The month of chickadees and new-swollen buds.

November 2.


Tall buttercups, red clover, houstonias, Polygonum aviculare, still.

Those handsome red buds on often red-barked twigs, with some red leaves still left, appear to be blueberry buds.

The prinos berries also now attract me in the scarcity of leaves, its own all gone; its berries are apparently a brighter red for it.

The month of chickadees and new-swollen buds.

At long intervals I see or hear a robin still.

To Walden.

In the latter part of October the skaters and water bugs entirely disappear from the surface of the pond, and then and in November, when the weather is perfectly calm, it is almost absolutely as smooth as glass.

This afternoon a three-days' rain-storm is drawing to an end, though still overcast.

The air is quite still but misty, from time to time mizzling, and the pond is very smooth, and its surface difficult to distinguish, though it no longer reflects the bright tints of autumn but sombre colors only, — calm at the end of a storm, except here and there a slight glimmer or dimple, as if a few skaters which had escaped the frosts were still collected there, or a faint breeze there struck, or a few rain-drops fell there, or perchance the surface, being remarkably smooth, betrayed by circling dimples where a spring-welled up from below.

I paddled gently toward one of these places and was surprised to find myriads of small perch about five inches long sporting there, one after another rising to the surface and dimpling it, leaving bubbles on it. They were very handsome as they surrounded the boat, with their distinct transverse stripes, a rich brown color.

There were many such schools in the pond, as it were improving the short season before the ice would close their window. When I approached them suddenly with noise, they made a sudden plash and rippling with their tails in fright, and then took refuge in the depths. Suddenly the wind rose, the mist increased, and the waves rose, and still the perch leaped, but much higher, half out of water, a hundred black points, three inches long, at once above the surface.

The pond, dark before, was now a glorious and indescribable blue, mixed with dark, perhaps the opposite side of the wave, a sort of changeable or watered-silk blue, more cerulean if possible than the sky itself, which was now seen overhead. It required a certain division of the sight, however, to discern this. Like the colors on a steel sword-blade.

Slate - colored snowbirds (?) with a faint note.

The leaves which are not withered, whose tints are still fresh and bright, are now remarked in sheltered places. Plucked quite a handsome nosegay from the side of Heywood's Peak, - white and blue-stemmed goldenrods, asters (undulatus and ?).

I do not know whether the perch amuse themselves thus more in the fall than at any other time. In such transparent and apparently bottomless water their swimming impresses the beholder as a kind of flight or hovering, like a compact flock of birds passing be low one, just beneath his level on the right or left. What a singular experience must be theirs in their winter quarters, their long night, expecting when the sun will open their shutters! 

November 2, 2017

If you look discerningly, so as to see the reflection only, you see a most glorious light blue, in comparison with which the original dark green of the opposite side of the waves is but muddy.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 2, 1852

Tall buttercups, red clover, houstonias.  See October 26, 1855 ("I see a houstonia in bloom."); November 5, 1855 ("I see the shepherd’s-purse, hedge-mustard, and red clover, — November flowers."); November 14, 1852 ("Still yarrow, tall buttercup, and tansy."); November 23, 1852 ("Among the flowers which may be put down as lasting thus far, as I remember, in the order of their hardiness: yarrow, tansy (these very fresh and common) . . . and perhaps tall buttercup, etc."

Those handsome red buds on often red-barked twigs, with some red leaves still left, appear to be blueberry buds. See November 6, 1853 (“The remarkable roundish, plump red buds of the high blueberry.”); November 23, 1857 (“You distinguish it by its gray spreading mass; its light-gray bark, rather roughened; its thickish shoots, often crimson; and its plump, roundish red buds.”); November 25, 1858 ("See a few high blueberry buds which have fairly started, expanded into small red leaves, apparently within a few weeks.")

 

The month of chickadees and new-swollen buds. 

The chickadee

Hops near to me.

November 8, 1857

See November 9, 1850 (" The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer and nearer inquisitively, from pine bough to pine bough, till within four or five feet, occasionally lisping a note."); November 26, 1859 ("The chickadee is the bird of the wood the most unfailing.. . . At this season it is almost their sole inhabitant."); November 2, 1853 ("Among the buds, etc., etc., to be noticed now, remember the alder and birch catkins, so large and conspicuous, — on the alder, pretty red catkins dangling in bunches of three or four, — the minute red buds of the panicled andromeda, the roundish plump ones of the common hazel, the longish sharp ones of the witch-hazel, etc.") See also October 30, 1853 ("Now, now is the time to look at the buds.”); November 1, 1853 ("I notice the shad-bush conspicuously leafing out. Those long, narrow, pointed buds, prepared for next spring, have anticipated their time."); November 4, 1854 ("The shad-bush buds have expanded into small leaflets already.”); November 6, 1863 ( Noticing Buds); December 1, 1852 (“At this season I observe the form of the buds which are prepared for spring the large bright yellowish and reddish buds of the swamp-pink, the already downy ones of the Populus tremuloides and the willows, the red ones of the blueberry, the long, sharp ones of the amelanchier, the spear-shaped ones of the viburnum; also the catkins of the alders and birches."); January 12, 1855 ("Well may the tender buds attract us at this season, no less than partridges, for they are the hope of the year, the spring rolled up. The summer is all packed in them.,")

The pond, dark before, was now a glorious and indescribable blue, mixed with dark, . . .more cerulean if possible than the sky itself. See June 26, 1852 ("the smooth reflecting surface of woodland lakes in which the ice is just melted . . .blue or black or even hazel, deep or shallow, clear or turbid; green next the shore,");  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."); October 9, 1858 ("The mountains are darker and distincter, and Walden, seen from this hill, darker blue. It is quite Novemberish."); and Walden ("Walden is blue at one time and green at another, even from the same point of view. Lying between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of the color of both. Viewed from a hill top it reflects the color of the sky, but near at hand it is of a yellowish tint next the shore where you can see the sand, then a; light green, which gradually deepens to a uniform dark green in the body of the pond. In some lights, viewed even from a hilltop, it is of a vivid green next the shore.”); Walden , The Pond in Winter ("Like the water, the Walden ice, seen near at hand, has a green tint, but at a distance is beautifully blue,") See also  January 24, 1852 (Walden and White Ponds are a vitreous greenish blue, like patches of the winter sky seen in the west before sundown)

In the latter part of October the skaters and water bugs entirely disappear from the surface of the pond [but I]  find myriads of small perch about five inches long sporting there See September 1, 1852 ("Paddling over it, I see large schools of perch only an inch long, yet easily distinguished by their transverse bars. This is a very warm and serene evening, and the surface of the pond is perfectly smooth except where the skaters dimple it, for at equal intervals they are scattered over its whole extent, and, looking west, they make a fine sparkle in the sun.")

Pure greenish-blue sky under the clouds now in the southwest just before sunset.

December 14

December 14, 2021

The boys have been skating for a week, but I have had no time to skate for surveying. I have hardly realized that there was ice, though I have walked over it about this business.

As for the weather, all seasons are pretty much alike to one who is actively at work in the woods. I should say that there were two or three remarkably warm days and as many cold ones in the course of a year, but the rest are all alike in respect to temperature. This is my answer to my acquaintances who ask me if I have not found it very cold being out all day.

McKean tells me of hardy horses left to multiply on the Isle of Sable. His father had one (for the shipwrecked to eat). Can they be descendants of those beasts Champlain or Lescarbot refers to? 

I hear the small woodpecker whistle as he flies toward the leafless wood on Fair Haven, doomed to be cut this winter.

The chickadees remind me of Hudson's Bay for some reason. I look on them as natives of a more northern latitude.

The now dry and empty but clean-washed cups of the blue-curls spot the half snow-covered grain-fields. Where lately was a delicate blue flower, now all the winter are held up these dry chalices. What mementos to stand above the snow! 

The fresh young spruces in the swamp are free from moss, but it adheres especially to the bare and dead masts of spruce trees oftentimes half destitute of bark. They look like slanting may-poles with drooping or withered garlands and festoons hanging to them. For an emblem of stillness, a spruce swamp with hanging moss now or at any season.

I notice that hornets' nests are hardly deserted by the insects than they look as if a truant boy had fired a charge of shot through them, -- all ragged and full of holes. It is the work either of the insects themselves or else of other insects or birds.

It is the andromeda (panicled?) that has the fine barked stem and the green wood, in the swamps.

Why not live out more yet, and have my friends and relations altogether in nature, only my acquaintances among the villagers? That way diverges from this I follow, not at a sharp but a very wide angle.

Ah, nature is serene and immortal! Am I not one of the Zincali? 

December 14, 2024

There is a beautifully pure greenish-blue sky under the clouds now in the southwest just before sunset.

I hear the ice along the edge of the river cracking as the water settles. It has settled about two feet, leaving ice for the most part without water on the meadows, all uneven and cracked over the hummocks, so that you cannot run straight for sliding.

The ice takes the least hint of a core to eke out a perfect plant; the wrecks of bulrushes and meadow grass are expanded into palm leaves and other luxuriant foliage. I see delicate-looking green pads frozen into the ice, and, here and there, where some tender and still green weeds from the warm bottom of the river have lately been cast up on to the ice.

There are certain places where the river will always be open, where perchance warmer springs come in. There are such places in every character, genial and open in the coldest seasons.

I come from contact with certain acquaintances, whom even I am disposed to look toward as possible friends. It oftenest happens that I come from them wounded. Only they can wound me seriously, and that perhaps without their knowing it.

 H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 14, 1851

The boys have been skating for a week, but I have had no time to skate for surveying. I have hardly realized that there was ice. See December 6, 1854 ("I see thick ice and boys skating . . . but know not when it froze, I have been so busy writing my lecture.")

I hear the small woodpecker whistle as he flies toward the leafless wood. See December 5, 1853 ("Saw and heard a downy woodpecker on an apple tree. Have not many winter birds, like this and the chickadee, a sharp note like tinkling glass or icicles?"); December 10, 1854 ("Hear the small woodpecker’s whistle; not much else. ") See also December 14, 1855 ("A little further I heard the sound of a downy woodpecker tapping a pitch pine in a little grove, and saw him inclining to dodge behind the stem.") ;August 28, 1858 ("The sharp whistling note of a downy woodpecker, which sounds rare; perhaps not heard since spring."); September 17, 1852 ("I hear the downy woodpecker whistle, and see him looking about the apple trees as if to bore him a hole.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Downy Woodpecker

The now dry and empty but clean-washed cups of the blue-curls spot the half snow-covered grain-fields. See December 14, 1852 ("The dried chalices of the Rhexia Virginica stand above the snow, and the cups of the blue-curls."):  See also November 18, 1855 ("Now first mark the stubble and numerous withered weeds rising above the snow. They have suddenly acquired a new character. “); November 30, 1856 (“Now see the empty chalices of the blue-curls and the rich brown-fruited pinweed above the crust.”); December 1, 1856 (“The blue-curls' chalices stand empty, and waiting evidently to be filled with ice.”); December 4, 1856 ("How many thousand acres are there now of pitchered blue-curls and ragged wormwood rising above the shallow snow?. . .They were not observed against the dark ground, but the first snow comes and reveals them"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blue-Curls

Deserted hornets' nests. See  October 15, 1855 ("The hornets’ nests are exposed, the maples being bare, but the hornets are gone”); October 25, 1854 ("The maples being bare, the great hornet nests are exposed.”); December 29, 1856 (“I see a hornets' nest about seven inches in diameter on a thorn bush, only eighteen inches from the ground.”); December 29, 1858 ("A large hornets’ nest thirty feet high on a maple over the river.”) ; December 31, 1857 ("Under and attached to one of the lowermost branches of a white pine sapling in my old potato-field, I see a large hornet's nest, close to the ground.")

It is the andromeda (panicled?) that has the fine barked stem and the green wood, in the swamps. See note to November 24, 1857 ("Looking toward the sun, the andromeda in front of me is a very warm red brown and on either side of me, a pale silvery brown; looking from the sun, a uniform pale brown. . . .These andromeda swamps charmed me more than twenty years ago, — I knew not why") See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The andromeda phenomenon

Ah, nature is serene and immortal! See November 10, 1854 ("Nature is prepared for an infinity of springs yet.");March 23, 1856 (""The eternity which I detect in Nature I predicate of myself also.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Nature

There is a beautifully pure greenish-blue sky under the clouds now in the southwest just before sunset. See   December 14, 1852 ("Ah, who can tell the serenity and clarity of a New England winter sunset? This could not be till the cold and the snow came."); December 25, 1851 (“I go forth to see the sun set. Who knows how it will set, even half an hour beforehand ?”) See also  December 9, 1859 (" I observe at mid-afternoon, the air being very quiet and serene, that peculiarly softened western sky, which perhaps is seen commonly after the first snow has covered the earth. . . .[T]here is just enough invisible vapor, perhaps from the snow, to soften the blue, giving it a slight greenish tinge.");  December 11, 1854 ("It is but mid-afternoon when I see the sun setting far through the woods, and there is that peculiar clear vitreous greenish sky in the west, as it were a molten gem."); December 20, 1854 ("The sky in the eastern horizon has that same greenish-vitreous, gem-like appearance which it has at sundown, as if it were of perfectly clear glass, —with the green tint of a large mass of glass."); January 11, 1852 ("The glory of these afternoons, . . . is in the ineffably clear blue, or else pale greenish-yellow, patches of sky in the west just before sunset."); and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Sunsets

There are certain places where the river will always be open, where perchance warmer springs come in.  See December 30, 1855 ("The places which are slowest to freeze in our river are, first, on account of warmth as well as motion, where a brook comes in, and also probably where are springs in banks and under bridges.")

It oftenest happens that I come from them wounded. See November 24, 1850 ("I have certain friends whom I visit occasionally, but I commonly part from them early with a certain bitter-sweet sentiment"); November 16, 1851 ("I love my friends very much, but I find that it is of no use to go to see them.")

December 14. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau , December 14

Pure greenish-blue sky 

under clouds in the southwest

just before sunset.

That pure greenish-blue 

sky southwest under the clouds

just before sunset.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Greenish-blue sky under the clouds 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau 

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-511214

Chickadees and jays are heard from the shore as in winter.

October 18.

Up river to Bittern Cliff.

October 18, 2020

 (avesong)

A mild still but cloudy or rather misty afternoon,

The water is at present perfectly smooth and calm but covered with a kind of smoky or hazy film.

Nevertheless the reflections of distant woods though less distinct are softer seen through this smoky and darkened atmosphere.

I speak only of the reflections as seen in the broader bays and longer reaches of the river as at the Willow End.

The general impression made by the river landscape now is that of bareness and bleakness the black willow not yet the golden and the button bush having lost almost all their leaves the latter perhaps all and the last is covered with the fuzzy mikania blossoms gone to seed a dirty white.

There are a very few polygonums hydropiperaides and perhaps the unknown rose tinted one but most have withered before the frosts.

The vegetation of the immediate shore and the water is for the most part black and withered.

A few muskrat houses are going up abrupt and precipitous on one side sloped on the other I distinguish the dark moist layer of weeds deposited last night on what had dried in the sun,

The tall bulrush and the wool grass are dry and yellow except a few in deep water but the rainbow rush Juncus militaris is still green.

The autumnal tints though less brilliant and striking are perhaps quite as agreeable now that the frosts have somewhat dulled and softened them.

Now that the forest is universally imbrowned they make a more harmonious impression.

Wooded hillsides reflected in the water are particularly agreeable.

The undulation which the boat creates gives them the appearance of being terraced.

Chickadees and jays are heard from the shore as in winter.

Saw two or three ducks which fly up before and alight far behind.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 18, 1852

Chickadees and jays are heard from the shore as in winter. See  October 14, 1852 ("Jays and chickadees are oftener heard in the fall than in summer."); October 20, 1856 (" Thus, of late, when the season is declining, many birds have departed, and our thoughts are turned towards winter . . .we hear the jay again more frequently, and the chickadees are more numerous and lively and familiar and utter their phebe note, and the nuthatch is heard again, and the small woodpecker seen amid the bare twigs.");  November 3, 1858 ("The jay is the bird of October. I have seen it repeatedly flitting amid the bright leaves, of a different color from them all and equally bright, and taking its flight from grove to grove. It, too, with its bright color, stands for some ripeness in the bird harvest. And its scream! it is as if it blowed on the edge of an October leaf. It is never more in its element and at home than when flitting amid these brilliant colors.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter; A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The Blue Jay

What a bountiful supply of winter food.

January 20. 

2 P. M. — 39°. Up Assabet. 

The snow and ice under the hemlocks is strewn with cones and seeds and tracked with birds and squirrels. What a bountiful supply of winter food is here provided for them! No sooner has fresh snow fallen and covered up the old crop than down comes a new supply all the more distinct on the spotless snow. 

Here comes a little flock of chickadees, attracted by me as usual, and perching close by boldly; then, descending to the snow and ice, I see them pick up the hemlock seed which lies all around them. Occasionally they take one to a twig and hammer at it there under their claws, perhaps to separate it from the wing, or even the shell. 

The snowy ice and the snow on shore have been blackened with these fallen cones several times over this winter. The snow along the sides of the river is also all dusted over with birch and alder seed, and I see where little birds have picked up the alder seed. 

At R.W.E.'s red oak I see a gray squirrel, which has been looking after acorns there, run across the river. The half-inch snow of yesterday morning shows its tracks plainly. They are much larger and more like a rabbit's than I expected.   The squirrel runs in an undulating manner, though it is a succession of low leaps of from two and a half to three feet. Each four tracks occupy a space some six or seven inches long. Each foot-track is very distinct, showing the toes and protuberances of the foot, and is from an inch and a half to an inch and three quarters long. The clear interval between the hind and fore feet is four to five inches. The fore feet are from one and a half to three inches apart in the clear; the hind, one to two inches apart. 

I see that what is probably the track of the same squirrel near by is sometimes in the horseshoe form, i. e., when its feet are all brought close together:  the open side still forward. I must have often mistaken this for a rabbit. But is not the bottom of the rabbit's foot so hairy that I should never see these distinct marks or protuberances? 

This squirrel ran up a maple till he got to where the stem was but little bigger than his body, and then, getting behind the gray-barked stem, which was almost exactly the color of its body, it clasped it with its fore feet and there hung motionless with the end of its tail blowing in the wind. As I moved, it steadily edged round so as to keep the maples always between me and it, and I only saw its tail, the sides of its body projecting, and its little paws clasping the tree. It remained otherwise perfectly still as long as I was thereabouts, or five or ten minutes. There was a leafy nest in the tree.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 20, 1860

The snow and ice under the hemlocks is strewn with cones and seeds and tracked with birds and squirrels. What a bountiful supply of winter food is here provided for them! See December 31, 1859 ("There is a great deal of hemlock scales scattered over the recent snow (at the Hemlocks), . . .and I see the tracks of small birds that have apparently picked the seeds from the snow also. Some of the seeds have blown at least fifteen rods southeast. So the hemlock seed is important to some birds in the winter.")

Here comes a little flock of chickadees, attracted by me as usual. See October 15, 1856 ("The chickadees are hopping near on the hemlock above. They resume their winter ways before the winter comes.");  October 17, 1856 ("I heard a smart tche-day-day-day close to my ear, and, looking up, see four of these birds, which had come to scrape acquaintance with me, hopping amid the alders within three and four feet of me. I had heard them further off at first, and they had followed me along the hedge.");  October 23, 1852 ("The chickadees flit along, following me inquisitively a few rods with lisping, tinkling note, — flit within a few feet of me from curiosity, head downward on the pines.");. November 9, 1850 ("The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer and nearer inquisitively, from pine bough to pine bough, till within four or five feet, occasionally lisping a note"); December 1, 1853 ("I hear their faint, silvery, lisping notes, like tinkling glass, and occasionally a sprightly day-day-day, as they inquisitively hop nearer and nearer to me. They are our most honest and innocent little bird, drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances, and deserve best of any of the walker."); December 3, 1856 ("they will flit after and close to you, and naively peck at the nearest twig to you, as if they were minding their own business all the while without any reference to you."); December 28, 1858 ("I notice a few chickadees there in the edge of the pines, in the sun, lisping and twittering cheerfully to one another, with a reference to me, I think."); January 30, 1854 ("As we walk up the river, a little flock of chickadees flies to us from a wood-side fifteen rods off, and utters their lively day day day, and follows us along a considerable distance, flitting by our side on the button-bushes and willows. It is the most, if not the only, sociable bird we have.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

I see where little birds have picked up the alder seed. See January 20, 1855 ("Our lesser redpoll . . . I heard its mew about the house early this morning before sunrise . . . I see the tracks of countless little birds, probably redpolls, where these have run over broad pastures and visited every weed"); See also January 19, 1855 ("At noon it is still a driving snow-storm, and a little flock of redpolls is busily picking the seeds of the pig weed in the garden. Almost all have more or less crimson; a few are very splendid, with their particularly bright crimson breasts. The white on the edge of their wing-coverts is very conspicuous. "); January 24, 1860 ("See a large flock of lesser redpolls, eating the seeds of the birch (and perhaps alder) in Dennis Swamp by railroad. They are distinct enough from the goldfinch, their note more shelly and general as they fly, and they are whiter, without the black wings, beside that some have the crimson head or head and breast. They alight on the birches, then swarm on the snow beneath, busily picking up the seed in the copse. "); January 27, 1860 ("Half a dozen redpolls busily picking the seeds out of the larch cones behind Monroe's."); January 29, 1860 ("To-day I see quite a flock of the lesser redpolls eating the seeds of the alder, picking them out of the cones just as they do the larch, often head downward; and I see, under the alders, where they have run and picked up the fallen seeds, making chain-like tracks, two parallel lines.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Lesser Redpoll

Moods and Seasons in Winter

January 18. 

2 p. m. — To Fair Haven Pond, on river. 

January 18, 2024

Thermometer 46; sky mostly overcast. 

The temperature of the air and the clearness or serenity of the sky are indispensable to a knowledge of a day, so entirely do we sympathize with the moods of nature. It is important to know of a day that is past whether it was warm or cold, clear or cloudy, calm or windy, etc. 

They are very different seasons in the winter when the ice of the river and meadows and ponds is bare, — blue or green, a vast glittering crystal, — and when it is all covered with snow or slosh; and our moods correspond. The former may be called a crystalline winter. 

Standing under Lee's Cliff, several chickadees, uttering their faint notes, come flitting near to me as usual. They are busily prying under the bark of the pitch pines, occasionally knocking off a piece, while they cling with their claws on any side of the limb. Of course they are in search of animal food, but I see one suddenly dart down to a seedless pine seed wing on the snow, and then up again. C. says that he saw them busy about these wings on the snow the other [day], so I have no doubt that they eat this seed. 

There is a springy place in the meadow near the Conantum elm. 

The sky in the reflection at the open reach at Hubbard's Bath is more green than in reality, and also darker-blue, and the clouds are blacker and the purple more distinct.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 18, 1860

The temperature of the air and the clearness or serenity of the sky are indispensable to a knowledge of a day, so entirely do we sympathize with the moods of nature. See January 26, 1852 ("Would you see your mind, look at the sky. Would you know your own moods, be weather-wise.");  February 5, 1855 ("In a journal it is important in a few words to describe the weather, or character of the day, as it affects our feelings.") 

Different seasons in the winter . . . and our moods correspond. See June. 6, 1857 ("Each season is but an infinitesimal point. It no sooner comes than it is gone. . . Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind.");  February 12, 1860 ("The ice is a solid crystalline sky under our feet.") See also A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, when the ice turns green; A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau Moods and Seasons of the Mind and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Nature's January Moods

I have no doubt that they eat this seed. See  October 24, 1854 ("The chickadees are picking the seeds out of pitch pine cones"); January 20, 1860 ("I see them pick up the hemlock seed which lies all around them. Occasionally they take one to a twig and hammer at it there under their claws, perhaps to separate it from the wing, or even the shell.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter and A Book of the Seasons,  The Pitch Pine in Winter

The sky in the reflection at the open reach at Hubbard's Bath is more green than in reality. See January 9, 1853 ("I see to-day the reflected sunset sky in the river, but the colors in the reflection are different from those in the sky.”); December 30, 1855 (“Recrossing the river behind Dodd’s, now at 4 P. M., the sun quite low, the open reach just below is quite green, a vitreous green, as if seen through a junk-bottle. Perhaps I never observed this phenomenon but when the sun was low”); December 29, 1856 (“When I return by Clamshell Hill, the sun has set, and the cloudy sky is reflected in a short and narrow open reach at the bend there. The water and reflected sky are a dull, dark green, but not the real sky.”);  October 14, 1858 ("Paddling slowly back, we enjoy at length very perfect reflections in the still water. The blue of the sky, and indeed all tints, are deepened in the reflection.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reflections

January 18.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 18

There is a season

when ice is covered with snow –

and when ice is bare.

In the reflection

blacker clouds purple distinct –

the sky darker blue.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Moods and Seasons in Winter

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-600118

October has been the month of autumnal tints.

October 23. 

P. M. — To Conantum. 

This may be called an Indian-summer day. 

It is quite hazy withal, and the mountains invisible. I see a horehound turned lake or steel-claret color. The yellow lily pads in Hubbard's ditch are fresh, as if recently expanded. There are some white lily pads in river still, but very few indeed of the yellow lily. A pasture thistle on Conantum just budded, but flat with the ground. The fields generally wear a russet hue. 

A striped snake out.

The milkweed (Syriaca) now rapidly discounting. The lanceolate pods having opened, the seeds spring out on the least jar, or when dried by the sun, and form a little fluctuating white silky mass or tuft, each held by the extremities of the fine threads, until a stronger puff of wind sets them free. It is a pleasant sight to see it dispersing its seeds. 

The bass has lost its leaves. 

I see where boys have gathered the mockernut, though it has not fallen out of its shells. 

The red squirrel chirrups in the walnut grove. 

The chickadees flit along, following me inquisitively a few rods with lisping, tinkling note, — flit within a few feet of me from curiosity, head downward on the pines.

The white pines have shed their leaves, making a yellow carpet on the grass, but the pitch pines are yet parti-colored. 

Is it the procumbent speedwell (Veronica agrestis) still in flower on Lee's Cliff? But its leaves are neither heart-ovate nor shorter than the peduncles. 
.

     

             October 23, 2020                                                     October 23, 2024

                (Avesong)                                                                     (Avesong)

The sprays of the witch-hazel are sprinkled on the air, and recurved

The pennyroyal stands brown and sere, though fragrant still, on the shelves of the Cliff. 

The elms in the street have nearly lost their leaves. 

October 23, 2024

October has been the month of autumnal tints. 

October 22, 2020

October 23, 2016

The first of the month the tints began to be more general, at which time the frosts began, though there were scattered bright tints long before; but not till then did the forest begin to be painted. By the end of the month the leaves will either have fallen or besered and turned brown by the frosts for the most part. 

Also the month of barberries and chestnuts. 

My friend is one whom I meet, who takes me for what I am. 

A stranger takes me for something else than I am. We do not speak, we cannot communicate, till we find that we are recognized. The stranger supposes in our stead a third person whom we do not know, and we leave him to converse with that one. It is suicide for us to become abetters in misapprehending ourselves. Suspicion creates the stranger and substitutes him for the friend. I cannot abet any man in misapprehending myself. 

What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm. It brings men together in crowds and mobs in barrooms and elsewhere, but it does not-deserve the name of virtue.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 23, 1852


The chickadees flit along, following me inquisitively a few rods with lisping, tinkling note, — flit within a few feet of me from curiosity, head downward on the pines. See October 13, 1852    ("It is a clear, warm, rather Indian-summer day. . . The chickadees take heart, too, and sing above these warm rocks. ")See also October 10, 1851 ("flitting ever nearer and nearer and nearer, inquisitively, till the boldest was within five feet of me");; November 9, 1850 (" The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer and nearer inquisitively, from pine bough to pine bough, till within four or five feet, occasionally lisping a note");  December 1, 1853 ("inquisitively hop nearer and nearer to me. They are our most honest and innocent little bird, drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances, and deserve best of any of the walker.")

The chickadee

Hops near to me.

November 8, 1857

 See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

The sprays of the witch-hazel are sprinkled on the air.  See October 20, 1852 ("The witch-hazel is bare of all but flowers") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Witch-Hazel

The chickadee's note has a new significance

October 11

P.M. — To Cliffs.

October 11, 2019

Looking under large oaks, black and white, the acorns appear to have fallen or been gathered by squirrels, etc. I see in many distant places stout twigs (black or scarlet oak) three or four inches long which have been gnawed off by the squirrels, with four to seven acorns on each, and left on the ground. These twigs have been gnawed off on each side of the nuts in order to make them more portable, I suppose. The nuts all abstracted and sides of the cups broken to get them out.  

The note of the chickadee, heard now in cooler weather and above many fallen leaves, has a new significance. 

There was a very severe frost this morning (ground stiffened), probably a chestnut-opening frost, a season ripener, opener of the burs that inclose the Indian summer. Such is the cold of early or middle October. The leaves and weeds had that stiff, hoary appearance.

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

Looking under large oaks, black and white, the acorns appear to have fallen or been gathered by squirrels. See October 11, 1860 ("The best time to gather these nuts is now -, when a strong wind has arisen suddenly in the day, before the squirrels precede you.")

The note of the chickadee, heard now in cooler weather and above many fallen leaves, has a new significance. See  October 4, 1859 ('I hear . . . the sweet phe-be of the chickadee.”); October 5, 1858 ("Phebe note of Chickadee often these days");  October 6, 1856 ("The common notes of the chickadee, so rarely heard for a long time, and also one phebe strain from it, amid the Leaning Hemlocks, remind me of pleasant winter days, when they are more commonly seen. “); October 10, 1851 ("The chickadee, sounding all alone, now that birds are getting scarce, reminds me of the winter, in which it almost alone is heard."); October 10, 1856 ("The phebe note of the chickadee is now often heard in the yards");  October 13, 1852 ("It is a clear, warm, rather Indian-summer day . . . The chickadees take heart, too, and sing above these warm rocks."); October 13, 1859  (“The chickadee seems to lisp a sweeter note”); October 13, 1860 ("Now, as soon as the frost strips the maples, and their leaves strew the swamp floor and conceal the pools, the note of the chickadee sounds cheerfully winteryish."); October 15, 1856 ("The chickadees . . . resume their winter ways before the winter comes.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

A very severe frost this morning. See October 1, 1860 (“Remarkable frost and ice this morning; quite a wintry prospect. The leaves of trees stiff and white.”);  October 14, 1860 ("This year, on account of the very severe frosts, the trees change and fall early, or fall before fairly changing."); October 15, 1853 ("Last night the first smart frost that I have witnessed. Ice formed under the pump, and the ground was white long after sunrise."); October 15, 1856 (“A smart frost . . . .Ground stiffened in morning; ice seen.”); October 17, 1851("A severe frost this morning, which puts us one remove further from summer.")

October 11. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 11

The chickadee's note

has a new significance

in cooler weather.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

  The chickadee's note has a new significance

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

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Let me see how soon the woods will have acquired a new color

April 1. 

Gilpin says well that the object of a light mist is a "nearer distance." Among winter plants, regarded as component parts of the forest, he thinks the fern the most picturesque. He says: "We are often at a loss to distinguish in pictures, the rising from the setting sun; though their characters are very different, both in the lights and shadows. The ruddy lights indeed of the evening are more easily distinguished: but it is not perhaps always sufficiently observed, that the shadows of the evening are much less opaque, than those of the morning." 

This morning, the ground was completely covered with snow, and the water on the meadows looked dark and stormy and contrasted well with the white landscape. Now, at noon, the ground is once more as bare as before. 

He is in the lowest scale of laborers who is merely an able-bodied man and can compete with others only in physical strength. Woodchoppers in this neighborhood get but fifty cents a cord, but, though many can chop two cords in a day in pleasant weather and under favorable circumstances, yet most do not average more than seventy-five cents a day, take the months together. But one among them of only equal physical strength and skill as a chopper, having more wit, buys a cross-cut saw for four dollars, hires a man to help him at a dollar a day, and saws down trees all winter at ten cents apiece and thirty or forty a day, and clears two or more dollars a day by it. 

Yet as long as the world may last few will be found to buy the cross-cut saw, and probably the wages of the sawyer will never be reduced to a level with those of the chopper. 

2 p. m. — To Flint's Pond cedar woods via railroad, returning by C. Smith's orchard. 

Saw the first bee of the season on the railroad causeway, also a small red butterfly and, later, a large dark one with buff-edged wings. 

Gilpin's "Forest Scenery" is a pleasing book, so moderate, temperate, graceful, roomy, like a gladed wood; not condensed; with a certain religion in its manners and respect for all the good of the past, rare in more recent books; and it is grateful to read after them. Somewhat spare indeed in the thoughts as in the sentences. Some of the cool wind of the copses converted into grammatical and graceful sentences, with out heat. Not one of those humors come to a head which some modern books are, but some of the natural surface of a healthy mind. 

Walden is all white ice, but little melted about the shores. The very sight of it, when I get so far on the causeway, though I hear the spring note of the chickadee from over the ice, carries my thoughts back at once some weeks toward winter, and a chill comes over them. 

There is an early willow on sand-bank of the railroad, against the pond, by the fence, grayish below and yellowish above. 

The railroad men have dug around the sleepers that the sun may thaw the ground and let them down. It is not yet out. 

Cut across near Baker's barn. 

The swollen buds of some trees now give a new tint to their tops seen at a distance, — to the maples at least. Baker's peach orchard looks at this distance purplish below and red above, the color of the last year's twigs. The geranium (?) is the most common green leaf to be seen everywhere on the surface now the snow is gone. 

They have been shooting great numbers of muskrats the last day or two. 

Is that the red osier (cornel or viburnum) near the grape-vine on the Bare Hill road? 

How sure the farmer is to find out what bush affords the best withes, little of a botanist as he is ! 

The mountains seen from Bare Hill are very fine now in the horizon, so evanescent, being broadly spotted white and blue like the skins of some animals, the white predominating. 

The Peterboro Hills to the north are almost all white.

The snow has melted more on the more southern mountains. With their white mantles, not withstanding the alternating dark patches, they melt into the sky. Yet perhaps the white portions may be distinguished by the peculiar light of the sun shining on them. They are like a narrow strip of broadly spotted leopard-skin, the saddle-cloth of the sun spread along the horizon. 

I am surprised to find Flint's Pond frozen still, which should have been open a week ago. 

The Great Sudbury Meadows covered with water are revealed. Blue they look over the woods. Each part of the river seen further north shines like silver in the sun, and the little pond in the woods west of this hill is half open water. Cheering, that water with its reflections, compared with this opaque dumb pond. How unexpectedly dumb and poor and cold does Nature look, when, where we had expected to find a glassy lake reflecting the skies and trees in the spring, we find only dull, white ice! 

Such am I, no doubt, to many friends. 

But, now that I have reached the cedar hill, I see that there is about an acre of open water, perhaps, over Bush Island in the middle of the pond, and there are some water-fowl there on the edge of the ice, — mere black spots, though I detect their character by discovering a relative motion, — and some are swimming about in the water. 

The pond is, perhaps, the handsomer, after all, for this distant patch only of blue water, in the midst of the field of white ice. Each enhances the other. It is an azure spot, an elysian feature, in your cold companion, making the imagined concealed depths seem deeper and rarer. This pond is worth coming to, if only be cause it is larger than Walden. 

I can so easily fancy it indefinitely large. It represents to me that Icy Sea of which I have been reading in Sir J. Richardson's book. 

The prevailing color of the woods at present, excepting the evergreens, is russet, a little more red or grayish, as the case may be, than the earth, for those are the colors of the withered leaves and the branches; the earth has the lighter hue of withered grass. Let me see how soon the woods will have acquired a new color. 

Went over the hill toward the eastern end of the pond. What is the significance of odors, of the odoriferous woods ? Sweet and yellow birch, sassafras, fever-bush, etc., are an interesting clan to me. When we bruise them in our walk, we are suddenly exhilarated by their odor. This sweet scent soon evaporates, and you must break the twig afresh. If you cut it, it is not as if you break it. Some, like the sassafras, have brought a great price as articles of commerce. No wonder that men thought they might have some effect toward renovating their lives. Gosnold, the discoverer of Cape Cod, carried home a cargo of sassafras. What could be more grateful to the discoverer of a new country than a new fragrant wood? 

Gilpin's is a book in which first there is nothing to offend, and secondly something to attract and please.

The branches of the young black birch grow very upright, as it were appressed to the main stem. Their buds appear a little expanded now. 

Saw the fox-colored sparrows and slate-colored snowbirds on Smith's Hill, the latter singing in the sun, — a pleasant jingle. 

The mountains, which an hour ago were white, are now all blue, the mistiness has increased so much in the horizon, and crept even into the vales of the distant woods. The mist is in wreaths or stripes because we see the mist of successive vales. There could not easily be a greater contrast than between this morning's and this evening's landscapes. 

The sun now an hour high. Now I see the river-reach, far in the north. The more distant river is ever the most ethereal. 

Sat awhile before sunset on the rocks in Saw Mill Brook. A brook need not be large to afford us pleasure by its sands and meanderings and falls and their various accompaniments. It is not so much size that we want as picturesque beauty and harmony. If the sound of its fall fills my ear it is enough. I require that the rocks over which it falls be agreeably disposed, and prefer that they be covered with lichens. The height and volume of the fall is of very little importance compared with the appearance and disposition of the rocks over which it falls, the agreeable diversity of still water, rapids, and falls, and of the surrounding scenery. I require that the banks and neighboring hillsides be not cut off, but excite a sense of at least graceful wild-ness. 

One or two small evergreens, especially hemlocks, standing gracefully on the brink of the rill, contrasting by their green with the surrounding deciduous trees when they have lost their leaves, and thus enlivening the scene and betraying their attachment to the water. It would be no more pleasing to me if the stream were a mile wide and the hemlocks five feet in diameter. I believe that there is a harmony between the hemlock and the water which it overhangs not explainable.

In the first place, its green is especially grateful to the eye the greater part of the year in any locality, and in the winter, by its verdure overhanging and shading the water, it concentrates in itself the beauty of all fluviatile trees. It loves to stand with its foot close to the water, its roots running over the rocks of the shore, and two or more on opposite sides of a brook make the most beautiful frame to a waterscape, especially not too glaring. 

It makes the more complete frame be cause its branches, particularly in young specimens such as I am thinking of, spring from so near the ground, and it makes so dense a mass of verdure. 

There are many larger hemlocks covering the steep side-hill forming the bank of the Assabet, where they are successively undermined by the water, and they lean at every angle over the water. Some are almost horizontally directed, and almost every year one falls in and is washed away. The place is known as the " Leaning Hemlocks." 

But to return to Saw Mill Run. I love that the green fronds of the fern, pressed by the snow, lie on its rocks. It is a great advantage to take in so many parts at one view. We love to see the water stand, or seem to stand, at many different levels within a short distance, while we sit in its midst, some above, some below us, and many successive falls in different directions, meandering in the course of the fall, rather than one "chute," — rather spreading and shoaling than contracting and deepening at the fall. In a small brook like this, there are many adjuncts to increase the variety which are wanting in a river, or, if present, cannot be attended to; even dead leaves and twigs vary the ripplings and increase the foam.

And the very lichens on the rocks of the run are an important ornament, which in the great waterfall are wont to be overlooked. I enjoy this little fall on Saw Mill Run more than many a large one on a river that I have seen. The hornbeams and witch-hazel and canoe birches all come in for their share of attention. We get such a complete idea of the small rill with its overhanging shrubs as only a bird's-eye view from some eminence could give us of the larger stream. Perhaps it does not fall more than five feet within a rod and a half. I should not hear Niagara a short distance off. The never-ending refreshing sound! 

It suggests more thoughts than Montmorenci. A stream and fall which the woods imbosom. They are not in this proportion to a larger fall. They lie in a more glaring and less picturesque light. Even the bubbles are a study. It can be completely examined in its details. The consciousness of there being water about you at different levels is agreeable. The sun can break through and fall on it and vary the whole scene infinitely. 

Saw the freshly (?) broken shells of a tortoise's eggs — or were they a snake's ? — in Hosmer's field. 

I hear a robin singing in the woods south of Hosmer's, just before sunset. It is a sound associated with New England village life. It brings to my thoughts summer evenings when the children are playing in the yards before the doors and their parents conversing at the open windows. It foretells all this now, before those summer hours are come. 

As I come over the Turnpike, the song sparrow's jingle comes up from every part of the meadow, as native as the tinkling rills or the blossoms of the spirea, the meadow-sweet, soon to spring. Its cheep is like the sound of opening buds. The sparrow is continually singing on the alders along the brook-side, while the sun is continually setting. 

We have had a good solid winter, which has put the previous summer far behind us; intense cold, deep and lasting snows, and clear, tense winter sky. It is a good experience to have gone through with.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 1, 1852

 See the first bee of the season on the railroad cause way, also a small red butterfly and, later, a large dark one with buff-edged wings. See April 2, 1856 (" I see and hear flies and bees about. A large buff-edged butterfly flutters by along the edge of the Cliff, — Vanessa antiopa. Though so little of the earth is bared, this frail creature has been warmed to life again. "). Also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  the Buff-edged butterfly

The Peterboro Hills to the north are almost all white. See April 4, 1852 ("I see the snow lying thick on the south side of the Peterboro Hills, . . .probably the dividing line at present between the bare ground and the snow-clad ground stretching three thousand miles to the Saskatchewan and Mackenzie and the Icy Sea."); April 4, 1855 (" [O]on each side and beyond, the earth is clad with a warm russet, more pleasing perhaps than green; and far beyond all, in the northwestern horizon, my eye rests on a range of snow-covered mountains, glistening in the sun.");February 21, 1855 ("We now notice the snow on the mountains, because on the remote rim of the horizon its whiteness contrasts with the russet and darker hues of our bare fields. I look at the Peterboro mountains with my glass from Fair Haven Hill. I think that there can be no more arctic scene than these mountains in the edge of the horizon completely crusted over with snow, with the sun shining on them, seen through a telescope over bare, russet fields and dark forests, .... A silver edging to this basin of the world"),

The place is known as the " Leaning Hemlocks.” See  March 29, 1853 ("A pleasant short voyage is that to the Leaning Hemlocks on the Assabet, just round the Island under Nawshawtuct Hill. The river here has in the course of ages gullied into the hill, at a curve, making a high and steep bank, on which a few hemlocks grow and overhang the deep, eddying basin. For as long as I can remember, one or more of these has always been slanting over the stream at various angles, being undermined by it, until one after another, from year to year, they fall in and are swept away")  Also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, at the Leaning Hemlocks.

I believe that there is a harmony between the hemlock and the water which it overhangs not explainable. See November 4, 1851 ("[A] few small hemlocks, with their now thin but unmixed and fresh green foliage, stand over and cheer the stream [Saw Mill Brook].These little cheerful hemlocks, - the lisp of chickadees seems to come from them now, - each standing with its foot on the very edge of the stream, reaching sometimes part way over its channel, and here and there one has lightly stepped across..")

We have had a good solid winter, which has put the previous summer far behind us; intense cold, deep and lasting snows, and clear, tense winter sky.See February 12, 1854("the unrelenting steel-cold scream of a jay, unmelted, that never flows into a song, a sort of wintry trumpet, screaming cold; hard, tense, frozen music, like the winter sky itself")