It is quite Novemberish.

October 9. 

Cold and northwest wind still. 

The maple swamps begin to look smoky, they are already so bare. Their fires, so faded, are pale-scarlet or pinkish. 

Some Cornus sericea looks quite greenish yet. 

Huckleberry leaves falling fast. 

I go to the Cliffs. 

The air is clear, with a cold northwest wind, and the trees beginning to be bare. 

The mountains are darker and distincter, and Walden, seen from this hill, darker blue. It is quite Novemberish. 

People are making haste to gather the remaining apples this cool evening.

Bay-wings flit along road. 

Crows fly over and caw at you now. 

Methinks hawks are more commonly seen now, — the slender marsh hawk for one. I see four or five in different places. 

I watch two marsh hawks which rise from the woods before me as I sit on the Cliff, at first plunging at each other, gradually lifting themselves as they come round in their gyrations, higher and higher, and floating toward the southeast. Slender dark motes they are at last, almost lost to sight, but every time they come round eastward I see the light of the westering sun reflected from the undersides of their wings. 

Those little bits of phosphorescent wood which I picked up on the 4th have glowed each evening since, but required wetting to get the most light out of them. This evening only one, about two inches long, shows any light. This was wet last evening, but is now apparently quite dry. If I should wet it again, it would, no doubt, glow again considerably.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 9, 1858


Bay-wings flit along road.  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 11, 1856 ("Bay-wing sparrows numerous"); ;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.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bay-Wing Sparrow

Crows fly over and caw at you now. See September 18, 1852 ("The crows congregate and pursue me through the half-covered woodland path, cawing loud and angrily above me, and when they cease, I hear the winnowing sound of their wings."); November 18, 1857 ("Crows will often come flying much out of their way to caw at me.")

Methinks hawks are more commonly seen now. See   September 16, 1852 (What makes this such a day for hawks?"); September 27, 1857 (“As I sit there I see the shadow of a hawk flying above and behind me. I think I see more hawks nowadays.”); October 9, 1860 ("See one crow chasing two marsh hawks over E. Hosmer's meadow. Occasionally a hawk dives at the crow, but the crow perseveres in pestering them.. . .The crow is at length joined by an other.")

The mountains are darker and distincter. See May 17, 1858 ("I doubt if in the landscape there can be anything finer than a distant mountain-range. They are a constant elevating influence."); May 24, 1854 ("As I return down the hill, my eyes are cast toward the very dark mountains in the northwest horizon."); August 14, 1854(“I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon.— to behold and commune with something grander than man. “); September 12, 1858 ("The mountains are of a darker blue. "); October 13, 1852 (" The air is singularly fine-grained; the mountains are more distinct from the rest of the earth and slightly purple."); October 17, 1857 ("The mountains are more distinct in the horizon "); October 20, 1852 (“I see the mountains in sunshine, all the more attractive from the cold I feel here, with a tinge of purple on them”); October 22, 1857 (" Look from the high hill, just before sundown, over the pond. The mountains are a mere cold slate-color. But what a perfect crescent of mountains we have in our northwest horizon! Do we ever give thanks for it?"); November 4, 1857 ("The mountains north . . . stand out grand and distinct, a decided purple.").; November 11, 1851 ("The horizon has one kind of beauty and attraction to him who has never explored the hills and mountains in it, and another ... to him who has.")

Walden, seen from this hill, darker blue. Compare August 27, 1852 ("Viewed from a hilltop, it is blue in the depths and green in the shallows, but from a boat it is seen to be a uniform dark green."); September 1, 1852 ("Viewed from the hilltop, [Walden] reflects the color of the sky. Beyond the deep reflecting surface, near the shore, it is a vivid green.").  See also Walden ("Walden is blue at one time and green at another ...")