A clear, cold, as well as frosty, morning. I have to walk with my hands in my pockets. Hear a faint chip, probably from a tree sparrow, which I do not see in the garden.

  The notes of one or two small birds, this cold morning, in the now comparatively leafless woods, sound like a nail dropped on an anvil, or a glass pendant tinkling against its neighbor. The sun now rises far southward I see westward the earliest sunlight on the reddish oak leaves and the pines. The former appear to get more than their share. flow soon the sun gets above the hills, as if he would accomplish his whole diurnal journey in a few hours . . .

  P.M.—To Conantum by boat, nutting . . .

  finder the warm south side of Bittern Cliff, where I moor my boat, I hear one cricket singing loudly and untdauntedly still, in the warm rock-side . . .