Notes from late October

November 11. 

I observed, October 23d, wood turtles copulating in the Assabet, and a flock of goldfinches on the top of a hemlock, — as if after its seeds? 

Also, October 24th, riding home from Acton, I saw the withered leaves blown from an oak by the roadside dashing off, gyrating, and surging upward into the air, so exactly like a flock of birds sporting with one another that, for a minute at least, I could not be sure they were not birds; and it suggested how far the motions of birds, like those of these leaves, might be determined by currents of air, i. e., how far the bird learns to conform to such currents. 

The flat variety of Lycopodium dendroideum shed pollen on the 25th of October. That 's a lycopodium path on north side of Colburn Hill.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 11, 1859

I observed, October 23d, wood turtles copulating in the Assabet.  see . September 15, 1855 ("An Emys insculpta which I mistook for dead, under water near shore; head and legs and tail hanging down straight. Turned it over, and to my surprise found it coupled with another. It was at first difficult to separate them with a paddle"); October 21, 1857 (" I saw wood tortoises coupled up the Assabet, the back of the upper above water. It held the lower with its claws about the head, and they were not to be parted. ") See also September 16, 1854 ("I see a wood tortoise in the woods. Why is it there now?"); November 9, 1855 ("See a painted tortoise and a wood tortoise in different places out on the bank still!”); November 14, 1855 ("A clear, bright, warm afternoon. A painted tortoise swimming under water and a wood tortoise out on the bank.”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Wood Turtle (Emys insculpta)

A flock of goldfinches on the top of a hemlock, — as if after its seeds?  See November 15, 1859 (“About the 23d of October I saw a large flock of goldfinches (judging from their motions and notes) on the tops of the hemlocks up the Assabet, apparently feeding on their seeds, then falling. They were collected in great numbers on the very tops of these trees and flitting from one to another. Rice has since described to me the same phenomenon ”); See alao January 5, 1860 ("I see where a flock of goldfinches in the morning had settled on a hemlock's top, by the snow strewn with scales, literally blackened or darkened with them for a rod.")

The withered leaves blown from an oak by the roadside dashing off, gyrating, and surging upward into the air, so exactly like a flock of birds. See October 26, 1860 ("This is the season of the fall when the leaves are whirled through the air like flocks of birds.")