I see some gossamer on the weeds above the ice. Also, in now hard, dark ice, the tracks apparently of a fox, made when it was saturated snow. So long his trail is revealed, but over the pastures no hound can now trace him. There has been much overflow about every tussock in the meadow, making that rough, opaque ice, like yeast. I mark the many preparations for another year which the farmer has made, - his late plowings, his muck-heaps in fields, perhaps of grass, which he intends to plow and cultivate, his ditches to carry off the winter’s floods, etc. How placid, like silver or like steel in different lights, the surface of the still, living water between these borders of ice, reflecting the weeds and trees, and now the warm colors of the sunset sky! The ice is that portion of the flood which is congealed and laid up in our fields for a season.
P. M. - To Pink Azalea Woods.
The warm sun has quite melted the thin snow on the south sides of the hills, but I go to see the tracks of animals that have been out on the north sides. First, getting over the wall under the walnut trees on the south brow of the hill, I see the broad tracks of squirrels, probably red, where they have ascended and descended the trees, and the empty shells of walnuts which they have gnawed left on the snow. The snow is so very shallow that the impression of their toes is the more distinctly seen. It imparts life to the landscape to see merely the squirrels’ track in the snow at the base of the walnut tree. You almost realize a squirrel at every tree. The attractions of nature are thus condensed or multiplied. You see not merely bare trees and ground which you might suspect that a squirrel had left, but you have this unquestionable and significant evidence that a squirrel has been there since the snow fell, - as conclusive as if you had seen him.
Sanborn tells me that he was waked up a few nights ago in Boston, about midnight, by the sound of a flock of geese passing over the city, probably about the same night I heard them here. They go honking over cities where the arts flourish, waking the inhabitants; over State-houses and capitols, where legislatures sit; over harbors where fleets lie at anchor; mistaking the city, perhaps, for a swamp or the edge of a lake, about settling in it, not suspecting that greater geese than they have settled there.
A still, completely gray, overcast, chilly morning. At 8:30 a fine snow begins to fall, increasing very gradually, perfectly straight down, till in fifteen minutes the ground is white, the smooth places first, and thus the winter landscape is ushered in. And now it is falling thus all the land over, sifting down through the tree-tops in woods, and on the meadow and pastures, where the dry grass and weeds conceal it at first, and on the river and ponds, in which it is dissolved. But in a few minutes it turns to rain, and so the wintry landscape is postponed for the present.
I affect what would commonly be called a mean and miserable way of living. I thoroughly sympathize with all savages and gypsies in so far as they merely assert the original right of man to the productions of Nature and a place in her. The Irishman moves into the town, sets up a shanty on the railroad land, and then gleans the dead wood from the neighboring forest, which would never get to market. But the so-called owner forbids it and complains of him as a trespasser. The highest law gives a thing to him who can use it.
First frost in our garden. Passed in boat within fifteen feet of a great bittern, standing perfectly still in the water by the riverside, with the point of its bill directly up, as if it knew that from the color of its throat, etc., it was much less likely to be detected in that position, near weeds.
In Dennis’s field this side the river, I count about one hundred and fifty cowbirds about eight cows, running before their noses and in odd positions, awkwardly walking with a straddle, often their heads down and tails up a long time at once, occasionally flying to keep up with a cow, over the heads of the others, and following off after a single cow. They keep close to the cow’s head and feet, and she does not mind them; but when all went off in a whirring (rippling?) flock at my approach, the cow (about whom they were all gathered) looked off after them for some time, as if she felt deserted.
Rode to North Truro very early in the stage or covered wagon, on the new road, which is just finished as far as East Harbor Creek. Blackfish on the shore. Walked from post-office to lighthouse. Fog till eight or nine, and short grass very wet. Board at James Small’s, the lighthouse, at $3.50 the week.
Polygala polygama well out, flat, ray-wise, all over the fields. Cakile Americana, sea-rocket, the large weed of the beach, some time and going to seed, on beach. Pasture thistle (Cirsium pumilum), out some time. A great many white ones. The boy, Isaac Small, got eighty bank swallows’ eggs out of the clay-bank, i. e. above the clay. Small says there are a few great gulls here in summer. I see small (?) yellow-legs. Many crow blackbirds in the dry fields hopping about. Upland plover near the lighthouse breeding. Small once cut off one’s wing when mowing in the field next the lighthouse as she sat on her eggs. Many seringo-birds, apparently like ours. They say mackerel have just left the Bay, and fishermen have gone to the eastward for them. Some, however, are catching cod and halibut on the back side. Cape measures two miles in width here on the great chart.
Saturday. The cherry-bird’s egg was a satin color, or very pale slate, with an internal or what would be called black-and-blue ring about large end.
P. M. - To Hubbard’s Grove, on river.
A sparrow’s nest with four gray eggs in bank beyond ivy tree. Four catbirds half fledged in the green-briar near bathing-place, hung three feet from ground.
Examined a kingbird’s nest found before (13th) in a black willow over edge of river, four feet from ground. Two eggs. West of oak in Hubbard’s meadow. Catbird’s nest in an alder, three feet from ground, three fresh eggs.
See young and weak striped squirrels nowadays, with slender tails, asleep on horizontal boughs above their holes, or moving feebly about; might catch them. Redstarts in the swamp there. Also see there a blue yellow-green-backed warbler, with an orange breast and throat, white belly and vent, and forked tail - indigo-blue head, etc.
Ground-nut, how long?
A painted tortoise just burying three flesh-colored eggs in the dry, sandy plain near the thrasher’s nest. It leaves no trace on the surface. Find near by four more about this business. When seen they stop stock-still in whatever position, and stir not nor make any noise, just as their shells may happen to be tilted up.
Rained in the night. Awake to see the ground white with snow, and it is still snowing, the sleet driving from the north at an angle of certainly not more than thirty or thirty-five degrees with the horizon, as I judge by its course across the windowpanes. By mid-afternoon the rain has so far prevailed that the ground is bare. As usual, this brings the tree sparrows and F. hyemalis into the yard again.
