12 March 1855 – 18 March 1855

6.30 a. m. —'To Andromeda Ponds. Lesser redpolls still.’ Elbridge Hayden and Poland affirm that they saw a brown thrasher sitting on the top of an apple tree by the road near Hubbard’s and singing after his fashion on the 5th. I suggested the shrike, which they da not know, but they say it was a brown bird. Hayden saw a bluebird yesterday. P. M. — To Great Meadows. Comes out pleasant after a raw forenoon with a flurry of snow, already gone. Two ducks in river, good size, white beneath with black heads, as they go over.? They first rise some distance down-stream, and fly by on high, reconnoitring me, and I first see them on wing; then settle a quarter of a mile above by a long slanting flight, at last oppo- site the swimming-elm below Flint’s. I come on up the bank with the sun in my face; start them again. Again they fly down-stream by me on high, turn and come round back by me again with outstretched heads, and go up to the Battle-Ground before they alight. Thus the river is no sooner fairly open than they are back again, — before I have got my boat launched, and long before the river has worn through Fair Haven Pond. I think I heard a quack or two. Audubon and Bachman say that Forster and Harlan refer the Mus leucopus “to Mus sylvaticus of Europe,” — wrongly, for they differ in many respects. “They may always be distinguished from each other at a glance by the following mark: in more than twenty specimens we examined of Mus sylvaticus [in Europe]' - we have always found a yellowish line edged with dark-brown, on the breast. In many hundred speci- mens of Mus leucopus we have without a single excep- tion found this yellow line entirely wanting, all of them being pure white on the breast, as well as on the whole under surface. We have no hesitation in pronouncing the species distinct.” Now I find that I had described my specimen of February 20th, before I had: read Audubon and Bachman or heard of the Mus sylva- ticus, as having “a very slight and delicate tinge of yellowish beneath, between the fore legs,” though Emmons does not mention this color. The other differences they mention certainly are not of much importance, and probably equally great ones are to be found between different specimens of Mus leucopus.

Northern lights last night. Rainbow . in east this morning. Almost all the meadow-crust now (and for a week past) lies on a cake of ice where it lodged and which, being prevented from melting any further than its edge, is of the same size with it. The crust is frozen on to this, and, the ice which first froze to it and raised it having melted some time ago, most would not know how to account for its position. 6.30 a. mM. — To Hill. Still, but with some wrack here and there. The river is low, very low for the season. It has been falling ever since the freshet of February 18th. Now, about sunrise, it is nearly filled with the thin, half- cemented ice-crystals of the night, which the warmer temperature of day apparently has loosened. They grate against the bushes and wheel round in great fields with a slight crash and piling up. I hear the rapid tapping of the woodpecker from over the water. P. M. — To Hubbard’s Close. For a week the more stagnant brooks and ditches have been green with conferva, a kind of green veil that conceals their bottom and invests the bubbles on the surface. I am surprised to see, not only many pollywogs through the thin ice of the warm ditches, but, in still warmer, stagnant, unfrozen holes in this meadow, half a dozen small frogs, probably Rana palustris.’ Green spires of grass stand perfectly upright in these pools, rising above water. Coming through the stubble of Stow’s rye-field in front of the Breed house, I meet with four mice-nests in going half a dozen rods. They lie flat on the ground amid the stubble; are flattened spheres, the horizontal diameter about five inches, the perpendicular consid- erably less, composed of grass or finer stubble, and on taking them up you do not at once detect the en- trance with your eye, but rather feel it with your finger on the side; lined with the finest of the grass. ‘These were undoubtedly — probably —made when the snow was on the ground, for their winter residence, while they gleaned the rye-field, and when the snow went off they scampered to the woods. I think they were made by the Mus leucopus, 1. e. Arvicola Emmonsit. Similar to that of March 6th in meadow, except that was thicker against wet. I look into many woodchucks’ holes, but as yet they are choked with leaves and there is no sign of their having come abroad. At evening the raw, overcast day concludes with snow and hail. Two pickerel caught in Flint’s Pond to-day weighed on the Mill-Dam to-night 72+ or nearly 8 pounds.

'Three inches of snow in the morning, and it snows a little more during the day, with occa- sional gleams of sunshine. Winter back again in pros- pect, and I see a few sparrows, probably tree sparrows, in the yard. P. M. — To Andromeda Ponds. At one of the holes under the stump of March 7th, caught a Mus leucopus (deer mouse). So this was the kind, undoubtedly, that fed on the moss, and that colored their droppings. It is in very good condition; extreme length six and a half, tail three inches. It is a less reddish brown on the sides and cheeks than my whole skin, and a darker brown above, mixed with a little reddish; no yellow tinge on breast. Some whiskers, as usual, are white, others black, and I count the “six tubercles on each palm.” There are no tracks about the stump, for they are not abroad by day, 7. e. since the last of this snow, but probably there will be tracks to-morrow morning. ‘Thus it is generally. If it ceases snowing in the morning, you see few, if any, tracks in your walk, but the next morning many. It is the first and last snows — especially the last — which blind us most, when the sun is most powerful and our eyes are unused to them. I observe the tracks of sparrows leading to every little sprig of blue-curls amid the other weeds which (its seemingly empty pitchers) rises above the snow. ‘There seems, however, to be a little seed left in them. This, then, is reason enough why these withered stems still stand, — that they may raise these granaries above the snow for the use of the snowbirds. That ice of February has destroyed almost the whole of Charles Hubbard’s young red maple swamp in front of the Hollowell place. Full an acre of thrifty young maples, as well as alders and birches four to seven feet high, is completely destroyed, being pulled and broken down (broken near the ground) as the ice sank after the water went down. It is all flat, and looks at a little distance as if one had gone through with a bush-whack and done his work faithfully. They [are] from half an inch to one inch thick, broken this wise: He has apparently con- cluded to = clear it. Only the taller birches, = etc., are left. I thought, as I approached, seeing some clumps still standing, all the rest flat on the ground, that without a doubt some one had been clearing the swamp, though I stood within a rod of it. Just as a snow-drift breaks down young fruit-trees. R. Rice tells me that a great many young white pines in a swamp of his in Sudbury have been barked, the bark rubbed down several inches completely bare by the ice. Thus the river from time to time asserts its authority over its swamps to a great distance.'

Jacob Farmer gave me to-day the foot of an otter, also of a fisher, —to put with my pine marten’s foot. He cut them off of recent furs in Boston. He sells about a hundred mink skins in a year. Thinks not more than thirty or forty are caught in Concord in a year. He says (I think) a mink’s skin is worth two dollars! They are sent to Europe to be worn there, not for hats. Foul weather all day, — at first a fine snow, and finally rain. Now, at 9 p. m., a clear sky. And so the storm which began evening of 13th ends. deeper are commonly broken higher up, three or four feet from the ground. This Mar. 19th. Vide Mar. 20th. As for the first half of this month, it began very plea- sant and warm (the latter third of February had been very clear and pleasant but colder), the river opening and ice beginning to soften; then on the 4th it became windy (northerly, east, or southwest), sometimes very cold and raw, occasionally rocking the house; the 9th a little warmer, storm threatening; the 10th, ground whitened with snow; and so it goes on, more or less raw till the snow of the 14th. Mr. Rice tells me that when he was getting mud out of the little swamp at the foot of Brister’s Hill last [a blank space left for the day], he heard a squeak- ing and found that he was digging near the nest of what he called a “field mouse,” — by his description probably the meadow mouse. It was made of grass, etc., and, while he stood over it, the mother, not regarding him, came and carried off the young, one by one, in her mouth, being gone some time in each case before she returned, and finally she took the nest itself. He saw a bluebird about a week ago in Sudbury, and [was] surprised to observe that it had a worm in its mouth, but I am not, for the ice and snow have been sprinkled with caterpillars of several kinds all the past winter.

Cloudy in the forenoon. Sun comes out and it is rather pleasant in the afternoon. P. M. — To Conantum End.

Saturday. H. Hosmer says he has seen black ducks. Edmund Hosmer’s meadow, 2. e. the Hunt house meadow, is covered with great pieces of meadow, the largest thick and dense cranberry meadow. It is piled three or four feet high for several rods. Higher up on the North Branch I see where the trees, espe- cially the swamp white oaks, have been chafed smooth and white by the ice (at that time), from the ground to three or four feet (six in some cases), as if scraped with a hoe, and the bushes all along the shore — wil- lows, alders, etc., etc. (blueberry swamps in some places) — have been more or less broken down. I hear the lesser redpolls yet. See now along the edge of the river, the ice being gone, many fresh heaps of clam- shells, which were opened by the musquash when the water was higher, about some tree where the ground rises. And very many places you see where they formed new burrows into the bank, the sand being pushed out into the stream about the entrance, which is still below water, and you feel the ground under- mined as you walk. White maple blossom-buds look as if bursting; show a rusty, fusty space, perhaps a sixteenth of an inch in width, over and above the regular six scales.” I see scraps of the evergreen ranunculus along the riverside.

Fair in the forenoon, but more or less cloudy and windy in the afternoon. ! The last. ? [There is an interrogation-point in the margin against this para- graph.]