for the most part to this, in this neighborhood.

February 3, 2019

The thickest ice I have seen this winter is full nine inches.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 3, 1853

Saw three ducks in the river. See note to January 28, 1853 ("See three ducks sailing in the river behind Prichard's this afternoon, black with white on wings, though these two or three have been the coldest days of the winter, and the river is generally closed.")

The thickest ice I have seen this winter is full nine inches. See  January 18, 1856 ("I clear a little space in the snow, which is nine to ten inches deep over the deepest part of the pond, and cut through the ice, which is about seven inches thick.");  January 29, 1853 ("I saw a little grayish mouse frozen into Walden . . . The ice is eight inches thick."); February 8, 1858 ("The ice which J. Brown is now getting for his ice house from S. Barrett’s is from eight to nine plus inches thick, but I am surprised to find that Walden ice is only six inches thick, or even a little less, and it has not been thicker."); February 18, 1858 (“I find Walden ice to be nine and a half plus inches thick, having gained three and a half inches since the 8th”)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 3

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 ©  2009-2023

The old window of diamond squares, set in lead,

February 1. 

Surveying the Hunt farm. 

Saw a duck in the river; different kind from the last. 

Dr. Bartlett tells me that it was Adam Winthrop, a grandson of the Governor, who sold this farm to Hunt in 1701. I saw the old window, some eighteen inches square, of diamond squares, four or five inches across, set in lead, on the back side the house.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 1, 1853

Saw a duck in the river; different kind from the last.  See January 29, 1853  ("Melvin calls the ducks which I saw yesterday sheldrakes; being small, then wood sheldrakes. [I judge from the plate they were velvet ducks, or white-winged coots.]")

Adam Winthrop, a grandson of the Governor sold this farm to Hunt in 1701. See March 18, 1857 ("It is to be observed that in the old deed of the Hunt farm, written in 1701, though the whole, consisting of something more than one hundred and fifty acres, is minutely described in thirteen different pieces, no part is described as woodland or wood-lot, only one piece as partly unimproved.")

 I saw the old window on the back side the house. See  February 17, 1857 ("To the old Hunt house. . . .This house is about forty-nine feet on the front by twenty."); December 20, 1857 ("The cellar stairs at the old Hunt house are made of square oak timbers "); February 9, 1858 ("The stairs of the old back part are white pine or spruce, each the half of a square log");  March 11, 1859 ("To Hunt house. I go to get one more sight of the old house which Hosmer is pulling down, but I am too late to see much of it."); March 13, 1859 ("The Hunt house, to draw from memory, . . .looked like this :

 

March 14, 1859 ("I judge by my eye that the house is fifteen feet high to the eaves. The posts are remarkably sawn and hewn away on account of the projection of the upper story, so that they are more than twice as large above as below."); March 18, 1859 ("I, with others, saw by the frame of the old Hunt house that an addition had been made to its west end in 1703.");March 27, 1859 ("Those chalk-marks on the chamber-floor joists and timbers of the Hunt house, one of which was read by many "Feb. 1666,""); September 22, 1859 ("I went past the Hunt cellar, where Hosmer pulled down the old house in the spring, );

Chickadees and jays are heard from the shore as in winter.

October 18.

Up river to Bittern Cliff.

October 18, 2020

 (avesong)

A mild still but cloudy or rather misty afternoon,

The water is at present perfectly smooth and calm but covered with a kind of smoky or hazy film.

Nevertheless the reflections of distant woods though less distinct are softer seen through this smoky and darkened atmosphere.

I speak only of the reflections as seen in the broader bays and longer reaches of the river as at the Willow End.

The general impression made by the river landscape now is that of bareness and bleakness the black willow not yet the golden and the button bush having lost almost all their leaves the latter perhaps all and the last is covered with the fuzzy mikania blossoms gone to seed a dirty white.

There are a very few polygonums hydropiperaides and perhaps the unknown rose tinted one but most have withered before the frosts.

The vegetation of the immediate shore and the water is for the most part black and withered.

A few muskrat houses are going up abrupt and precipitous on one side sloped on the other I distinguish the dark moist layer of weeds deposited last night on what had dried in the sun,

The tall bulrush and the wool grass are dry and yellow except a few in deep water but the rainbow rush Juncus militaris is still green.

The autumnal tints though less brilliant and striking are perhaps quite as agreeable now that the frosts have somewhat dulled and softened them.

Now that the forest is universally imbrowned they make a more harmonious impression.

Wooded hillsides reflected in the water are particularly agreeable.

The undulation which the boat creates gives them the appearance of being terraced.

Chickadees and jays are heard from the shore as in winter.

Saw two or three ducks which fly up before and alight far behind.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 18, 1852

Chickadees and jays are heard from the shore as in winter. See  October 14, 1852 ("Jays and chickadees are oftener heard in the fall than in summer."); October 20, 1856 (" Thus, of late, when the season is declining, many birds have departed, and our thoughts are turned towards winter . . .we hear the jay again more frequently, and the chickadees are more numerous and lively and familiar and utter their phebe note, and the nuthatch is heard again, and the small woodpecker seen amid the bare twigs.");  November 3, 1858 ("The jay is the bird of October. I have seen it repeatedly flitting amid the bright leaves, of a different color from them all and equally bright, and taking its flight from grove to grove. It, too, with its bright color, stands for some ripeness in the bird harvest. And its scream! it is as if it blowed on the edge of an October leaf. It is never more in its element and at home than when flitting amid these brilliant colors.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter; A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The Blue Jay

Perambulating the imagination

September 20.

3 P. M. – To Cliffs via Bear Hill. 

September 20, 2020

As I go through the fields, endeavoring to recover my tone and sanity and to perceive things truly and simply again, after having been perambulating the bounds of the town all the week, and dealing with the most commonplace and worldly-minded men, and emphatically trivial things, I feel as if I had committed suicide in a sense.

I am again forcibly struck with the truth of the fable of Apollo serving King Admetus, its universal applicability.

A fatal coarseness is the result of mixing in the trivial affairs of men. Though I have been associating even with the select men of this and the surrounding towns, I feel inexpressibly begrimed.

My Pegasus has lost his wings; he has turned a reptile and gone on his belly.

Such things are compatible only with a cheap and superficial life.

The poet must keep himself unstained and aloof. Let him perambulate the bounds of Imagination's provinces, the realms of faery, and not the insignificant boundaries of towns. The excursions of the imagination are so boundless, the limits of towns are so petty.

I scare up the great bittern in meadow by the Heywood Brook near the ivy. He rises buoyantly as he flies against the wind, and sweeps south over the willow with outstretched neck, surveying.

The ivy here is reddened. The dogwood, or poison sumach, by Hubbard's meadow is also turned reddish.

Here are late buttercups and dwarf tree-primroses still.

Methinks there are not many goldenrods this year.

The river is remarkably low. There is a rod wide of bare shore beneath the Cliff Hill.

Last week was the warmest perhaps in the year.

On Monday of the present week water was frozen in a pail under the pump. Yet to-day I hear the locust sing as in August.

This week we have had most glorious autumnal weather, - cool and cloudless, bright days, filled with the fragrance of ripe grapes, preceded by frosty mornings. All tender herbs are flat in gardens and meadows. The cranberries, too, are touched.

To-day it is warmer and hazier, and there is, no doubt, some smoke in the air, from the burning of the turf and moss in low lands, where the smoke, seen at sunset, looks like a rising fog.

I fear that the autumnal tints will not be brilliant this season, the frosts have commenced so early.

Butter-and-eggs on Fair Haven.

The cleared plateau beneath the Cliff, now covered with sprouts, shows red, green, and yellow tints, like a rich rug.

I see ducks or teal flying silent, swift, and straight, the wild creatures.

White pines on Fair Haven Hill begin to look parti-colored with the falling leaves, but not at a distance.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 20, 1851

I scare up the great bittern in meadow by the Heywood Brook near the ivy. He rises buoyantly as he flies against the wind, and sweeps south over the willow with outstretched neck, surveying. See September 20, 1855 ("The great bittern, as it flies off from near the rail road bridge, filthily drops its dirt and utters a low hoarse kwa kwa; then runs and hides in the grass, and I land and search within ten feet of it before it rises.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Stake-Diver (American Bittern)

On Monday of the present week water was frozen in a pail under the pump. See September 15, 1851 ("Ice in the pail under the pump, and quite a frost.")

This week we have had most glorious autumnal weather, - cool and cloudless, bright days, filled with the fragrance of ripe grapes, preceded by frosty mornings. See August 19, 1853 ("It is a glorious and ever-memorable day. . . . The first bright day of the fall" ); September 3, 1860 ("Here is a beautiful, and perhaps first decidedly autumnal, day, -- a, cloudless sky, a clear air, with, maybe, veins of coolness”); September 18, 1860 ("This is a beautiful day, warm but not too warm, a harvest day . . . the first unquestionable and conspicuous autumnal day,"); September 22, 1851 ("It is a beautifully clear and bracing air, with just enough coolness, full of the memory of frosty mornings"); October 10, 1857 ("The most brilliant days in the year, ushered in, perhaps, by a frosty morning, as this.") October 11, 1857 ("This is the seventh day of glorious weather. Perhaps, these might be called Harvest Days"); December 9, 1853 ("The third (at least) glorious day, clear and not too cold . . .with peculiarly long and clear cloudless silvery twilights morn and eve")

White pines on Fair Haven Hill begin to look parti-colored. SeeAugust 24, 1854 ("The white pines are parti-colored there [Lee's Cliff]"); September 28, 1854 ("R. W. E.’s pines are parti-colored, preparing to fall, some of them.");. September 29, 1857 (". Pines have begun to be parti-colored with yellow leaves");. October 3, 1852 ("The pine fall, i.e. change, is commenced, and the trees are mottled green and yellowish"); October 3, 1856 ("The white pines are now getting to be pretty generally parti-colored, the lower yellowing needles ready to fall. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The October Pine Fall

Two great devil’s-needles, as big as hummingbirds,

July 17.

The common amaranth.

Young toads not half an inch long at Walden shore.

The smooth sumach resounds with the hum of bees, wasps, etc., at Water target Pond.

I see two great devil’s-needles, three inches long, with red abdomens and bodies as big as hummingbirds, sailing round this pond, round and round, and ever and anon darting aside suddenly, probably to seize some prey.

Here and there the water targets look red, perhaps their under sides.

A duck at Goose Pond.

Rank weeds begin to block up low wood-paths, — goldenrods, asters, etc.

The pearly everlasting.

Lobelia inflata.

The Solidago nemoralis (?) in a day or two, - gray goldenrod.

I think we have no Hieracium Gronovii, though one not veined always and sometimes with two or more leaves on stem.

No grass balls to be seen.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  July 17, 1853

Young toads not half an inch long. See July 17, 1856 ("I see many young toads hopping about . . .not more than five eighths to three quarters of an inch long"); July 25, 1855 ("Many little toads about.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: Midsummer Toads ; Northland Nature: Tiny toad time in late July; What are these Tiny Toads? ("The tadpoles of many species of the genus Bufo (what most people consider to be the “true toads”) metamorphose at a very small size, often all at once, and then disperse. If you live near a pond or lake or stream where the tadpoles are common, you might all of a sudden see dozens or even hundreds of these tiny toadlets for a few days, and after that, see them only occasionally.); Mary Holland, Toadlets Dispersing (July 17, 2013)

The smooth sumach resounds with the hum of bees, wasps, etc, See July 17, 1856 ("Hear at distance the hum of bees from the bass with its drooping flowers") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood

I see two great devil’s-needles, three inches long, with red abdomens and bodies as big as hummingbirds, sailing round this pond. See ; July 17, 1854 ("Meanwhile large yellowish devil's-needles, coupled, are flying about and repeatedly dipping their tails in the water. . . . great yellowish devil's-needles, flying from shore to shore . . . about a foot above the water, some against a head wind; a. . . If devil's-needles cross Fair Haven, then man may cross the Atlantic. "); see also July 10, 1855 ("Great devil’s-needles above the bank, apparently catching flies ") July 27, 1856 ("A great devil's-needle alights on my paddle, between my hands. It is about three inches long and three and a half in spread of wings, without spots, black and yellow, with green eyes") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Devil's-needle

The pearly everlasting. See July 17, 1852 ("The Antennaria margaritacea, pearly everlasting, is out"); August 23, 1856 ("I see a bed of Antennaria margaritacea, now in its prime, by the railroad, and very handsome."); August 23, 1858 (“I see dense patches of the pearly everlasting, maintaining their ground in the midst of dense green sweet-fern, a striking contrast of snow-white and green.”)

Lobelia inflata. See  July 17, 1852 ("Lobelia inflata, Indian-tobacco""); July 19, 1856 ("Lobelia inflata, perhaps several days; little white glands (?) on the edges of the leaves. ") August 20, 1851 ("The Lobelia inflata, Indian-tobacco, meets me at every turn. At first I suspect some new bluish flower in the grass, but stooping see the inflated pods. Tasting one such herb convinces me that there are such things as drugs which may either kill or cure")

The Solidago nemoralis  in a day or two.See August 5, 1856 ("S. nemoralis, two or three days."); August 18, 1854 ("The solidago nemoralis is now abundantly out on the Great Fields.”); August 21, 1856 ("nemoralis, just beginning generally to bloom.")

I think we have no Hieracium Gronoviis See August 21, 1851 ("I have now found all the hawkweeds. Singular these genera of plants, plants manifestly related yet distinct. They suggest a history to nature, a natural history in a new sense.”);July 29, 1856 (“What I have called Hieracium Gronovii. . . has achenia like H . venosum; so I will give it up.”)---Hieracium gronovii  has not been recorded from Middlesex County, Massachusetts~ Vascular Flora of Concord, Massachusetts

No grass balls to be seen See June 19, 1853 ("No grass balls yet.")

March is the fourth coldest month.

March 23. 

2 P. M. — 40°; rather windy.

Small dark-based cumuli spring clouds, mostly in rows parallel with the horizon. 

I see one field which was plowed before the 18th and spring rye sowed. The earlier the better, they say. Some fields might have been plowed earlier, but the ground was too wet. Farmer says that some fifty years ago he plowed and sowed wheat in January, and never had so good a crop. 

I hear that Coombs has killed half a dozen ducks one of them a large gray duck in Goose Pond. He tells me it weighed five and a half pounds, — while his black ducks weigh only three and a half, — and was larger than a sheldrake and very good to eat. Simply gray, and was alone, and had a broad flat bill. Was it the gadwall? or a kind of goose? 

It will be seen by the annexed scrap [Tables from the Patent Office Reports, 1853, p.332; 1854, p.427; 1855, p.375.] that March is the fourth coldest month, or about midway between December and November. The same appears from the fifteen years' observation at Mendon. (“American Almanac,” page 86.) 

The descent to extreme cold occupies seven months and is therefore more gradual (though a part of it is more rapid) than the ascent to extreme heat, which takes only five months. 

The mean average temperature of the coldest month (February) being 23.25, and of the warmest (July) being 72.35, the whole ascent from extreme cold to extreme heat is 49.10°, and in March (32.73) we have accomplished 8.48°, or a little less than one sixth the ascent. (According to the Mendon fifteen years ' average the whole ascent is 47.5, and in March we have advanced 9.2, a little more than one fifth.) 

It appears (from the scrap) that December, January, and February, the three winter months, differ very little in temperature, and the three summer months and September are next most alike, though they differ considerably more. (Same from Mendon tables.) 

The greatest or abruptest change is from November to December (in Mendon tables from September to October), the next most abrupt from April to May (in Mendon tables from March to April). 

The least change (according to the above tables) is from December to January. (According to Mendon tables, the same from December to January as from January to February.) 

The three spring months, and also October and November, are transition months, in which the temperature rapidly changes.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 23, 1860

March is the fourth coldest month. See March 25, 1860 ("To speak of the general phenomena of March")

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.")