October 8.
P. M. – To Damon's wood-lot, part of the burnt district of the spring.
Am surprised to see how green the forest floor and the sprout-land north of Damon's lot are already again, though it was a very severe burn.
In the wood-lot the trees are apparently killed for twenty feet up, especially the smaller, then six or ten feet of green top, while very vigorous sprouts have shot up from the base below the influence of the fire. This shows that they will die, I think.
The top has merely lived for the season while the growth has been in their sprouts around the base. This is the case with oaks, maples, cherry, etc.
Also the blueberry (Vaccinium vacillans) has sent up very abundant and vigorous shoots all over the wood from the now more open and cleaned ground. These are evidently from stocks which were comparatively puny before.
The adjacent oak sprout-land has already sprung up so high that it makes on me about the same impression that it did before, though it was from six to ten feet high and was generally killed to the ground.
The fresh shoots from the roots are very abundant and three to five feet high, or half as high as before. So vivacious are the roots and so rapidly does Nature recover herself.
You see myriads of little shrub oaks and others in the woods which look as if they had just sprung from the seed, but on pulling one up you find it to spring from a long horizontal root which has survived perhaps several burnings or cuttings. Thus the stumps and roots of young oak, chestnut, hickory, maple, and many other trees retain their vitality a very long time and after many accidents, and produce thrifty trees at last.
In the midst of the wood, I noticed in some places, where the brush had been more completely burned and the ground laid bare, some fire-weed (Senecio), golden rods, and ferns.
Standing by a pigeon-place on the north edge of Damon's lot, I saw on the dead top of a white pine four or five rods off — which had been stripped for fifteen feet downward that it might die and afford with its branches a perch for the pigeons about the place, like the more artificial ones that were set up — two woodpeckers that were new to me.
They uttered a peculiar sharp kek kek on alighting (not so sharp as that of the hairy or downy woodpecker) and appeared to be about the size of the hairy woodpecker, or between that and the golden-winged. I had a good view of them with my glass as long as I desired.
With the back to me, they were clear black all above, as well as their feet and bills, and each had a yellow or orange (or possibly orange - scarlet?) front (the anterior part of the head at the base of the upper mandible). A long white line along the side of the head to the neck, with a black one below it.
The breast, as near as I could see, was gray specked with white, and the underside of the wing expanded was also gray, with small white spots. The throat white and vent also white or whitish.
Is this the arctic three-toed?
Probably many trees dying on this large burnt tract will attract many woodpeckers to it.
I find a great many white oak acorns already sprouted, although they are but half fallen, and can easily believe that they sometimes sprout before they fall. It is a good year for them.
It is remarkable how soon and unaccountably they decay. Many which I cut open , though though they look sound without, are discolored and decaying on one side or throughout within, though there is no worm in them. Perhaps they are very sensitive to moisture.
Those which I see to-day are merely hazel and not nearly so black as what I saw yesterday.
Trees that stand by themselves without the wood bear the most.
The sugar maple seeds are now browned — the seed end as well as wing — and are ripe.
The severe frosts about the first of the month ripened them.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 8, 1860
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