4 February 1856 – 10 February 1856

P. M. — To Walden. I go to walk at 3 p. M., thermometer 18°. It has been about this (and 22°) at this hour for a week or two. All the light snow, some five inches above the crust, is adrift these days and driving over the fields like steam, or like the foam-streaks on a flooded meadow, from northwest to southeast. The surface of the fields is rough, like a lake agitated by the wind. I see that the partridges feed quite extensively on the sumach berries, ¢. g. at my old house. They come to them after every snow, making fresh tracks, and have now stripped many bushes quite bare. At Tanager Glade I see where the rabbits have gnawed the bark of the shrub oaks extensively, and the twigs, down to the size of a goose-quill, cutting them off as smoothly as a knife. They have also gnawed some young white oaks, black cherry, and apple. The shrub oaks look like hedges which have been trimmed or clipped. I have often wondered how red cedars could have sprung up in some pastures which I knew to be miles distant from the nearest fruit-bearing cedar, but it now occurs to me that these and barberries, etc., may be planted by the crows, and probably other birds. The oak leaves which have blown over the snow are collected in dense heaps on the still side of the bays at Walden, where I suspect they make warm beds for the rabbits to squat on.

The weatheris still clear, cold, and unrelenting. I have walked much on the river this winter, but, ever since it froze over, it has been on a snow-clad river, or pond. They have been river walks because the snow was shallowest there. Even the meadows, on account of the firmer crust, have been more passable than the uplands. In the afternoons I have walked off freely up or down the river, without impediment or fear, looking for birds and birds’ nests and the tracks of animals; and, as often as it was written over, a new snow came and presented a new blank page. If it were still after it, the tracks were beautifully distinct. If strong winds blew, the dry leaves, losing their holds, traversed and scored it in all directions. The sleighing would have been excellent all the month past if it had not been for the drifting of the surface snow into the track whenever the wind blew, but that crust on the old snow has prevented very deep drifts. I should [say] the average cold was about 8° at 8 a. m. and 18° or 20° at 3 P. M.

P. M. — To Walden. The down is just peeping out from some of the aspen buds. Cut a cake of ice out of the middle of Walden, within three rods of where I cut on the 18th of Jan- uary. The snow was about an inch deep only, so fast has it been converted into snow ice. I was obliged to make a hole about four feet square in order to get out a cake, and with great care to approach the water evenly on all sides, so that I might have the less chopping to do after the water began to rush in, which would wet me through. It was surprising with what violence the water rushed in as soon as a hole was made, under the pressure of that body of ice. On the 18th of Jan- uary the ice had been about seven inches thick here, about four being snow ice, and about three water ice. It was now 19 inches thick, 114— being snow ice and 74+ water ice. Supposing it an inch thick only here when the snow began to fall on it (for it be- gan to fall almost immediately), it had increased since that time 6$+ inches downward and 114— upward. Since the 18th of January, when there was ten inches of snow on it, it had increased about 44 downward and about 74 upward. I was not prepared to find that any ice had formed on the under side since the 18th. The water ice was very crystalline. This ice was thicker than the snow has been in open fields any time this winter, yet this winter has been remarkable for the abundance of snow. I also cut through and measured in the Ice Heap Cove. The snow ice was 124, and the water ice about 6, but perhaps a little was broken off in cutting through the last. In all about 184 inches. I was not prepared to find it thickest in the middle. Earlier in the winter, or on the 18th January, it was thickest near the shore. Goodwin says that he has caught two crows this winter in his traps set in water for mink, and baited with fish. The crows, probably put to it for food and looking along the very few open brooks, attracted by this bait, got their feet into the traps. He thinks that [what] I call muskrat-tracks are mink-tracks by the Rock, and that muskrat do not come out at all this weather. I saw a clamshell opened, and they say minks do not open them (? ).

Began to snow at 8 A. M.; turned to rain at noon, and cleared off, or rather ceased raining, at night, with some glaze on the trees. This the first thawing, though slight, since the 25th of December. During the rain the air was thick, the distant woods bluish, and the single trees, etc., on the hill, under the dull, mist-covered sky, remarkably distinct and black.

9 A. M.— To Fair Haven Pond. A clear and a pleasanter and warmer day than we have had for a long time. ‘The snow begins (at noon) to soften somewhat in the road. For two or three weeks, successive light and dry snows have fallen on the old crust and been drifting about on it, leaving it at last three quarters bare and forming drifts against the fences, etc., or here and there low, slaty, fractured ones in mid-field, or pure white hard-packed ones. These drifts on the crust are com- monly quite low and flat. But yesterday’s snow turning to rain, which froze as it fell, there is now a glaze on the trees, giving them a hoary look, icicles like rakes’ teeth on the rails, and a thin crust over all the snow. . At this hour the crust sparkles with a myriad brilliant points or mirrors, one to every six inches, at least. ‘This crust is cracked like ice into irregular figures a foot or two square. Perhaps the snow has settled considerably, for the track in the roads is the highest part. Some heard a loud cracking in the ground or ice last night. I cut through, five or six rods from the east shore of Fair Haven, and find seven inches of snow, nine inches of snow ice and eight of water ice, — seventeen of both. The water rises to within half an inch of the top of the ice. Isaac Garfield has cut a dozen holes on the west side. The ice there averages nineteen inches in thickness. Half the holes are five or six rods from the shore, and the rest nine or ten, the water from three to seven feet deep. In some places more than half the whole depth is ice. The thinnest ice is 17 inches; the thickest, 20+ .1 The inner row invariably the thickest. The water rises above the ice in some cases. Edward and Isaac Garfield were fishing there, and Puffer came along, and afterward Lewis Miner with his gun. He cannot get near the partridges on account of the cracklings of the crust. I saw the last two ap- proaching with my glass. The fishermen agree in saying that the pickerel have generally been eating, and are full, when they bite. Puffer thinks they eat a good deal, but seldom. Some think it best to cut the holes the day before, because the noise fnghtens them; and the crackling of the crust to-day was thought to frighten them. E. Garfield says that his Uncle Daniel was once scaling a pickerel, when he pricked his finger against the horn of a pout which the pickerel had swallowed. He himself killed a pickerel with a paddle, in the act of swallowing a large perch. Puffer had taken a striped snake out of one. They send to Lowell for their bait, and fishermen send thither from far and wide, so that there is not a sufficient supply for them. I. Garfield once caught an eel there with his pickerel bait, through the ice; also speared a trout that weighed three and a half pounds, he says, off Well Meadow. E. Garfield says that he was just turning into the pond from up-stream when he heard a loud sound and saw and caught those two great mud turtles. He let the boat drift down upon them. One had got the other by the neck, and their shells were thumping together and their tails sticking up. He caught one in each hand suddenly, and succeeded in getting them into the boat only by turning them over, since they resisted with their claws against the side; then stood on them turned over, paddled to nearest shore, pulled his boat up with his heel, and, taking a tail in each hand, walked back- ward through the meadow in water a foot deep, drag- ging them; then carried one a few rods, left him and returned for the other, and soon. One weighed forty- three and the other forty-seven pounds, together ninety. Puffer said that he never saw two together so heavy. I. Garfield said that he had seen one that weighed sixty-three pounds. All referred to the time when (about fifteen years ago; one said the year of the Bunker Hill Monument celebration) some forty were found dead on the meadows between there and Sud- bury. It was about the end of March, and Puffer in- ferred that they had come out thus early from the river, and, the water going down, the ice had settled on them and killed them; but the Garfields thought that the ice, which tore up the meadows very much that year, exposed them and so they froze. I think the last most likely. Puffer searches for them in May under the cran- berry vines with a spear, and calls one of the small kinds the ‘‘ grass tortoise.” E. Garfield says that he saw the other day where a fox had caught in the snow three partridges and eaten two. He himself last winter caught two, on the hillside south of Fair Haven, with his hands. They flew before him and dived into the snow, which was about a foot deep, going twice their length into it. He thrust his hand in and caught them. Puffer said that his com- panion one night speared a partridge on the alders on the south side the pond. E. Garfield says there were many quails here last fall, but that they are suffering now. One night as he was spearing on Conant’s cranberry meadow, just north. the pond, his dog caught a sheldrake in the water by the shore. Some days ago he saw what he thought a hawk, as white as snow, fly over the pond, but it may have been a white owl (which last he never saw).'! He sometimes sees a hen-hawk in the winter, but never a partridge or other small hawk at this season. Speaks again of that large speckled hawk he killed once, which some called a “Cape eagle.”” Had a hum-bird’s nest behind their house last summer, and was amused to see the bird drive off other birds; would pursue a robin and alight on his back; let none come near. I. Garfield saw one’s nest on a horizontal branch of a white pine near the Charles Miles house, about seven feet from ground. E. Garfield spoke of the wren’s nest as not uncommon, hung in the grass of the meadows, and how swiftly and easily the bird would run through a winrow of hay. Puffer saw a couple of foxes cross the pond a few days ago. The wheelwright in the Corner saw four at once, about the same time. They think that most squirrel-tracks now are of the gray ones; that they do not lay up anything. Their tracks are much larger than those of the red. Puffer says that five gray squirrels came out of one of their leafy nests in a middle-sized white pine, after it was cut down, behind the Harrington house the other day, and, a day or two after, three out of another. He says that they, too, use bark in making their nests, as well [as] leaves, —the inner bark of old chestnut rails, which looks like seaweed. E. Garfield says the chip squirrels come out this month. Puffer saw a star-nosed mole yesterday in the road. Its track was: .%.*.% *, °,7-, dog-like. Coming home at twelve, the ice is fast melting on the trees, and I see in the drops the colors of all the gems. ‘The snow is soft, and the eaves begin to run as not for many weeks. Thermometer at 3.30 Pp. m., 31°. Puffer once found the nest of what he calls the deer mouse (probably jumping) in pile of wood at what is now R. Rice’s place in Sudbury, and the old one car- ried off nine young clinging to her teats. These men do not chop now; they saw, because the snow is so deep and the crust cuts their legs. Mr. Prichard tells me that he remembers a six weeks of more uninterruptedly severe cold than we have just [had], and that was in ’31, ending the middle of Jan- uary. The eaves on the south side of his house did not once run during that period, but they have run or dripped a trifle on several days during the past six weeks. Puffer says that he and Daniel (?) Haynes set lines once when there was good skating in all the bays, from the long causeway in Sudbury down to the rail- road bridge, but caught only two or three perch.

How much the northwest wind prevails in the winter! Almost all our storms come from that quarter, and the ridges of snow-drifts run that way. If the In- dians placed their heaven in the southwest on account of the warmth of the southwest wind, they might have made a stern winter god of the northwest wind. P. M. — Up Assabet. 3.30 p. M., thermometer 30°. This and yesterday comparatively warm weather. Half an inch of snow fell this forenoon, but now it has cleared up. I see a few squirrel-tracks, but no mice-tracks, for no night has intervened since the snow. It is only where the river washes a wooded bank that I see mice or even squirrel tracks; elsewhere only where dogs and foxes have trav- ersed it. For example, there are no tracks on the side of the river against Hosmer’s and Emerson’s land, though many alders, etc., there, but many tracks com- monly on the opposite wooded side. In the swamp west of Pigeon Rock, I see where the rabbits have bitten off the swamp white oak sprouts, where they have sprung up tender, looking like poplar, from stocks broken by the ice last winter. I hear a phoebe note from a chickadee. Saw a pensile nest eighteen feet high, within a lichen- clad red maple on the edge of the Assabet Spring or Pink Azalea Swamp. It looked very much like a bunch of the lichens dangling, and I was not sure it was not till I climbed up to it. Without, it was chiefly the coarse greenish lichens of the maple, bound with coarse bits of bark and perhaps bleached milkweed bark (??) and brown cocoon silk, and within, a thin lining of pine- needles, hemlock twigs, and the like. Was it a yellow- throat vireo’s? It was not shaped like the red-eye’s, but, sidewise, thus: “ss% looking down upon it, thus: On, =" aside twig to one of the limbs and about a foot from BS the end of the twig.

Speaking about the weather and the fish- ing with E. and I. Garfield on the 8th, I was amused to hear these two young farmers suddenly disputing as to whether the moon (?), if that be it, was in the Feet or the Head or elsewhere. Though I know far more of astronomy than they, I should not know how at once to find out this nonsense in an almanac. Yet they talk very glibly about it, and go a-fishing accord- ingly. Again, in the evening of the same day, I over- took Mr. Prichard and observed that it was time for a thaw, but said he, “That does not look like it,” point- ing to the moon in the west. ‘‘ You could hang a powder- horn upon that pretty well.” P. M. — To Walden. Returning, I saw a fox on the railroad, at the cross- ing below the shanty site, eight or nine rods from me. He looked of a dirty yellow and lean. I did not notice the white tip to his tail. Seeing me, he pricked up his ears and at first ran up and along the east bank on the crust, then changed his mind and came down the steep bank, crossed the railroad before me, and, gliding up the west bank, disappeared in the woods. He coursed, or glided, along easily, appearing not to lift his feet high, leaping over obstacles, with his tail extended straight behind. He leaped over the ridge of snow about two feet high and three wide between the tracks, very easily and gracefully. I followed, examining his tracks. There was about a quarter of an inch of recent snow above the crust, but for the most part he broke in two or three inches. I slumped from one to three feet. His tracks when running, as I have described, were like this:— being about two by five YD > a inches, as if he slid a little, no marks of toes being seen in that shallow snow; the greatest interval above, one foot. Soon = Dd after, thus: > po ee ad = ; © The greatest interval sometimes four feet even. Some- times the three tracks merged together where the crust broke: When a, 2 © o 6 85, @ walking at ease, before he saw me his tracks were more round and nearer together, — about two inches by two and a half, thus:— a ge SB au ge er Sometimes I thought his tail had scraped the snow. He went off at an easy gliding pace such as he might keep up for a long time, pretty direct after his first turning.