How beautifully they die, making cheerfully their annual contribution to the soil!

October 16. 

Friday. P. M. — Up Assabet. 

It clears up entirely by noon, having been cloudy in the forenoon, and is as warm as before now. I stop a while at Cheney's shore to hear an incessant musical twittering from a large flock of young goldfinches which have dull-yellow and drab and black plumage, on maples, etc., while the leaves are falling. Young birds can hardly restrain themselves, and if they did not leave us, might perchance burst forth into song in the later Indian summer days.

I see dwarf cornel leaves on the hemlock bank, some green, some bright crimson. 

The onoclea has faded whiter still. 

Hemlock leaves are falling now faster than ever, and the trees are more parti-colored. The falling leaves look pale-yellow on the trees, but become reddish on the ground. 

The large poplar (P. grandidentata) is now at the height of its change, – clear yellow, but many leaves have fallen. 

The ostrya still holds its leaves. It is about the color of the elm at its height. 

I see red oaks now turned various colors, – red-brown or yellow-brown or scarlet-brown, – not commonly bright. 

The swamp white are greener yet. 

Melvin is fishing for pickerel. Thinks this the best day for fishing we have had this long time; just wind enough. Says there are some summer ducks up the stream, the same I saw here the other day. Thinks they are here after acorns. He once caught seven summer ducks by baiting his steel traps with acorns under water. They dove for them, and he caught them by the neck. He saw yesterday a green chestnut bur on the Great Meadows (now bare), fifty rods from the Holt. Could not tell how it came there. 

Am surprised to find an abundance of witch-hazel, now at the height of its change, where S. Wheeler cut off, at the bend of the Assabet. The tallest bushes are bare, though in bloom, but the lowest are full of leaves, many of them green, but chiefly clear and handsome yellow of various shades, from a pale lemon in the shade or within the bush to a darker and warmer yellow with out. Some are even a hue of crimson; some green, with bright yellow along the veins. 

This reminds me that, generally, plants exposed turn early, or not at all, while the same species in the shade of the woods at a much later date assume very pure and delicate tints, as more withdrawn from the light. 

You notice now many faded, almost white dicksonia ferns, and some brakes about as white. 

A great part of the pine-needles have just fallen. See the carpet of pale-brown needles under this pine. How light it lies up on the grass, and that great rock, and the wall, resting thick on its top and its shelves, and on the bushes and underwood, hanging lightly! They are not yet flat and reddish, but a more delicate pale brown, and lie up light as joggle-sticks just dropped. The ground is nearly concealed by them. 

How beautifully they die, making cheerfully their annual contribution to the soil! They fall to rise again; as if they knew that it was not one annual deposit alone that made this rich mould in which pine trees grow. They live in the soil whose fertility and bulk they increase, and in the forests that spring from it. 

The leaves that were floating before the rain have now sunk to the bottom, being wetted above as well as below. 

I see a delicate pale brown-bronze wood frog. I think I can always take them up in my hand. They, too, vary in color, like the leaves of many species of plants at present, having now more yellow, now more red; and perhaps for the same reason. 

I saw some blackbirds, apparently grackles, singing, after their fashion, on a tree by the river. Most had those grayish-brown heads and necks; some, at least, much ferruginous or reddish brown reflected. They were pruning themselves and splitting their throats in vain, trying to sing as the other day. All the melody flew off in splinters.” 

Also a robin sings once or twice, just as in spring! 

I think that the principal stages in the autumnal changes of trees are these, thus far, as I remember, this year: — 

First, there were in September the few prematurely blushing white maples, or blazing red ones in water, that reminded us of October. 

Next, the red maple swamps blazed out in all their glory, attracting the eyes of all travellers and contrasting with other trees. 

And hard upon these came the ash trees and yellowing birches, and walnuts, and elms, and the sprout-land oaks, the last streaking the hillsides far off, often occupying more commanding positions than the maples. All these add their fires to those of the maples. 

But even yet the summer is unconquered. Now the red maple fires are gone out (very few exceptions), and the brightness of those accompanying fires is dulled, their leaves falling; but a general, though duller, fire, yellowish or red, growing more reddish, has seized the masses of the forest, and betrays the paucity of the evergreens, but mingled with it are the delicate tints of aspens, etc., and, beneath, of protected underwoods whose exposed specimens gave us such promise. 

What is acorn-color! Is it not as good as chestnut?”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 16, 1857

Also a robin sings once or twice, just as in spring! See October 10, 1853 ("The faint suppressed warbling of the robins sounds like a reminiscence of the spring.")

A great part of the pine-needles have just fallen. ... They are not yet flat and reddish, but a more delicate pale brown, and lie up light as joggle-sticks just dropped. See October 16, 1855 ("The freshly fallen needles lay as evenly strewn as if sifted over the whole surface, giving it a uniform neat fawn-color ...  They rest alike on the few green leaves of weeds and the fallen cones and the cobwebs between them, in every direction across one another like joggle-sticks. ")