Thoreau writes in his journal:
P.M.—To E. Hosmcr Spring. Down Turnpike and back by E. Hubbard’s Close.
We stood still a few moments on the Turnpike below Wright’s (the Turnpike, which had no wheel-track beyond Tuttle’s and no track at all beyond Wright’s), and listened to hear a spring bird. We heard only the jay screaming in the distance and the cawing of a crow. What a perfectly New England sound is this voice of the crow! . . .
C. [William Ellery Channing] thinks this is called a sap snow, because it comes after the sap begins to flow . . .