There is a slight coolness in the air, yet the sun is occasionally very warm.

September 27.

September 27, 2014

The bluebird family revisit their box and warble as in spring. 

P. M. — To Clamshell by boat. 

Solidago speciosa not quite out!! 

Viburnum nudum berries are soon gone. I noticed none to speak of in Hubbard's Swamp, September 15th. 

Start up a snipe in the meadow. 

Bathed at Hubbard's Bath, but found the water very cold. Bathing about over. 

It is a very fine afternoon to be on the water, some what Indian-summer-like. I do not know what constitutes the peculiarity and charm of this weather; the broad water so smooth, notwithstanding the slight wind, as if, owing to some oiliness, the wind slid over without ruffling it. There is a slight coolness in the air, yet the sun is occasionally very warm. 

I am tempted to say that the air is singularly clear, yet I see it is quite hazy. Perhaps it is that transparency it is said to possess when full of moisture and before or after rain. Through this I see the colors of trees and shrubs beginning to put on their October dress, and the creak of the mole cricket sounds late along the shore. 

The Aster multiflorus may easily be confounded with the A. Tradescanti. Like it, it whitens the roadside in some places. It has purplish disks, but a less straggling top than the Tradescanti.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 27, 1856

The bluebird family revisit their box... See September 12, 1854 ("I see plump young bluebirds in small flocks along the fences . . .")

Viburnum nudum berries are soon gone. See September 3, 1856 ("Gather four or five quarts of Viburnum nudum berries, now in their prime, attracted more by the beauty of the cymes than the flavor of the fruit. The berries, which are of various sizes and forms, — elliptical, oblong, or globular, — are in different stages of maturity on the same cyme, and so of different colors, — green or white, rose-colored, and dark purple or black.")

Bathing about over. See  September 2, 1854 ("Bathe at Hubbard’s. The water is surprisingly cold . . .. It is a very important and remarkable autumnal change. It will not be warm again probably."); September 12, 1854 ("I find it colder again than on the 2d, so that I stay in but a moment."); September 26 1854 ("Took my last bath the 24th . Probably shall not bathe again this year. It was chilling cold.") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing

A very fine afternoon to be on the water, some what Indian-summer-like  See September 21, 1854 ("A fine-grained air, seething or shimmering as I look over the fields, reminds me of the Indian summer that is to come.")

The creak of the mole cricket sounds late along the shore.  See September 27, 1855 ("I traced the note of what I have falsely thought the Rana palustris, or cricket frog, to its true source [and] I found a mole cricket (Gryllotalpa brevipennis)."); August 22, 1856 ("The creak of the mole cricket is heard along the shore."); August 18, 1853 ("What means this sense of lateness that so comes over one now") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Cricket in August; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in Spring and "What Thoreau Heard in the Song of the Crickets" by Lewis Hyde, NYT Sept. 23, 2023.

The Aster multiflorus may easily be confounded with the A. Tradescanti.  See September 21, 1858 ("Saw no Aster Tradescanti in this walk, but an abundance of A. multiflorus in its prime, in Salem and Marblehead.")

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