The chickadees resume their winter ways before the winter comes.

October 15

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

A smart frost, which even injured plants in house. Ground stiffened in morning; ice seen. 

River lower than for some months. Banks begin to wear almost a Novemberish aspect.

The black willow almost completely bare; many quite so. It loses its leaves about same time with the maples. 

The large ferns are now rapidly losing their leaves except the terminal tuft. Other species about the edges of swamps were turned suddenly dark cinnamon-color by the frost of yesterday. 

The water is very calm and full of reflections. Large fleets of maple and other leaves are floating on its surface as I go up the Assabet, leaves which apparently came down in a shower with yesterday morning's frost. Every motion of the turtles is betrayed by their rustling now.

Mikania is all whitish woolly now. Yet many tortoises are still out in the sun. 

An abundance of checkerberries by the hemlock at V. Muhlenbergii Brook. A remarkable year for berries. Even this, too, is abundant like the rest. They are tender and more palatable than ever now. I find a little pile of them, maybe fifteen or twenty, on the moss with each a little indentation or two on it, made apparently by some bird or beast. 

The chickadees are hopping near on the hemlock above. They resume their winter ways before the winter comes. 

A great part of the hemlock seeds fallen.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 15, 1856

A smart frost . . .  Ground stiffened in morning; ice seen.  See October 15, 1853 ("Last night the first smart frost that I have witnessed. Ice formed under the pump, and the ground was white long after sunrise."); October 15, 1853 ("And now . . .how the leaves come down in showers after this touch of the frost! "); See also  October 16, 1856 ("Ground all white with frost."); October 17, 1851 ("A severe frost this morning, which puts us one remove further from summer"); October 17, 1859 ("A smart frost this morning. Ground stiffened. Hear of ice in a tub.")

Large fleets of maple and other leaves. . .came down in a shower with yesterday morning's frost.  See October 15, 1853 (“[H]ow the leaves come down in showers after this touch of the frost!.”);   October 15, 1857 (“There has been a great fall of leaves in the night on account of this moist and rainy weather”) See also October 13, 1860 ("Now, as soon as the frost strips the maples, and their leaves strew the swamp floor and conceal the pools"); October22,1854 (“Pretty hard frosts these nights. Many leaves fell last night, and the Assabet is covered with their fleets.”)

The chickadees . . .resume their winter ways before the winter comes. See October 15, 1859 (The chickadees sing as if at home. They are not travelling singers hired by any Barnum. Theirs is an honest, homely, heartfelt melody.""). See also  October 11, 1851 ("The chickadee, sounding all alone, now that birds are getting scarce, reminds me of the winter, in which it almost alone is heard.”); October 13, 1860 ("Now, as soon as the frost strips the maples, and their leaves strew the swamp floor and conceal the pools, the note of the chickadee sounds cheerfully winterish.”); October 17, 1856 (" I heard a smart tche-day-day-day close to my ear, and, looking up, see four of these birds, which had come to scrape acquaintance with me, hopping amid the alders within three and four feet of me. I had heard them further off at first, and they had followed me along the hedge. They day-day 'd and lisp their faint notes alternately, and then, as if to make me think they had some other errand than to peer at me, they peck the dead twigs with their bills — the little top-heavy, black-crowned, volatile fellows.")

 

The chickadee

Hops near to me.

November 8, 1857

November 9, 1850 ("The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer and nearer inquisitively, from pine bough to pine bough, till within four or five feet, occasionally lisping a note.”); December 1, 1853 (“[T]he little chickadees . . . inquisitively hop nearer and nearer to me. They are our most honest and innocent little bird, drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances, and deserve best of any of the walker.”) and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

A great part of the hemlock seeds fallen. See October 13, 1859 ("The hemlock seed is now in the midst of its fall, some of it, with the leaves, floating on the river."); October 31, 1853 ("The hemlock seeds are apparently ready to drop from their cones.”); November 1, 1853 ("Showers of their fresh winged seeds come wafted down")

October 15. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, October 15

Chickadees hop near –

they resume their winter ways 

before winter comes.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Chickadees resume their winter ways

 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 ©  2009-2025

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