Thoreau writes in his journal:
I heard, this forenoon, a pleasant jingling note from the slate-colored snow bird on the oaks in the sun on Minott’s hillside. Apparently they sing with us in the pleasantest days before they go northward. Minott thinks that the farmers formerly used their meadow-hay better, gave it more sun, so that the cattle liked it as well as the English now . . .
