12 March 1860 – 18 March 1860

Sleet, turning soon to considerable rain, —a rainy day. Thermometer about 40, yet it seems a warm rain to walk in, it being still, while yesterday, of the same temperature, with thatraw northwest wind, was cold and blustering. It is the wind of March that makes it unpleasant often, and to seem much colder than it is.

Quite overcast all day. ‘Thermometer 36.

2 Pp. mM.— Thermometer 39. Overcast, with a flurry of snow and a little rain, till 4.30 p.m. To Walden and Cliffs. I am surprised to find Walden almost entirely open. There is only about an acre of ice at the southeast end, north of the Lincoln bound, drifted there, and a little old and firm and snowy in the bottom of the deep south bay. I may say it opens to-morrow.’ I have not observed it to open before before the 23d of March.’? But Fair Haven Pond has not yet a channel through it, nor half through, though it is wholly clear, on an average, two or three days before Walden. However, it is clear enough why Walden has broken up thus early this year. It does not ordinarily freeze till near the end of December (average of twelve observations, December 25th *), while Fair Haven Pond freezes about December 2d. But this past winter our cold weather was mostly confined to December, which was remarkable for its uniform cold, while January and February were very open and pleasant. So that Fair Haven Pond, having more than three weeks the start, and that being almost all the cold weather that we had, froze much the thick- est. Walden did not freeze so thick as usual. If we have an average winter up to January, but a particularly warm one afterward, Walden will break up early, not having had any chance to freeze thick. You must look sharp to see if the pond is wholly clear of ice. Standing on the northerly shore, I did not detect any, but, having ascended the peak, I saw a field of an acre which had drifted to the southeast comer, beside some in the deep south bay. As I stand there, I see some dark ripples already drop and sweep over the surface of the pond, as they will ere long over Ripple Lake and other pools in the wood. No sooner has the ice of Walden melted than the wind begins to play in dark ripples over the surface of the virgin water. It is affecting to see Nature so tender, however old, and wearing none of the wrinkles of age. Ice dissolved is the next moment as perfect water as if it had been melted a million years. To see that which was lately so hard and immovable now so soft and impressible! What if our moods could dissolve thus completely ? It is like a flush of life in a cheek that was dead. It seems as if it must rejoice in its own newly acquired fluidity, as it affects the beholder with joy. Often the March winds have no chance to ripple its face at all.

Lhear that there was about one acre of ice only at the southwest corner (by the road) of Flint’s Pond on the 13th. It will probably, then, open entirely to-day, with Walden. Though it is pretty dry and settled travelling on open roads, it is very muddy still in some roads through woods, as the Marlborough road or Second Division road. 2 p.m. — To Lee’s Cliff. Thermometer 50°. On the whole the finest day yet (the thermometer was equally high the 3d),' consider- ing the condition of the earth as well as the temperature of the air. Yet I think I feel the heat as much if not more than I did on the 23d of February, when the 1 2d and 8th. Vide next page. = thermometer rose to 58°. Is it because there was more snow lying about then? The comparative stillness, as well as the absence of snow, has an effect on our imagina- tions, I have no doubt. Our cold and blustering days this month, thus far, have averaged about 40°. Here is the first fair, and at the same time calm and warm, day. Looking over my Journal, I find that the — Ist of March was rainy. 2 at 2 P. M. 56° 3 50 4 44 The temperature has been as high on three days this month, and on the 3d [sic] considerably higher, and yet this has seemed the warmest and most summer-like, evidently owing to the calmness and greater absence of snow. How admirable in our memory lies a calm warm day amid a series of cold and blustering ones! The 11th was cold and blustering at 40; to-day delightfully warm and pleasant (being calm) at 50°. I see those devil’s-needle-like larvee in the warm pool south of Hubbard’s Grove (with two tails) swimming about and rising to the top. What a difference it makes whether a pool lies open to the sun or is within a wood, — affecting its breaking- up. This pool has been open at least a week, while that three or four rods from it in the woods is still completely closed and dead. It is very warm under the south edge of the wood there, and the ground, as for some time, — since snow went off, — is seen all strewn with the great white pine cones which have been blown off during the winter, — part of the great crop of last fall, — of which apparently as many, at least, still remain on the trees. A hen-hawk sails away from the wood southward. I get a very fair sight of it sailing overhead. What a per- fectly regular and neat outline it presents! an easily recognized figure anywhere. Yet I never see it repre- sented in any books. The exact correspondence of the marks on one side to those on the other, as the black or dark tip of one wing to the other, and the dark line mid- way the wing. I have no idea that one can get as correct an idea of the form and color of the under sides of a hen-hawk’s wings by spreading those of a dead specimen in his study as by looking up at a free and living hawk soaring above him in the fields. The penalty for obtain- ing a petty knowledge thus dishonestly is that it is less interesting to men generally, as it is less significant. Some, seeing and admiring the neat figure of the hawk sailing two or three hundred feet above their heads, wish to get nearer and hold it in their hands, perchance, not realizing that they can see it best at this distance, better now, perhaps, than ever they will again. What is an eagle in captivity!— screaming in a courtyard! Iam not the wiser respecting eagles for having seen one there. I do not wish to know the length of its entrails. How neat and all compact this hawk! Its wings and body are all one piece, the wings apparently the greater part, while its body is a mere fullness or protuberance between its wings, an inconspicuous pouch hung there. It suggests no insatiable maw, no corpulence, but looks like a larger moth, with little body in proportion to its wings, its body naturally more etherealized as it soars higher. These hawks, as usual, began to be common about the first of March, showing that they were returning from their winter quarters. I see a little ice still under water on the bottom of the meadows by the Hubbard’s Bridge causeway. The frost is by no means out in grass upland. I see to-day in two places, in mud and in snow, what I have no doubt is the track of the woodchuck that has lately been out, with peculiarly spread toes like a little hand.

2p.mM.— Thermometer 55; wind slight, west by south. To Abner Buttrick’s Hill. The buttercup radical leaves are many of them now a healthy dark green, as if they had acquired new life. I notice that such are particularly downy, and probably that enables them to endure the cold so well, like mul- leins. ‘Those and thistles and shepherd’s-purse, etc., have the form of rosettes on the brown ground. Here is a flock of red-wings. I heard one yesterday, and I see a female among these. These are easily dis- tinguished from grackles by the richness and clarity of their notes, as if they were a more developed bird. 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. I think here are four or five grackles with them, which remain when the rest fly. They cover the apple trees like a black fruit. The air is full of song sparrows and bluebirds to-day. The minister asked me yesterday: “ What birds are they that make these little tinkling sounds? I have n’t seen one.”’ Song sparrows. C. saw a green fly yesterday. Saw a flock of sheldrakes a hundred rods off, on the Great Meadows, mostly males with a few females, all intent on fishing. They were coasting along a spit of bare ground that showed itself in the middle of the meadow, sometimes the whole twelve apparently in a straight line at nearly equal distances apart, with each its head under water, rapidly coasting along back and forth, and ever and anon one, having caught something, would be pursued by the others. It is remarkable that they find their finny prey on the middle of the meadow now, and even on the very inmost side, as I afterward saw, though the water is quite low. Of course, as soon as they are seen on the meadows there are fishes there to be caught. I never see them fish thus in the channel. Perhaps the fishes lie up there for warmth already. I also see two gulls nearly a mile off. One stands still and erect for three quarters of an hour, or till disturbed, on a little bit of floated meadow-crust which rises above the water, — just room for it to stand on, — with its great white breast toward the wind. Then another comes flying past it, and alights on a similar perch, but which does not rise quite to the surface, so that it stands in the water. Thus they will stand for an hour, at least. They are not of handsome form, but look like great wooden images of birds, bluish-slate and white. But when they fly they are quite another creature.

P. M. — To Walden and Goose Pond. Thermometer 56; wind south, gentle; somewhat overcast. There is still perhaps a half-acre of ice at the bottom of the deep south bay of Walden. Alsoa little at the southeast end of Goose Pond. Ripple Lake is mostly covered yet. I see a large flock of sheldrakes, which have probably risen from the pond, go over my head in the woods. A dozen large and compact birds flying with great force and rapidity, spying out the land, eyeing every traveller, fast and far they ‘steam it” on clipping wings, over field and forest, meadow and flood; now here, and you hear the whistling of their wings, and in a moment they are lost in the horizon. Like swift propellers of the air. Whichever way they are headed, that way their wings propel them. What health and vigor they suggest! The life of man seems slow and puny in comparison, — reptilian. The cowslip leaves are now expanded. The rabbit and partridge can eat wood; therefore they abound and can stay here all the year. The leaves on the woodland floor are already getting to be dry. How handsome a flock of red-wings, ever changing its oval form as it advances, by the rear birds passing the others! = \ Was not that a marsh hawk, a slate-colored one which I saw flying over Walden Wood with long, slender, curv- ing wings, with a diving, zigzag flight ? '

Sunday. Quite a fog, — after three warm days, — lasting till 8 a. M. 2 p.M.— Thermometer 56. Wind south, but soon changes to southeast, making the air fresh and hazy and rippling the before smooth water. ‘The water is low on the meadows. The Mantatuket Meadow nearly half bare. Go [to] Cold Pool (J. P. B.’s). When we start it is stiller, 7. e. calmer, than the last two days, and therefore seems warmer. Let there be a strong northwest wind with the thermometer at 40 at this season, and we shall call it cold and blustering; but let the thermometer rise only ten degrees, or to 50, and, if it is quite fair and calm, we shall call it a summer day. The thermometer does not give account of the wind, but our moods are very obedient to it. I examine the skunk-cabbage, now generally and abundantly in bloom all along under Clamshell. It is a flower, as it were, without a leaf. All that you see is a stout beaked hood just rising above the dead brown grass in the springy ground now, where it has felt the heat, under some south bank. The single enveloping leaf, or “spathe,”’ is all the flower that you see commonly, and those are as variously colored as tulips and of similar color, — from a very dark almost black mahogany to a light yellow streaked or freckled with mahogany. It is a leaf simply folded around the flower, with its top like a bird’s beak bent over it for its further protection, evidently to keep off wind and frost, with a sharp angle down its back. These various colors are seen close together, and their beaks are bent in various directions. All along under that bank I heard the hum of honey- bees in the air, attracted by this flower. Especially the hum of one within a spathe sounds deep and loud. They circle about the bud at first hesitatingly, then alight and enter at the open door and crawl over the spadix, and reappear laden with the yellow pollen. What a remarkable instinct it is that leads them to this flower! This bee‘is said to have been introduced by the white man, but how much it has learned! This is the only indigenous flower in bloom in this town at present,! and probably I and my companion are the only men who have detected it this year; yet this foreign fly has left its home, probably a mile off, and winged its way to this warm bank to the only indigenous flower that has been in flower for a fortnight past. (Probably the chickweed and shepherd’s-purse are of no use to it.) There is but one indigenous flower in bloom in the town, and has been but one for sixteen days past, and probably this is the only one which the honey-bee can use, and this has only been detected hitherto by the botanist; yet this imported insect knows where to find it, and is sure to be heard near it. Six weeks hence children will set forth a-maying and have indifferent luck; but the first sunny and warmer day in March the honey- [bee] comes forth, stretches its wings, and goes forth in search of the earliest flower. The curled dock has grown the most of any plant I have noticed yet. It had begun the 2d. Turning over a log, I see a fishworm out, and plenty of sow-bugs running about, and ant-like creatures, also a wireworm. Black spiders are more numerous than before, and it must be they that have shot these webs of late on all the stubble and bushes. You see a fly come forth from its hibernaculum in your yard, stretch its wings in the sun, and set forth on its flowery journey. You little think that it knows the locality of early flowers better than you. You have not dreamed of them yet. It knows a spot a mile off under a warm bank-side where the skunk-cabbage is in ‘bloom. No doubt this flower, too, has learned to expect its winged visitor knocking at its door in the spring. The bee sees their low roofs in the brown and springy ground. It is very warm on the sandy slopes of Clamshell now. The buzzing fly describes an unseen arc in that calm air, reminding us of far-off sultry heats to come. A brown cicindela (green beneath) runs on the sand. I see a brown grasshopper, also a green one, each about three quarters of an inch long, hop at a ditch. C. picks up at Clamshell a very thin piece of pottery about one eighth of an inch thick, which appears to contain much pounded shell. See middling-sized frogs at Hosmer’s early ditch, brown above, whitish beneath. Are they not Rana fontinalis ? — though neither green nor yellow. Also a great many similar-colored small ones, which may be male sylvaticas. Callitriche has decidedly started. I see that simplest form shell snail of the water cop- ulating. We sit on the withered sedge, on a warm and shel- tered hillside, in the sprout-land toward J. P. B.’s Cold Pool, and observe the hazel catkins around us already very much loosened and elongated. No doubt, this being the fourth of these warm days, they began to be so on the 15th. As I sit there, I notice on a bush four feet off, between me and the sun, the little fiery-crimson stars where the stigmas have just begun to peep (one thirtieth of an inch), minute points of crimson not half so big as the head of a pin, yet making a large impres- sion, they so fill your imagination. Pratt says that his bees come out in a pleasant day at any time in the winter; that of late they have come out and eased themselves, the ground being covered around the hives with their yellow droppings. Were not these the little yellow pellets I saw in a skunk-cabbage flower some years ago?' He says they come home now all yellow. I tell him it is skunk-cabbage pollen. I think there would be no surer way to tell when this flower had bloomed than to. keep bees and watch when they first returned laden with pollen. Let them search for you, —-a swarm of bees. Probably with a microscope you could tell exactly when each of the bee-frequented flowers began to bloom throughout the year. The elm buds are expanded, partly opened. The first day in March when, the ground being bare, the temperature rises to 58° and the weather is clear and calm is a memorable one. Is it not commonly a bluebird day ? On the 16th, going behind Flint’s, the water on the meadow quite low, I observed that portions were clear water, —it being calm,— while in other parts the stubble of the sedge rose just above the surface, and this sedge was seen thus to grow in rounded patches with a regular curved edge. The water being just at this height, you could easily see the boundary of a particular kind of sedge. I think that many kinds of sedge spread in this manner. The sweet-fern grows in large, dense, more or less rounded or oval patches in dry land. You will see three or four such patches in a single old field. It is now quite perfect in my old bean-field.