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

No mortal is alert enough 

to be present at the first dawn of the spring. 

Henry Thoreau, March 17, 1857

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

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

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

That dark-blue meadowy revelation.

March 8, 1853

Ducks on the meadow

leave a long furrow in the 

water behind them. 

March 16, 1854

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 5. I see some tame ducks in the river, six of them. It is amusing to see how exactly perpendicular they will stand, with their heads on the bottom and their tails up, plucking some food there, three or four at once. Perhaps the grass, etc., is a little further advanced there for them.  March 5, 1860

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thirty ducks asleep

with heads on backs, motionless –

ice forms about them.

March 21, 1854

See also

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

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

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

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

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

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

And, Signs of the Spring:

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau 

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2023

https://tinyurl.com/HDTmarchducks

A Book of the Seasons: March 16 (Ducks on the water, first sailing, first phoebe, red-wings)

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

March 16

With infinite and

 unwearied expectation 

usher in each dawn.

  March 16, 1852

Ducks on the meadow

leave a long furrow in the 

water behind them. 

March 16, 1854

They dive and come up --  

first I see but one then a 

minute after -- three.

March 16, 1854

Tracks from hole to hole

as if they had run round and

waked each other up.

March 16, 1855

Red maple sap spilled

on the ice of the river

will flow to the sea.

March 16, 1856.

The earth has cast off 

her white coat and come forth in

 her early spring dress. 

March 16, 1859

A flock of red-wings

how handsome as they go by --

bright-scarlet shoulders.

March 16, 1860

March 16, 2015

Before sunrise. With what infinite and unwearied expectation and proclamation the cocks usher in every dawn, as if there had never been one before! And the dogs bark still, and the thallus of lichens springs, so tenacious of life is nature. Spent the day in Cambridge Library. Walden is not yet melted round the edge. It is, perhaps, more suddenly warm this spring than usual . . . Saw a large flock of geese go over Cambridge and heard the robins in the College Yard. The Library a wilderness of books. March 16, 1852

Another fine morning. Willows and alders along watercourses all alive these mornings and ringing with the trills and jingles and warbles of birds, even as the waters have lately broken loose and tinkle below. . . . I see ducks afar, sailing on the meadow, leaving a long furrow in the water behind them. Watch them at leisure without scaring them, with my glass; observe their free and undisturbed motions . . . Others with bright white breasts, etc., and black heads . . They dive and are gone some time, and come up a rod off. At first I saw but one, then, a minute after, three . . . The first phoebe near the water is heard . . . It is warm weather. A thunder-storm in the evening. March 16, 1854

Cloudy in the forenoon. Sun comes out and it is rather pleasant in the afternoon . . . At the woodchuck’s hole . . . I see several diverging and converging trails of undoubtedly a woodchuck, or several, which must have come out at least as early as the 13th . . . They had come out and run about directly from hole to hole, six in all . . . as if they had run round a-visiting and waked each other up the first thing . . . Scare up two large ducks just above the bridge. One very large; white beneath, breast and neck; black head and wings and aft. The other much smaller and dark. Apparently male and female. They alight more than a hundred rods south of the bridge, and I view them with glass. The larger sails about on the watch, while the smaller, dark one dives repeatedly. I think it the goosander or sheldrake. March 16, 1855

2 P. M. — The red maple sap is now about an inch deep in a quart pail, nearly all caught since morning . . . Going home, slip on the ice, throwing the pail over my head to save myself, and spill all but a pint. So it is lost on the ice of the river. When the river breaks up, it will go down the Concord into the Merrimack, and down the Merrimack into the sea. March 16, 1856

To Cambridge and Boston. March 16, 1857

To Conantum. A thick mist, spiriting away the snow. Very bad walking. This fog is one of the first decidedly spring signs; also the withered grass bedewed by it and wetting my feet. A still, foggy, and rather warm day . . . [T]he melted snow has made a swift rill in the rut of a cart-path, flowing over an icy bottom and between icy banks. . . The laws, perchance, by which the world was made, and according to which the systems revolve, are seen in full operation in a rill of melted snow . . . The crowing of cocks and the cawing of crows tell the same story. The ice is soggy and dangerous to be walked on. March 16, 1858

Launch my boat and sail to Ball's Hill. It is fine clear weather and a strong northwest wind. What a change since yesterday! Last night I came home through as incessant heavy rain as I have been out in for many years, through the muddiest and wettest of streets, still partly covered with ice . . . But to-day. . . A new phase of the spring is presented; a new season has come.

By the soaking rain and the wind of yesterday especially, the remaining snow and ice has been almost entirely swept away, and the ice has been broken, floated off, and melted, and much frost taken out of the ground; and now . . . we see the bare and now pale-brown and dry russet hills. 

The earth has cast off her white coat and come forth in her clean-washed sober russet early spring dress. As we look over the lively, tossing blue waves for a mile or more eastward and northward, our eyes fall on these shining russet hills, and Ball's Hill appears in this strong light at the verge of this undulating blue plain, like some glorious newly created island of the spring, just sprung up from the bottom in the midst of the blue waters . . . 

Our sail draws so strongly that we cut through the great waves without feeling them. And all around, half a mile or a mile distant, looking over this blue foreground, I see the bare and peculiarly neat, clean-washed, and bright russet hills reflecting the bright light (after the storm of yesterday) from an infinite number of dry blades of withered grass . . . 

This sight affects me as if it were visible at this season only. What with the clear air and the blue water and the sight of the pure dry withered leaves, that distant hill affects me as something altogether ethereal . . .  

Go out into the sparkling spring air, embark on the flood of melted snow and of rain gathered from all hillsides, with a northwest wind in which you often find it hard to stand up straight, and toss upon a sea of which one half is liquid clay, the other liquid indigo, and look round on an earth dressed in a home spun of pale sheeny brown and leather-color. Such are the blessed and fairy isles we sail to! . . .

This first sight of the bare tawny and russet earth, seen afar, perhaps, over the meadow flood in the spring, affects me as the first glimpse of land, his native land, does the voyager who has not seen it a long time. March 16, 1859

Thermometer 55; wind slight, west by south . . . Here is a flock of red-wings. I heard one yesterday, and I see a female among these. How handsome as they go by in a checker, each with a bright-scarlet shoulder! They are not so very shy, but mute when we come near. They cover the apple trees like a black fruit. March 16, 1860

A severe, blocking-up snow-storm. March 16, 1861

March 16, 2022

*****

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

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

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

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

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

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:

Ducks Afar, Sailing on the Meadow

The crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows

The Red-Wing Arrives

The Song Sparrow Sings

 Geese Overhead

Bright Blue Water

Red Maple Sap Flows

Braided ripples of melting snow

March is famous for its Winds

The Woodchuck Ventures Out

.

March 16, 2015

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

March 15 <<<<< March 16 >>>>> March 17

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

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

A severe, blocking-up snow-storm.

 March 16. 

A severe, blocking-up snow-storm.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 16, 1861

A severe, blocking-up snow-storm. See March 19,1856 ("Though it is quite warm, the air is filled with large, moist snowflakes, of the star form, which are rapidly concealing the very few bare spots on the railroad embankment. It is, indeed, a new snow-storm."); March 25, 1860 ("The morning of the 12th begins with a snow- storm, snowing as seriously and hard as if it were going to last a week and be as memorable as the Great Snow of 1760, and you forget the haze of yesterday and the bluebird. It tries hard but only succeeds to whiten the ground")

March 16. A flock of red-wings, how handsome as they go by. Bright-scarlet shoulders.

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

Journal, March 16, 1852:Walden is not yet melted round the edge. See March 14, 1852 ("The ice on Walden has now for some days looked white like snow, the surface being softened by the sun."); March 18, 1852 ("The pond is still very little melted around the shore."); April 1, 1852 ("Walden is all white ice, but little melted about the shores."); April 14. 1852 ("Walden is only melted two or three rods from the north shore yet."); April 19, 1852 (" Walden is clear of ice. The ice left it yesterday, then, the 18th. "); Walden ("In 1845 Walden was first completely open on the 1st of April; in '46, the 25th of March; in '47, the 8th of April; in '51, the 28th of March; in '52, the 18th of April; in '53, the 23rd of March; in '54, about the 7th of April.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-out

Journal, March 16, 1854: I see ducks afar. . . bright white breasts, etc., and black heads about same size or larger . . .Probably both sheldrakes. See March 16, 1855 ("Scare up two large ducks . . .. One very large; white beneath, breast and neck; black head and wings and aft. . . . I view them with glass. The larger sails about on the watch, while the smaller, dark one dives repeatedly. I think it the goosander or sheldrake."); March 16, 1820 ("Saw a flock of sheldrakes a hundred rods off, on the Great Meadows, mostly males with a few females, all intent on fishing.") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Goosander, Merganser)

The first phoebe near the water is heard. See April 6, 1856 ("Just beyond Wood’s Bridge, I hear the pewee. 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


Journal, March 16, 1855: At the woodchuck’s hole just beyond the cockspur thorn. [Cockspur thorn (Crataegus crus-galli) is a species of hawthorn native to eastern North America.] See June 10, 1856 ("The Crataegus Crus-Galli is out of bloom”); September 25, 1856 ("The Crataegus Crus-Galli on the old fence line between Tarbell and T. Wheeler beyond brook are smaller, stale, and not good at all.")

The track is about one and three quarters inches wide by two long, the five toes very distinct and much spread, and is somewhat hand-like. See April 12, 1855 (“For a week past I have frequently seen the tracks of woodchucks in the sand.”)

Scare up two large ducks . . . I think it the goosander or sheldrake. See March 12, 1855 ("Two ducks in river, good size, white beneath with black heads, as they go over."); March 16, 1854 ("I see ducks afar, sailing on the meadow, leaving a long furrow in the water behind them."); March 16, 1860 ("Saw a flock of sheldrakes a hundred rods off, on the Great Meadows, mostly males with a few females, all intent on fishing”) See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Goosander, Merganser)



Journal, March 16, 1856: The red maple sap is now about an inch deep in a quart pail, nearly all caught since morning. See March 14, 1856 ("[J]ust above Pinxter Swamp, one red maple limb was moistened by sap trickling along the bark. Tapping this, I was surprised to find it flow freely . . . "); March 15, 1856 ("Put a spout in the red maple of yesterday, and hang a pail beneath to catch the sap."); March 24, 1856 ("9 A. M. -- Start to get two quarts of white maple sap and home at 11.30"). See also February 21, 1857 ("Am surprised to see this afternoon a boy collecting red maple sap from some trees behind George Hubbard's. It runs freely. The earliest sap I made to flow last year was March 14th . . .The river for some days has been open and its sap visibly flowing, like the maple."); February 23, 1857 ("I have seen signs of the spring. . . .. I have seen the clear sap trickling from the red maple."); March 2, 1860 ("The red maple sap flows freely, and probably has for several days."); March 3, 1857 ("The red maple sap, which I first noticed the 21st of February, is now frozen up in the auger-holes ."); March 4, 1852 (I see where a maple has been wounded the sap is flowing out. Now, then, is the time to make sugar."); 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.”); March 7, 1855 ("To-day, as also three or four days ago, I saw a clear drop of maple sap on a broken red maple twig, which tasted very sweet.") March 24, 1855 ("It is too cold to think of those signs of spring which I find recorded under this date last year. The earliest signs of spring in vegetation noticed thus far are the maple sap, the willow catkins, grass on south banks, and perhaps cowslip in sheltered places. Alder catkins loosened, and also white maple buds loosened."); March 28, 1857 ("The maple sap has been flowing well for two or three weeks. )

When the river breaks up, it will go down the Concord into the Merrimack, and down the Merrimack into the sea. See April 14, 1852 ("The streams break up; the ice goes to the sea. Then sails the fish hawk overhead, looking for his prey.")

Journal, March 16, 1857: To Cambridge and Boston. See December 22, 1856; July 2, 1856; March 2, 1856; March 26, 1856; July 4, 1855




Journal, March 16, 1858: The crowing of cocks and the cawing of crows tell the same story. See January 12, 1855 ("Perhaps what most moves us in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer. . . .It is in the cawing of the crow, the crowing of the cock, the warmth of the sun on our backs."); February 16, 1855 ("A thick fog without rain. Sounds sweet and musical through this air, as crows, cocks, and striking on the rails at a distance.”); December 17, 1855 ("The sound of cock-crowing is so sweet, and I hear the sound of the sawmill even at the door, also the cawing of crows.")

No doubt he had names accordingly for many things for which we have no popular names. See March 5, 1858 ("It was a new light when my; guide gave me Indian names for things for which had only scientific ones before. In proportion as I understood the language, I saw them from a new point of view."); January 15, 1853 ("Science suggests the value of mutual intelligence. I have long known this dust, but, as I did not know the name of it, i. e . what others called it, I therefore could not conveniently speak of it. . ."); May 21, 1851 ("You have a wild savage in you, and a savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as yours.")

A circular mass of foam or white bubbles nearly two inches in diameter. See February 13, 1852 ("I now sit by the little brook in Conant's meadow, where it falls over an oak rail . . .. Bubbles on the surface make a coarse foam. . . .") 

Journal, March 16, 1859: Launch my boat and sail to Ball's Hill. It is fine clear weather and a strong northwest wind. . . .in each direction the crests of the waves are white, and you cannot sail or row over this watery wilderness without sharing the excitement of this element. See March 16, 1854 (“See and hear honey-bees about my boat in the yard, attracted probably by the beeswax in the grafting-wax which was put on it a year ago. It is warm weather. A thunder-storm in the evening.”); March 16, 1860 (“The ice of the night fills the river in the morning, and I hear it go grating downward at sunrise. As soon as I can get it painted and dried, I launch my boat and make my first voyage for the year up or down the stream, on that element from which I have been de barred for three months and a half.”) See also March 8, 1855 (“This morning I got my boat out of the cellar and turned it up in the yard to let the seams open before I calk it. The blue river, now almost completely open, admonishes me to be swift.”); March 9, 1855 (“Painted the bottom of my boat.”); March 12, 1854 (“A new feature is being added to the landscape, and that is expanses and reaches of blue water. . . .Toward night the water becomes smooth and beautiful. Men are eager to launch their boats and paddle over the meadows.”); March 15, 1854 (“Paint my boat.”);; March 17, 1857 (“This morning it is fair, and I hear the note of the woodpecker on the elms (that early note) and the bluebird again. Launch my boat.”); March 18, 1854 (“Took up my boat, a very heavy one, which was lying on its bottom in the yard, and carried it two rods.”); March 19, 1855 (“A fine clear and warm day for the season. Launch my boat.”); March 19, 1858 ("Another pleasant and warm day. Painted my boat afternoon.”); March 20, 1855 ("A flurry of snow at 7 A. M. I go to turn my boat up.”); March 22, 1854 ("Launch boat and paddle to Fair Haven. Still very cold.”); March 22, 1858 ("Launch my boat and row down stream.”) And see A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Boat in. Boat out.



Journal , March 16, 1860: They cover the apple trees like a black fruit. See March 6, 1854 ("Hear and see the first blackbird, flying east over the Deep Cut, with a tchuck, tchuck, and finally a split whistle."); March 12, 1854 ("This is the blackbird morning. Their sprayey notes and conqueree ring with the song sparrows' jingle all along the river. Thus gradually they acquire confidence to sing."); March 19, 1855 (" I hear at last the tchuck tchuck of a blackbird and, looking up, see him flying high over the river southwesterly in great haste to reach somewhere."); 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, but oftener a sharp, shrill whistle or a tchuck.”); April 30, 1855 ("Red-wing blackbirds now fly in large flocks, covering the tops of trees—willows, maples, apples, or oaks—like a black fruit , and keep up an incessant gurgling and whistling, — all for some purpose; what is it? ”; April 25, 1860 ("I hear the greatest concerts of blackbirds, – red wings and crow blackbirds nowadays. . .They look like a black fruit on the trees, distributed over the top at pretty equal distances.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Red-wing in Spring

Saw a flock of sheldrakes a hundred rods off, on the Great Meadows. See March 5, 1857 ("I scare up six male sheldrakes, with their black heads, in the Assabet,—the first ducks I have seen"); March 12, 1855 ("Two ducks in river, good size, white beneath with black heads, as they go over."); March 16, 1854 ("I see ducks afar, sailing on the meadow, leaving a long furrow in the water behind them.Watch them at leisure without scaring them, with my glass; observe their free and undisturbed motions. They dive and are gone some time, and come up a rod off. At first I see but one, then, a minute after, three. "); March 16, 1855 ("Scare up two large ducks . . . I think it the goosander or sheldrake. "); March 22, 1858 ("We go along to the pitch pine hill off Abner Buttrick's, and, finding a sheltered and sunny place, we watch the ducks from it with our glass. There are not only gulls, but about forty black ducks and as many sheldrakes . . . I see two of these very far off on a bright-blue bay where the waves are running high. They are two intensely white specks, which yet you might mistake for the foaming crest of waves. Now one disappears, but soon is seen again, and then its companion is lost in like manner, having dived.") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Goosander, Merganser)

But when they fly they are quite another creature. See March 29, 1854 ("A gull of pure white, - a wave of foam in the air. How simple and wave-like its outline, two curves, - all wing - like a birch scale."); see also March 22, 1858 ("They look bright-white, like snow on the dark-blue water. It is surprising how far they can be seen, how much light they reflect, and how conspicuous they are")

Journal, March 16, 1861: A severe, blocking-up snow-storm. See March 19,1856 ("Though it is quite warm, the air is filled with large, moist snowflakes, of the star form, which are rapidly concealing the very few bare spots on the railroad embankment. It is, indeed, a new snow-storm."); March 25, 1860 ("The morning of the 12th begins with a snow- storm, snowing as seriously and hard as if it were going to last a week and be as memorable as the Great Snow of 1760, and you forget the haze of yesterday and the bluebird. It tries hard but only succeeds to whiten the ground")

March 16

A flock of red-wings,

how handsome as they go by.

Bright-scarlet shoulders.

March 16, 1860

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 © 2009-2019

The Library a wilderness of books.

March 16. 

Before sunrise. 

With what infinite and unwearied expectation and proclamation the cocks usher in every dawn, as if there had never been one before! And the dogs bark still, and the thallus of lichens springs, so tenacious of life is nature. 

Spent the day in Cambridge Library. 

Walden is not yet melted round the edge. 

It is, perhaps, more suddenly warm this spring than usual. 

Mr. Bull thinks that the pine grosbeaks, which have been unusually numerous the past winter, have killed many branches of his elms by budding them, and that they will die and the wind bring them down, as heretofore. 

Saw a large flock of geese go over Cambridge and heard the robins in the College Yard. 

The Library a wilderness of books. 

Looking over books on Canada written within the last three hundred years, could see how one had been built upon another, each author consulting and referring to his predecessors. You could read most of them without changing your leg on the steps.

It is necessary to find out exactly what books to read on a given subject. Though there may be a thousand books written upon it, it is only important to read three or four; they will contain all that is essential, and a few pages will show which they are. Books which are books are all that you want, and there are but half a dozen in any thousand. 

I saw that while we are clearing the forest in our westward progress, we are accumulating a forest of books in our rear, as wild and unexplored as any of nature's primitive wildernesses. 

The volumes of the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, which lie so near on the shelf, are rarely opened, are effectually forgotten and not implied by our literature and newspapers. 

When I looked into Purchas's Pilgrims, it affected me like looking into an impassable swamp, ten feet deep with sphagnum, where the monarchs of the forest, covered with mosses and stretched along the ground, were making haste to become peat. 

Those old books suggested a  certain fertility, an Ohio soil, as if they were making a humus for new literatures to spring in. I heard the bellowing of bullfrogs and the hum of mosquitoes reverberating through the thick embossed covers when I had closed the book. 

Decayed literature makes the richest of all soils.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 16, 1852

Saw a large flock of geese go over Cambridge and heard the robins in the College Yard. See March 14, 1854 ("From within the house at 5.30 p. m. I hear the loud honking of geese, throw up the window, and see a large flock in disordered harrow flying more directly north or even northwest than usual. Raw, thick, misty weather"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring; Geese Overhead

Walden is not yet melted round the edge.  See March 14, 1852 ("The ice on Walden has now for some days looked white like snow, the surface being softened by the sun.");  Journal, March 18, 1852("The pond is still very little melted around the shore.");  April 1, 1852 ("Walden is all white ice, but little melted about the shores."); April 14. 1852 (" Walden is only melted two or three rods from the north shore yet."); April 19, 1852 (" Walden is clear of ice. The ice left it yesterday, then, the 18th. ");Walden. ("In 1845 Walden was first completely open on the 1st of April; in '46, the 25th of March; in '47, the 8th of April;  in '51, the 28th of March; in '52, the 18th of April; in '53, the 23rd of March;  in '54, about the 7th of April.")