March is the fourth coldest month.

March 23. 

2 P. M. — 40°; rather windy.

Small dark-based cumuli spring clouds, mostly in rows parallel with the horizon. 

I see one field which was plowed before the 18th and spring rye sowed. The earlier the better, they say. Some fields might have been plowed earlier, but the ground was too wet. Farmer says that some fifty years ago he plowed and sowed wheat in January, and never had so good a crop. 

I hear that Coombs has killed half a dozen ducks one of them a large gray duck in Goose Pond. He tells me it weighed five and a half pounds, — while his black ducks weigh only three and a half, — and was larger than a sheldrake and very good to eat. Simply gray, and was alone, and had a broad flat bill. Was it the gadwall? or a kind of goose? 

It will be seen by the annexed scrap [Tables from the Patent Office Reports, 1853, p.332; 1854, p.427; 1855, p.375.] that March is the fourth coldest month, or about midway between December and November. The same appears from the fifteen years' observation at Mendon. (“American Almanac,” page 86.) 

The descent to extreme cold occupies seven months and is therefore more gradual (though a part of it is more rapid) than the ascent to extreme heat, which takes only five months. 

The mean average temperature of the coldest month (February) being 23.25, and of the warmest (July) being 72.35, the whole ascent from extreme cold to extreme heat is 49.10°, and in March (32.73) we have accomplished 8.48°, or a little less than one sixth the ascent. (According to the Mendon fifteen years ' average the whole ascent is 47.5, and in March we have advanced 9.2, a little more than one fifth.) 

It appears (from the scrap) that December, January, and February, the three winter months, differ very little in temperature, and the three summer months and September are next most alike, though they differ considerably more. (Same from Mendon tables.) 

The greatest or abruptest change is from November to December (in Mendon tables from September to October), the next most abrupt from April to May (in Mendon tables from March to April). 

The least change (according to the above tables) is from December to January. (According to Mendon tables, the same from December to January as from January to February.) 

The three spring months, and also October and November, are transition months, in which the temperature rapidly changes.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 23, 1860

March is the fourth coldest month. See March 25, 1860 ("To speak of the general phenomena of March")

The phenomena of an average March

March 22. 

Colder yet, and a whitening of snow, some of it in the form of pellets, — like my pellet frost! - but melts about as fast as it falls. 

At 4 P. M., 28; probably about 30 at 2 P. M.

Fair Haven Pond was seen entirely open the 20th. ( I saw it the 15th, and thought it would open in four or five days; the channel was not then open.) Say, then, 20th. Channel open, say 17th. 

The phenomena of an average March are increasing warmth, melting the snow and ice and, gradually, the frost in the ground; cold and blustering weather, with high, commonly northwest winds for many days together; misty and other rains taking out frost, and whitenings of snow, and winter often back again, both its cold and snow; bare ground and open waters, and more or less of a freshet; some calm and pleasant days reminding us of summer, with a blue haze or a thicker mist wreathing the woods at last, in which, perchance, we take off our coats awhile and sit without a fire a day; ways getting settled, and some greenness appearing on south bank; April-like rains, after the frost is chiefly out; plowing and planting of peas, etc., just beginning, and the old leaves getting dry in the woods. 

Vegetation fairly begins, – conferva and mosses, grass and carex, etc., — and gradually many early herbaceous plants start, and noticed radical leaves; Stellaria media and shepherd's-purse bloom; maple and buttonwood sap (6th) flow; spiræas start, cladonias flush, and bæomyces handsome; willow catkins become silvery, aspens downy; osiers, etc., look bright, white maple and elm buds expand and open, oak woods thin- leaved; alder and hazel catkins become relaxed and elongated. 

First perceptible greenness on south banks, 22d. The skunk-cabbage begins to bloom (23d) ; plant peas , etc., 26th; spring rye, wheat, lettuce; maple swamps red-tinged (?) 28th, and lake grass; and perchance the gooseberry and lilac begin to show a little green. That is, one indigenous native flower blooms. (Vide if the early sedge does.) 

About twenty-nine migratory birds arrive (including hawks and crows), and two or three more utter their spring notes and sounds, as nuthatch and chickadee, turkeys, and woodpecker tapping, while apparently the snow bunting, lesser redpoll, shrike, and doubtless several more — as owls, crossbills (?) — leave us, and woodcocks and hawks begin to lay. 

Many insects and worms come forth and are active,- and the perla insects still about ice and water, — as tipula, grubs, and fuzzy caterpillars, minute hoppers on grass at springs; gnats, large and small, dance in air; the common and the green fly buzz outdoors; the gyrinus, large and small, on brooks, etc., and skaters; spiders shoot their webs, and at last gossamer floats; the honey bee visits the skunk- cabbage; fishworms come up, sow-bugs, wireworms  etc.; various larvæ are seen in pools; small green and also brown grasshoppers begin to hop, small ants to stir (25th); Vanessa Antiopa out 29th; cicindelas run on sand; and small reddish butter flies are seen in wood-paths, etc., etc., etc. 

Skunks are active and frolic; woodchucks and ground squirrels come forth; moles root; musquash are commonly drowned out and shot , and sometimes erect a new house, and at length are smelled; and foxes have young (?). 

As for fishes, etc., trout glance in the brooks , brook minnows are seen; see furrows on sandy bottoms, and small shell snails copulate; dead suckers, etc. , are seen floating on meadows; pickerel and perch are running up brooks, and suckers (24th) and pickerel begin to dart in shallows. 

And for reptiles, not only salamanders and pollywogs are more commonly seen, and also those little frogs (sylvatica males ?) at spring-holes and ditches, the yellow-spot turtle and wood turtle, Rana fontinalis, and painted tortoise come forth, and the Rana sylvatica croaks.

Our river opened in 1851, much before February 25; 1852, March 14 at least; 1853, say March 8 at least; 1854, say March 9; average March 5. 

Hudson River opened, according to Patent Office Reports, 1854, page 435: 1851, February 25; 1852, March 28 ; 1853 , March 23; 1854, March 17; average March 16. According to which our river opens some eleven days the soonest. Perhaps this is owing partly to the fact that our river is nearer the ocean and that it rises southward instead of northward.

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

Colder yet, and a whitening of snow, some of it in the form of pellets, — like my pellet frost! - but melts about as fast as it falls. See December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. . . . there is the pellet or shot snow, which consists of little dry spherical pellets the size of robin-shot")

Fair Haven Pond was seen entirely open the 20th. Channel open, say 17th. See  March 26, 1860 ("See Fair Haven Pond may be open by the 20th of March, as this year [1860], or not till April 13 as in '56, or twenty-three days later."); March 20, 1858 ("Fair Haven is still closed."); March 21, 1859 (" Fair Haven Pond is only two thirds open. "); March 22, 1854 ("Fair Haven still covered and frozen anew in part. "); March 22, 1855 ("I cross Fair Haven Pond, including the river, on the ice, and probably can for three or four days yet.");  March 30, 1852 ("From the Cliffs I see that Fair Haven Pond is open over the channel of the river, - which is in fact thus only revealed, of the same width as elsewhere, running from the end of Baker's Wood to the point of the Island. The slight current there has worn away the ice. I never knew before exactly where the channel was . It is pretty central.")

 The perla insects still about ice and water,  See  March 17, 1858 ("As usual, I have seen for some weeks on the ice these peculiar (perla?) insects with long wings and two tails.");   March 22, 1856 (" On water standing above the ice under a white maple, are many of those Perla (?) insects, with four wings, drowned, though it is all ice and snow around the country over. Do not see any flying, nor before this);  March 24, 1857 ("I see many of those narrow four-winged insects (perla?) of the ice now fluttering on the water like ephemerae. They have two pairs of wings indistinctly spotted dark and light..")

The phenomena of an average March. See March 22, 1853 ("I have an appointment with spring. She comes to the window to wake me") See also Walden (Spring)("I am on the alert for the first signs of spring ") and A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, Earliest signs of spring, a working checklist

Colder and overcast

March 21. 

Colder and overcast. Did not look at thermometer; probably not far from 40°.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 21, 1860

Colder. See March 20, 1860 ("The 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th were very pleasant and warm days, the thermometer standing at 50° 55° , 56° , 56°, and 51° (average 53 1/2°), - quite a spell of warm weather ")

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

The season when you sit under a bridge and watch the dimples made by the rain.

March 20 . 

Worm-piles in dooryard this morning. 

A foggy morning; turns to some April-like rain, after east wind of yesterday. 

A. Buttrick says he saw and heard woodcocks the 5th of March this year, or much earlier than ever before. Thinks they are now laying. His dog put them up at the brushy point below Flint's,– one pair there. Is an other pair at Hunt’s Pond, another at Eleazer Davis's Hill. 

He says that he caught three skunks and a crow last week in his traps baited with muskrat for mink. Says a fox will kill a skunk and eat him greedily before he smells, but nothing will eat a mink. 

2 P.M. — Thermometer about 49. 

This is a slight, dripping, truly April-like rain. You hardly know whether to open your umbrella or not. More mist than rain; no wind, and the water perfectly smooth and dark, but ever and anon the cloud or mist thickens and darkens on one side, and there is a sudden rush of warm rain, which will start the grass. 

I stand on Hunt's Bridge and, looking up- stream, see now first, in this April rain, the water being only rippled by the current, those alternate dark and light patches on the surface, all alike dimpled with the falling drops. (The ground now soaks up the rain as it falls, the frost being pretty commonly out.) It reminds me of the season when you sit under a bridge and watch the dimples made by the rain. 

I see where some one has lately killed a striped snake. 

The white maple by the bridge is abundantly out, and of course did not open this rainy day. Yesterday, at least, it began.

I observed on the 18th a swarm of those larger tipulidæ, or fuzzy gnats , dancing in a warm sprout-land, about three feet above a very large white pine stump which had been sawed off quite smoothly and was conspicuous. They kept up their dance directly over this, only swaying to and fro slightly, but always recovering their position over it. 

This afternoon, in the sprinkling rain, I see a very small swarm of the same kind dancing in like manner in a garden, only a foot above the ground but directly over a bright tin dish,— apparently a mustard-box, — and I suspect that they select some such conspicuous fixed point on the ground over which to hover and by which to keep their place, finding it for their convenience to keep the same place. These gyrate in the air as water-bugs on the water.  [ For same , March 10 , 1859]

Methinks this gentle rainy day reminds me more of summer than the warmest fair day would. 

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

Perhaps calm weather and thermometer at about 50, the frost being commonly out and ground bare, may be called an April-like rain. The 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th were very pleasant and warm days, the thermometer standing at 50°  55° , 56° , 56°, and 51° (average 53 1/2°), - quite a spell of warm weather (succeeding to cold and blustering), in which the alders and white maples, as well as many more skunk-cabbages, bloomed, and the hazel catkins became relaxed and elongated. 

A. Buttrick says he has seen ground squirrels some time. 

I hear that the first alewives have been caught in the Acushnet River.

Our own mistakes often reveal to us the true colors of objects better than a conscious discrimination. Coming up the street the other afternoon, I thought at first that I saw a smoke in Mr. Cheney's garden. It was his white tool-house.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 20, 1860

Worm-piles in dooryard this morning. See April 9, 1861 ("Worm-piles in grass."); April 14, 1859 (“There are many worm holes or piles in the door-yard this forenoon. How long?”); April 26, 1856 (“Worm-piles about the door-step this morning; how long?”)

You hardly know whether to open your umbrella or not. March 21, 1858 ("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. ")

The season when you sit under a bridge and watch the dimples made by the rain. See March 21, 1858 ("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."); July 31, 1860 ("The differently shaded or lit currents of the river through it all; but anon it begins to rain very hard, and a myriad white globules dance or rebound an inch or two from the surface, where the big drops fall, and I hear a sound as if it rains pebbles or shot.")

These gyrate in the air as water-bugs on the water. See March 19, 1858 ("They keep up a circulation in the air like water-bugs on the water.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ) 

The pitch pine has an ingrained sunniness especially valuable for imparting warmth to the landscape at this season.

March 19. 

Early willows in their silvery state. 

2 P. M.—Thermometer 51; wind easterly, blowing slightly. To Everett's Spring.

Going along the Turnpike, I look over to the pitch pines on Moore's hillside, – ground bare as it has been since February 23, except a slight whitening or two, — and it strikes me that this pine, take the year round, is the most cheerful tree and most living to look at and have about your house, it is so sunny and full of light, in harmony with the yellow sand there and the spring sun. 

The deciduous trees are apparently dead, and the white pine is much darker, but the pitch pine has an ingrained sunniness and is especially valuable for imparting warmth to the landscape at this season.and is especially valuable for imparting warmth to the landscape at this season. Yet men will take pains to cut down these trees and set imported larches in their places! The pitch pine shines in the spring somewhat as the osiers do. 

I see in the ditch by the Turnpike bridge a painted tortoise, and, I think, a small shiner or two, also several suckers which swiftly dart out of sight, rippling the water. We rejoice to see the waters inhabited again, for a fish has become almost incredible.

Myriads of water-bugs of various sizes are now gyrating, and they reflect the sun like silver. Why do they cast a double orbicular shadow on the bottom? 

I see some monstrous yellow lily roots in the ditch there just beyond the bridge on the right hand, - great branching roots, three or four of them from one base, two feet long (or more) and as big as my arm, all covered with muddy sediment. I know of no herbaceous plant which suggests so much vigor. They taper at the extremity, down (or up) to the green leaf-bud, and, regularly marked as they are with the bases of the leaf-stalks, they look like pineapples there. 

Holding by an alder, I get my hand covered with those whitish lice, which I suppose will cover themselves with down. 

The Rana halecina sits on the bank there. 


The Alnus incana is out, near Everett' s Spring, but not the Alnus serrulata, i. e. the smaller one, which grows south of scouring-rush. The plants which have grown the most there — and they are very conspicuous now — are the forget-me-not , the Ranunculus repens (much more than any bulbosus), and a common sedge which already begins to yellow the top of some tussocks.  

The lower part of the hill at Minott's is decidedly green now. 

The road and paths are perfectly dry and settled in the village, except a very little frost still coming out on the south side the street.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 19, 1860

The pitch pine shines in the spring . See March 26, 1846 ( The green pitch  suddenly looked brighter and more erect, as if now entirely washed and cleansed by the rain. I knew it would not rain any more. A serene summer-evening sky seemed darkly reflected in the pond, though the clear sky was nowhere visible overhead. It was no longer the end of a season, but the beginning.).  Compare March 19, 1858 ("This is the brightening and awakening of the pines, a phenomenon perchance connected with the flow of sap in them.")

I see in the ditch by the Turnpike bridge a painted tortoise. See March 28, 1857 ("He who painted the tortoise thus, what were his designs? ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle

I see, I think, a small shiner or two, also several suckers which swiftly dart out of sight, rippling the water.  See March 19, 1854 ("You look into some clear, sandy-bottomed brook, where it spreads into a deeper bay, yet flowing cold from ice and snow not far off, and see, indistinctly poised over the sand on invisible fins, the outlines of a shiner, scarcely to be distinguished from the sands behind it as if it were transparent.”);  March 19, 1856 ("No sooner is some opening made in the river, a square rod in area, where some brook or rill empties in, than the fishes apparently begin to seek it for light and warmth, . . .They are seen to ripple the water, darting out as you approach.") Compare March 19, 1857 ("I observed yesterday a dead shiner by the riverside, and to-day the first sucker.")

We rejoice to see the waters inhabited again,. See March 20, 1853 ("A myriad brilliant sparkles on the bare face of the pond, an expression of glee, of youth, of spring, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it.")

Myriads of water-bugs of various sizes are now gyrating, and they reflect the sun like silver. Why do they cast a double orbicular shadow on the bottom? See March 10, 1855 ("To-day they are here and yesterday they were not");  March 19, 1856 ("In the smooth open water there, small water-bugs were gyrating singly, not enough to play the game"); October 18, 1857 ("The shadows of these bugs on the bottom, half a dozen times as big as themselves, are very distinct and interesting, with a narrow and well-defined halo about them. But why are they composed, as it were, of two circles run together, the foremost largest? Is it owing to the manner in which the light falls on their backs, in two spots? You think that the insect must be amused with this pretty shadow. I also see plainly the shadows of ripples they make, which are scarcely perceptible on the surface.")

The Alnus incana is out, near Everett' s Spring,  See   March 22, 1853 ("The very earliest alder is in bloom and sheds its pollen. I detect a few catkins at a distance by their distinct yellowish color. This the first native flower.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau : the Alders

The road and paths are perfectly dry and settled in the village, except a very little frost still coming out on the south side the street.  See March 15, 1860 ("Though it is pretty dry and settled travelling on open roads, it is very muddy still in some roads through woods").

Getting ice out of Loring's Pond.

March 17. 

Channing says he saw blackbirds yesterday; F. C. Brown, that they were getting ice out of Loring's Pond yesterday.

P. M . – Rode to Lexington with Brown. 

Saw, on the corner of a wall by a house about three quarters of a mile from the monument on the Bedford road, a stone apparently worn by water into the form of a rude bird-like idol, which I thought, as I rode by, to be the work of the Indians. It was probably discovered and used by them. 

It was as near as nature might come by accident to an eagle, with a very regular pedestal such as busts have, on which it stood  — in all about two and a half feet high. Whitewashed as well as the wall. Found not near water. It is one of those stones which Schoolcraft describes as found among the Chippeways. 

The ways are mostly settled, frozen dry.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 17, 1853


Channing says he saw blackbirds yesterday. See March 11, 1852 ("I believe that I saw blackbirds yesterday."); March 17, 1858 ("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.") See also note to March 17, 1860 ("How handsome a flock of red-wings,").

It is one of those stones which Schoolcraft describes as found among the Chippeways. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (March 28, 1793 – December 10, 1864) was an American ethnologist noted for his early studies of Native American cultures, as well as for his 1832 expedition to the source of the  Mississippi River. He is also noted for his major six-volume study of Native Americans published in the 1850s. ~Wikipedia

The ways are mostly settled, frozen dry. See March 15, 1860 ("Though it is pretty dry and settled travelling on open roads, it is very muddy still in some roads through woods"); March 19, 1860 ("The road and paths are perfectly dry and settled in the village, except a very little frost still coming out on the south side the street.");  March 21, 1858 ("This first spring rain . . .helps take the remaining frost out and settles the ways.")

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.")