Near Flint's Pond.

October 26. 

October 26, 2023

This is the season of the fall when the leaves are whirled through the air like flocks of birds, the season of birch spangles, when you see afar a few clear-yellow leaves left on the tops of the birches.

I am overtaken by a sudden thunder-shower.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 26, 1860

This is the season of the fall when the leaves are whirled through the air like flocks of birds.  See November 11, 1859 ("October 24th, riding home from Acton, I saw the withered leaves blown from an oak by the roadside dashing off, gyrating, and surging upward into the air, so exactly like a flock of birds sporting with one another that, for a minute at least, I could not be sure they were not birds.")

Birch spangles. See October 26, 1857 (“Yellowish leaves still adhere to the very tops of the birches.”); See also May 17, 1852 ("The birch leaves are so small that you see the landscape through the tree, and they are like silvery and green spangles in the sun, fluttering about the tree."); May 17, 1854 ("the wooded shore is all lit up with the tender, bright green of birches fluttering in the wind and shining in the light, "); October 22, 1855 ("I see at a distance the scattered birch-tops, like yellow flames amid the pines,"); October 22, 1858 ("The birches are now but thinly clad and that at top, its flame shaped top more like flames than ever now. . . little cones or crescents of golden spangles."); October 28, 1854 (“Birches, which began to change and fall so early, are still in many places yellow.”); October 29, 1858 ("The birch has now generally dropped its golden spangles.")

See also full entry for Oct  26, 1860:  P. M. – To Baker ' s old chestnut lot near Flint ' s Pond . .  .

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