Signs of the season

August 15.

That clear ring like an alder locust (is it a cricket ?) for some time past is a sound which belongs to the season. Birds fly in flocks.

I see a dense, compact flock of bobolinks going off in the air over a field. They cover the rails and alders, and go rustling off with a brassy, tinkling note as I approach, revealing their yellow breasts and bellies. This is an autumnal sight, that small flock of grown birds in the afternoon sky.

Now a sudden gust of wind blows from the northwest, cooled by a storm there, blowing the dust from roads far over the fields.

Elder-berry ripe. 

Some naked viburnum berries are quite dark purple amid the red, while other bunches are wholly green yet. 

The red choke-berry is small and green still. I plainly distinguish it, also, by its woolly under side. 

Some cranberries turned red on one cheek along the edges of the meadows. 

The swamp blackberry begins.

See a blue heron on the meadow.

In E. Hubbard's swamp I gather some large and juicy and agreeable rum cherries. They are much finer than the small ones on large trees; quite a good fruit. The birds make much account of them.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 15, 1852

That clear ring like an alder locust (is it a cricket ?) See August 4, 1856 ( "Have heard the alder cricket some days. The turning-point is reached."); August 9, 1857 ("Hear the shrilling of my alder locust."); August 11, 1852 ("The autumnal ring of the alder locust."); August 13, 1860 ("Hear the steady shrill of the alder locust"); August 18, 1856 ("I hear the steady shrilling of . . .the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound. . . . It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy,")

That small flock of grown birds in the afternoon sky. See August 9, 1857 ("I see the blackbirds flying in flocks."): . August 15, 1854 ("I see large flocks of bobolinks on the Union Turnpike");August 16, 1858 ("I hear . . . the link of many bobolinks (and see large flocks on the fences and weeds; they are largish-looking birds with yellow throats) . . .Channing tells me that he saw a white bobolink in a large flock of them to-day."); August 19, 1853 ("Flocks of bobolinks go tinkling along about the low willows.") August 19, 1852 ("The small fruits of most plants are now generally ripe or ripening, and this is coincident with the flying in flocks of such young birds now grown as feed on them"); August 26, 1859 ("Bobolinks fly in flocks more and more.") A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bobolink

Some naked viburnum berries are quite dark purple amid the red, while other bunches are wholly green yet. See August 25, 1854 ("The Viburnum nudum berries, in various stages, — green, deep-pink, and also deep-blue, not purple or ripe, — are very abundant at Shadbush Meadow. They appear to be now in their prime and are quite sweet, but have a large seed. Interesting for the various colors on the same bush and in the same cluster.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Viburnum lentago  (nannyberry)

See a blue heron on the meadow.  See  August 15, 1860 ("See a blue heron.") See also   August 12, 1853 ("See the blue herons opposite Fair Haven Hill, as if they had bred here."); August 14, 1859 ("You have not seen our weedy river, you do not know the significance of its weedy bars, until you have seen the blue heron wading and pluming itself on it");  August 19, 1858  ("The blue heron has within a week reappeared in our meadows")  and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Blue Heron

An autumnal sight

that small flock of grown birds in

the afternoon sky.