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  Finger-cold and windy. The sweet-flags showed themselves about in the pads. Hear Maryland yellow-throat. Many grackles still in flocks singing on trees, male and female, the latter a very dark or black ash, but with silvery eye. I suspect the red-wings are building. Large white maples began to leaf yesterday at least, generally; one now shows considerably across the river. The aspen is earlier . . .

  A crow’s nest near the top of a pitch pine about twenty feet high, just completed, betrayed by the birds’ cawing and alarm. As on the 5th, one came and sat on a bare oak within forty feet, cawed, reconnoitred; and then both flew off to a distance, while I discovered and climbed to the nest . . .

  P.M.—To Lee’s Cliff via Hubbard’s Bath.

  Viola cucullata apparently a day or two. A lady-bug and bumblebee, the last probably some time. A lily wholly above water, and yellow, in Skull-Cap Meadow, ready to open . . .

  2 P.M.—To bear-berry on Major Heywood road . . .

  I hear the evergreen-forest note close by; and hear and sec many myrtle-birds, at the same time that I hear what I have called the black and white creeper’s note. Have I ever confounded them?

  Over the edge of Miles’s mill-pond, now running off, bumblebee goes humming over the dry brush . . .

  Small pewee, and methinks, a golden robin? (Journal, 9:358).

  Cousin Charles says that he drove Grandmother over to Weston the 2d of May; on the 3d it snowed and he rode about there in a sleigh; on the 4th and the 5th, when he returned in a chaise to Concord, it was considered dangerous on account of the drifts . . .

  P.M.—To Assabet by Tarbell’s . . .

  P.M.—To Assabet stone bridge . . .

  Met old Mr. Conant with his eye and half the side of his face black and blue, looking very badly. He said he had been jerked down on to the barn-floor by a calf some three weeks old which he was trying to lead. The strength of calves is remarkable . . .

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  From there we looked over the lower land and westward to the Jenkins house and Wachusett; the latter to-day a very faint blue, almost lost in the atmosphere. Entering Wayland, the sluggish country town, C. remarked that we might take the town if we had a couple of oyster-knives. We marvelled as usual at the queer-looking building which C. thought must be an engine-house, but which a boy told us was occupied as a shoemaker’s shop but was built for a library. C. was much amused here by a bigger schoolboy whom we saw on the common, one of those who stretch themselves on the back seats and can chew up a whole newspaper into a spitball to plaster the wall with when the master’s back is turned; made considerable fun of him, and thought this the event of Wayland. Soon got to a country new to us, in Wayland, opposite to Pelham or Heard’s Pond . . .

  Close by we found Long Pond, in Wayland, Framingham, and Natick, a great body of water with singularly sandy, shelving, caving, undermined banks; and there we ate our luncheon. The mayflower leaves we saw there, and the Viola pedata in blossom. We went down it a mile or two on the east side through the woods on its high bank, and then dined, looking far down to what seemed the Boston outlet (opposite to its natural outlet), where a solitary building stood on the shore . . .

  Returned by the south side of Dudley Pond, which looked fairer than ever, though smaller,—now so still, the afternoon somewhat advanced, Nobscot in the west in a purplish light, and the scalloped peninsula before us . . .

  At Nonesuch Pond, in Natick, we saw a boulder some thirty-two feet square by sixteen high, with a large rock leaning against it,—under which we walked,—forming a triangular frame, through which we beheld the picture of the pond. How many white men and Indians have passed under it! Boulder Pond! Thence across lots by the Weston elm, to the bounds of Lincoln at the railroad. Saw a delicate fringed purple flower, Gentiana crinita, between those Weston hills, in a meadow, and after on higher land.

  C kept up an incessant strain of wit, banter, about my legs, which were so springy and unweariable, declared I had got my double legs on, that they were not cork but steel, that I should let myself to Van Amburgh, should have them sent to the World’s Fair, etc., etc.; wanted to know if I could not carry my father Anchises.

  The sun sets while we are perched on a high rock in the north of Weston. It soon grows finger cold. At Walden are three reflections of the bright full (or nearly) moon, one moon and two sheens further off.

  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 . . .