Stow's cold pool three quarters full of ice.

April 11. 

P. M. – To Cliffs. 

The hills are now decidedly greened as seen a mile off, and the road or street sides pretty brightly so. 

I have not seen any lingering heel of a snow-bank since April came in. 

Acer rubrum west side Deep Cut, some well out, some killed by frost; probably a day or two at least. 

Hazels there are all done; were in their prime, methinks, a week ago at least. 

The early willow still in prime. Salix humilis abundantly out, how long? 

Epigæa abundantly out (probably 7th at least). 

Stow's cold pool three quarters full of ice. 

April 11, 2020

My early sedge, which has been out at Cliffs apparently a few days (not yet quite generally), the highest only two inches, is probably Carex umbellata.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 11, 1860

The hills are now decidedly greened. See  April 10, 1855 ("There is the slightest perceptible green on the hill now."); April 14, 1854 ("There is a general tinge of green now discernible through the russet on the bared meadows and the hills, the green blades just peeping forth amid the withered ones.");April 17, 1856 ("There is a quite distinct tinge of green on the hillside seen from my window now."); April 22, 1855 ("The grass is now become rapidly green by the sides of the road, promising dandelions and butter cups."); April 25, 1859 ("I got to-day and yesterday the first decided impression of greenness beginning to prevail, summer-like."); April 28, 1854 ("Perhaps the greenness of the landscape may be said to begin fairly now. . . .during the last half of April the earth acquires a distinct tinge of green, which finally prevails over the russet") See also April 2, 1855 ("Green is essentially vivid, or the color of life, and it is therefore most brilliant" when a plant is moist or most alive. . . . The word, according to Webster, is from the Saxon grene, to grow, and hence is the color of herbage when growing. ")

I have not seen any lingering heel of a snow-bank since April came in. See March 6, 1860 ("I can scarcely see a heel of a snow-drift from my window")

Acer rubrum west side Deep Cut, some well out. See April 11, 1853 ("The maple which I think is a red one, just this side of Wheildon's, is just out this morning"); see also  April 1, 1860 ("The red maple buds are considerably expanded, and no doubt make a greater impression of redness."); April 6, 1853 ("Notice a white maple with almost all the staminate flowers above or on the top, most of the stamens now withered, before the red maple has blossomed. "); April 10, 1853 (''The male red maple buds now show eight or ten (ten counting everything) scales, alternately crosswise, and the pairs successively brighter red or scarlet, which will account for the gradual reddening of their tops. They are about ready to open."); April 13, 1854 ('The red maple in a day or two. I begin to see the anthers in some buds. So much more of the scales of the buds is now uncovered that the tops of the swamps at a distance are reddened."); April 18, 1856 ("Red maple stamens in some places project considerably, and it will probably blossom to-morrow if it is pleasant. "); April 22, 1855 ("Red maple yesterday, — an early one by further stone bridge."); April 23, 1856 ("The red maple did not shed pollen on the 19th and could not on the 20th, 21st, or 22d, on account of rain; so this must be the first day, — the 23d."); April 24, 1854 ("The first red maple blossoms — so very red over the water — are very interesting. ");April 24, 1857 ("I see the now red crescents of the red maples in their prime . . . above the gray stems."); April 26, 1855 ("The blossoms of the red maple (some a yellowish green) are now most generally conspicuous and handsome scarlet crescents over the swamps. “); April 26, 1860 ("Red maples are past prime. I have noticed their handsome crescents over distant swamps commonly for some ten days. At height, then, say the 21st. They are especially handsome when seen between you and the sunlit trees."); April 28, 1855 ("The red maples, now in bloom, are quite handsome at a distance over the flooded meadow beyond Peter’s. The abundant wholesome gray of the trunks and stems beneath surmounted by the red or scarlet crescents.”); April 29, 1856 ("Sat on the knoll in the swamp, now laid bare. How pretty a red maple in bloom (they are now in prime), seen in the sun against a pine wood, like these little ones in the swamp against the neighboring wood, they are so light and ethereal, not a heavy mass of color impeding the passage of the light, and they are of so cheerful and lively a color."); April 29, 1859 ("Those red maples are reddest in which the fertile flowers prevail.")

The early willow still in prime. See  April 12, 1852 (“See the first blossoms (bright-yellow stamens or pistils) on the willow catkins to-day.. . . It is fit that this almost earliest spring flower should be yellow, the color of the sun.”); April 15, 1852 ("I think that the largest early-catkined willow in large bushes in sand by water now blossoming -- the fertile catkins with paler blossoms, the sterile covered with pollen, a pleasant lively bright yellow -- is the brightest flower I have seen thus far. I notice that the sterile blossoms of that large-catkined early willow begin to open on the side of the catkin, like a tinge of golden light, gradually spreading and expanding over the whole surface and lifting their anthers far and wide.").

Salix humilis abundantly out, how long? See April 9, 1858 ("The staminate Salix humilis in the path in three or four days. Possibly it is already out elsewhere, if, perchance, that was not it just beginning on the 6th on the Marlborough road. The pistillate appear more forward. It must follow pretty close to the earliest willows.")

Hazels there are all done; were in their prime, methinks, a week ago at least. See April 11, 1856 ("The hazel sheds pollen to-day; some elsewhere possibly yesterday. . . . You thread your way amid the rustling oak leaves on some warm hillside sloping to the south . . . when, glancing along the dry stems, in the midst of all this dryness, you detect the crimson stigmas of the hazel, like little stars peeping forth, and perchance a few catkins are dangling loosely in the zephyr and sprinkling their pollen on the dry leaves beneath.") See also April 7, 1854 ("The hazel stigmas are well out and the catkins loose, but no pollen shed yet." ) ; April 9, 1856 ("The stigmas already peep out, minute crimson stars"); April 13, 1855 ("Many minute, but clear crystalline crimson stars at the end of a bare and seemingly dead twig."). Also see A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Hazel.

Epigæa abundantly out (probably 7th at least). See April 4, 1859 ("The flower-buds are protected by the withered leaves, oak leaves, which partly cover them, so that you must look pretty sharp to detect the first flower"); April 13, 1858 ("Epigaea abundantly out, maybe four or five days.")/ See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Epigaea

Stow's cold pool three quarters full of ice. See April 16, 1855 ('Stow’s cold pond-hole is still full of ice though partly submerged, —the only pool in this state that I see.")

My early sedge, which has been out at Cliffs apparently a few days is probably Carex umbellata. See April 7, 1854 ("On the Cliff I find, after long and careful search, one sedge above the rocks, low amid the withered blades of last year, out, its little yellow beard amid the dry blades and few green ones, — the first herbaceous flowering I have detected. );  April 10, 1855 ("As for the early sedge, who would think of looking for a flower of any kind in those dry tufts whose withered blades almost entirely conceal the springing green ones? I patiently examined one tuft after another, higher and higher up the rocky hill, till at last I found one little yellow spike low in the grass which shed its pollen on my finger."); April 22, 1852 ("The early sedge (Carex marginata) grows on the side of the Cliffs in little tufts with small yellow blossoms, i.e. with yellow anthers, low in the grass.");

The bay-wing now sings.

April 15. 

Ground white with snow this morning, but it melts in a few hours, and, the sun coming out, I observe, after it is gone, much bluish vapor curling up from plowed ground, looking like a smoke there, but not from ground not recently plowed or from grass ground. 

Is it that the plowed ground is warmer, or merely that it has absorbed more moisture? Perhaps the sun penetrates it and so warms it more, since it lies up lighter. It is a very noticeable phenomenon, at any rate, that only the ground just plowed thus smokes. 

P. M. — To Cliffs and Well Meadow. 

There is quite a shimmer in the air, the day being pretty warm, but methinks it is a little greater over plowed ground than over sod, but I see it in woods as high as the tree-tops. M. [?] Pratt refers it chiefly to heat, as about a stove, and thinks I should [see] the most over the driest sand, and it occurs to me that if it is chiefly owing to evaporation I ought to see considerable over water, but I believe that I do not. 

Carpenter refers it (in part, at least) to the exhalation of plants, but they are not now exhaling, — not leafed or leafing as yet. I am uncertain, therefore, whether to regard [sic] the earliest shimmer in the spring, on pleasant days, to heated air in motion or to vapor raised by heat into the air. (Vide back to April 10th.) 

I see and hear white-bellied swallows as they are zigzagging through the air with their loud and lively notes. I am pretty sure it was these and not the martin I heard on the 13th. 

The bay-wing now sings — the first I have been able to hear — both about the Texas house and the fields this side of Hayden's, both of them similar dry and open pastures. I heard it just before noon, when the sun began to come out, and at 3 p. m., singing loud and clear and incessantly. It sings with a pleasing deliberation, contrasting with the spring vivacity of the song sparrow, whose song many would confound it with. It comes to revive with its song the dry up lands and pastures and grass-fields about the skirts of villages. 

Only think how finely our life is furnished in all its details, — sweet wild birds provided to fill its interstices with song! It is provided that while we are employed in our corporeal, or intellectual, or other, exercises we shall be lulled and amused or cheered by the singing of birds. 

When the laborer rests on his spade to-day, the sun having just come out, he is not left wholly to the mercy of his thoughts, nature is not a mere void to him, but he can hardly fail to hear the pleasing and encouraging notes of some newly arrived bird. The strain of the grass finch is very likely to fall on his ear and convince him, whether he is conscious of it or not, that the world is beautiful and life a fair enterprise to engage in. It will make him calm and contented. 

If you yield for a moment to the impressions of sense, you hear some bird giving expression to its happiness in a pleasant strain. We are provided with singing birds and with ears to hear them. What an institution that! 

Nor are we obliged to catch and cage them, nor to be bird-fanciers in the common sense. Whether a man's work be hard or easy, whether he be happy or unhappy, a bird is appointed to sing to a man while he is at his work. 

Consider how much is annually spent on the farmer's life: the beauty of his abode, which has inspired poets since the world was made; the hundreds of delicate and beautiful flowers scattered profusely under his feet and all around him, as he walks or drives his team afield, — he cannot put his spade into uncultivated, nor into much cultivated, ground without disturbing some of them; a hundred or two of equally beautiful birds to sing to him morning and evening, and some at noonday, a good part of the year; a perfect sky arched over him, a perfect carpet spread under him, etc., etc. ! 

And can the farmer speak or think carelessly of these gifts ? Will he find it in his heart to curse the flowers and shoot the birds? 

Hear a goldfinch, after a loud mewing on an apple tree, sing in a rich and varied way, as if imitating some other bird. 

Observe in the small shallow rills in the sandy road beyond the Smallpox Burying-Ground, made by the snow of the morning, now melted, very interesting ripples over a pebbly or uneven bottom on this side or that. 

The beauty of these little ripples was occasioned by their shadows amid the bright water. They were so arranged with remarkable order as to resemble the bright scales of a portion of a snake's skin with geometrical regularity, seven or eight parallel rows in a triangular form, successively diminishing in size. 

The ripple is occasioned merely by the impetuosity of the water meeting some slight obstacle. Thus you see in the very ripples on a rill a close resemblance in arrangement to the bright scales of a fish, and it [would] greatly help to conceal a fish if it could lie under them. The water was generally less than an inch deep on a sandy bottom. 

The warm pine woods are all alive this afternoon with the jingle of the pine warbler, the for the most part invisible minstrel. That wood, for example, at the Punk Oak, where we sit to hear it. It is surprising how quickly the earth, which was covered half an inch deep this morning, and since so wet, has become comparatively dry, so that we sit on the ground or on the dry leaves in woods at 3 p. m. and smell the pines and see and hear the flies, etc., buzz about, though the sun did not come out till 12 m. 

This morning, the aspect of winter; at mid-forenoon, the ground reeking with moisture; at 3 p. m., sit on dry leaves and hear the flies buzz and smell the pines! 

That wood is now very handsome seen from the westerly side, the sun falling far through it, though some trunks are wholly in shade. This warbler impresses me as if it were calling the trees to life. I think of springing twigs. Its jingle rings through the wood at short intervals, as if, like an electric shock, it imparted a fresh spring life to them. You hear the same bird, now here now there, as it incessantly flits about, commonly invisible and uttering its simple jingle on very different keys, and from time to time a companion is heard farther or nearer. 

This is a peculiarly summer-like sound. Go to a warm pine wood-side on a pleasant day at this season after storm, and hear it ring with the jingle of the pine warbler.

 As I sit on the stump of a large white pine which was sawed off, listening to these warblers, in a warm sun, I see a fair-weather cloud going over rather low, and hear the flies buzz about me, and it reminds me of those long-drawn summer days when you lie out-of-doors and are more related to the clouds travelling over. The summer clouds, the thunder-cloud especially, are nearer to us than the clouds of winter.

When we go huckleberrying, the clouds are our fellow-travellers, to greet or avoid. I might say the clouds have come. I perceive that I am in the same apartment with them. 

Going up a mountain is like travelling half a day through a tan-yard, till you get into a fog, and then, when the fog blows away, you discover yourself and a buzzing fly on the sunny mountain-top. 

The wood thrush! At Well Meadow Head. Not being prepared to hear it, I thought it a boy whistling at first. 

Also a catbird mews? [Could this have been a goldfinch?]

The epigaea opened, apparently, the 13th.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 15, 1859

I see and hear white-bellied swallows as they are zigzagging through the air with their loud and lively notes. See April 15, 1855 ("Many martins (with white—bellied swallows) are skimming and twittering above the water, perhaps catching the small fuzzy gnats"); April 15, 1856 ("The white-bellied swallows are circling about and twittering above the apple trees and walnuts on the hillside.")

The bay-wing now sings. See April 13, 1856 ("I hear a bay-wing on the railroad fence sing, the rhythm somewhat like, char char (orhere here), che che, chip chip chip (fast), chitter chitter chitter chit (very fast and jingling), tchea tchea (jinglingly). It has another strain, considerably different, but a second also sings the above. Two on different posts are steadily singing the same.") ,May 12, 1857(" I hear from across the fields the note of the bay-wing, Come here here there there quick quick quick or I'm gone . . . and it instantly translates me from the sphere of my work and repairs all the world that we jointly inhabit. It reminds me of so many country afternoons and evenings when this bird's strain was heard far over the fields, as I pursued it from field to field. . .  As the bay-wing sang many a thousand years ago, so sang he to-night. In the beginning God heard his song and pronounced it good, and hence it has endured.. . . . [S]uddenly, in some fortunate moment, the voice of eternal wisdom reaches me even, in the strain of the sparrow, and liberates me, whets and clarifies my senses, makes me a competent witness."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bay-Wing Sparrow

The beauty of these little ripples was occasioned by their shadows amid the bright water. See March 26, 1860 ("The yellow sands of a lonely brook seen through the rippling water, with the shadows of the ripples like films passing over it.")

The wood thrush!  Probably the hermit thrush. See April 15, 1858 ("Saw flitting silently through the wood, near the yew, two or three thrushes, . . . a light ring about eyes, and whitish side of throat (?); rather fox-colored or cinnamon tail, with ashy reflections from edges of primaries; flesh-colored legs.").  See also  note to April 24, 1856 ("See a brown bird flit, and behold my hermit thrush, with one companion, flitting silently through the birches. I saw the fox-color on his tail-coverts, as well as the brown streaks on the breast.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: The Arrival of the Hermit Thrush


The warm pine woods are all alive this afternoon with the jingle of the pine warbler, the for the most part invisible minstrel. See April 15, 1855 ( "In the meanwhile, as we steal through the woods, we hear the pleasing note of the pine warbler, bringing back warmer weather"); April 15, 1860 ("At Conantum pitch pines hear the first pine warbler") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pine Warbler

The origins of the islands in the meadow.

April 12. 

Clears up in afternoon. 

April 12, 2019

P. M. — Paddle to Cliffs. 

I saw a minnow on the 10th which looked like a young brook minnow, not one inch long. When was it spawned? 

The small alder (A. serrulata) is sometimes yellow- flowered, sometimes reddish-flowered. It grows with the incana at Cardinal Shore. 

I see where the musquash has eaten the white base of the pontederia leaves. 

I first perceived the pickerel dart on the 10th, the river having gone down so much that you could not cross the meadows, and that being the first really warm and pleasant day since March 17th. 

Saw a duck, apparently a sheldrake, at the northeast end of Cyanean Meadow. It disappeared at last by diving, and I could not find it. But I saw what looked like a ripple made by the wind, which moved slowly down the river at least forty rods toward the shore and there disappeared. Though I saw no bird there, I suspect that the ripple was made by it. 

Two sheldrakes flew away from this one when first observed. Why did this remain? Was it wounded? Or can those which dart so swiftly across the river and dive be another species and not the young of the season or females of the common one? Is it not, after all, the red-breasted merganser, and did I not see them in Maine? 

I see half a dozen sheldrakes very busily fishing around the base of Lupine Hill or Promontory. There are two full-plumaged males and the rest females, or perhaps some of them young males. They are coasting along swiftly with their bodies sunk low and their heads half under, looking for their prey, one behind another, frequently turning and passing over the same ground again. Their crests are very conspicuous, thus: 

When one sees a fish he at first swims rapidly after it, and then, if necessary, flies close over the water after it, and this excites all the rest to follow, swimming or flying, and if one seizes the fish, which I suspect is commonly a pickerel, they all pursue the lucky fisher, and he makes the water fly far in his efforts to get away and gulp down his fish. I can see the fish in his bill all the while, and he must swallow it very skillfully and quickly, if at all. 

I was first attracted to them by seeing these great birds rushing, shooting, thus swiftly through the air and water and throwing the water high about them. Sometimes they dive and swim quietly beneath, looking for their game. At length they spy me or my boat, and [I] hear a faint quack indicative of alarm, and suddenly all arise and go off. 

In the meanwhile I see two black ducks sailing with them along the shore. These look considerably smaller, and of course carry their heads more erect. They have a raw, gosling look beside the others, and I see their light bills against their dusky necks and heads. At length, when I get near them, I hear their peculiar quack also, and off they go. 

The sheldrakes appear to be a much more lively bird than the black duck. How different from the waddling domestic duck! The former are all alive, eagerly fishing, quick as thought, as they need to be to catch a pickerel. 

I look again at the meadow-crust carried off by the ice. There is one by the railroad bridge, say three rods by one, covered with button-bushes and willows. Another, some five rods by three, at the south end of  Potter Swamp Meadow, also covered densely with button-bushes, etc. It is far from the river, by the edge of the wood. 

Another, and the most interesting one, lies up high some thirty rods north of this near the wood-side and fifteen rods from the river. I measure it with a tape. It is rudely triangular and about four rods on a side, though the sides are longer on the convex line. As well as the other, it is from one to three feet thick and very densely covered with button-bushes, with a few black and other willows and late roses from four to seven feet high. As dense and impassable as any kind of thicket that we have, and there are, besides, countless great yellow and white lily and pontederia roots in it. It is a large and densely bushy island in the meadow. It would surprise any one to behold it. 

Suppose that you were to find in the morning such a slice of the earth's crust with its vegetation dropped in your front yard, if it could contain it. I think we should not soon hear the last of it. It is an island such as might almost satisfy Sancho Panza's desires. It is a forest, in short, and not a very small one either. It is Birnam wood come to Dunsinane. It contained at least eight square rods. 

There was another piece covered in like manner, some five rods long and three wide, sunk off Cardinal Shore on a hard sandy bottom, and so deep that its whole size did not appear above water. I could not touch the bottom with my oars on the outside. This no one would have detected for an immigrant or new-come land unless very familiar with the shore, for if the raw edge is concealed it looks exactly as if it grew there like the others near by. There was a strip with out anything but grass on it, some five rods long by twenty feet wide, and two pieces making as much more in length end to end with it on the [sic]. In all there must have been from a third to half an acre on this single meadow, which came from far up-stream, I could not tell from where. 

I saw more up the stream, and they were all dropped nearly in a line on the east side for half a mile or more. Such revolutions can take place and none but the proprietor of the meadow notice it, for the traveller passing within sight does not begin to suspect that the bushy island which he sees in the meadow has floated from elsewhere, or if he saw it when on its voyage, he would not know it for a voyager. 

In one year all the raw edge is concealed, and the vegetation thus transplanted does not appear to find it out. These must have been carried off about the 16th of March or when the river broke up, perhaps in that strong southwest wind of the 19th. The ice, being eighteen or twenty inches thick and having ten thousand strong handles to take hold by, aided too often by the lightness of the frozen meadow, can easily lift these masses, and if there were rocks imbedded in them, would move them also. For the cake of ice may be a dozen rods or more in breadth.

These have generally grounded high on the meadows, where the lilies, etc., will all die. Indeed, most of them have already been killed by frost, and probably the button-bush will much of it die too. Also that which has sunk in deep water will die. 

I saw one piece a rod wide nearly in the middle of the river, and detected it only by the top [of] a few twigs seen above the surface. The willows or osiers will do well, and the roses, wherever they may lodge on the banks or in the meadow, but the button-bush must stand immediately on the edge of the river or other water, and there they are most likely to be placed. 

The present islands, bushy or wooded, in the meadow have no doubt commonly had this origin. The soil is there doubled, and so elevated, and the plants set out at the same time. The surface being at once elevated one to three feet for four rods or more, though the button-bush dies, willows will live and maples and alders, etc., spring up there. When the flood comes with icy hands you have got a mighty lifter at work. Black willows ten feet high and these four or five rods of button-bushes are all taken up together with their soil and carried upright and without jarring to a new locality half a mile or more distant. 

I observe that different meadows are at different levels above the river. The great Sudbury meadows are low. Cyanean Meadow is generally higher than the ammannia meadow. I can cross the last still, but not the first. The surface has been much taken off the last by the ice, and perhaps more has lodged on the other. Mantatuket Meadow appears to be about the height of Cyanean Meadow generally, or hardly so low. The Potter Swamp Meadow is lower than any that I have named in Concord. 

Perhaps those valleys parallel with the river are where the water has swept off the meadow-crust the most, and not old channels? It is evident that this transportation of the meadow surface affects the relative height of the meadows very much. Some meadows are now saved by the causeways and bridges and willow-rows. Though there were a hundred pieces in Potter Swamp Meadow, there were none in the meadow this side the causeway. Probably more meadow, etc., was transported two hundred years ago than to-day there, when the river, at high water especially, was less obstructed. This is the origin of almost all inequalities of surface in the meadows, and it is impossible to say how many of the clumps of bushes you see there have been thus transplanted. 

As for that mass which sunk in deep water off Cardinal Shore, the cake of ice which transported it may have struck the shore many rods from its burden and melted in that position. Consider what a new arrangement of the clumps in the mead is thus made every year. The revolution from each source is now confined to the space between two causeways and bridges, or two willow-rows, while formerly it was only confined by the form or dimensions of the meadow. 

I find, on that most interesting mass of meadow and button-bushes, or the top of a sort of musquash-mound, a very peculiar stercus, precisely like a human one in size and form and color externally, so that I took it for such. But it was nearly inodorous and contained some fish-scales, and it was about the color of fireproof-brick dust within. I think it was that of an otter, quite fresh. 

I hear that the epigsea is no more forward than on the 8th.

Pine warblers heard in the woods by C. to-day. This, except the pigeon woodpecker and pigeon and hawks, as far as they are migratory, is the first that I should call woodland (or dry woodland) birds that arrives. 

The red-wings generally sit on the black willows and the swamp white oaks and maples by the water, and sing o-gurgle-ee this evening, as if glad to see the river's brink appearing again and smooth waters also. 

The grackles are feeding on the meadow-edge.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 12, 1859

The small alder (A. serrulata) is sometimes yellow-flowered, sometimes reddish-flowered. It grows with the incana at Cardinal Shore. See   May 25, 1851 ("Alnus serrulata, the common alder, with a grayish stem, leaves smooth on both sides. Alnus incana, the speckled alder, downy on under side of leaves.");  April 13, 1855 ("The Alnus incana blossoms begin generally to show. The serrulata will undoubtedly blossom to-morrow in some places. "); April 16, 1852 ("I think that the tassels of the Alnus incana are rather earlier, longer, and more yellow, with smaller scales, than those of the A. serrulata, which are not yellow but green, mixed with the purplish or reddish brown scales."); April 17, 1858 ("The female flowers of the alder are now very pretty when seen against the sun, bright-crimson."); April 18, 1852 ("The catkins of the Alnus incana at Jenny's Brook are longer than ever, — three or four inches.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Alders

When one sees a fish he at first swims rapidly after it, and then, if necessary, flies close over the water after it, and this excites all the rest to follow, swimming or flying, and if one seizes the fish, which I suspect is commonly a pickerel, they all pursue the lucky fisher, and he makes the water fly far in his efforts to get away and gulp down his fish. See March 30, 1858 ("I saw one come up with a large fish, whereupon all the rest, as they successively came to the surface, gave chase to it, while it held its prey over the water in its bill, and they pursued with a great rush and clatter a dozen or more rods over the surface, making a great furrow in the water,") See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Goosander, Merganser)

Pine warblers heard in the woods, the first that I should call woodland (or dry woodland) birds that arrives. See note to  April 12, 1858 ("The woods are all alive with pine warblers now. Their note is the music to which I survey.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pine Warbler

I look again at the meadow-crust carried off by the ice. There is one by the railroad bridge, say three rods by one, covered with button-bushes and willows. See August 3, 1859 ("The low water reveals a mass of meadow sunk under the railroad bridge. Both this and Lee’s Bridge are thus obstructed this year."); August 9, 1859 ("I see under the railroad bridge a mass of meadow which lodged there last spring") See also April 13, 1854 ("The transplanting of fluviatile plants is carried on on a very large and effective scale. Even in one year a considerable plantation will thus be made on what had been a bare shore, and its character changed. The meadow cannot be kept smooth.")

The red-wings generally sit on the black willows and the swamp white oaks and maples by the water, and sing o-gurgle-ee this evening, as if glad to see the river's brink appearing again and smooth waters also. See March 19, 1858 (" A new era has come. The red-wing's gurgle-ee is heard when smooth waters begin; they come together. "); March 22, 1855 ("[T]he blackbirds already sing o-gurgle ee-e-e from time to time on the top of a willow or elm or maple.");  April 9, 1856 ("The red-wing’s o’gurgle-ee-e is in singular harmony with the sound and impression of the lapsing stream or the smooth, swelling flood beneath his perch. He gives expression to the flood.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Red-wing in Spring

April 12. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 12

The red-wings  sing  as 

if glad to see the river's 

brink and smooth waters.

The gray bodkin-pointed willow

April 8. 

Friday. 

I believe that I rarely hear the nuthatch's note from the elms toward evening, for when I heard it yesterday evening I was surprised. 

P. M. — To epigaea and Well Meadow. 

I see on the west side of the railroad causeway a peculiar early willow, now just beginning to bloom with the common Salix discolor there, perhaps (as I remember) some thirty rods beyond the wall, against A. Wheeler's land.

The catkins (sterile) are peculiarly long and tapering, and grayish or mouse-color, beginning to open low on one side, while the points have comparatively little down on them. I find no description of it. Perhaps rather more than one inch long. The most decidedly opening first on one side near the base of any. Call it the gray bodkin-pointed. 

As I stood by the foot of a middling-sized white pine the other day, on Fair Haven Hill, one of the very windy days, I felt the ground rise and fall under my feet, being lifted by the roots of the pine, which was waving in the wind; so loosely are they planted. 

We have had two more windy days, this and yesterday, though less so than the previous ones. 

We have had, most of the time, during this windy weather for a month past, when the wind was northwest, those peculiar brushy clouds which look as if a little snow or rain was falling in the northwest, but they prove to be wind chiefly. It has not rained, I think, with the wind in that quarter. 

These windy days the sparrows resort to the pines and peach trees on the east side of our house for shelter, and there they sing all together, — tree sparrows, fox-colored sparrows, and song sparrows. The F. hyemalis with them do not sing so much of late. The first two are most commonly heard together, the fine canary like twitter of the tree sparrow appearing to ripen or swell from time to time into the clear, rich whistle of the fox-colored sparrow, so that most refer both notes to one bird. 

What a pitiful business is the fur trade, which has been pursued now for so many ages, for so many years by famous companies which enjoy a profitable mono poly and control a large portion of the earth's surface, unweariedly pursuing and ferreting out small animals by the aid of all the loafing class tempted by rum and money, that you may rob some little fellow-creature of its coat to adorn or thicken your own, that you may get a fashionable covering in which to hide your head, or a suitable robe in which to dispense justice to your fellow-men! Regarded from the philosopher's point of view, it is precisely on a level with rag and bone picking in the streets of the cities. The Indian led a more respectable life before he was tempted to debase himself so much by the white man. Think how many musquash and weasel skins the Hudson's Bay Company pile up annually in their warehouses, leaving the bare red carcasses on the banks of the streams throughout all British America, — and this it is, chiefly, which makes it British America. It is the place where Great Britain goes a-mousing. 

We have heard much of the wonderful intelligence of the beaver, but that regard for the beaver is all a pretense, and we would give more for a beaver hat than to preserve the intelligence of the whole race of beavers. When we see men and boys spend their time shooting and trapping musquash and mink, we cannot but have a poorer opinion of them, unless we thought meanly of them before. Yet the world is imposed on by the fame of the Hudson's Bay and Northwest Fur Companies, who are only so many partners more or less in the same sort of business, with thousands of just such loafing men and boys in their service to abet them. On the one side is the Hudson's Bay Company, on the other the company of scavengers who clear the sewers of Paris of their vermin. 

There is a good excuse for smoking out or poisoning rats which infest the house, but when they are as far off as Hudson's Bay, I think that we had better let them alone. To such an extent do time and distance, and our imaginations, consecrate at last not only the most ordinary, but even vilest pursuits. The efforts of legislation from time to time to stem the torrent are significant as showing that there is some sense and conscience left, but they are insignificant in their effects. We will fine Abner if he shoots a singing bird, but encourage the army of Abners that compose the Hudson's Bay Company. One of the most remarkable sources of profit opened to the Yankee within a year is the traffic in skunk- skins. I learn from the newspapers — as from other sources (vide Journal of Commerce in Tribune for April 5, 1859) — that "the traffic in skunk-skins has suddenly become a most important branch of the fur trade, and the skins of an animal which three years ago were deemed of no value whatever, are now in the greatest demand.”

"The principal markets are Russia and Turkey, though some are sent to Germany, where they are sold at a large profit." Furs to Russia ! " The black skins are valued the most, and during the past winter the market price has been as high as one dollar per skin, while mottled skins brought only seventy cents." "Upward of 50,000 of these skins have been shipped from this city [New York] alone within the past two months." Many of them "are designed for the Leipsic sales, Leipsic being next to Novgorod, in Russia, the most important fur entrepot in Europe. 

The first intimation received in this market of the value of this new description of fur came from the Hudson's Bay Company, which, having shipped a few to Lon don at a venture, found the returns so profitable that they immediately prosecuted the business on an extensive scale." "The heaviest collections are made in the Middle and Eastern States, in some parts of which the mania for capturing these animals seems to have equalled the Western Pike's Peak gold excitement, men, women, and children turning out en masse for that purpose." And beside, "our fur dealers also receive a considerable sum for the fat of these animals!!"

Almost all smile, or otherwise express their contempt, when they hear of this or the rat-catching of Paris, but what is the difference between catching and skinning the skunk and the mink? It is only in the name. 

When you pass the palace of one of the managers of the Hudson's Bay Company, you are reminded that so much he got for his rat-skins. In such a snarl and contamination do we live that it is almost impossible to keep one's skirts clean. Our sugar and cotton are stolen from the slave, and if we jump out of the fire, it is wont to be into the frying-pan at least. It will not do to be thoughtless with regard to any of our valuables or property. When you get to Europe you will meet the most tender-hearted and delicately bred lady, perhaps the President of the Antislavery Society, or of that for the encouragement of humanity to animals, marching or presiding with the scales from a tortoise's back — obtained by laying live coals on it to make them curl up — stuck in her hair, rat-skin fitting as close to her fingers as erst to the rat, and, for her cloak, trimmings perchance adorned with the spoils of a hundred skunks, — rendered inodorous, we trust. Poor misguided woman! Could she not wear other armor in the war of humanity? When a new country like North America is discovered, a few feeble efforts are made to Christianize the na tives before they are all exterminated, but they are not found to pay, in any sense. But the energetic traders of the discovering country organize themselves, or rather inevitably crystallize, into a vast rat-catching society, tempt the natives to become mere vermin-hunters and rum-drinkers, reserving half a continent for the field of their labors. Savage meets savage, and the white man's only distinction is that he is the chief. She says to the turtle basking on the shore of a dis tant isle, " I want your scales to adorn my head " (though fire be used to raise them); she whispers to the rats in the wall, " I want your skins to cover my delicate fingers;" and, meeting an army of a hundred skunks in her morning walk, she says, "worthless vermin, strip off your cloaks this instant, and let me have them to adorn my robe with;" and she comes home with her hands muffled in the pelt of a gray wolf that ventured abroad to find food for its young that day. When the question of the protection of birds comes up, the legislatures regard only a low use and never a high use; the best-disposed legislators employ one, perchance, only to examine their crops and see how many grubs or cherries they contain, and never to study their dispositions, or the beauty of their plumage, or listen and report on the sweetness of their song. The legislature will preserve a bird professedly not because it is a beautiful creature, but because it is a good scavenger or the like. This, at least, is the defense set up. It is as if the question were whether some celebrated singer of the human race — some Jenny Lind or an other — did more harm or good, should be destroyed, or not, and therefore a committee should be appointed, not to listen to her singing at all, but to examine the contents of her stomach and see if she devoured any thing which was injurious to the farmers and gardeners, or which they cannot spare.1 

Cold as it is, and has been for several weeks, in all exposed places, I find it unexpectedly warm in perfectly sheltered places where the sun shines. And so it always is in April. The cold wind from the northwest seems distinct and separable from the air here warmed by the sun, and when I sit in some warm and sheltered hollow in the woods, I feel the cold currents drop into it from time to time, just as they are seen to ripple a small lake in such a situation from time to time. 

The epigaea is not quite out. The earliest peculiarly woodland herbaceous flowers are epigaea, anemone, thalictrum, and — by the first of May — Viola pedata. These grow quite in the woods amid dry leaves, nor do they depend so much on water as the very earliest flowers. 

I am, perhaps, more surprised by the growth of the Viola pedata leaves, by the side of paths amid the shrub oaks and half covered with oak leaves, than by any other growth, the situation is so dry and the surrounding bushes so apparently lifeless.

I noticed the other day a leaf on a young oak very rapidly revolving like a windmill, in the wind, not around its midrib for an axis, but about its broken stem, and I saw that this was the way those curiously broken and twisted and splintered petioles were made. It went round so fast as almost to appear like a circular figure.

 I find that the cress (Cardamine hirmta) which was so forward at Well Meadow a fortnight ago has been almost entirely browsed off by some creature, so that, if I had not detected it, I might have been surprised that it made no more show. 

The skunk-cabbage leaf-buds, which have just begun to unroll, also have been extensively eaten off as they were yet rolled up like cigars. These early greens of the swamp are thus kept down. Is it by the rabbit? 

I could see the tracks of some animal, apparently as large, very indistinct in the mud and water. Also an early kind of sedge there was cropped. 

The only animals at all likely to have done this are rabbits, musquash, woodchuck (though I doubt if the last has been about here long enough), and geese. Of these, I think it most likely to have been the first, and probably it was the same that gnawed the spathes and ate up the spadix of the cabbage some weeks ago. Woodchucks might nibble some plants now in warmer and drier places. These earliest greens must be very acceptable to these animals. Do partridges ever eat these things ? 

The Alnus serrulata is evidently in its prime considerably later than the incana, for those of the former which I notice to-day have scarcely begun, while the latter chance to be done. The fertile flowers are an interesting bright crimson in the sun. 

C. says that he found a musquash's skull (which he showed me) at the fox-burrow in Laurel Glen, from which it would appear that they kill the musquash. 

See the first bay-wing hopping and flitting along the railroad bank, but hear no note as yet. 

I saw Heavy Haynes fishing for trout down the Mill Brook this morning, cold and blustering as it was. He caught two. He is splitting pine-knots at the alms house door for spearing. Has already been spearing in Walden, and got some pickerel, all in the two little meadows there, and saw some pouts and perch. So the pickerel have come into those meadows, probably since January, for the bars were dry before. Perhaps they lie in shallow water, not for warmth, — for it is coldest there by night now, — but for food, the early insects and frogs which may soonest be found there!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 8, 1859

These windy days the sparrows resort to the pines and peach trees on the east side of our house for shelter, and there they sing all together, — tree sparrows, fox-colored sparrows, and song sparrows. See April 8, 1855 ("Also song sparrows and tree sparrows and F. hyemalis are heard in the yard. The fox-colored sparrow is also there”); and note to April 6, 1859 ("Tree sparrows, F. hyemalis, and fox-colored sparrows in company").  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Tree Sparrow;  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Fox-colored Sparrow;  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco;   A Book of the Seasons, by  Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)

The first two are most commonly heard together so that most refer both notes to one bird.  See March 23, 1858 ("See a large flock of fox-colored sparrows flits by along an alder-row, uttering a faint chip like that of the tree sparrow.")  April 3, 1859 ("Their [fox-tailed sparrow's] note to-day is the chip much like a tree sparrow's")

Cold as it is, and has been for several weeks, in all exposed places, I find it unexpectedly warm in perfectly sheltered places where the sun shines. And so it always is in April. The cold wind from the northwest seems distinct and separable from the air here warmed by the sun. See April 13, 1855 ("A fair day, but a cool wind still, from the snow covered country in the northwest. It is, however, pleasant to sit in the sun in sheltered places."); April 26, 1857 ("How well adapted we are to our climate! In the winter we sit by fires in the house; in spring and fall, in sunny and sheltered nooks; in the summer, in shady and cool groves, or over water where the breeze circulates."); See also note to November 18, 1857 (“Now, as in the spring, we rejoice in sheltered and sunny places. ”)


The Alnus serrulata is evidently in its prime considerably later than the incana See April 8, 1855 ("I find also at length a single catkin of the Alnus incana, . . . Though I have looked widely, I have not found the alder out before."): See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Alders

I see the cold and sheeny snow still glazing the mountains.

April 4. 

Clear, cold, and very windy; wind north west. 

For a fortnight past, or since the frost began to come out, I have noticed the funnel-shaped holes of the skunk in a great many places and their little mincing tracks in the sand. Many a grub and beetle meets its fate in their stomachs. 

Methinks the peculiar and interesting Brown Season of the spring lasts from the time the snow generally begins to go off — as this year the fore part of March — till the frost is generally (or entirely ?) out. Perhaps it will be through the first week of April this year. Ordinary years it must be somewhat later. 

The surface of the earth is never so completely saturated with wet as during this period, for the frost a few inches beneath holds all the ice and snow that are melted and the rain, and an unusual amount of rain falls. All plants, therefore, that love moisture and coolness, like mosses and lichens, are in their glory, but also [?] I think that the very withered grass and weeds, being wet, are blooming at this season. 
The conspicuous reddish brown of the fallen brakes is very rich, contrasting with the paler brown of oak leaves.

 Such an appetite have we for new life that we begin by nibbling the very crust of the earth. We betray our vegetable and animal nature and sympathies by our delight in water. We rejoice in the full rills, the melting snow, the copious spring rains and the freshets, as if we were frozen earth to be thawed, or lichens and mosses, expanding and reviving under this influence. The osier bark now, as usual, looks very yellow when wet, and the wild poplar very green. 

P. M. — To Cliffs. 

Those striped snakes of the 30th were found (several in all) on west side the railroad causeway, on the sand, which is very warm. It would seem, then, that they come out in such places soon after the frost is out. The railroad men who were cutting willows there to set on the sides of the Deep Cut, to prevent the gullying there, came across them. 

The epigaea looks as if it would open in two or three days at least, — showing much color and this form: The flower-buds are protected by the withered leaves, oak leaves, which partly cover them, so that you must look pretty sharp to detect the first flower. These plants blossom by main strength, as it were, or the virtue that is in them, — not growing by water, as most early flowers, — in dry copses. 

I see several earthworms to-day under the shoe of the pump, on the platform. They may have come up through the cracks from the well where the warm air has kept them stirring. 

On the barren railroad causeway, of pure sand, grow chiefly sallows, a few poplars, and sweet-fern and blackberry vines. 

When I look with my glass, I see the cold and sheeny snow still glazing the mountains. This it is which makes the wind so piercing cold. 

There are dark and windy clouds on that side, of that peculiar brushy or wispy character — or rather like sheafs — which denotes wind. They only spit a little snow at last, thin and scarcely perceived, like falling gossamer.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 4, 1859

 I have noticed the funnel-shaped holes of the skunk in a great many places and their little mincing tracks in the sand. See March 28, 1855 ("The skunk’s nose has made small round holes such as a stick or cane would make."); April 2, 1856 ("There are many holes in the surface of the bare, springy ground amid the rills, made by the skunks or mice, and now their edges are bristling with feather like frostwork, as if they were the breathing-holes or nostrils of the earth."). See also  note to February 25, 1860 ("They appear to come out commonly in the warmer weather in the latter part of February.")

Brown Season of the spring lasts from the time the snow generally begins to go off — as this year the fore part of March. Compare March 26, 1860 ("The brown season extends from about the 6th of March ordinarily into April. . . . Tried by various tests, this season fluctuates more or less.")

Those striped snakes of the 30th were found (several in all) on west side the railroad causeway, on the sand, which is very warm. See April 3, 1859 ("C. says he saw a striped snake on the 30th") See also April 2, 1858 ("At the spring on the west side of Fair Haven Hill, I startle a striped snake.. . . No doubt on almost every such warm bank now you will find a snake lying out"); April 9, 1856 ("Saw a striped snake, which probably I had scared into the water from the warm railroad bank”); April 16, 1855 (A striped snake rustles down a dry open hillside where the withered grass is long. "); April 20, 1854 ("A striped snake on a warm, sunny bank.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Striped Snake

The cold and sheeny snow still glazing the mountains. This it is which makes the wind so piercing cold. See April 4, 1852 (" I see the snow lying thick on the south side of the Peterboro Hills, and though the ground is bare from the seashore to their base, I presume it is covered with snow from their base to the Icy Sea. I feel the northwest air cooled by the snow on my cheek."); April 4, 1855 ("far beyond all, in the north western horizon, my eye rests on a range of snow-covered mountains, glistening in the sun.”). See also April 12, 1855 ("the mountains are again thickly clad with snow, and, the wind being northwest, this coldness is accounted for.”); April 30, 1860 ("It snowed there a little, but not here. This is connected with the cold weather of yesterday; the chilling wind came from a snow-clad country.")

Is not the first lightning the forerunner or warranty of summer heat?

April 13. 

Began to rain last evening, and still rains. 

The tree sparrows sing sweetly, canary-like, still.

Hear the first toad in the rather cool rain, 10 A. M.

See through the dark rain the first flash of lightning, in the west horizon, doubting if it was not a flash of my eye at first, but after a very long interval I hear the low rumbling of the first thunder, and now the summer is baptized and inaugurated in due form. Is not the first lightning the forerunner or warranty of summer heat? The air now contains such an amount of heat that it emits a flash. 

Speaking to J. B. Moore about the partridges being run down, he says that he was told by Lexington people some years ago that they found a duck lying dead under the spire of their old meeting-house (since burned) which stood on the Battle-Ground. The weathercock — and it was a cock in this case —- was considerably bent, and the inference was that the duck had flown against it in the night. 

P. M. – To the yew. 

Shepherd's-purse already going to seed; in bloom there some time. Also chickweed; how long? I had thought these would be later, on account of the ground having been so bare, and indeed they did suffer much, but early warm weather forwarded them. 

That unquestionable staminate Salix humilis beyond yew will not be out for three or four days. Its old leaves on the ground are turned cinder-color, as are those under larger and doubtful forms. 

Epigaea abundantly out, maybe four or five days. It was apparently in its winter state March 28th.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 13, 1858

Hear the first toad in the rather cool rain. See April 13, 1853 ("Pewee days and April showers. First hear toads (and take off coat), a loud, ringing sound filling the air, which yet few notice.") See also April 5, 1857 ("Probably single ones ring earlier than I supposed."): April 5, 1860 ("I hear, a very faint distant ring of toads, which, though I walk and walk all the afternoon, I never come nearer to."); April 15, 1856 ("[ 11 P. M., a still and rather warm night, I am surprised to hear the first loud, clear, prolonged ring of a toad, . . .While all the hillside else, perhaps, is asleep, this toad has just awaked to a new year."); April 18, 1855 ("In the evening hear far and wide the ring of toads, and a thunder-shower with its lightning is seen and heard in the west. "): April 25, 1856 ("The toads have begun fairly to ring at noonday in amid the birches to hear them . . . The voice of the toad, the herald of warmer weather. "); April 29, 1856 ("Do not the toads ring most on a windy day like this?") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Ring of Toads

See through the dark rain the first flash of lightning. . . and now the summer is baptized and inaugurated in due form. See April 14, 1858 ("Rains still, with one or two flashes of lightning, but soon over "); April 17, 1856 (" Was awakened in the night by a thunder and lightning shower and hail-storm — the old familiar burst and rumble,. . . a skirmish between the cool rear-guard of winter and the warm and earnest vanguard of summer. Advancing summer strikes on the edge of winter, which does not drift fast enough away, and fire is elicited. Electricity is engendered by the early heats. I love to hear the voice of the first thunder as of the toad .") April 18, 1855 ("In the evening hear far and wide the ring of toads, and a thunder-shower with its lightning is seen and heard in the west. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Lightning

Speaking to about the partridges being run down. See April 12, 1858 ("A partridge standing on the track, between the rails over which the cars had just passed. She had evidently been run down. . . It may be many generations before the partridges learn to give the cars a sufficiently wide berth.")

That unquestionable staminate Salix humilis beyond yew will not be out for three or four days. See April 9, 1858 ("The yew looks as if it would bloom in a day or two, and the staminate Salix humilis in the path in three or four days.") See also April 11, 1860 ("Salix humilis abundantly out, how long?"); April 25, 1857 ("Got to-day unquestionable Salix humilis in the Britton hollow, north of his shanty, but all there that I saw (and elsewhere as yet) [are] pistillate. It is apparently now in prime, and apparently the next to bloom after the various larger and earlier ones, all which I must call as yet S. discolor. This S. humilis is small-catkined and loves a dry soil.")

Epigaea abundantly out. See April 8, 1859 ("The epigaea is not quite out.");April 11, 1860 ("Epigæa abundantly out (probably 7th at least).");  April 15, 1859 ("The epigaea opened, apparently, the 13th.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Epigaea

Each new year is a surprise to us.

 
March 18

 7 A.M. – By river. 

Almost every bush has its song sparrow this morning, and their tinkling strains are heard on all sides. You see them just hopping under the bush or into some other covert, as you go by, turning with a jerk this way and that, or they flit away just above the ground, which they resemble. It is the prettiest strain I have heard yet. 

Melvin is already out in his boat for all day, with his white hound in the prow, bound up the river for musquash, etc., but the river is hardly high enough to drive them out. 

March 18, 2018

P. M. – To Fair Haven Hill via Hubbard’s Bath. 

How much more habitable a few birds make the fields! At the end of winter, when the fields are bare and there is nothing to relieve the monotony of the withered vegetation, our life seems reduced to its lowest terms. But let a bluebird come and warble over them, and what a change! 

• The note of the first bluebird in the air answers to the purling rill of melted snow beneath. It is eminently soft and soothing, and, as surely as the thermometer, indicates a higher temperature. It is the accent of the south wind, its vernacular. It is modulated by the south wind. 

• The song sparrow is more sprightly, mingling its notes with the rustling of the brash along the watersides, but it is at the same time more terrene than the bluebird. 

• The first woodpecker comes screaming into the empty house and throws open doors and windows wide, calling out each of them to let the neighbors know of its return. But heard further off it is very suggestive of ineffable associations which cannot be distinctly recalled, – of long-drawn summer hours, – and thus it, also, has the effect of music. I was not aware that the capacity to hear the woodpecker had slumbered within me so long.

• When the blackbird gets to a conqueree he seems to be dreaming of the sprays that are to be and on which he is to perch. 

• The robin does not come singing, but utters a somewhat anxious or inquisitive peep at first. The song sparrow is immediately most at home of any that I have named. 

I see this afternoon as many as a dozen bluebirds on the warm side of a wood. 

At Hubbard's shore, where a strong but warm westerly wind is blowing, the shore is lined for half a rod in width with pulverized ice, or “brash,” driven against it. 

At Potter's sand-hill (Bear Garden), I see, on the southeast side of the blue-curls, very distinct and regular arcs of circles (about a third of a circle), scored deep in the sand by the tops of these weeds, which have been blown about by the wind, and these marks show very surely and plainly how the wind has been blowing and with what force and flakiness. 

The rather warm but strong wind now roars in the wood — as in the maple swamp — with a novel sound. I doubt if the same is ever heard in the winter. It apparently comes at this season, not only to dry the earth but to wake up the trees, as it were, as one would awake a sleeping man with a smart shake. Perchance they need to be thus wrung and twisted, and their sap flows the sooner for it. 

Perfectly dry sand even is something attractive now, and I am tempted to tread on and to touch it, as a curiosity. Skunks’ tracks are everywhere now, on the sand, and the little snow that is left. 

The river is still closed with ice at Cardinal Shore, so Melvin must have stopped here at least; but there is a crescent of “brash ” there, which the waves blown up-stream have made, half a dozen rods wide. It is even blown a rod on to the solid ice. The noise made by this brash undulating and grating upon itself, at a little distance, is very much like the rustling of a winrow of leaves disturbed by the winds. A little farther off it is not to be distinguished from the roar of the wind in the woods. 

Each new year is a surprise to us. We find that we had virtually forgotten the note of each bird, and when we hear it again it is remembered like a dream, reminding us of a previous state of existence. How happens it that the associations it awakens are always pleasing, never saddening; reminiscences of our sanest hours? The voice of nature is always encouraging. 

The blackbird — probably grackle this time —wings his way direct above the swamp northward, with a regular tchuck, carrier haste, calling the summer months along, like a hen her chickens. 

When I get two thirds up the hill, I look round and am for the hundredth time surprised by the landscape of the river valley and the horizon with its distant blue scalloped rim. 

It is a spring landscape, and as impossible a fortnight ago as the song of birds. It is a deeper and warmer blue than in winter, methinks. The snow is off the mountains, which seem even to have come again like the birds. 

The undulating river is a bright-blue channel between sharp-edged shores of ice retained by the willows. The wind blows strong but warm from west by north, so that I have to hold my paper tight when I write this, making the copses creak and roar; but the sharp tinkle of a song sparrow is heard through it all. 

But ah! the needles of the pine, how they shine, as I look down over the Holden wood and westward! Every third tree is lit with the most subdued but clear ethereal light, as if it were the most delicate frostwork in a winter morning, reflecting no heat, but only light. And as they rock and wave in the strong wind, even a mile off, the light courses up and down there as over a field of grain; i. e., they are alternately light and dark, like looms above the forest, when the shuttle is thrown between the light woof and the dark web, weaving a light article, – spring goods for Nature to wear. 

At sight of this my spirit is like a lit tree. It runs or flashes over their parallel boughs as when you play with the teeth of a comb. The pine tops wave like squirrels' tails flashing in the air. Not only osiers but pine-needles, methinks, shine in the spring, and arrowheads and railroad rails, etc., etc. Anacreon noticed the same. 

Is it not the higher sun, and cleansed air, and greater animation of nature? There is a warmer red to the leaves of the shrub oak, and to the tail of the hawk circling over them. 

I sit on the Cliff, and look toward Sudbury. I see its meeting-houses and its common, and its fields lie but little beyond my ordinary walk, but I never played on its common nor read the epitaphs in its graveyard, and many strangers to me dwell there. How distant in all important senses may be the town which yet is within sight! We see beyond our ordinary walks and thoughts. With a glass I might perchance read the time on its clock. How circumscribed are our walks, after all! With the utmost industry we cannot expect to know well an area more than six miles square, and yet we pretend to be travellers, to be acquainted with Siberia and Africa! 

Going by the epigaea on Fair Haven Hill, I thought I would follow down the shallow gully through the woods from it, that I might find more or something else. There was an abundance of checkerberry, as if it were a peculiar locality for shrubby evergreens. At first the checkerberry was green, but low down the hill it suddenly became dark-red, like a different plant, as if it had been more subject to frost there, it being more frosty lower down. Where it was most turned, that part of the leaf which was protected by another overlapping it was still pure bright-green, making a pretty contrast when you lifted it. 

Eight or ten rods off I noticed an evergreen shrub with the aspect or habit of growth of the juniper, but, as it was in the woods, I already suspected it to be what it proved, the American yew, already strongly budded to bloom. This is a capital discovery. 

I have thus found the ledum and the taxus this winter and a new locality of the epigaea.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 18, 1858

The note of the first bluebird in the air answers to the purling rill of melted snow beneath . . . It is modulated by the south wind. See March 9, 1852 ("I hear and see bluebirds, come with the warm wind."); March 17, 1858 ("Hear the first bluebird. A remarkably warm and pleasant day with a south or southwest wind . . .  The air is full of bluebirds. I hear them far and near on all sides of the hill, warbling in the tree-tops, though I do not distinctly see them . . . four species of birds have all come in one day, no doubt to almost all parts of the town. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Listening for the Bluebird

The rather warm but strong wind now roars in the wood to wake up the trees,  and their sap flows the sooner for it. See March 9, 1852 (“These March winds, which make the woods roar and fill the world with life and bustle, appear to wake up the trees out of their winter sleep and excite the sap to flow.”)

When I get two thirds up the hill, I look round and am for the hundredth time surprised by the landscape of the river valley and the horizon with its distant blue scalloped rim. See May 17, 1853 ("I was surprised, on turning round, to behold the serene and everlasting beauty of the world.”); May 22, 1854 ("How many times I have been surprised  thus, on turning about on this very spot, at the fairness of the earth!”) ; October 7, 1857 ("When I turn round half-way up Fair Haven Hill, by the orchard wall, and look northwest, I am surprised for the thousandth time at the beauty of the landscape.”). See also note to June 3, 1850 ("The landscape is a vast amphitheatre rising to its rim in the horizon.")

The robin does not come singing, but utters a somewhat anxious or inquisitive peep at first. See March 18, 1853 ("He does not sing as yet . . . the robin and blackbird only peep and chuck at first."); March 18, 1859 ("Three days ago, the 15th, we had steady rain with a southerly wind. . . and the peep of the robin was heard through the drizzle and the rain.") See also  February 27, 1857 (" Before I opened the window this cold morning, I heard the peep of a robin, that sound so often heard in cheerless or else rainy weather, so often heard first borne on the cutting March wind or through sleet or rain, as if its coming were premature. "); March 8, 1855 ("I hear the hasty, shuffling, as if frightened, note of a robin from a dense birch wood . . . This sound reminds me of rainy, misty April days in past years."); March 12, 1854 ("I hear my first robin peep distinctly at a distance. No singing yet."); March 17, 1858 ("I hear a faint note far in the wood which reminds me of the robin. Again I hear it; it is he, — an occasional peep.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, the anxious peep of the early robin

Each new year is a surprise to us. See December 29, 1851 (" What a fine and measureless joy the gods grant us thus, letting us know nothing about the day that is to dawn! This day, yesterday, was as incredible as any other miracle.")

The sharp tinkle of a song sparrow is heard through it all. See March 18, 1857 ("I now again hear the song sparrow’s tinkle along the riverside, probably to be heard for a day or two.”)March 18, 1852 ("I hear the song sparrow's simple strain, most genuine herald of the spring.”)

I have thus found the ledum this winter. See February 4, 1858 (“As usual with the finding of new plants, I had a presentiment that I should find the ledum in Concord.”)

Going by the epigaea on Fair Haven Hill, I thought I would follow down the shallow gully through the woods from it, that I might find more or something else. See September 8, 1858 ("It is good policy to be stirring about your affairs, for the reward of activity and energy is that if you do not accomplish the object you had professed to yourself, you do accomplish something else. So, in my botanizing or natural history walks, it commonly turns out that, going for one thing, I get another thing.")

A new locality of the epigaea. See February 7, 1858 (“I am surprised to find the epigaea on this hill, at the northwest corner of C. Hubbard’s (?) lot.”)

March 18. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, March 18

The snow is off the

mountains, which seem to have come

again like the birds,

their blue scalloped rim

a deeper and warmer blue

than winter, methinks.

A spring landscape as

impossible a fortnight

ago as birdsong.

The note of each bird

remembered like a dream when

we hear it again.

How happens it that

each new year is always

a pleasing surprise?

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Each new year is a surprise to us.

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

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