March 1

9 A.M. To Flint's Pond via Walden, by railroad and the crust. I hear the hens cackle as not before for many months. Are they not now beginning to lay? The catkins of the. willow by the causeway and of the aspens appear to have pushed out a little further than a month ago. I see the down of half a dozen on that willow by the causeway; on the aspens pretty generally.

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.

At Flint's I find half a dozen fishing . The pond cracks a very little while I am there, say at half past ten. I think I never saw the ice so thick. It measures just two feet thick in shallow water, twenty rods from shore.

Goodwin says that somewhere where he lived they called cherry-birds "port-royals."

Haynes of Sudbury brought some axe-helves which he had been making to Smith's shop to sell today. Those made by hand are considered stronger than those which arc turned, because their outline conforms to the grain. They told him they had not sold any of the last yet . "Well," said he, "you may depend on it you will. They've got to come after them yet, for they haven't been able to get into the woods this winter on account of the snow, and they 'll have to do all their chopping this month." (1856)

Here is our first spring morning according to the almanac. It is remarkable that the spring of the almanac and of nature should correspond so closely. The morning of the 26th was good winter, but there came a plentiful rain in the afternoon, and yesterday and to-day are quite springlike. This morning the air is still, and, though clear enough, a yellowish light is widely diffused throughout the east, now just after sunrise. The sunlight looks and feels warm, and a fine vapor fills the lower atmosphere. I hear the phoebe or spring note of the chickadee, and the scream of the jay is perfectly repeated by the echo from a neighboring wood. For some days past the surface of the earth, covered with water, or with ice where the snow is washed off, has shone in the sun as it does only at the approach of spring, methinks. And are not the frosts in the morning more like the early frosts in the fall - common white frosts? (1854)

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