To Tommy Wheeler's lot.

November 4.

As I go over John Hosmer's High Level, there being considerable wind, I notice for the first time that peculiar blueness of the river agitated by the wind and contrasting with the tawny fields, a fall phenomenon.

White birch seed has but recently begun to fall. I see a quarter of an inch of many catkins bare. May have begun for a week. To-day also I see distinctly the tree sparrows, and probably saw them, as supposed, some days ago. Thus the birch begins to shed its seed about the time our winter birds arrive from the north.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 4, 1860

White birch seed has but recently begun to fall. See November 4, 1853 ("The fertile catkins of the yellow birch appear to be in the same state with those of the white . . .”)