A pasture thistle with many fresh flowers and bees on it.

October 11. 

October 11, 2014

P. M. — To Cliffs. 

The Indian summer continues. Solidagos now generally show woolly heads along the fences and brooks. 

E. Hosmer said yesterday that his father remembered when there was but one store in Concord, and that the little office attached to Dr. Heywood's house, kept by Beatton. I remember the old shutters with names of groceries on them. Perhaps, then, Jones was the only shopkeeper in his day. I was speaking of it to Farrar, the blacksmith, to-day, and he said, yes, he had heard his father speak of Beatton as "the most honestest man that ever was." When a child was sent to his store and he could not make change within half a penny he would stick a row of pins in the child's sleeve, enough to make all square. He said he had only a keg of molasses and a bladder of snuff when he began. 

Farrar thought that the spirit manufactured a century ago was not so adulterated and poisonous as that now made. He could remember when delirium tremens was very rare. There was Luke Dodge; he could remember him a drunkard for more than forty years, yet he was now between eighty and ninety. 

Broad-winged Hawk

Buteo platypterus

(Falco Pennsylvanicus)

Farrar gave me a wing and foot of a hawk which he shot about three weeks ago as he was sitting on a wood pile by the railroad, against R. W. E.'s lot. He called it a partridge hawk; said he was about as big as a partridge and his back of a similar color, and had not a white rump. This foot has a sharp shin and stout claws, but the wing is much larger than that of the Falco fuscus (or sharp-shinned hawk), being, with the shoulder attached, sixteen inches long, which would make the alar extent some thirty-three inches, which is the size of the F. Pennsylvanicus. This wing corresponds in its markings very exactly with the description of that, and I must so consider it. Peabody does not describe any such bird, and Nuttall describes it as very rare, — apparently he has not seen one, — and says that Wilson had seen only two. 

Bay-wing sparrows numerous. 

In the woods I hear the note of the jay, a metallic, clanging sound, some times a mew. Refer any strange note to him. 

The scent of decaying leaves after the wet fall is a very agreeable fragrance on all sides in the woods now, like a garret full of herbs. 

In the path, as I go up the hill beyond the springs, on the edge of Stow's sprout-land, I find a little snake which somebody has killed with his heel. It is apparently Coluber amamus, the red snake. Brown above, light-red beneath, about eight inches long, but the end of its tail is gone (only three quarters of an inch of it left). I count some one hundred and twenty-seven plates. It is a conspicuous light red beneath, then a bluish-gray line along the sides, and above this brown with a line of lighter or yellowish brown down the middle of the back. 

The sprout-land and stubble behind the Cliffs are all alive with restless flocks of sparrows of various species. I distinguish F. hyemalis, song sparrow, apparently F. juncorum or maybe tree sparrows,1 and chip-birds (?). They are continually flitting past and surging upward, two or more in pursuit of each other, in the air, where they break like waves, and pass along with a faint cheep. On the least alarm many will rise from a juniper bush on to a shrub oak above it, and, when all is quiet, return into the juniper, perhaps for its berries. It is often hard to detect them as they sit on the young trees, now beginning to be bare, for they are very nearly the color of the bark and are very cunning to hide behind the leaves. There are apparently two other kinds, one like purple finches, another more like large Savannah sparrows. 

The shrub oak plain is now in the perfection of its coloring, the red of young oaks with the green of spiring birches intermixed. A rich rug. 

It is perfect Indian summer, a thick haze forming wreaths in the near horizon. The sun is almost shorn of its rays now at mid-afternoon, and there is only a sheeny reflection from the river. 

The patches of huckleberries on Conantum are now red. 

Here on the Cliffs are fresh poke flowers and small snapdragon and corydalis. 

The white goldenrod is still common here, and covered with bees.

Hieracium venosum still. 

I see pretty dense spreading radical leaves about the pinweeds, apparently recent.

A cuckoo is heard.

I find that the rough, white, crystalled-surfaced pigeon-egg fungus (one was noticed in report of October 5th) are puffballs. The outer thick white coat peels off first. I see it so now, but not in segments like the stellata. 

A pasture thistle with many fresh flowers and bees on it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 11, 1856

Bay-wing sparrows numerous. See April 15, 1859 (“The bay-wing now sings — the first I have been able to hear ”); October 9, 1858 (“Bay-wings flit along road.”); ;October 12, 1859 ("I see scattered flocks of bay-wings amid the weeds and on the fences.") October 16, 1855 ("I look at a grass-bird on a wall in the dry Great Fields. There is a dirty-white or cream-colored line above the eye and another from the angle of the mouth beneath it and a white ring close about the eye. The breast is streaked with this creamy white and dark brown in streams, as on the cover of a book.") A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bay-Wing Sparrow

Luke Dodge [was] a drunkard for more than forty years, yet he was now between eighty and ninety. See May 4, 1856 ("Was surprised to hear him say, “I am in my eighty-third year.”  . . It is encouraging to know that a man may fish and paddle in this river in his eighty-third year.")

Hieracium venosum still. See October 2, 1852 ("The veiny-leaved hawkweed in blossom (again?)")

Posting the east line this year (2016) in the dark we again lose the connection somewhere between Kendall pond and Clifford Corner but without the emotion. this was two years ago:

 We separate and i go to the saddle trail, again losing the connection.  Jane goes to clifford corner then west to the Moose trail. The dogs roam back and forth between us. Evening comes and i have Loki, and jane has Buda. I get to the view just after sunset. The pond is reflecting saffron light brighter than the sky. I sit with the view and sky for perhaps half an hour until Jane comes with her extra headlamp for me. 20141011

Just after sunset
the pond reflects saffron light
brighter than the sky.

zphx