A gray screech owl.

 

February 5.

Horace Mann brings me a screech owl, which was caught in Hastings's barn on the meeting-house avenue. It had killed a dove there.

This is a decidedly gray owl, with none of the reddish or nut brown of the specimen of December 26, though it is about the same size, and answers exactly to Wilson's mottled owl.

Rice brings me an oak stick with a woodpecker's hole in it by which it reached a pupa.

The first slight rain and thaw of this winter was February 2d .

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 5, 1861

This is a decidedly gray owl, with none of the reddish or nut brown of the specimen of December 26 and answers exactly to Wilson's mottled owl. See December 26, 1860 ("Melvin sent to me yesterday a perfect Strix asio, or red owl of Wilson, - not at all gray. . . . This is, as Wilson says, a bright “nut brown" . . .. It is twenty-three inches alar extent by about eleven long.") See also July 10, 1856 ("I find myself suddenly within a rod of a gray screech owl sitting on an alder bough with horns erect, turning its head from side to side and up and down,. . .Another more red, also horned, repeats the same warning sound . . . I draw near and find a young owl a third smaller than the old, all gray without obvious horns --only four or five feet distant.")

 We hike to the fort via the rope trail making new tracks in compressed snow over a foot deep. At the lower view hear the spring note of the chickadee one seems to be calling another and then one carries on for quite some time hear the white breasted nuthatch as well I stay out of janes trail and for once keep up with her as it turns out because she is in excruciating pain with her right foot flopping to one side. But this is alleviated by a small adjustment to the padding after we get to the fort for the most part the dogs trail behind us 1, 2, 3 but as we near the Fort  acorn runs head crosses the stream and goes up there and waits. Loki meanwhile begins to trot and hunt through the deep snow. It was a good plan to leave the chair upside-down as I have a dry seat the temperature is a little over 30° perhaps over freezing and there is some sun in the woods and then in the tops of the trees and cliffs as dusk approaches we stop on porcupine ridge and look up at the pine tops glowing in the sun.

As dusk approaches

we look up at the pine tops

glowing in the sun. 

February 5, 2021

A rainy night with a little snow and a song sparrow!

February 2

Still rains, after a rainy night with a little snow, forming slosh. 

As I return from the post-office, I hear the hoarse, robin-like chirp of a song sparrow on Cheney's ground, and see him perched on the top most twig of a heap of brush, looking forlorn and drabbled and solitary in the rain.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 2, 1858

Slosh. See January 23, 1853 ("Rain, carrying off the snow and making slosh of the lower half of it. It is perhaps the wettest walking we ever have.")

A song sparrow looking forlorn and drabbled and solitary in the rain. See January 15, 1857 ("I saw, to my surprise, that it must be a song sparrow . . . taken refuge in this shed"); January 21, 1857 ("I noticed that several species of birds lingered late this year . . . What does it mean?"); January 22, 1857 ("Minott tells me that Sam Barrett told him once when he went to mill that a song sparrow took up its quarters in his grist-mill and stayed there all winter."); January 28, 1857 ("Am again surprised to see a song sparrow sitting for hours on our wood-pile in the yard, in the midst of snow in the yard. It is unwilling to move. People go to the pump, and the cat and dog walk round the wood-pile without starting it. I examine it at my leisure through a glass.") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,   
Signs of the Spring: the Song Sparrow Sings and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)

A song sparrow perched

topmost on a heap of brush –

forlorn in the rain.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A rainy night with a little snow 

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 ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-18580202

Lichens from dry ash and leather-color turn a lively olive-green.

March 3

P. M. —To Fair Haven Hill. 

3 p.m., 24° in shade. 

The red maple sap, which I first noticed the 21st of February, is now frozen up in the auger-holes and thence down the trunk to the ground, except in one place where the hole was made in the south side of the tree, where it is melted and is flowing a little. Generally, then, when the thermometer is thus low, say below freezing-point, it does not thaw in the auger-holes. 

There is no expanding of buds of any kind, nor early birds, to be seen. 

Nature was thus premature — anticipated her own revolutions — with respect to the sap of trees, the buds (spiraea at least), and birds. The warm spell ended with February 26th. 

The crust of yesterday's snow has been converted by the sun and wind into flakes of thin ice from two or three inches to a foot in diameter, scattered like a mackerel sky over the pastures, as if all the snow had been blown out from beneath. Much of this thin ice is partly opaque and has a glutinous look even, reminding me of frozen glue. Probably it has much dust mixed with it. 

I go along below the north end of the Cliffs. The rocks in the usual place are buttressed with icy columns, for water in almost imperceptible quantity is trickling down the rocks. 

It is interesting to see how the dry black or ash-colored umbilicaria, which get a little moisture when the snow melts and trickles down along a seam or shallow channel of the rock, become relaxed and turn olive-green and enjoy their spring, while a few inches on each side of this gutter or depression in the face of the rock they are dry and crisp as ever. Perhaps the greater part of this puny rill is drunk up by the herbage on its brink. 

These are among the consequences of the slight robin snow of yesterday. It is already mostly dissipated, but where a heap still lingers, the sun on the warm face of this cliff leads down a puny trickling rill, moistening the gutters on the steep face of the rocks where patches of umbilicaria lichens grow, of rank growth, but now thirsty and dry as bones and hornets' nests, dry as shells, which crackle under your feet. 

The more fortunate of these, which stand by the moistened seams or gutters of the rock, luxuriate in the grateful moisture — as in their spring. Their rigid nerves relax, they unbend and droop like limber infancy, and from dry ash and leather-color turn a lively olive-green. 

You can trace the course of this trickling stream over the rock through such a patch of lichens by the olive-green of the lichens alone. Here and there, too, the same moisture refreshes and brightens up the scarlet crowns of some little cockscomb lichen, and when the rill reaches the perpendicular face of the cliff, its constant drip at night builds great organ-pipes of a ringed structure, which run together, buttressing the rock. 

Skating yesterday and to-day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 3, 1857

The red maple sap, which I first noticed the 21st of February, is now frozen up. See note to February 21, 1857 ("Am surprised to see this afternoon a boy collecting red maple sap from some trees behind George Hubbard's.”)

There is no expanding of buds of any kind, nor early birds, to be seen. Compare March 5, 1852 ("As I sit under their boughs, looking into the sky, I suddenly see the myriad black dots of the expanded buds against the sky. Their sap is flowing.”)

Nature . . . anticipated her own revolutions. See April 18, 1852 ("Can I not by expectation affect the revolutions of nature, make a day to bring forth something new?")

Great organ-pipes of a ringed structure, which run together, buttressing the rock. See February 14, 1852 ("icicles . . .hang perpendicularly, like organ pipes."); January 11, 1854 ("Now is the time to go out and see the ice organ-pipes.”)

Moisture refreshes and brightens up the scarlet crowns of some little cockscomb lichen, See January 26, 1852 ("The lichens look rather bright to-day, . . .The beauty of lichens, with their scalloped leaves, the small attractive fields, the crinkled edge! I could study a single piece of bark for hour.”);  February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day. . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day, - a sudden humid growth.”); March 5, 1852 ("Such is the mood of my mind, and I call it studying lichens . . .really prevents my seeing aught else in a walk"); March 6, 1856 ("The snow is softening . Methinks the lichens are a little greener for it . "); See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau   The Lichens and the lichenst

March 3.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau March 3

Lichens from dry ash 

and leather-color turn a 

lively olive-green. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Lichens turnng green

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