I come out to hear a spring bird, the ground generally covered with snow yet and the channel of the river only partly open. On the Rill I hear first the tapping of a small woodpecker. I then see a bird alight on the dead top of the highest white oak on the hilltop, on the topmost point. It is a shrike . . .

  A lady tells me that she saw, last Cattle-Show Day, — — putting up a specimen of hairwork in a frame (by his niece) in the exhibition hall . . .

  P.M.—To Ministerial Swamp.

  I hear of two who saw bluebirds this morning, and one says he saw one yesterday. This seems to have been the day of their general arrival here, but I have not seen one in Concord yet.

  It is a good plan to go to some old orchard on the south side of a hill, sit down, and listen, especially in the morning when all is still. You can thus often hear the distant warble of some bluebird lately arrived, which, if you had been walking, would not have been audible to you. As I walk, these first mild spring days, with my coat thrown open, stepping over tinkling rills of melting snow, excited by the sight of the bare ground, especially the reddish subsoil, where it is exposed by a cutting, and by the few green radical leaves, I stand still, shut my eyes, and listen from time to time, in order to hear the note of some bird of passage just arrived . . .