MARCH SWALLOWS 239 



at this season ; and since we are talking of 

 dates, I note it as a coincidence that precisely 

 forty-two years ago (March 23, 1859), he 

 entered in his journal that he saw "come 

 slowly flying from the southwest a great gull, 

 of voracious form, which at length, by a 

 sudden and steep descent, alighted in Fair 

 Haven Pond [a wide place in the river], 

 scaring up a crow which was seeking its 

 food on the edge of the ice." Our bird, 

 also, made one " sudden and steep descent," 

 and picked from the ice some small, dark- 

 colored object, which at our distance might 

 have been a dead leaf. But if Thoreau saw 

 ducks and gulls, he saw no March swallows. 

 His earliest date for them, so far as the 

 printed journals show, seems to have been 

 April 5. 



The woods brought us nothing, beyond 

 a chickadee or two, but we were hardly 

 out of them before we heard the blue-jay 

 scream of a red-shouldered hawk, and pre- 

 sently saw first one bird and then another 

 (rusty shoulder and all) sailing above us. 

 A grand sight it is, a soaring and diving 

 hawk. May it never become less frequent. 



