P. M. — To White Pond.
The button-bushes by the river are generally overrun with the mikania. This is married to the button-bush as much as the vine to the elm, and more. I suspect that the button-bushes and black willows have been as ripe as ever they get to be.
I get quite near to a blackbird on an apple tree, singing with the grackle note very earnestly and not minding me. He is all alone. Has a (rustyish) brown head and shoulders and the rest black. I think it is a grackle.
Where are the red-wings now? I have not seen nor heard one for a long time.
Is this a grackle come from its northern breeding-place?
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 20, 1859
I suspect that the button-bushes and black willows have been as ripe as ever they get to be. See July 9, 1859 ("The button-bush and black willow generally grow together, especially on the brink of the stagnant parts of the river."); August 15, 1854 ("The button-bush is now nearly altogether out of bloom, so that it is too late to see the river's brink in its perfection. It must be seen between the blooming of the mikania and the going out of bloom of the button bush, before you feel this sense of lateness in the year.");August 15, 1858 (“The black willows are already being imbrowned."); August 22, 1858 ("As for the beauty of the river’s brim: now that the mikania begins to prevail the button-bush has done . . . and the willows are already some what crisped and imbrowned , , , So perhaps I should say that the brim of the river was in its prime about the 1st of August this year"); September 24, 1854 (The button-bushes, which before had attained only a dull mixed yellow, are suddenly bitten, wither, and turn brown, all but the protected parts. . . . The button-bushes thus withered suddenly paint with a rich brown the river’s brim. "); October 4, 1857 ("The button-bushes are generally greenish-yellow now; only the highest and most exposed points brown and crisp in some places. The black willow, rising above them, is crisped yellowish-brown, so that the general aspect of the river's brim now is a modest or sober ripe yellowish-brown"); See also October 8, 1858 ("The button-bushes and black willows are rapidly losing leaves, and the shore begins to look Novemberish"); October 10, 1858 ("November has already come to the river with the fall of the black willow and the button-bush, . . . letting in the autumn light to the water")
A blackbird on an apple tree, singing with the grackle note. See September 20, 1854 ("See to-day quite a flock of what I think must be rusty grackles about the willows and button-bushes."); September 20, 1855 ("See blackbirds (grackle or red-wing or crow blackbird?)"); October 14, 1857 ("I see a large flock of grackles, probably young birds, quite near me on William Wheeler's apple trees, pruning themselves and trying to sing."); October 28, 1857 ("On a black willow, a single grackle with the bright iris")
Where are the red-wings now? See July 29, 1859 ("See large flocks of red-wings now, the young grown."); August 12, 1853 ("You now see and hear no red-wings along the river as in spring."); August 16, 1859 ("A large flock of red-wings goes tchucking over"); September 4, 1859 ("Where are the robins and red-wing blackbirds of late?"); October 16, 1858 (" I have not seen red-wings [for] a long while."); October 29, 1859 (''Also a flock of blackbirds fly eastward over my head from the top of an oak, either red-wings or grackles"); November 14, 1855 ("Two red-wing blackbirds alight on a black willow.")
Is this a grackle come from its northern breeding-place? See September 30, 1858 ("A large flock of grackles amid the willows by the riverside, or chiefly concealed low in the button bushes . . .These are the first I have seen, and now for some time, I think, the red wings have been gone. These are the first arrivers from the north where they breed."); October 16, 1858 See a large flock of grackles . . . [T]hese birds, which went so much further north to breed, are still arriving from those distant regions, fetching the year about.");
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