All at once, I saw that it was a woodcock, perfectly still, with its head drawn in, standing on its great pink feet.

November 21.

P. M. – Up Assabet. 

Paddling along, a little above the Hemlocks, I hear, I think, a boy whistling upon the bank above me, but immediately perceive that it is the whistle of the locomotive a mile off in that direction. I perceived that it was distant, and therefore the locomotive, the moment that the key was changed from a very high to a low one. Was it because distant sounds are commonly on a low key? 

Just above the grape-hung birches, my attention was drawn to a singular-looking dry leaf or parcel of leaves on the shore about a rod off. Then I thought it might be the dry and yellowed skeleton of a bird with all its ribs; then the shell of a turtle, or possibly some large dry oak leaves peculiarly curved and cut; and then, all at once, I saw that it was a woodcock, perfectly still, with its head drawn in, standing on its great pink feet. 

I had, apparently, noticed only the yellowish-brown portions of the plumage, referring the dark-brown to the shore behind it. May it not be that the yellowish-brown markings of the bird correspond somewhat to its skeleton? At any rate with my eye steadily on it from a point within a rod, I did not for a considerable time suspect it to be a living creature. 

I was paddling along slowly, on the lookout for what was to be seen, when my attention was caught by a strange-looking leaf or bunch of leaves on the shore, close to the water’s edge, a rod distant. I thought to myself, I may as well investigate that, and so pushed slowly toward it, my eyes resting on it all the while. It then looked like a small shipwrecked hulk and, strange to say, like the bare skeleton of a fowl that has been picked and turned yellowish, resting on its breast-bone, the color of a withered black or red oak leaf. Again I thought it must be such a leaf or cluster of leaves peculiarly curved and cut or torn on the upper edges. 

The chubby bird dashed away zigzag, carrying its long tongue-case carefully before it, over the witch hazel bushes. 

Examining the shore after it had flown with a whistling flight, I saw that there was a clear space of mud between the water and the edge of ice-crystals about two inches wide, melted so far by the lapse of the water, and all along the edge of the ice, for a rod or two at least, there was a hole where it had thrust its bill down, probing, every half-inch, frequently closer. Some animal life must be collected at that depth just in that narrow space, savory morsels for this bird. 

This is its walk, – the portion of the shore, the narrow strip, still kept open and unfrozen between the water's edge and the ice. The sportsman might discover its neighborhood by these probings.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 21, 1857

I hear, I think, a boy whistling upon the bank above me, but immediately perceive that it is the whistle of the locomotive a mile off in that direction. See December 31, 1853 ("I hear very distinctly from the railroad causeway the whistle of the locomotive on the Lowell road. . "); August 15, 1854 ("The locomotive whistle, far southwest, sounds like a bell.”); March 22, 1856 ("I thought I heard the hum of a bee, but perhaps it was a railroad whistle on the Lowell Railroad")