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.")

To Walden and Goose Pond.

March 17.

P. M. – To Walden and Goose Pond. 

Thermometer 56; wind south, gentle; somewhat overcast. 

There is still perhaps a half-acre of ice at the bottom of the deep south bay of Walden. Also a little at the southeast end of Goose Pond. Ripple Lake is mostly covered yet. 

I see a large flock of sheldrakes, which have probably risen from the pond, go over my head in the woods. A dozen large and compact birds flying with great force and rapidity, spying out the land, eyeing every traveller, fast and far they “steam it” on clipping wings, over field and forest, meadow and flood; now here, and you hear the whistling of their wings, and in a moment they are lost in the horizon. Like swift propellers of the air. 

Whichever way they are headed, that way their wings propel them. What health and vigor they suggest!

The life of man seems slow and puny in comparison, — reptilian. 

The cowslip leaves are now expanded. 

The rabbit and partridge can eat wood; therefore they abound and can stay here all the year. 

The leaves on the woodland floor are already getting to be dry. 

How handsome a flock of red-wings, ever changing its oval form as it advances, by the rear birds passing the others!

Was not that a marsh hawk, a slate-colored one which I saw flying over Walden Wood with long , slender, curving wings, with a diving, zigzag flight? [No doubt it was, for I see another, a brown one, the 19th.]

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 17, 1860

There is still perhaps a half-acre of ice at the bottom of the deep south bay of Walden. See note to March 14, 1860 ("I am surprised to find Walden open. There is only about an acre of ice at the southeast end . . . and a little old and firm and snowy in the bottom of the deep south bay.")

 A little ice at the southeast end of Goose Pond. See March 11, 1861 ("Goose Pond is to-day all ice.");  March 21, 1855 ("Crossed Goose Pond on ice.");  March 24, 1854 (" Goose Pond half open.")

Ripple Lake is mostly covered yet. See March 14, 1860 ("I see some dark ripples already drop and sweep over the surface of [Walden], as they will ere long over Ripple Lake and other pools in the wood."); April 9, 1859 ("We sit by the side of Little Goose Pond, which C. calls Ripple Lake or Pool, to watch the ripples on it.")

I see a large flock of sheldrakes . . .See March 16, 1854 "I see ducks afar. . . bright white breasts, etc., and black heads about same size or larger . . .Probably both sheldrakes.”); March 16, 1855 ("scare up two large ducks . . .. One very large; white beneath, breast and neck; black head and wings and aft. . . . I think it the goosander or sheldrake.");   March 23, 1859 ("As we sit there, we see coming, swift and straight, northeast along the river valley, not seeing us and therefore not changing his course, a male goosander, . . .. He looks like a paddle-wheel steamer, so oddly painted up, black and white and green, and moves along swift and straight like one."); See also Henry Thoreau, A Book of the Seasons,The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

How handsome a flock of red-wings, ever changing its oval form as it advances. See March 13, 1859 (" I see a small flock of blackbirds flying over, some rising, others falling, yet all advancing together, one flock but many birds, some silent, others tchucking, — incessant alternation. This harmonious movement as in a dance, this agreeing to differ, makes the charm of the spectacle to me. One bird looks fractional, naked, like a single thread or ravelling from the web to which it belongs. Alternation! Alternation! Heaven and hell ! Here again in the flight of a bird, its ricochet motion, is that undulation observed in so many materials, as in the mackerel sky."):  March 16, 1860 ("Here is a flock of red-wings. . . . How handsome as they go by in a checker, each with a bright-scarlet shoulder!."); May 5, 1859 ("Red-wings fly in flocks yet.").

I see another, a brown one.  See April 23, 1855 ("I have seen also for some weeks occasionally a brown hawk with white rump, flying low, which I have thought the frog hawk in a different stage of plumage; but can it be at this season? and is it not the marsh hawk? . . . -- probably female hen-harrier."); October 18, 1855 ("A large brown marsh hawk comes beating the bush along the river, and ere long a slate-colored one (male), with black tips, is seen circling against a distant wood-side");

May 14, 1857 ("See a pair of marsh hawks, the smaller and lighter-colored male, with black tips to wings, and the large brown female, sailing low . . .apparently looking for frogs or the like.");. March 21, 1859 ("I see a female marsh hawk sailing and hunting over Potter's Swamp. I not only see the white rump but the very peculiar crescent-shaped curve of its wings"). See also  April 5, 1854 ("These days, when a soft west or southwest wind blows and it is truly warm, and an outside coat is oppressive, — these bring out the butterflies and the frogs, and the marsh hawks which prey on the last. Just so simple is every year.")