March 14

Threatening rain after clear morning.

Great concert of song sparrows in willows and alders along Swamp Bridge Brook by river. Hardly hear a distinct strain. Couples chasing each other, and some tree sparrows with them.

R. W. E. saw a small bird in the woods yesterday which reminded him of the parti-colored warbler.

To Great Meadows.
Raw thickening mists, as if preceding rain. Counted over forty robins with my glass in the meadow north of Sleepy Hollow, in the grass and on the snow. A large company of fox-colored sparrows in Heywood's maple swamp close by. I heard their loud, sweet, canary-like whistle thirty or forty rods off.

From within the house at 5.30 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. (1854)

Three inches of snow in the morning, and it snows a little more during the day, with occasional gleams of sunshine. Winter back again in prospect, 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, i.e. since the last of this snow, but probably there will be tracks tomorrow 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. (1855)

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