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. 

October 15, 2016

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

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!.”);  October22,1854 (“Pretty hard frosts these nights. Many leaves fell last night, and the Assabet is covered with their fleets.”); October 15, 1857 (“There has been a great fall of leaves in the night on account of this moist and rainy weather. . .”)

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."); 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.”)


A great part of the hemlock seeds fallen. See October 31, 1853 ("The hemlock seeds are apparently ready to drop from their cones.”)

Pine-needles, just fallen, now make a thick carpet.

October 14, 2016

October 14. 

A sudden change in the weather after remarkably warm and pleasant weather. Rained in the night, and finger-cold to-day. Your hands instinctively find their way to your pockets. 

Leaves are fast falling, and they are already past their brightness, perhaps earlier than usual on account of wet. [No.]

P. M. — To Hubbard's Close. 

Huckleberries perfectly plump and fresh on the often bare bushes (always (else) red-leaved). The bare gray twigs begin to show, the leaves fast falling. 

The maples are nearly bare. The leaves of red maples, still bright, strew the ground, often crimson-spotted on a yellow ground, just like some apples. 

Pine-needles, just fallen, now make a thick carpet. 

October 14, 2018

Going to Laurel Glen in the hollow beyond Deep Cut Woods, I see now withered erechthites and epilobium standing thick on the bare hillside, where the hemlocks were cut, exposing the earth, though no fire has been there. They seem to require only that the earth shall be laid bare for them. 

In Laurel Glen, an aspen sprout which has grown seven to eight feet high, its lower and larger leaves, already fallen and blackened (a dark slate), about. One green and perfect leaf measures ten inches in length and nine broad, heart-shaped. Others, less perfect, are half an inch or more larger each way. 

Any flowers seen now may be called late ones. I see perfectly fresh succory, not to speak of yarrow, a Viola ovata, some Polygala sanguinea, autumnal dandelion, tansy, etc., etc.

 H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 14, 1856

Leaves are fast falling . . . perhaps earlier than usual on account of wet. See October 14, 1860 ("This year, on account of the very severe frosts, the trees change and fall early, or fall before fairly changing.")

Pine-needles, just fallen, now make a thick carpet. See October 12, 1852 ("A new carpet of pine leaves is forming in the woods. . . ."); October 13, 1855 ("A thick carpet of white pine needles lies now lightly, half an inch or more in thickness, above the dark-reddish ones of last year."); October 15 1858 ("White pines are in the midst of their fall");  October 16, 1855 ("How evenly the freshly fallen pine-needles are spread on the ground! quite like a carpet.") See also The October Pine Fall

Any flowers seen now may be called late ones . . . See October 20, 1852 (" . . .tansy . . ."); October 16, 1853 ("Viola ovata out."); October 23, 1853 ("Many phenomena re mind me that now is to some extent a second spring, — not only the new-springing and blossoming of flowers, but the peeping of the hylodes for some time, and the faint warbling of their spring notes by many birds. . . .The Viola pedata looking up from so low in the wood-path makes a singular impression."); October 22, 1859 (" In the wood-path below the Cliffs I see perfectly fresh and fair Viola pedata flowers, as in the spring, though but few together. No flower by its second blooming more perfectly brings back the spring to us."); November 9, 1850 ("I found many fresh violets (Viola pedata) to-day (November 9th) in the woods.").

I did not suspect such a congregation in the desolate garden.

October 12.

witch hazel

October 12, 2018

It is interesting to see how some of the few flowers which still linger are frequented by bees and other insects. 

Their resources begin to fail and they are improving their last chance. I have noticed them of late, especially on white goldenrod and pasture thistles, etc.; and to-day, on a small watermelon cut open ten days ago, in the garden, I see half a dozen honey bees, many more flies, some wasps, a grasshopper, and a large handsome butterfly, with dark snuff-colored wings and a stripe of blue eyes on them. The restless bees keep buzzing toward the butterfly, but it keeps them off by opening and shutting its wings, but does not much mind the other insects. I did not suspect such a congregation in the desolate garden.

Wasps for some time looking about for winter quarters.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 12, 1856

I did not suspect such a congregation in the desolate garden. See September 30, 1852 ("I feel the richer for this experience. It taught me that even the insects in my path are not loafers, but have their special errands. Not merely and vaguely in this world, but in this hour, each is about its business.")

Wasps for some time looking about for winter quarters. See August 21, 1852 ("See The bees, wasps, etc. are on the goldenrods, improving their time before the sun of the year sets"); August 29, 1851 ("I find a wasp in my window, which already appears to be taking refuge from winter"); September 10, 1859 ("See wasps, collected in the sun on a wall, at 9 A. M."); September 26, 1857 ("The season is waning. A wasp just looked in upon me."); October 2, 1851 ("At the Cliffs, I find the wasps prolonging their short lives on the sunny rocks, just as they endeavored to do at my house in the woods.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Wasps and Hornets

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

These are the finest days in the year

October 10.

October 10, 2016

These are the finest days in the year, Indian summer. 

This afternoon it is 80°, between three and four, and at 6.30 this evening my chamber is oppressively sultry, and the thermometer on the north side of the house is at 64°. I lie with window wide open under a single sheet most of the night. But I anticipate. 

The phebe note of the chickadee is now often heard in the yards, and the very Indian summer itself is a similar renewal of the year, with the faint warbling of birds and second blossoming of flowers. 

Going to E. Hosmer's by boat, see quite a flock of wild ducks in front of his house, close by the bridge. 

While moving the fence to-day, dug up a large reddish, mummy-like chrysalid or nymph of the sphinx moth.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 10, 1856


These are the finest days in the year,. . . . See October 10, 1857 ("The sixth day of glorious weather, which I am tempted to call the finest in the year"). See also July 22, 1851 ("These are our fairest days, which are born in a fog."); May 5, 1852 ("Every part of the world is beautiful today."); May 18, 1852 (The world can never be more beautiful than now”); August 19, 1853 (“A glorious and ever-memorable day.”); December 10, 1853”These are among the finest days in the year”); May 21, 1854 (“the finest days of the year, days long enough and fair enough for the worthiest deeds.”); December 21, 1854 (“We are tempted to call these the finest days of the year.”);  September 18, 1860 ("If you are not happy to-day you will hardly be so to-morrow.").

A renewal of the year, with the faint warbling of birds and second blossoming of flowers.  See October 10, 1851 ("There are many things to indicate the renewing of spring at this season");  October 10, 1853 ("The faint suppressed warbling of the robins sounds like a reminiscence of the spring."); See also September 10, 1857 ("I see lambkill ready to bloom a second time.”); September 16, 1852 (“Some birds, like some flowers, begin to sing again in the fall.”); September 26, 1859 ("So it is with flowers, birds, and frogs a renewal of spring."); October 3, 1858 ("Hear a hylodes peeping on shore."); October 22, 1859 (" I see perfectly fresh and fair Viola pedata flowers, as in the spring, though but few together. No flower by its second blooming more perfectly brings back the spring to us.");  October 23, 1853 ("Many phenomena re mind me that now is to some extent a second spring, — not only the new-springing and blossoming of flowers, but the peeping of the hylodes for some time, and the faint warbling of their spring notes by many birds. . . ."); November 9, 1850 ("I found many fresh violets (Viola pedata) to-day (November 9th) in the woods.").

I lie with window wide open . . . See November 8, 1855 ("I can sit with my window open and no fire.”); October 31, 1854 ("[W]e have had remarkably warm and pleasant Indian summer, with frequent frosts in the morning. Sat with open window for a week.")

The trees and weeds by the Turnpike are all alive this pleasant afternoon with twittering sparrows.

October 8.

October 8.  P. M. — To Smith Chestnut Grove by Turnpike, and Saw Mill. 

At length I discover some white pine cones, a few, on Emerson Heater Piece trees. They are all open, and the seeds, all the sound ones but one, gone. So September is the time to gather them. The tip of each scale is covered with fresh flowing pitch. 

The trees and weeds by the Turnpike are all alive this pleasant afternoon with twittering sparrows, Emerson's buckthorn hedge especially, and Watts's weeds adjoining. I observe white-throated sparrows, song sparrows, I think some Fringilla juncorum, etc. (maybe tree sparrows ???). They are all together and keep up a faint warbling, apparently the white-throats and tree sparrows, — if the last are there. A song sparrow utters a full strain.

Asters and goldenrods are now scarce; no longer that crowd along the low roadsides. The following is the condition of the asters and goldenrods, judging from my observations on this walk alone. I will only refer to those which were not done September 24th. I speak of their general condition, though a very few specimens here and there may present a different appearance. 

Swamp striata, done, some hoary.
S. nemoralis, done, many hoary, though a very few flowers linger.
S. altissima, done, many hoary,
S. puberula, not seen.
S. tricolor and variety, probably done (not seen out). S. latifolia, far gone.
S. casia, much the worse for the wear, but freshest of any seen.
S. speciosa, not seen (it was in prime Oct. 2d).
D. umbettatus, not seen, probably done.
A. patens, apparently done.
A. macrophyllus, not seen.
A. acuminatus, not seen.
A. dumosus, probably done.
D. linariifolius, apparently nearly done.
A. undulatus, comparatively fresh.
A. corymbosus, looks fresh !
A. Laevis, not noticed, probably done (?) generally.
A. Tradescanti, a few still.
A. puniceus, hardly seen, probably nearly done.
A. longifolius, a few still.
A. multiflorus, none observed.
A. miser, a very few left.

Diplopappus cornifolius, not seen, probably done.

Of solidagos, I judge that only the last three named, and perhaps puberula and S. bicolor in some places, are common still; and, of asters, only corymbosus, undulatus, Tradescanti, and longifolius (know not of multiflorus) are common. 

The Bidens cernuum is quite common and fresh yet in Everett's meadow by Turnpike. 

A few chestnut burs are open, and have been some days, before they could have felt frost, showing that they would open without it, but a stone will not jar them down, nor a club thrown into the tree yet. I get half a pocketful out of slightly gaping burs at the expense of many prickles in my fingers. The squirrels have cut off some burs. I see the marks of their teeth. 

Find many checker-berries on Smith's hill beyond the chestnut grove, which appear to be just ripe, a lighter pink color, with two little white checks on the stem side, the marks of what I suppose are the two outer calyx-leaves. 

Near by, a short fertile fern with large shelly capsules, perhaps a botrychium. 

A great deal, a great part, of the dicksonia fern at Saw Mill is now whitened or whitening. 

I see, as I go through the hollow behind Britton's shanty, the already hoary tops of many S. nemoralis and also the yellowish spheres of the Hicracium scabrum amid the scarlet (or crimson) sumach and reddened comptonia. So fast the winter advances.

I notice a large toad amid the dead leaves in the woods at Chimaphila maculata, colored like the leaves, a much darker brown than usual, proving that they resemble the ground they occupy. 

Meet Nealy, short and thick, in the woodland path, with his great silent mastiff by his side and his double-barrelled gun in his palm, all dangerously cocked. He is eager for partridges, but only guilty of killing a jay, I judge, from his report. Once or twice I hear the report of his fowling-piece. 

I heard partridges drum the 3d instant. 

Observed in the woods a very large, perhaps owl pellet, or possibly fox stercus, of gray fur and small bones and the jaw of a rodent, apparently a wild mouse. 

Shagbark Hickory

(avesong)

October. 6, 2022

The hickory leaves are among the handsomest now, varying from green through yellow, more or less broadly green-striped on the principal veins, to pure yellow, at first almost lemon-yellow, at last browner and crisped. This mingling of yellow and green on the same leaf, the green next the veins where the life is most persistent, is very pleasing. 

Sophia brings home two or three clusters of very large freshly ripe thimble-berries, with some unripe, a second crop, apparently owing to the abundance of rain for the last six weeks.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 8, 1856

At length I discover some white pine cones, a few, . . .and the seeds . . . gone. So September is the time to gather them. . .See October 15, 1855 ("Go to look for white pine cones, but see none.”); September 18, 1859 "There is an abundant crop of cones on the white pines this year, and they are now for the most part brown and open. . . . It is worth a long walk to look from some favorable point over a pine forest whose tops are thus covered with the brown cones just opened, — from which the winged seeds have fallen or are ready to fall. How little observed are the fruits which we do not use! How few attend to the ripening and dispersion of the pine seed!”); October 13, 1860 ( "So far as I have observed, if pines or oaks bear abundantly one year they bear little or nothing the next year. This year, so far as I observe, there are scarcely any white pine cones (were there any ?)“)

The trees and weeds by the Turnpike are all alive this pleasant afternoon with twittering sparrows. See October 2, 1858 ("The garden is alive with migrating sparrows these mornings."); October 8, 1855 ("Flocks of tree sparrows by river, slightly warbling. Hear a song sparrow sing. See apparently white-throated sparrows.”); October 8, 1857 (" I see and hear white-throated sparrows on the swamp white oaks by the river's edge, uttering a faint sharp cheep.")

Asters and goldenrods are now scarce . . . See September 24, 1856 (“Methinks it stands thus with goldenrods and asters now”); September 1, 1856 ("I think it stands about thus with asters and golden-rods now. . .”); August 21, 1856 ("The prevailing solidagos now are . . .”)

The jay's shrill note is more distinct of late.

October 6.  

I notice the effects of some frost this morning in garden. Some pumpkin vines drooping and black. 

P. M. — Carried Sophia and Aunt up the Assabet. 

The reflections of the bright-tinted maples very perfect. 

The common notes of the chickadee, so rarely heard for a long time, and also one phebe strain from it, amid the Leaning Hemlocks, remind me of pleasant winter days, when they are more commonly seen. [This again the 8th. It is an anticipation of spring.]

The jay's shrill note is more distinct of late about the edges of the woods, when so many birds have left us. 

We are suddenly driven home by a slight thunder-shower!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 6, 1856

Carried Sophia and Aunt up the Assabet.  See October 18, 1853 ("With Sophia boat to Fair Haven, where she makes a sketch.") September 25, 1855 ("Carry Aunt and Sophia a-barberrying to Conantum "); November 14, 1855 ("Up Assabet with Sophia. A clear, bright, warm afternoon.”)

The jay's shrill note is more distinct of late about the edges of the woods., when so many birds have left us. See September 12, 1858 (“Amid the October woods we hear no funereal bell, but the scream of the jay. ”); September 21, 1859  ("Jays are more frequently heard of late, maybe because other birds are more silent.”);   September 25, 1851 (" In these cooler, windier, crystal days the note of the jay sounds a little more native.”);  October 5, 1857 (“ There are few flowers, birds, insects, or fruits now, and hence what does occur affects us as more simple and significant. The cawing of a crow, the scream of a jay. The latter seems to scream more fitly and with more freedom now that some fallen maple leaves have made way for his voice. The jay's voice resounds through the vacancies occasioned by fallen maple leaves.”); October 14, 1852  (Jays and chickadees are oftener heard in the fall than in summer.”); October 20, 1856  (“Thus, of late, when the season is declining, many birds have departed, and our thoughts are turned towards winter . . .we hear the jay again more frequently, and the chickadees are more numerous and lively and familiar and utter their phebe note”)

Suddenly driven home by a slight thunder-shower! See October 26, 1860 ("Overtaken by a sudden thunder-shower.")