Now, then, spring is beginning again in earnest after this short check . . . I no sooner step out of the house than I hear the bluebirds in the air, and far and near, everywhere except in the woods, throughout the town you may hear them . . . Everywhere also, all over the town, within an hour or two have come out little black two-winged gnats with plumed or fuzzy shoulders. When I catch one in my hands, it looks like [a] bit of black silk ravelling. I hear the chuck, chuck of a blackbird in the sky, whom I cannot detect . . . And there’s the great gull I came to see, already fishing in front of Bittern Cliff . . . The ice in Fair Haven is more than half melted . . .

  Hearing a faint quack, I looked up and saw two apparently dusky ducks winging their swift way northward over the course of the river. [William Ellery] Channing says he saw some large white-breasted ducks to-day, and also a frog. I have seen dead frogs, as if killed while dormant.