A small round flock of birds, perhaps blackbirds, like the holes in the strainer of a watering-pot.

September 7. 

September 7, 2017

Monday. P. M. — To Dodge Brook Wood. 

It occurred to me some weeks ago that the river-banks were not quite perfect. It is too late then, when the mikania is in bloom, because the pads are so much eaten then. 

Our first slight frost in some places this morning. Northwest wind to-day and cool weather; such weather as we have not had for a long time, a new experience, which arouses a corresponding breeze in us. 

Rhus venenata berries are whitening. Its leaves appear very fresh, of a rich, dark, damp green, and very little eaten by insects. 

Go round by the north side of Farmer's (?) Wood, turn southeast into the shut-in field, and thence to Spencer Brook, a place for hawks. 

Bidens chrysanthemoides there; how long? 

There are three or four larch trees near the east edge of the meadows here. One measures two feet and seven inches in circumference at six feet from ground; begins to branch there, but is dead up to ten feet from ground, where its diameter is apparently about twelve feet; and from this it tapers regularly to the top, which is about forty-five feet from the ground, forming a regular, sharp pyramid, yet quite airy and thin, so that you could see a hawk through it pretty well. These are young and healthy trees. 

Measured that large tupelo behind Merriam's, which now is covered with green fruit, and its leaves begin to redden. It is about thirty feet high, with a round head and equally broad near the ground. At one foot from the ground, it is four and a third feet in circumference; at seven feet, three and a third in circumference. The principal [branches] diverge at about fifteen or sixteen feet from the ground and tend upward; the lower ones are small and partly dead. The lowest, at about thirteen or fourteen feet from the ground, are three or four inches in diameter, and first grow out horizontally about six feet, then, making an abrupt angle, straggle downward nearly to the ground, fifteen feet from the tree. This leaves the tree remarkably open in the middle. 

Returning to my boat, at the white maple, I see a small round flock of birds, perhaps blackbirds, dart through the air, as thick as a charge of shot, — now comparatively thin, with regular intervals of sky be tween them, like the holes in the strainer of a watering-pot, now dense and dark, as if closing up their ranks when they roll over one another and stoop downward.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 7, 1857

Measured that large tupelo behind Merriam's which now is covered with green fruit, and its leaves begin to redden. It is about thirty feet high. . .See September 25, 1857 (“To tupelo on Daniel B. Clark’s land.”); June 26, 1857 ("The largest tupelo I remember in Concord is on the northerly edge of Staples's clearing."); June 30, 1856 ("By the roadside, Long Plain, North Fairhaven, observed a tupelo seven feet high with a rounded top, shaped like an umbrella, eight feet diameter . . ."); May 25, 1855 ("Tupelo leaf before button-bush; maybe a week now.");  September 30, 1854 ("I find a fine tupelo near Sam Barrett’s now all turned scarlet. I find that it has borne much fruit — small oval bluish berries, . . ..").  See also July 5, 1855 (The great tupelo on the edge of Scituate is very conspicuous for many miles . . .”);  July 27, 1851 ("Visit the large tupelo tree (Nyssa multiflora) in Scituate, whose rounded and open top I can see from Mr. Sewal's, the tree which George Emerson went twenty-five miles to see, called sometimes snag-tree and swamp hornbeam, also pepperidge and gum-tree. Hard to split. We have it in Concord.”); October 6, 1858 (“The tupelo at Wharf Rock is completely scarlet, with blue berries amid its leaves”)

Nyssa sylvatica, commonly known as the Black Tupelo, is a medium-sized deciduous tree native to eastern North America, from New England and southern Ontario south to central Florida and eastern Texas. ~ iNaturalist

September 7, 2017

I see a small round flock of birds, perhaps blackbirds, dart through the air, as thick as a charge of shot . . .See August 9, 1857 ("I see the blackbirds flying in flocks (which did not when I went away July 20th)") See also October 6, 1860 ("The crow, methinks, is our only large bird that hovers and circles about in flocks in an irregular and straggling manner, filling the air over your head and sporting in it as if at home here. They often burst up above the woods where they were perching, like the black fragments of a powder-mill just exploded.")