Flocks of small sparrows

October 10

October 10, 2023

This morning it is very pleasant and warm. 

There are many small birds in flocks on the elms in Cheney's field, faintly warbling, – robins and purple finches and especially large flocks of small sparrows, which make a business of washing and pruning themselves in the puddles in the road, as if cleaning up after a long flight and the wind of yesterday. 

The faint suppressed warbling of the robins sounds like a reminiscence of the spring. 

Cooler and windy at sunset, and the elm leaves come down again.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 10, 1853

The elm leaves come down again. See October 10, 1852 ("The streets are strewn with elm leaves.") See also September 29, 1854 ("The elm leaves have in some places more than half fallen and strew the ground with thick rustling beds"); October 1, 1858 ("The elms are now great brownish-yellow masses hanging over the street. . . .The harvest of elm leaves is come, or at hand.");`October 7, 1852 (" Now is the time to behold . . .in the village, the warm brownish-yellow elms"); October 9, 1857 ("The elms are now at the height of their change. As I look down our street, which is lined with them, now clothed in their very rich brownish-yellow dress, they remind me of yellowing sheaves of grain, as if the harvest had come to the village itself"); October 12, 1852 (" The elms in the village,  losing their leaves, reveal the birds' nests.”)

Flocks of small sparrows, which make a business of washing and pruning themselves in the puddles in the road. See September 26, 1858 (“Now is the time, too, when flocks of sparrows begin to scour over the weedy fields,”); October 2, 1858 ("The garden is alive with migrating sparrows these mornings."); October 3, 1860 ("I have seen and heard sparrows in flocks, more as if flitting by, within a week, or since the frosts began."); October 4, 1859 (“Birds are now seen more numerously than before,. . . probably many migrating birds from the north.”); October 5, 1858 (“I still see large flocks, apparently of chip birds, on the weeds and ground in the yard.”); October 8, 1856 (“The trees and weeds by the Turnpike are all alive this pleasant afternoon with twittering sparrows ”) and March 31, 1852("These migrating sparrows all bear messages that concern my life." )

The faint suppressed warbling of the robins sounds like a reminiscence of the spring. See October 10, 1851 ("There are many things to indicate the renewing of spring at this season"); and note to October 10, 1856 ("Indian summer itself is a similar renewal of the year, with the faint warbling of birds and second blossoming of flowers.") See also April 2, 1854 ("Sitting on the rail over the brook, I hear something which reminds me of the song of the robin in rainy days in past springs. Why is it that not the note itself, but something which reminds me of it, should affect me most?"); Walden, Spring ("I heard a robin in the distance, the first I had heard for many a thousand years, methought, whose note I shall not forget for many a thousand more . . . If I could ever find the twig he sits upon! I mean he; I mean the twig.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting

Cooler and windy at sunset, and the elm leaves come down again. See October 10, 1851 ("The elms in the village have lost many of their leaves, and their shadows by moonlight are not so heavy as last month.")

October 10.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  October 10

 

Flocks of small sparrows

washing and pruning themselves

after a long flight.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Flocks of small sparrows

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-531010