Geese go over in the spring about 10 o'clock in the morning,

March 26.

There is a large specimen of what I take to be the common alder by the poplar at Egg Rock, five inches in diameter. It may be considered as beginning to bloom to-day.

Some white maples appear still as backward as the red.

Saw about 10 A. M. a gaggle of geese, forty-three in number, in a very perfect harrow flying northeasterly. One side the harrow was a little longer than the other. They appeared to be four or five feet apart.

At first I heard faintly, as I stood by Minott's gate, borne to me from the southwest through the confused sounds of the village, the indistinct honking of geese.

I was somewhat surprised to find that Mr. Loring at his house should have heard and seen the same flock. I should think that the same flock was commonly seen and heard from the distance of a mile east and west.

It is remarkable that we commonly see geese go over in the spring about 10 o'clock in the morning, as if they were accustomed to stop for the night at some place southward whence they reached us at that time.

Goodwin saw six geese in Walden about the same time.

The scales of the alder run to leaves sometimes.

P. M. Up Assabet to stone-heaps, in boat.

A warm, moist, April-like afternoon, with wet-looking sky, and misty.  For the first time I take off my coat.

Everywhere are hovering over the river and floating, wrecked and struggling, on its surface, a miller-like insect, without mealy wings, very long and narrow, six- legged with two long feelers and, I believe, two long slender grayish wings, from my harbor to the heaps, or a couple of miles at least, food for fishes. This was the degree and kind of warmth to bring them forth.

The tortoises, undoubtedly painted, drop now in several instances from the limbs and floating rails on which they had come out to sun.

I notice by the Island a yellow scum on the water close to the shore, which must be the pollen of the alders just above. This, too, is perhaps food for fishes.

Up the Assabet, scared from his perch a stout hawk, -- the red-tailed undoubtedly, for I saw very plainly the cow-red when he spread his wings from off his tail (and rump?).

I rowed the boat three times within gunshot before he flew, twice within four rods, while he sat on an oak over the water,-- I think because I had two ladies with me, which was as good as bushing the boat. Each time, or twice at least, he made a motion to fly before he started.

The ends of his primaries looked very ragged against the sky.

This is the hen-hawk of the farmer, the same, probably, which I have scared off from the Cliff so often. It was an interesting eagle-like object, as he sat upright on his perch with his back to us, now and then looking over his shoulder, the broad-backed, flat-headed, curve-beaked bird.

Heard a pewee. This, it seems to me, is the first true pewee day, though they have been here some time.

What is that cress-like weed in and on the edge of the river opposite Prescott Barrett's? A fresher and more luxuriant growth of green leaf than I have seen yet; as if it had grown in winter.

I do not perceive any fresh additions to the stone-heaps, though perhaps I did not examine carefully enough.

Went forth just after sunset.

A storm gathering, an April-like storm. I hear now in the dusk only the song sparrow along the fences and a few hylas at a distance. And now the rattling drops compel me to return.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 26, 1853

There is a large specimen of what I take to be the common alder by the poplar at Egg Rock. See December 30, 1855 ("For a few days I have noticed the snow sprinkled with alder and birch scales. I go now through the birch meadow southwest of the Rock. The high wind is scattering them over the snow there. ")

Saw about 10 A. M. a gaggle of geese, forty-three in number, in a very perfect harrow flying northeasterly. See March 24, 1859 (" C. sees geese go over again this afternoon."); March 25, 1853 ("A Lincoln man heard a flock of geese, he thinks it was day before yesterday."); March 27, 1857 ("Farmer says that he heard geese go over two or three nights ago."); March 27 and 28, 1860 (" Louis Minor tells me he saw some geese about the 23d."); March 28, 1859 ("I suspect it will be found that there is really some advantage in large birds of passage flying in the wedge form and cleaving their way through the air, — that they really do overcome its resistance best in this way, — and perchance the direction and strength of the wind determine the comparative length of the two sides . . .Undoubtedly the geese fly more numerously over rivers which, like ours, flow northeasterly, — are more at home with the water under them.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring, Geese Overhead

Everywhere are hovering over the river and floating, wrecked and struggling, on its surface, a miller-like insect . . the degree and kind of warmth to bring them forth. See March 7, 1859 ("Their appearance is a regular early spring, or late winter, phenomenon"); April 25, 1854 ("Many shad-flies in the air and alighting on my clothes. The summer approaches by almost insensibly increasing lieferungs of heat,  . . Each creature awaits with confidence its proper degree of heat.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Insect Hatches in Spring (millers, perla, shad-flies or ephemera)

Up the Assabet, scared from his perch a stout hawk, -- the red-tailed undoubtedly See March 6, 1858 ("I see the first hen-hawk, or hawk of any kind, methinks, since the beginning of winter. Its scream, even, is inspiring as the voice of a spring bird."); . March 2, 1855 ("Hear two hawks scream. There is something truly March-like in it, like a prolonged blast or whistling of the wind through a crevice in the sky. which, like a cracked blue saucer, overlaps the woods. Such are the first rude notes which prelude the summer’s quire, learned of the whistling March wind") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: the Hawks of March

The first true pewee day, though they have been here some time. See March 16, 1854.  ("The first phoebe near the water is heard.");  April 2, 1852 ("For a long distance, as we paddle up the river, we hear the two-stanza'd lay of the pewee on the shore, - pee-wet, pee-wee, etc. Those are the two obvious facts to eye and ear, the river and the pewee.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Phoebe

I do not perceive any fresh additions to the stone-heaps, See April 19, 1854 ("Yesterday, as I was returning down the Assabet, . . . I was surprised to find the river so full of sawdust from the pail-factory and Barrett's mill that I could not easily distinguish if the stone-heaps had been repaired"); May 3, 1855 ("Sitting on the bank near the stone-heaps, I see large suckers rise to catch insects,—sometimes leap."): June 11, 1858 (""Examine the stone-heaps. One is now a foot above water and quite sharp. They contain, apparently freshly piled up, from a wheelbarrow to a cartload of stones; but I can find no ova in them. "); July 31, 1859 ("A man fishing at the Ox-Bow said without hesitation that the stone-heaps were made by the sucker,")

I have come with a spy-glass to look at the hawks

June 9.

4. 30 A. M.— To Nawshawtuct by boat.

A prevalent fog, though not quite so thick as the last described.

It is a little more local, for it is so thin southwest of this hill that I can see the earth through it, but as thick as before northeast. Yet here and there deep valleys are excavated in it, as painters imagine the Red Sea for the passage of Pharaoh's host, wherein trees and houses appear as it were at the bottom of the sea.

What is peculiar about it is that it is the tops of the trees which you see first and most distinctly, before you see their trunks or where they stand on earth.

Far in the northeast there is, as before, apparently a tremendous surf breaking on a distant shoal. It is either a real shoal, i. e. a hill over which the fog breaks, or the effect of the sun's rays on it. 

I was amused by the account which Mary, the Irish girl who left us the other day, gave of her experience at-- the milkman's, in the north part of the town. She said that twenty-two lodged in the house the first night, including two pig men, that Mr. —-kept ten men, had six children and a deaf wife, and one of the men had his wife with him, who helped sew, beside taking care of her own child. Also all the cooking and washing for his father and mother, who live in another house and whom he is bound to carry through, is done in his house, and she, Mary, was the only girl they hired; and the workmen were called up at four by an alarm clock which was set a quarter of an hour ahead of the clock down stairs, — and that more than as much ahead of the town clock, — and she was on her feet from that hour till nine at night. Each man had two pairs of overalls in the wash, and the cans to be scalded were countless. Having got through washing the breakfast dishes by a quarter before twelve, Sunday noon, by — ' s time, she left, no more to return. He had told her that the work was easy, that girls had lived with him to recover their health, and then went away to be married. He is regarded as one of the most enterprising and thrifty farmers in the county, and takes the premiums of the Agricultural Society. He probably exacts too much of his hands.

June 9, 2023

The steam of the engine streaming far behind is regularly divided, as if it were the vertebræ of a serpent, probably by the strokes of the piston.

The reddish seeds or glumes of grasses cover my boots now in the dewy or foggy morning.

The diervilla out apparently yesterday.

The first white lily bud.

White clover is abundant and very sweet on the common, filling the air, but not yet elsewhere as last year.


8 A. M. – To Orchis Swamp; Well Meadow.

Hear a goldfinch; this the second or third only that I have heard.

Whiteweed now whitens the fields.

There are many star flowers. I remember the anemone, especially the rue anemone, which is not yet all gone, lasting longer than the true one above all the trientalis, and of late the yellow Bethlehem-star, and perhaps others.

I have come with a spy-glass to look at the hawks. They have detected me and are already screaming over my head more than half a mile from the nest.

I find no difficulty in looking at the young hawk (there appears to be one only, standing on the edge of the nest), resting the glass in the crotch of a young oak. I can see every wink and the color of its iris.

It watches me more steadily than I it, now looking straight down at me with both eyes and outstretched neck, now turning its head and looking with one eye.

How its eye and its whole head express anger! Its anger is more in its eye than in its beak.

It is quite hoary over the eye and on the chin.

The mother meanwhile is incessantly circling about and above its charge and me, farther or nearer, sometimes withdrawing a quarter of a mile, but occasionally coming to alight for a moment almost within gunshot, on the top of a tall white pine; but I hardly bring my glass fairly to bear on her, and get sight of her angry eye through the pine-needles, before she circles away again.

Thus for an hour that I lay there, screaming every minute or oftener with open bill. Now and then pursued by a kingbird or a blackbird, who appear merely to annoy it by dashing down at its back.

Meanwhile the male is soaring, apparently quite undisturbed, at a great height above, evidently not hunting, but amusing or recreating himself in the thinner and cooler air, as if pleased with his own circles, like a geometer, and enjoying the sublime scene.

I doubt if he has his eye fixed on any prey, or the earth. He probably descends to hunt.



Got two or three handfuls of strawberries on Fair Haven. They are already drying up.

The huckleberry bedbug-smelling bug is on them.It is natural that the first fruit which the earth bears should emit and be as it were an embodiment of that vernal fragrance with which the air has teemed.

Strawberries are its manna, found ere long where that fragrance has filled the air. Little natural beds or patches on the sides of dry hills, where the fruit sometimes reddens the ground. But it soon dries up, unless there is a great deal of rain.

Well, are not the juices of early fruit distilled from the air? 

Prunella out.

The meadows are now yellow with the golden senecio, a more orange yellow, mingled with the light glossy yellow of the buttercup.

The green fruit of the sweet-fern now.

The Juniperus repens appears, though now dry and effete, to have blossomed recently.

The tall white Erigeron annuus ( ? ), for this is the only one described as white tinged with purple, just out.

The bullfrogs are in full blast to-night.

I do not hear a toad from my window; only the crickets beside. The toads I have but rarely heard of late. So there is an evening for the toads and another for the bullfrogs.



H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 9, 1853

June 9, 2013

The steam of the engine streaming far behind is regularly divided, as if it were the vertebræ of a serpent.  See December 25, 1851 ("If there is not something mystical in your explanation, something unexplainable to the understanding, some elements of mystery, it is quite insufficient.  . . Just as inadequate to a pure mechanic would be a poet's account of a steam-engine.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Steam of the Engine

I have come with a spy-glass to look at the hawks. See June 8, 1853 ("At length I detect the nest about eighty feet from the ground, in a very large white pine by the edge of the swamp. It is about three feet in diameter, of dry sticks, and a young hawk, apparently as big as its mother, stands on the edge of the nest looking down at me")

So there is an evening for the toads and another for the bullfrogs.  See June 13, 1851 ("The different frogs mark the seasons pretty well,- the peeping hyla, the dreaming frog, and the bullfrog."); See also  June 1, 1853 ("The birds have now all come and no longer fly in flocks. The hylodes are no longer heard. The bullfrogs begin to trump.”); June 11, 1853 ("Another fog this morning. The mosquitoes first troubled me a little last night. On the river at dusk I hear the toads still, with the bullfrogs.");  June 15, 1860 ("A new season begun. The bullfrogs now commonly trump at night, and the mosquitoes are now really troublesome. For some time I have not heard toads by day, and the hylodes appear to have done.")

The meadows are now yellow with the golden senecio, a more orange yellow, mingled with the light glossy yellow of the buttercup. See May 23, 1853 ("I am surprised by the dark orange-yellow of the senecio. At first we had the lighter, paler spring yellows of willows, dandelion, cinquefoil, then the darker and deeper yellow of the buttercup; and then this broad distinction between the buttercup and the senecio, as the seasons revolve toward July."); June 6, 1858 ("Golden senecio is not uncommon now") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Golden Senecio

The peculiar flight of a hawk thus fetches the year about.

April 22. 

April 22, 2019

Row to Fair Haven. Thermometer 56° or 54º. 

See shad-flies. 

Scare up woodcock on the shore by my boat's place, — the first I had seen. It was feeding within a couple of rods, but I had not seen or thought of it. When I made a loud and sharp sound driving in my rowlocks, it suddenly flew up. It is evident that we very often come quite near woodcocks and snipe thus concealed on the ground, without starting them and so without suspecting that they are near. These marsh birds, like the bittern, have this habit of keeping still and trusting to their resemblance to the ground. 

See now hen-hawks, a pair, soaring high as for pleasure, circling ever further and further away, as if it were midsummer. The peculiar flight of a hawk thus fetches the year about. I do not see it soar in this serene and leisurely manner very early in the season, methinks. 

The early luzula is almost in bloom; makes a show, with its budded head and its purplish and downy, silky leaves, on the warm margin of Clamshell Bank.

Two or three dandelions in bloom spot the ground there. 

Land at Lee's Cliff. 

The cassandra (water-brush) is well out, — how long? — and in one place we disturb great clouds of the little fuzzy gnats that were resting on the bushes, as we push up the shallow ditch there. 

The Ranunculus fascicularis is now in prime, rather than before. 

The columbine is hardly yet out. 

I hear that the Viola ovata was found the 17th and the 20th, and the bloodroot in E. Emerson's garden the 20th. 

J. B. Moore gave me some mineral which he found being thrown out of [a] drain that was dug between Knight's factory and his house. It appears to me to be red lead and quartz, and the lead is quite pure and marks very well, or freely, but is pretty dark.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 22, 1860

See shad-flies. See April 24, 1857 (“Sail to Ball's Hill. The water is at its height, higher than before this year. I see a few shad-flies on its surface.”); April 25, 1854  ("Many shad-flies in the air and alighting on my clothes."); April 28, 1859 ("See a shad-fly, one only, on water.,”); May 1, 1854 ("The water is strewn with myriads of wrecked shad-flies, erect on the surface, with their wings up like so many schooners all headed one way.”); May 1, 1858 (“Ephemerae quite common over the water.”); May 4, 1856 ("Shad-flies on the water, schooner-like.”); see also June 9, 1854 ("The air is now full of shad-flies, and there is an incessant sound made by the fishes leaping for their evening meal");June 8, 1856 (“my boat being by chance at the same place where it was in ’54, I noticed a great flight of ephemera”);  June 9, 1856 ("Again, about seven, the ephemera came out, in numbers as many as last night, now many of them coupled, even tripled; and the fishes leap as before.")

    

These marsh birds, like the bittern, have this habit of keeping still and trusting to their resemblance to the ground. See November 21, 1857 ("Just above the grape-hung birches, my attention was drawn to a singular-looking dry leaf or parcel of leaves on the shore about a rod off. Then I thought it might be the dry and yellowed skeleton of a bird with all its ribs; then the shell of a turtle, or possibly some large dry oak leaves peculiarly curved and cut; and then, all at once, I saw that it was a woodcock, perfectly still, with its head drawn in, standing on its great pink feet."); See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The American Woodcock

The peculiar flight of a hawk thus fetches the year about. See . April 22, 1852 ("See four hawks soaring high in the heavens over the Swamp Bridge Brook. At first saw three; said to myself there must be four, and found the fourth. Glad are they, no doubt, to be out after being confined by the storm"); February 16, 1859 ("The hen-hawk . . . loves to soar above the clouds. It has its own way and is beautiful.);  March 15, 1860 ("I get a very fair sight of it sailing overhead. What a perfectly regular and neat outline it presents! an easily recognized figure anywhere."); March 23, 1856 ("I spend a considerable portion of my time observing the habits of the wild animals, my brute neighbors. By their various movements and migrations they fetch the year about to me.")  See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Hen-Hawk

The early luzula is almost in bloom; makes a show, with its budded head and its purplish and downy, silky leaves. See April 30, 1859 ("Luzula campestris is almost out at Clamshell. Its now low purplish and silky-haired leaves are the blooming of moist ground and early meadow-edges.")

Two or three dandelions in bloom spot the ground there. See April 22, 1855 ("The grass is now become rapidly green by the sides of the road, promising dandelions and butter cups. "); April 29, 1857 ("I commonly meet with the earliest dandelion set in the midst of some liquid green patch. It seems a sudden and decided progress in the season.")

We disturb great clouds of the little fuzzy gnats that were resting on the bushes.  

See April 22, 1852 ("I see swarms of gnats in the air."); See also April 21, 1855 ("All the button-bushes, etc., etc., in and about the water are now swarming with those minute fuzzy gnats about an eighth of an inch long. The insect youth are on the wing. The whole shore resounds with their hum wherever we approach it, and they cover our boat and persons. They are in countless myriads the whole length of the river.") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ)

The Ranunculus fascicularis is now in prime, rather than before. See April 11, 1858 ("Crowfoot (Ranunculus fascicularis) at Lee's since the 6th, apparently a day or two before this.")

The columbine is hardly yet out. See April 18, 1856 (“Columbine, and already eaten by bees. Some with a hole in the side.”); April 30, 1855 (" Columbine just out; one anther sheds."); May 1, 1854 ("I think that the columbine cannot be said to have blossomed there [Lee's Cliff] before to-day, — the very earliest.”)

I hear that the Viola ovata was found the 17th and the 20th. See April 19, 1858 ("Viola ovata on bank above Lee's Cliff. Edith Emerson found them there yesterday.") See also May 20, 1852 ) ("The Viola ovata is of a deep purple blue, is darkest and has most of the red in it; the V. pedata is smooth and pale-blue, delicately tinged with purple reflections; the cucullata is more decidedly blue, slaty-blue, and darkly striated.”). and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Violets

The bluebird comes to us bright in his vernal dress as a bridegroom.

April 5 

The bluebird comes to us bright in his vernal dress as a bridegroom. (Cleared up at noon, making a day and a half of rain.) Has he not got new feathers then? 

Brooks says “the greater number of birds renew their plumage in autumn only;” if they have two moults, spring and autumn, there is still but one of the wings and tail feathers. 

Also says that in the spring various “birds undergo a change of color unaccompanied by any moult.” 

I have noticed the few phoebes, not to mention other birds, mostly near the river. Is it not because of the greater abundance of insects there, those early moths or ephemeræ? As these and other birds are most numerous there, the red-tailed hawk is there to catch them?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal  April 5, 1853 

The bluebird comes to us bright in his vernal dress as a bridegroom. See April 3, 1852 ("The bluebird carries the sky on his back ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bluebird in Early Spring.

I have noticed the few phoebes mostly near the river. See March 16, 1854 ("The first phoebe near the water is heard. "); April 1, 1859 ("At the Pokelogan up the Assabet, I see my first phoebe, the mild bird. It flirts its tail and sings pre vit, pre vit, pre vit, pre vit incessantly, as it sits over the water, and then at last, rising on the last syllable, says pre-VEE, as if insisting on that with peculiar emphasis."); April 2, 1852 (" For a long distance, as we paddle up the river, we hear the two-stanza'd lay of the pewee on the shore, - pee-wet, pee-wee, etc. Those are the two obvious facts to eye and ear, the river and the pewee.");  April 6, 1856 ("With what confidence after the lapse of many months, I come out to this waterside, some warm and pleasant spring morning, and, listening, hear, from farther or nearer, through the still concave of the air, the note of the first pewee! If there is one within half a mile, it will be here, and I shall be sure to hear its simple notes from those trees, borne over the water.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Phoebe

Abundance of insects there, those early moths or ephemeræ. See March 11, 1855 ("Many of those dirty-white millers or ephemera in the air."); April 2, 1859 ("There are many fuzzy gnats now in the air, . . . not, perhaps, so thick as they will be, but they are suddenly much thicker than they were, and perhaps their presence affects the arrival of the phoebe, which, I suspect, feeds on them.").

As these and other birds are most numerous there, the red-tailed hawk is there to catch them? See April 5, 1855 ("The snipe too, then, like crows, robins, blackbirds, and hens, is found near the waterside, . . . , and there too especially are heard the song and tree sparrows and pewees, and even the hen-hawk at this season haunts there for his prey.")

Here is the first fair, and at the same time calm and warm, day.

March 15. 

I hear that there was about one acre of ice only at the southwest corner (by the road) of Flint's Pond on the 13th. It will probably, then, open entirely to-day, with Walden. 

Though it is pretty dry and settled travelling on open roads, it is very muddy still in some roads through woods, as the Marlborough road or Second Division road. 

2 P. M. – To Lee's Cliff. Thermometer 50°. 

March 15, 2020

On the whole the finest day yet (the thermometer was equally high the 3d), considering the condition of the earth as well as the temperature of the air. Yet I think I feel the heat as much if not more than I did on the 23d of February, when the thermometer rose to 58º. Is it because there was more snow lying about then? The comparative stillness, as well as the absence of snow, has an effect on our imaginations, I have no doubt. Our cold and blustering days this month, thus far, have averaged about 40°. Here is the first fair, and at the same time calm and warm, day.

Looking over my Journal, I find that the -

• 1st of March was rainy.
• 2 at 2 P. M.         56°
• 3                         50
• 4                         44
• 5 ( probably as low )
• 6 at 3 P . M .     44
• 7 at 3 P . M       34
• 8 2 P. M.           50
• 9 2 P. M.           41
• 10                     30
• 11                     44
• 12                     40
• 13                     36
• 14                     39
• 15                     50

The temperature has been as high on three days this month, and on the 2nd considerably higher, and yet this has seemed the warmest and most summer-like, evidently owing to the calmness and greater absence of snow. 

How admirable in our memory lies a calm warm day amid a series of cold and blustering ones! The 11th was cold and blustering at 40; to-day delightfully warm and pleasant (being calm) at 50°.

I see those devil's-needle-like larvæ in the warm pool south of Hubbard's Grove (with two tails) swimming about and rising to the top. 

What a difference it makes whether a pool lies open to the sun or is within a wood, — affecting its breaking up. This pool has been open at least a week, while that three or four rods from it in the woods is still completely closed and dead. 

It is very warm under the south edge of the wood there, and the ground, as for some time, — since snow went off, — is seen all strewn with the great white pine cones which have been blown off during the winter, — part of the great crop of last fall, — of which apparently as many, at least, still remain on the trees. 

A hen-hawk sails away from the wood southward. I get a very fair sight of it sailing overhead. What a perfectly regular and neat outline it presents! an easily recognized figure anywhere. Yet I never see it represented in any books. The exact correspondence of the marks on one side to those on the other, as the black or dark tip of one wing to the other, and the dark line mid way the wing. 

I have no idea that one can get as correct an idea of the form and color of the undersides of a hen-hawk's wings by spreading those of a dead specimen in his study as by looking up at a free and living hawk soaring above him in the fields. The penalty for obtaining a petty knowledge thus dishonestly is that it is less interesting to men generally, as it is less significant. 

Some, seeing and admiring the neat figure of the hawk sailing two or three hundred feet above their heads, wish to get nearer and hold it in their hands, not realizing that they can see it best at this distance, better now, perhaps, than ever they will again. What is an eagle in captivity! — screaming in a courtyard! I am not the wiser respecting eagles for having seen one there. I do not wish to know the length of its entrails. 

How neat and all compact this hawk! Its wings and body are all one piece, the wings apparently the greater part, while its body is a mere fullness or protuberance between its wings, an inconspicuous pouch hung there. It suggests no insatiable maw, no corpulence, but looks like a larger moth, with little body in proportion to its wings, its body naturally more etherealized as it soars higher. 

These hawks, as usual, began to be common about the first of March, showing that they were returning from their winter quarters. 

I see a little ice still under water on the bottom of the meadows by the Hubbard's Bridge causeway. The frost is by no means out in grass upland. 

I see to-day in two places, in mud and in snow, what I have no doubt is the track of the woodchuck that has lately been out, with peculiarly spread toes like a little hand. 

Am surprised to hear, from the pool behind Lee's Cliff, the croaking of the wood frog. It is all alive with them, and I see them spread out on the surface. Their note is somewhat in harmony with the rustling of the now drier leaves. It is more like the note of the classical frog, as described by Aristophanes, etc. How suddenly they awake! yesterday, as it were, asleep and dormant, to-day as lively as ever they are. The awakening of the leafy woodland pools. They must awake in good condition. 

As Walden opens eight days earlier than I have known it, so this frog croaks about as much earlier. 

Many large fuzzy gnats and other insects in air. 

It is remarkable how little certain knowledge even old and weather-wise men have of the comparative earliness of the year. They will speak of the passing spring as earlier or later than they ever knew, when perchance the third spring before it was equally early or late, as I have known.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 15, 1860


I hear that there was about one acre of ice only at the southwest corner (by the road) of Flint's Pond on the 13th. It will probably, then, open entirely to-day, with Walden. Compare April 1, 1852 (" I am surprised to find Flint's Pond frozen still, which should have been open a week ago. How unexpectedly dumb and poor and cold does Nature look, when, where we had expected to find a glassy lake reflecting the skies and trees in the spring, we find only dull, white ice!")

A hen-hawk sails away from the wood southward. See March 4, 1860 ("A hen-hawk rises and sails away over the Holden Wood as in summer.")

Many large fuzzy gnats and other insects in air. See March 2, 1860 ("We see one or two gnats in the air."); March 7, 1860 ("C. says that he saw a swarm of very small gnats in the air yesterday."). See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fuzzy Gnats

Am surprised to hear, from the pool behind Lee's Cliff, the croaking of the wood frog. . . . As Walden opens eight days earlier than I have known it, so this frog croaks about as much earlier. See March 14, 1860 ("I am surprised to find Walden almost entirely open. . . . I have not observed it to open before before the 23d of March."); March 30, 1858 ("Later, in a pool behind Lee's Cliff, I hear them, – the waking up of the leafy pools.");/ See also March 23, 1859 ("I hear a single croak from a wood frog. . . . Thus we sit on that rock, hear the first wood frog's croak"); March 24, 1859 ("I am sitting in Laurel Glen, listening to hear the earliest wood frogs croaking. . . .. Now, when the leaves get to be dry and rustle under your feet, dried by the March winds, the peculiar dry note, wurrk wurrk wur-r-r-k wurk of the wood frog is heard faintly by ears on the alert, borne up from some unseen pool in a woodland hollow which is open to the influences of the sun. "); March 26, 1857 ("I hear a faint, stertorous croak from a frog in the open swamp; at first one faint note only, which I could not be sure that I had heard"); March 26, 1860 (“The wood frog [first] may be heard March 15, as this year, or not till April 13, as in '56,”); March 27, 1853 ("Tried to see the faint-croaking frogs at J. P. Brown's Pond in the woods. They are remarkably timid and shy; had their noses and eyes out, croaking, but all ceased, dove, and concealed themselves, before I got within a rod of the shore."); March 28, 1858 ("Coming home, I hear the croaking frogs in the pool on the south side of Hubbard’s Grove. It is sufficiently warm for them at last."); March 30, 1858 ("I do not remember that I ever hear this frog in the river or ponds. They seem to be an early frog, peculiar to pools and small ponds in the woods and fields.");  March 31, 1855 (“I go listening for the croak of the first frog, or peep of a hylodes."); March 31, 1857 (“As I rise the east side of the Hill, I hear the distant faint peep of hylodes and the tut tut of croaking frogs from the west of the Hill.”); April 13, 1856 ("As I go by the Andromeda Ponds, I hear the tut tut of a few croaking frogs,"); See also April 18, 1856 ("Walden is open entirely to-day for the first time.")

The last three have been true March days for wind.

March 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

I see some curled dock, just started. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The last three have been true March days for wind. 

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

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

Aspen down a quarter of an inch out.

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

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

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

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

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

  

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

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

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

A hen-hawk rises 

and sails over Holden Wood 

as in the summer.

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

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-600304

The ice has many curious marks on it.

January 31. 

2 p. m. — To Bedford Level. 

Thermometer 45. Fair but all overcast. Sun's place quite visible. Wind southwest.

Went to what we called Two-Boulder Hill, behind the house where I was born. There the wind suddenly changed round 90° to northwest, and it became quite cold (had fallen to 24° at 5.30). 

Called a field on the east slope Crockery Field, there were so many bits in it. 

Saw a pitch pine on a rock about four feet high, but two limbs flat on the ground. This spread much and had more than a hundred cones of different ages on it. Such are always the most fertile. 

Can look a great way northeast along the Bedford Swamp. 

Saw a large hawk, probably hen-hawk. 

The ice that has been rotting and thawing from time to time on the meadows — the water run out from below — has many curious marks on it. There are many ingrained waving lines more or less parallel. Often they make circular figures, or oval, and are concentric, as if they marked the edge of a great bubble or the like. 

I notice the ice on a ditched brook so far worn by the current as to be mackerelled in color, white and dark, all along the middle, making a figure two or three rods long which reminds me forcibly of the flat skin of a boa-constrictor, — marked just like it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 31, 1860



The house where I was born. See About Thoreau Farm (“[I was] born July 12, 1817 in the Minott House, on the Virginia Road," Concord); and note to December 27. 1855 ("the various houses (and towns) in which I have lived")

A pitch pine on a rock about four feet high had more than a hundred cones of different ages on it. See  April 29, 1857 ("See old cones within two feet of the ground on the trunk, — sometimes a circle of them around it, — which must have been formed on the young tree some fifteen years ago.");  pitch pine cones two years old still closed on felled trees, two to six together recurved, in the last case closely crowded and surrounding the twig in a ring, forming very rich-looking clusters eight to ten inches from the extremity, and, within two or three inches of the extremity, maybe one or two small ones of the last year. Low down on twigs around the trunks of old trees, and sometimes on the trunk itself, you see old gray cones which have only opened or blossomed at the apex, covered with lichens; which have lost their spines. February 18, 1855 ("I see pitch pine cones two years old still closed on felled trees, two to six together recurved, in the last case closely crowded and surrounding the twig in a ring, forming very rich-looking clusters eight to ten inches from the extremity, and, within two or three inches of the extremity, maybe one or two small ones of the last year. Low down on twigs around the trunks of old trees, and sometimes on the trunk itself, you see old gray cones which have only opened or blossomed at the apex, covered with lichens; which have lost their spines."); see also T. Evans, Forest Trees of Vemont ("Cones often remain on the trees 10-12 years.") and  A Book of the Seasons, The Pitch Pine in Winter

The ice that has been rotting and thawing has many curious marks on it. See January 26, 1859 ("The ice, having fairly begun to decompose, is very handsomely marked  . . .  with a sort of graphic character, or bird-tracks, very agreeable and varied.")

I notice the ice so far worn by the current as to be mackerelled in color, white and dark, all along the middle. See March 3, 1857 ("Flakes of thin ice from two or three inches to a foot in diameter, scattered like a mackerel sky over the pastures"); January 25, 1860 ("When the river begins to break up, it becomes clouded like a mackerel sky, but in this case the blue portions are where the current, clearing away the ice beneath, begins to show dark."); February 12, 1860 ("Above me is a cloudless blue sky; beneath, the sky-blue, sky-reflecting ice with patches of snow scattered over it like mackerel clouds");

JANUAR 28, 2018

A mackerel sky

of pine boughs sunny above

and shaded beneath.

March 26, 1860

How much it enhances the wildness and the richness of the forest to see in it some beautiful bird which you never detected before!

June 13. 

9 a. m. — To Orchis Swamp.

Find that there are two young hawks; one has left the nest and is perched on a small maple seven or eight rods distant. This one appears much smaller than the former one. I am struck by its large, naked head, so vulture-like, and large eyes, as if the vulture's were an inferior stage through which the hawk passed. Its feet, too, are large, remarkably developed, by which it holds to its perch securely like an old bird, before its wings can perform their office. It has a buff breast, striped with dark brown. 

Pratt, when I told him of this nest, said he would like to carry one of his rifles down there. But I told him that I should be sorry to have them killed. I would rather save one of these hawks than have a hundred hens and chickens. It was worth more to see them soar, especially now that they are so rare in the landscape. It is easy to buy eggs, but not to buy hen-hawks. 

My neighbors would not hesitate to shoot the last pair of hen-hawks in the town to save a few of their chick ens! But such economy is narrow and grovelling. It is unnecessarily to sacrifice the greater value to the less. I would rather never taste chickens' meat nor hens' eggs than never to see a hawk sailing through the upper air again. This sight is worth incomparably more than a chicken soup or a boiled egg. So we exterminate the deer and substitute the hog. 

It was amusing to observe the swaying to and fro of the young hawk's head to counterbalance the gentle motion of the bough in the wind. 

Violets appear to be about done, generally. 

Four-leaved loosestrife just out; also the smooth wild rose yesterday. The pogonia at Forget-me-not Brook.

What was that rare and beautiful bird in the dark woods under the Cliffs, with black above and white spots and bars, a large triangular blood-red spot on breast, and sides of breast and beneath white? Note a warble like the oriole, but softer and sweeter. It was quite tame. I cannot find this bird described.  I think it must be a grosbeak.

 At first I thought I saw a chewink, [as] it sat within a rod sideways to me, and I was going to call Sophia to look at it, but then it turned its breast full toward me and I saw the blood-red breast, a large triangular painted spot occupying the greater part of the breast. It was in the cool, shaded underwood by the old path just under the Cliff. It is a memorable event to meet with so rare a bird. 

Birds answer to flowers, both in their abundance and their rareness. The meeting with a rare and beautiful bird like this is like meeting with some rare and beautiful flower, which you may never find again, perchance, like the great purple fringed orchis, at least. How much it enhances the wildness and the richness of the forest to see in it some beautiful bird which you never detected before!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 13, 1853


To Orchis Swamp. See June 12, 1853 ("Visited the great [purple fringed] orchis which I am waiting to have open completely. It is emphatically a flower (within gunshot of the hawk's nest); its great spike, six inches by two, of delicate pale-purple flowers, which begin to expand at bottom, rises above and contrasts with the green leaves of the hellebore and skunk-cabbage and ferns (by which its own leaves are concealed) in the cool shade of an alder swamp.")

What was that rare and beautiful bird in the dark woods under the Cliffs, with black above and white spots and bars, a large triangular blood-red spot on breast, and sides of breast and beneath white? --beautiful bird which you never detected before!. See May 25, 1854 ("Hear and see . . . the rose-breasted grosbeak, a handsome bird with a loud and very rich song, in character between that of a robin and a red-eye. . . . Rose breast, white beneath, black head and above, white on shoulder and wings."); May 24, 1855 (“Hear a rose-breasted grosbeak. At first think it a tanager, but soon I perceive its more clear and instrumental — should say whistle, if one could whistle like a flute; a noble singer, reminding me also of a robin; clear, loud and flute-like; . . . Song not so sweet as clear and strong.”); May 21, 1856 (“What strong colored fellows, black, white, and fiery rose-red breasts! Strong-natured, too, with their stout bills. A clear, sweet singer, like a tanager but hoarse somewhat, and not shy.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak

The meeting with a rare and beautiful bird like this is like meeting with some rare and beautiful flower, which you may never find again. See May 31, 1853 (“That a rare and beautiful flower which we never saw, perhaps never heard of, for which therefore there was no place in our thoughts may be found in our immediate neighborhood, is very suggestive.”)

Some rare and beautiful flower like the great purple fringed orchis. See June 15, 1852 ("Here also, at Well Meadow Head, I see the fringed purple orchis, unexpectedly beautiful, though a pale lilac purple, — a large spike of purple flowers. . . . The most striking and handsome large wild-flower of the year thus far that I have seen.")

June 13. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, June 13

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 © 2009-2021