The link of the bobolink and goldfinch.

August 10. 

4.30 a. m. — To Cliffs.

A high fog. 

As I go along the railroad, I observe the darker green of early-mown fields. A cool wind at this hour over the wet foliage, as from over mountain-tops and uninhabited earth. 

The large primrose conspicuously in bloom. Does it shut by day?

The woods are comparatively still at this season. I hear only the faint peeping of some robins (a few song sparrows on my way), a wood pewee, kingbird, crows, before five, or before reaching the Springs. Then a chewink or two, a cuckoo, jay, and later, returning, the link of the bobolink and the goldfinch. That is a peculiar and distinct hollow sound made by the pigeon woodpecker's wings, as it flies past near you.

At length, as I return along the back road at 6:30, the sun begins to eat through the fog.

The tinkling notes of goldfinches and bobolinks which we hear nowadays are of one character and peculiar to the season. They are nuts of sound, --ripened seeds of sound. It is the linking of ripened grains in Nature's basket. It is like the sparkle on water,-- sound produced by friction on the crisped air.

For a day or two I have inclined to wear a thicker, or fall, coat.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 10, 1854

The tinkling notes of goldfinches and bobolinks which we hear nowadays are of one character and peculiar to the season. See August 10, 1853 (The goldfinch sings er, twe, trotter trotter . . . Of late, and for long time, only the link, link of bobolink.")

August 10. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau , August 10

 

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 © 2009-2021