Looking for pine cones, a time to see hornets' nests.

October 15.

P. M. — Go to look for white pine cones, but see none. 

See a striped squirrel on a rail fence with some kind of weed in his mouth. Is it milkweed seed? At length he scuds swiftly along the middle rail past me, and, instead of running over or around the posts, he glides through the little hole in the post left above the rails, as swiftly as if there had been no post in the way. 

Thus he sped through five posts in succession in a straight line, incredibly quick, only stooping and straightening himself at the holes. 

The hornets’ nests are exposed, the maples being bare, but the hornets are gone. 

I see one a very perfect cone, like a pitch pine cone, uninjured by the birds, about twelve feet from the ground, by a swamp, three feet from the end of a maple twig and upheld by it alone passing through its top, about an inch deep, seven and a half inches wide, by eight long. A few sere maple leaves adorn and partly conceal the crown, at the ends of slight twigs which are buried in it. 

What a wholesome color! somewhat like the maple bark (and so again concealed) laid on in successive layers in arcs of circles a tenth of an inch wide, eye brow-wise, gray or even white or brown of various shades, with a few dried maple leaves sticking out the top of it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 15, 1855