The wet scent of the umbrella.

March 21. 

Warm rain, April-like, the first of the season, holding up from time to time, though always completely overcast. 

P. M. – To Ministerial Swamp via Little River. 

Standing by the mud-hole in the swamp, I hear the pleasant phebe note of the chickadee. It is, methinks, the most of a wilderness note of any yet. It is peculiarly interesting that this, which is one of our winter birds also, should have a note with which to welcome the spring. 

Standing by that pool, it is pleasant to see the dimples made on its smooth surface by the big drops, after the rain has held up a quarter of an hour. 

The skunk-cabbage at Clamshell is well out, shedding pollen. It is evident that the date of its flowering is very fluctuating, according to the condition in which the winter leaves the crust of the meadow. 

This first spring rain is very agreeable. I love to hear the pattering of the drops on my umbrella, and I love also the wet scent of the umbrella. It helps take the remaining frost out and settles the ways, but there is yet frost and ice in meadows and swamps.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 21, 1858

It is peculiarly interesting that this, which is one of our winter birds also, should have a note with which to welcome the spring. See January 9, 1858 ("Some chickadees come flitting close to me, and one utters its spring note, phe-be, for which I feel under obligations to him."); See February 9, 1856 ("I hear a phoebe note from a chickadee"); February 24, 1857 ("A chickadee with its winter lisp flits over, and I think it is time to hear its phebe note, and that instant it pipes it forth. ");  March 1, 1854 ("I hear the phoebe or spring note of the chickadee"); March 1, 1856 ("I hear several times the fine-drawn phe-be note of the chickadee, which I heard only once during the winter. Singular that I should hear this on the first spring day."); March 10, 1852 ("Hear the phoebe note of the chickadee to-day for the first time. I had at first heard their day-day-day ungratefully,- ah! you but carry my thoughts back to winter, - but anon I find that they too have become spring birds; they have changed their note. Even they feel the influence of spring."):   March 11, 1854 (" Air full of birds, — bluebirds, song sparrows, chickadee (phoebe notes), and blackbirds. Bluebirds' warbling curls in elms.”); March 14, 1852 (" I see a flock of blackbirds and hear their conqueree. The ground is mostly bare now. Again I hear the chickadee's spring note.”); March 19, 1858 ("Hear the phebe note of a chickadee."); March 22, 1855 ("The jays scream. I hear the downy woodpecker’s rapid tapping and my first distinct spring note (phe-be) of the chickadee.”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: the spring note of the chickadee

The skunk-cabbage at Clamshell is well out, shedding pollen. The date of its flowering is very fluctuating. See February 18, 1851 (" See the skunk-cabbage in flower.”); March 2, 1859 (“Under the alders at Well Meadow I see a few skunk- cabbage spathes fairly open on the side, and these may bloom after a day or two of pleasant weather.”): March 6, 1854 ("I see the skunk- cabbage started about the spring at head of Hubbard's Close'") March 8, 1855 ("As the ice melts in the swamps I see the horn-shaped buds of the skunk-cabbage, green with a bluish bloom, standing uninjured, ready to feel the influence of the sun, - the most prepared for spring—to look at— of any plant."); March 18, 1860 (The skunk-cabbage, now generally and abundantly in bloom all along under Clamshell"); March 30, 1856 ("I am surprised to see the skunk cabbage, with its great spear-heads open and ready to blossom (i. e. shed pollen in a day or two)"); April 7, 1855 ("The skunk-cabbage open yesterday, — the earliest flower this season."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: the Skunk Cabbage

This first spring rain is very agreeable. I love to hear the pattering of the drops on my umbrella, and I love also the wet scent of the umbrella. See April 4, 1853 ("A warm, dripping rain, heard on one's umbrella as on a snug roof, and on the leaves without, suggests comfort.")

March 21.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 21

This first spring rain I 

love to hear the pattering 

on my umbrella.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The wet scent of the umbrella

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 © 2009-2024

All Nature revives at this season.

March 20. 

A. M. – By river. 

The tree sparrow is perhaps the sweetest and most melodious warbler at present and for some days. It is peculiar, too, for singing in concert along the hedge rows, much like a canary, especially in the mornings. Very clear, sweet, melodious notes, between a twitter and a warble, of which it is hard to catch the strain, for you commonly hear many at once. 

The note of the F. hyemalis, or chill-lill, is a jingle, with also a shorter and drier crackling or shuffling chip as it flits by. 

I hear now, at 7 A. M., from the hill across the water, probably the note of a woodpecker, I know not what species; not that very early gnah gnah, which I have not heard this year. 

Now first I hear a very short robin's song. 

P. M. — To Clematis Brook via Lee's with C. 

We cross the Depot Field, which is fast becoming dry and hard. At Hubbard’s wall, how handsome the willow catkins! Those wonderfully bright silvery but tons, so regularly disposed in oval schools in the air, or, if you please, along the seams which their twigs make, in all degrees of forwardness, from the faintest, tiniest speck of silver, just peeping from beneath the black scales, to lusty pussies which have thrown off their scaly coats and show some redness at base on a close inspection. - These fixed swarms of arctic buds spot the air very prettily along the hedges. They remind me somewhat by their brilliancy of the snow flecks which are so bright by contrast at this season when the sun is high. Is not this, perhaps, the earliest, most obvious, awakening of vegetable life?  

Farmer told me this morning that he found a bay wing’s egg yesterday, dropped in a footpath! I have not seen that bird yet. 

In low grounds we feel from time to time the icy crust in the soil sink beneath us, but it is so dry that we need no rubbers now. 

A small ant fallen on water and swimming. A small brown grasshopper jumps into a brook at our approach and, drifting down, clings to a stubble. I see another just like it two hours later. 

We look into that pool on the south side of Hubbard’s Grove, and admire the green weeds, water purslane (?), at the bottom. There is, slowly moving along in it near the bottom, one of those bashaws with two tails, — in this case red tails, —something devil’s-needle-like. 

The whole pool is full of a small gyrating insect. I took up from a weed within it, by a chance sweep of my hand, a minute bivalve clam-like shell hardly one twentieth of an inch long. Yet this dries up in summer. The other pool near by, within the woods, is still covered with black soggy ice. 

The herbaceous plants have evidently suffered far more than usual the past wonderfully mild and snow less winter. Not only is there less green in the fields, but even less at the bottoms of the pools and ditches. 

The foul flanks of the cattle remind me how early it is still in the spring. 

On that same tree by Conant's orchard, I see a flock of cherry-birds with that alert, chieftain-like look, and hear their seringo note, as if made by their swift flight through the air. They have been seen a week or two.

 Fair Haven is still closed. Near the open water where the river is eating up into it, the ice is very black, even sooty, here and there, from this point of view. You would not believe that mere water-logged ice could be so black. You cannot now get on to it, but you see the holes which pickerel-fishers cut in it a month ago.

 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. 

We go along behind Lee's, looking out over the Sudbury meadows. I see a distant roof at Round Hill. It is pleasant when we see thus only the roof of a house at a distance, a mere gray scale, diamond-shape, against the side of a hill, while all the lower part is lost in shade. It is more interesting than a full view.

The river but yesterday was a bright-blue artery between straight edgings of ice held by the bushes, but beyond, on each side, was a clear canal. To-day most of this ice is drifted down the stream or blown across it, so that often the straight edge is presented to the opposite meadow and is at first sight unaccountable. 

The wind shifts to east or southeast, but still its rawness is agreeable. As C. says of the water insects, we too come out of our shells in the spring. Yes, we take off our greatcoats. 

I had noticed from the Cliff by Lee's road an elevated sandy point above Pole Brook which I said must be Indian ground, and, walking there, I found a piece of a soapstone pot. 

In the sluiceway of Pole Brook, by the road just beyond, I found another kind of Indian pot. It was an eel-pot (?) or creel, a wattled basket or wicker work, made of willow osiers with the bark on, very artfully. It was about four feet long and shaped thus: - Moore says that he used to find them  in the brooks when he was trout-fishing, stopping them up so closely with sticks and stones on the sides that not a trout could pass, and he would cut them from end to end with his knife. About a dozen (or more) willow sticks, as big one's finger or larger, being set small end down in a circle, in a thin round board which made the bottom, and then smaller osiers interwoven at right angles with them, close and firm. 

Another funnel-shaped basket was secured within this, extending about half-way down it, as represented by the dotted lines, with an opening hardly two inches wide at the bottom, where only a dozen sharped sticks approached each other. There was a square door in the board bottom, by which the fishes could be taken out. 

This was set in that sluice way, with the mouth or broad end down-stream, all sunk beneath the surface, the fishes being now evidently running up the brooks from the river and ponds, the ice being mostly gone out of the meadows and brooks. We raised this and found eight or ten small pickerel in it, the biggest a foot long, and one good-sized perch. It was pleasant to find that any were practicing such cunning art in the outskirts. 

I am not sure whether this invention is Indian or derived from our own ancestors. “Creel” appears to be an old English word. But I have no doubt that the Indians used something very like this. 

How much more we might have learned of the aborigines if they had not been so reserved! Suppose they had generally become the laboring class among the whites, that my father had been a farmer and had an Indian for his hired man, how many aboriginal ways we children should have learned from them!

It was very pleasant to meet with this kind of textile or basket in our walk, to know that some had leisure for other things than farming and town meeting, and that they felt the spring influence in their way. That man was not fitting for the State prison when he was weaving that creel. He was meditating a small poem in his way. It was equal to a successful stanza whose subject was spring. 

The fishes are going up the brooks as they open. They are dispersing themselves through the fields and woods, imparting new life into them. They are taking their places under the shelving banks and in the dark swamps. The water running down meets the fishes running up. They hear the latest news. Spring-aroused fishes are running up our veins too. Little fishes are seeking the sources of the brooks, seeking to disseminate their principles. Talk about a revival of religion! and business men's prayer-meetings! with which all the country goes mad now! What if it were as true and wholesome a revival as the little fishes feel which come out of the sluggish waters and run up the brooks toward their sources? All Nature revives at this season. With her it is really a new life, but with these churchgoers it is only a revival of religion or hypocrisy. They go down stream to still muddier waters. It cheers me more to behold the swarms of gnats which have revived in the spring sun. The fish lurks by the mouth of its native brook, watching its opportunity to dart up the stream by the cakes of ice. 

Do the fishes stay to hold prayer-meetings in Fair Haven Bay, while some monstrous pike gulps them down? Or is it not rather each one privately, or with its kindred spirits, as soon as possible stemming the current of its native brook, making its way to more ethereal waters, burnishing his scaly armor by his speed, ofttimes running into osier creels and finding its salvation there even, as in the discharge of its duty? 

No wonder we feel the spring influences. There is a motion in the very ground under our feet. Each rill is peopled with new life rushing up it.

If a man do not revive with nature in the spring, how shall he revive when a white-collared priest prays for him? 

Small water-bugs in Clematis Brook. 

We had turned in at the old Minott house. We kept on by Heron Pool and through the pitch pine wood be hind Baker's, down the path to Spanish Brook, and came out on to the railroad at Walden. Channing thought it was a suitably long stretch to wind up with, like one of our old Nashoba walks, so long drawn and taxing our legs so, in which it seemed that the nearer you got to home the farther you had to go. 

That is a very handsome descent by the path to Spanish Brook, seeing the path below, between the trunks of the trees. How important the hemlock amid the pines, for its darker and wilder green! 

We, too, are out, obeying the same law with all nature. Not less important are the observers of the birds than the birds themselves. 

At last I see a small, straight flock of ducks going northeast in the distance. 

In order that a house and grounds may be picturesque and interesting in the highest degree, they must suggest the idea of necessity, proving the devotion of the builder, not of luxury. We need to see the honest and naked life here and there protruding. What is a fort without any foe before it, that is not now sustaining and never has sustained a siege? The gentle man whose purse is always full, who can meet all demands, though he employs the most famous artists, can never make a very interesting seat. He does not carve from near enough to the bone. No man is rich enough to keep a poet in his pay.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 20, 1858

The note of the F. hyemalis, or chill-lill, is a jingle, with also a shorter and drier crackling or shuffling chip as it flits by. See March 19, 1858 (Hear the pleasant chill-lill of the F. hyemalis,the first time have heard this note.")

Now first I hear a very short robin's song. See March 18, 1858 ("The robin does not come singing, but utters a somewhat anxious or inquisitive peep at first."); March 31, 1852 ("The robins sing at the very earliest dawn. I wake with their note ringing in my ear. "); March 31, 1860 ("At even I hear the first real robin's song.");  April 1, 1854 (" The robin now begins to sing sweet powerfully."); (" It is a true April evening, feeling and looking as if it would rain, and already I hear a robin or two singing their evening song.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring

Fair Haven is still closed. See March 19, 1855 (" I am surprised to find that the river has not yet worn through Fair Haven Pond.”); March 26, 1860 ("Fair Haven Pond may be open by the 20th of March, as this year, or not till April 13 as in '56, or twenty-three days later."

The note of a woodpecker, not that very early gnah gnah, which I have not heard this year. See March 17, 1857 (" I notice that woodpecker-like whar-whar-whar-whar-whar-whar, earliest spring sound. “); February 18, 1857 ("When I step out into the yard I hear that earliest spring note from some bird, perhaps a pigeon woodpecker . . ., the rapid whar whar, whar whar, whar whar, which I have so often heard before any other note.”); February 17, 1855 (" Can it be a jay? or a pigeon woodpecker? Is it not the earliest springward note of a bird?”)

The pitch pine wood be hind Baker's. See July 16, 1851 ("I come through the pine plains behind James Baker's, where late was open pasture, now open pitch pine woods; only here and there the grass has given place to a carpet of pine-needles. These are among our pleasantest woods")

The red-wing's gurgle-ee is heard when smooth waters begin.

March 19   P. M. —To Hill and Grackle Swamp. Another pleasant and warm day. Painted my boat afternoon. 

These spring impressions (as of the apparent waking up of the meadow described day before yesterday) are not repeated the same year, at least not with the same force, for the next day the same phenomenon does not surprise us. Our appetite has lost its edge.

The other day the face of the meadow wore a peculiar appearance, as if it were beginning to wake up under the influence of the southwest wind and the warm sun, but it cannot again this year present precisely that appearance to me. I have taken a step forward to a new position and must see something else. You perceive, and are affected by, changes too subtle to be described. 

I see little swarms of those fine fuzzy gnats in the air. I am behind the Hemlocks. It is their wings which are most conspicuous, when they are in the sun. Their bodies are comparatively small and black, and they have two mourning plumes in their fronts. Are not these the winter gnat? They keep up a circulation in the air like water-bugs on the water. They people a portion of the otherwise vacant air, being apparently fond of the sunshine, in which they'are most conspicuous. Sometimes a globular swarm two feet or more in diameter, suggesting how genial and habitable the air is become. 

I hear turkeys gobble. This too, I suppose, is a spring sound. 

I hear a steady sigh of the wind, rising and swelling into a roar, in the pines, which seems to tell of a long, warm rain to come. 

I see a white pine which has borne fruit in its ninth year. The cones, four in number, which are seven eighths of an inch long, have stems about two and a half inches long!— not yet curving down; so the stem probably does not grow any more. 

Met Channing and walked on with him to what we will call Grackle Swamp, admiring the mosses; those bright-yellow hypnums (?), like sunlight on decaying logs, and jungermannia, like sea-mosses ready spread. 

Hear the phebe note of a chickadee. 

In the swamp, see grackles, four or five, with the light ring about eye, — their bead eyes. They utter only those ineffectual split notes, no conqueree. 

Might I not call that Hemlock Brook? and the source of it Horse-skull Meadow? 

Hear the pleasant chill-lill of the F. hyemalis, the first time have heard this note. This, too, suggests pleasant associations. 

By the river, see distinctly red-wings and hear their conqueree. They are not associated with grackles. They are an age before their cousins, have attained to clearness and liquidity. They are officers, epauletted; the others are rank and file. I distinguish one even by its flight, hovering slowly from tree-top to tree-top, as if ready to utter its liquid notes. Their whistle is very clear and sharp, while the grackle's is ragged and split. 

It is a fine evening, as I stand on the bridge. The waters are quite smooth; very little ice to be seen. The red-wing and song sparrow are singing, and a flock of tree sparrows is pleasantly warbling. 

A new era has come. The red-wing's gurgle-ee is heard when smooth waters begin; they come together. 

One or two boys are out trying their skiffs, even like the fuzzy gnats in the sun, and as often as one turns his boat round on the smooth surface, the setting sun is reflected from its side. 

I feel reproach when I have spoken with levity, when I have made a jest, of my own existence. The makers have thus secured seriousness and respect for their work in our very organization. The most serious events have their ludicrous aspect, such as death; but we cannot excuse ourselves when we have taken this view of them only. It is pardonable when we spurn the proprieties, even the sanctities, making them stepping-stones to something higher.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 19, 1858

March 19,  2018

Another pleasant and warm day. Painted my boat afternoon. See March 19, 1855 ("A fine clear and warm day for the season. Launch my boat.");  March 20, 1853 ("(Yesterday I forgot to say I painted my boat.")); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Boat in. Boat out.

I see little swarms of those fine fuzzy gnats in the air.  See March 20, 1858 ("It cheers me more to behold the swarms of gnats which have revived in the spring sun."); March 20, 1860 ("I observed on the 18th a swarm of those larger tipulidæ, or fuzzy gnats . . . This afternoon, in the sprinkling rain, I see a very small swarm of the same kind dancing in like manner . . . These gyrate in the air as water-bugs on the water. ") March 25, 1859 ("I thought the other day, How we enjoy a warm and pleasant day at this season! We dance like gnats in the sun. ") See alao A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ)

I hear turkeys gobble. This too, I suppose, is a spring sound.  See March 20, 1856 ("For two or three days I have heard the gobbling of turkeys, the first spring sound") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: The gobbling of turkeys

In the swamp, see grackles . . . They utter only those ineffectual split notes.   March 8, 1860 ("I suspect that I have seen only grackles as yet. ");  March 13, 1859 ("Probably grackles have been seen some days. I think I saw them on the 11th?");  March 29, 1853 (" It would be worth the while to attend more to the different notes of the blackbirds."); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,Signs of the Spring: the grackle arrives

Hear the pleasant chill-lill of the F. hyemalis, the first time have heard this note. See March 18, 1857 ("I hear the chill-lill or tchit-a-tchit of the slate-colored sparrow, and see it."); March 20, 1852 ("And now, within a day or two, I have noticed the chubby slate-colored snowbird (Fringilla hyemalis?). . . It has two white feathers in its tail."); March 20, 1855 ("At my landing I hear the F. hyemalis,”); TMarch 20, 1858  ("The note of the F. hyemalis, or chill-lill, is a jingle, with also a shorter and drier crackling or shuffling chip as it flits by.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, the note of the dark-eyed junco going northward

The red-wing's gurgle-ee is heard when smooth waters begin. See March 19, 1853 ("His first note may be a chuck, but his second is a rich gurgle or warble."); 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 16, 1860 ("How handsome as they go by in a checker, each with a bright-scarlet shoulder! "); March 17, 1858 ("Now I hear . . . the tchuck tchuck of a blackbird, and after, a distinct conqueree. So it is a red-wing?"); March 18, 1857 ("And now from far southward coming on through the air, the chattering of blackbirds, —probably red-wings, for I hear an imperfect conqueree.");  March 22, 1855 ("The 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 9, 1856 ("The red-wing’s o’gurgle-ee-e is in singular harmony with the sound and impression of the lapsing stream or the smooth, swelling flood beneath his perch. He gives expression to the flood.");  April 12, 1859 ("The red-wings generally sit on the black willows and the swamp white oaks and maples by the water, and sing o-gurgle-ee this evening, as if glad to see the river's brink appearing again and smooth waters also.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, The Red-wing Arrives

Red-wing's gurgle-ee 

heard when smooth waters begin –

they come together. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The red-wing's gurgle-ee is heard when smooth waters begin.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

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

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-580319

Each new year is a surprise to us.

 
March 18

 7 A.M. – By river. 

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

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

March 18, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The snow is off the

mountains, which seem to have come

again like the birds,

their blue scalloped rim

a deeper and warmer blue

than winter, methinks.

A spring landscape as

impossible a fortnight

ago as birdsong.

The note of each bird

remembered like a dream when

we hear it again.

How happens it that

each new year is always

a pleasing surprise?

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau 

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-580318

Thus these four species of birds have all come in one day.

March 17.

Hear the first bluebird. 

P. M. —To the Hill. 

A remarkably warm and pleasant day with a south or southwest wind, but still very bad walking, the frost coming out and the snow that was left going off. 

The air is full of bluebirds. I hear them far and near on all sides of the hill, warbling in the tree-tops, though I do not distinctly see them. 

I stand by the wall at the east base of the hill, looking over the alder meadow, lately cut off. I am peculiarly attracted by its red-brown maze, seen in this bright sun and mild southwest wind. It has expression in it as a familiar freckled face. Methinks it is about waking up, though it still slumbers. 

See the still, smooth pools of water in its midst, almost free from ice. I seem to hear the sound of the water soaking into it, — as it were its voice. We must not expect it to blow warm long at a time. Even to-day, methinks, there are cool veins in the air, as if some puffs came over snow and ice and others not, like the meat which consisted alternately of a streak of fat and a streak of lean. 

I sit on the bank at the Hemlocks and watch the great white cakes of ice going swiftly by. Now one strikes a rock and swings round in an eddy. They bear on them the wrecks and refuse of the shore where they were formed. 

Even the shade is agreeable to-day. You hear the buzzing of a fly from time to time, and see the black speck zigzag by. 

Ah! there is the note of the first flicker, a prolonged, monotonous wick-wick-wick-wick-wick-wick, etc., or, if you please, quick-quick, heard far over and through the dry leaves. But how that single sound peoples and enriches all the woods and fields! They are no longer the same woods and fields that they were. This note really quickens what was dead. It seems to put a life into withered grass and leaves and bare twigs, and henceforth the days shall not be as they have been. 

It is as when a family, your neighbors, return to an empty house after a long absence, and you hear the cheerful hum of voices and the laughter of children, and see the smoke from the kitchen fire. The doors are thrown open, and children go screaming through the hall. So the flicker dashes through the aisles of the grove, throws up a window here and cackles out it, and then there, airing the house. 

It makes its voice ring up-stairs and down-stairs, and so, as it were, fits it for its habitation and ours, and takes possession.  It is as good as a housewarming to all nature. Now I hear and see him louder and nearer on the top of the long-armed white oak, sitting very upright, as is their wont, as it were calling for some of his kind that may also have arrived. 

As usual, I have seen for some weeks on the ice these peculiar (perla?) insects with long wings and two tails. 

The withered vegetation, seed-vessels of all kinds, etc., are peculiarly handsome now, having been remarkably well preserved the past winter on account of the absence of snow. 

How indulgent is Nature, to give to a few common plants, like checkerberry, this aromatic flavor to relieve the general insipidity! Perhaps I am most sensible of the presence of these plants when the ground is first drying at this season and they come fairly out. Also mouse-ear and pyrola. 

Sitting under the handsome scarlet oak beyond the hill, I hear a faint note far in the wood which reminds me of the robin. Again I hear it; it is he, — an occasional peep. These notes of the earliest birds seem to invite forth vegetation. No doubt the plants concealed in the earth hear them and rejoice. They wait for this assurance. 

Now I hear, when passing the south side of the hill, or first when threading the maple swamp far west of it, the tchuck tchuck of a blackbird, and after, a distinct conqueree. So it is a red-wing? 

Thus these four species of birds have all come in one day, no doubt to almost all parts of the town.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 17, 1858

Hear the firat bluebird though I do not distinctly see them. See  March 26, 1860 ("The bluebird may be seen February 24, as in '50, '57, and '60, or not till March 24, as in '56, — say twenty-eight days”);  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.”); March 18, 1858 (“ I see this afternoon as many as a dozen bluebirds on the warm side of a wood. ”); March 19, 1855 ("I hear my first bluebird, somewhere about Cheney’s trees by the river. I hear him out of the blue deeps, but do not yet see his blue body. He comes with a warble.”)

Ah! there is the note of the first flicker, a prolonged, monotonous wick-wick-wick-wick-wick-wick, etc., or, if you please, quick-quick, heard far over and through the dry leaves. See  April 8, 1855 ("Hear and see a pigeon woodpecker, something like week-up week-up."): April 22, 1856 ("Joins his mate on a tree and utters the wooing note o-week o-week, etc"); . April 23, 1855 ("Saw two pigeon woodpeckers approach and, I think, put their bills together and utter that o-week, o-week"); Compare March 17, 1857 (“I notice that woodpecker-like whar-whar-whar-whar-whar-whar, earliest spring sound. “); February 18, 1857 ("When I step out into the yard I hear that earliest spring note from some bird, perhaps a pigeon woodpecker . . ., the rapid whar whar, whar whar, whar whar, which I have so often heard before any other note.”); February 17, 1855 (" Can it be a jay? or a pigeon woodpecker? Is it not the earliest springward note of a bird?”); and March 5, 1859 ("Going down-town this forenoon, I heard a white-bellied nuthatch on an elm within twenty feet, uttering peculiar notes and more like a song than I remember to have heard from it.. . .It was something like to-what what what what what, rapidly repeated, and not the usual gnah gnah; and this instant it occurs to me that this may be that earliest spring note which I hear, and have referred to a woodpecker! . . .It is the spring note of the nuthatch"). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Woodpecker (flicker)

I am most sensible of the presence of these plants when the ground is first drying at this season. See March 10, 1855 ("Those reddening leaves, as the checkerberry, lambkill, etc., etc., which at the beginning of winter were greenish, are now a deeper red, when the snow goes off.”) 

I hear a faint note far in the wood which reminds me of the robin. See See March 8, 1855 ("I hear the hasty, shuffling, as if frightened, note of a robin from a dense birch wood, —. . . This sound reminds me of rainy, misty April days in past years."); March 12, 1854 ("I hear my first robin peep distinctly at a distance. No singing yet.”); March 14, 1854 ("Count over forty robins with my glass in the meadow north of Sleepy Hollow, in the grass and on the snow.“); March 18, 1857 ("I now again hear the song sparrow’s tinkle along the riverside, probably to be heard for a day or two, and a robin, which also has been heard a day or two.”); March 18, 1858 (“The robin does not come singing, but utters a somewhat anxious or inquisitive peep at first.”)

The tchuck tchuck of a blackbird, and after, a distinct conqueree. 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 14, 1852 ("I see a flock of blackbirds and hear their conqueree."); March 17, 1860 ("How handsome a flock of red-wings,"); 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.”)

Thus these four species of birds have all come in one day, See March 18, 1858 ("How much more habitable a few birds make the fields! ")

I hear a faint note 

far in the wood which reminds 

me of the robin.