From Fair Haven Hill the air is clear and fine-grained, and now it is a perfect russet November landscape.

November 13.

In mid-forenoon, seventy or eighty geese, in three harrows successively smaller, flying southwest—pretty well west—over the house. A completely overcast, occasionally drizzling forenoon. 

I at once heard their clangor and rushed to and opened the window. The three harrows were gradually formed into one great one before they were out of sight, the geese shifting their places without slacking their progress. 

P. M. —— To Cardinal Shore. 

Going over Swamp Bridge Brook at 3 P. M., I saw in the pond by the roadside, a few rods before me, the sun shining bright, a mink swimming, the whole length of his back out. It was a rich brown fur, glowing internally as the sun fell on it, like some ladies’ boas, not black, as it sometimes appears, especially on ice. 

It landed within three rods, showing its long, some what cat-like neck, and I observed was carrying some thing by its mouth, dragging it overland. At first I thought it a fish, maybe an eel, and when it had got half a dozen feet, I ran forward, and it dropped its prey and went into the wall. 

It was a muskrat, the head and part of the fore legs torn off and gone, but the rest still fresh and quite heavy, including hind legs and tail. It had probably killed this muskrat in the brook, eaten so much, and was dragging the remainder to its retreat in the wall. 

A fine clear afternoon after the misty morning and heavy rain of the night. Even after all this rain I see the streaming lines of gossamer from trees and fences. 

From Fair Haven Hill the air is clear and fine-grained, and now it is a perfect russet November landscape, —including the reddish brown of the oaks, excepting where the winter-rye fields and some low meadows show' their green, the former quite bright, and also the evergreen patches of pines, edged in the northwest by the blue mountain ridges. 

Got the wood thrush’s (?) nest of November 5th. It is about five inches [in] diameter from outside to outside, and two and a half within. Outside of some weedy tufts (beneath), weed stems and stubble (some dry galium stems, small), and lined with a little fine grass and horsehair. I found the egg partly concealed by some dry alder leaves which had fallen into the nest.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 13, 1855

It was a rich brown fur, glowing internally as the sun fell on it, like some ladies’ boas, not black.  See December 2, 1852 ("Above the bridge . . .we see a mink, slender, black”); November 27, 1855 ("A mink skin which he showed me was a darker brown than the one I saw last (he says they changed suddenly to darker about a fortnight since); and the tail was nearly all black.”)

Nest of November 5th: (" A nest made very thick, of grass and stubble, and lined with finer grass and horsehair, as big as a king bird’s, on an alder, within eighteen inches of ground, close to the water, at Cardinal Shore. The alder had been broken down at that height by the ice, and the nest rested-on the stub ends. I took a few dead leaves out and to my surprise found an egg—very pale greenish-blue.”)

Even after all this rain I see the streaming lines of gossamer from trees and fences. See November 7, 1855 ("gossamer on the grass. . . revealed by the dewy mist which has collected on it.”) See also November 19, 1853 (“This, too, is a gossamer day, though it is not particularly calm.”); November 1, 1860 ("Gossamer on the withered grass is shimmering in the fields,”); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days