An immense cohort of cawing crows

November 25.

Winter weather has come suddenly this year. Last night and to-day are very cold and blustering. The house was shaken by wind last night, and there was a general deficiency of bedclothes. This morning some windows are as handsomely covered with frost as ever in winter.

There is much ice on the meadows now, the broken edges shining in the sun. 

As I go up the meadow-side toward Clamshell, I see a very great collection of crows far and wide on the meadows, evidently gathered by this cold and blustering weather. They flit before me in countless numbers, flying very low on account of the strong northwest wind that comes over the hill, and a cold gleam is reflected from the back and wings of each, as from a weather-stained shingle. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 25, 1860 

Very cold and blustering. The house was shaken by wind last night. See November 25, 1857 (“A clear, cold, windy afternoon. ”) ;; November 25, 1858 (“Most keep close to their parlor fires this cold and blustering Thanksgiving afternoon”); November 25, 1853 ('A clear, cold, windy day.“);November 20, 1857 ("High wind in the night, shaking the house.”); 


Flying very low on account of the strong northwest wind that comes over the hill. See October 6, 1860 ("One crow lingers on a limb of the dead oak . . . and when it launches off to follow its comrades it is blown up and backward still nearer to me. It is obliged to tack four or five times just like a vessel, first to the right, then to the left, before it can get off; for as often as it tries to fly directly forward against the wind, it is blown upward and . . . it only advances directly forward at last by stooping very low within a few feet of the ground where the trees keep off the wind.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow