184 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



The sun has shone for a day over this savage swamp, 

 where the single spruce ^ stands covered with usnea 

 moss, which a Concord merchant mortgaged once to 

 the trustees of the ministerial fund and lost, but now 

 for a different race of creatures a new day dawns over 

 this wilderness, which one would have thought was suf- 

 ficiently dismal before. Here hawks also circle by day, 

 and chickadees are heard, and rabbits and partridges 

 abound. 



Nov. 25, 1851. When surveying in the swamp on 

 the 20th last, at sundown, I heard the owls. Hosmer^ 

 said : " If you ever minded it, it is about the surest sign 

 of rain that there is. Don't you know that last Friday 

 night you heard them and spoke of them, and the next 

 day it rained ? " This time there were other signs of rain 

 in abundance. "But night before last," said I, "when 

 you were not here, they hooted louder than ever, and we 

 have had no rain yet." At any rate, it rained hard the 

 21st, and by that rain the river was raised much higher 

 than it has been this fall. 



Feb. 3, 1852. My owl sounds hob hob hob^ hob.^ 

 May 1, 1852. When leaving the woods * I heard the 

 hooting of an owl, which sounded very much like a 

 clown calling to his team. 



^ [An old name for the white spruce. Thoreau afterwards learned that 

 he had been mistaken as to the identification and that the Concord trees 

 •were hlack spruces.] 



2 [Mr. Joseph Hosmer, an old citizen of Concord, who was helping 

 Thoreau in his surveying'.] 



' [This was at the cliffs of Fairhaven Hill near Walden Pond on a 

 moonlight evening.] 



* [Near Walden Pond.] 



