Sidewalks are covered with the impressions of leaves which fell yesterday.

 

 

October 16

Octobeer 16, 2022

Saturday.

The sidewalks are covered with the impressions of leaves which fell yesterday and were pressed into the soil by the feet of the passers, leaving a myriad dark spots -- like bird- tracks or hieroglyphics to a casual observer.

What are the sparrow-like birds with striped breasts and two triangular chestnut colored spots on the breasts which I have seen some time, picking the seeds of the weeds in the garden?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 16, 1852

The snow begins to whiten the plowed ground.

November 8

Mayweed and shepherd’s-purse.

10 A. M. — Our first snow, the wind southerly, the air chilly and moist; a very fine snow, looking like a mist toward the woods or horizon, which at 2 o’clock has not whitened the ground. The children greet it with a shout when they come out at recess.

P. M. – To riverside as far down as near Peter’s, to look at the water-line before the snow covers it.

By Merrick’s pasture it is mainly a fine, still more or less green, thread-like weed or grass of the river bottom (?), sedges, utricularias (that coarse one especially, whose name I am not sure of, with tassels (?), yellow water ranunculus, potamogeton’s translucent leaves, a few flags and pontederia stems.

By Peter’s there was much of that coarse triangular cellular stem mentioned yesterday as sparganium (?). I would not have thought it so common.

There is not so much meadow grass or hay as I expected, for that has been raked and carried off.

The pads, too, have wasted away and the pontederias’ leaves, and the stems of the last for the most part still adhere to the bottom.

Three larks rise from the sere grass on Minott’s Hill before me, the white of their outer tail-feathers very conspicuous, reminding me of arctic snowbirds by their size and form also.

The snow begins to whiten the plowed ground now, but it has not overcome the russet of the grass ground.

November 8, 2023

Birds generally wear the russet dress of nature at this season. They have their fall no less than the plants; the bright tints depart from their foliage or feathers, and they flit past like withered leaves in rustling flocks.

The sparrow is a withered leaf.

The Stellaria media still blooms in Cheney’s garden, and the shepherd’s-purse looks even fresher. This must be near the end of the flower season.

Perchance I heard the last cricket of the season yesterday. They chirp here and there at longer and longer intervals, till the snow quenches their song.

And the last striped squirrel, too, perchance, yesterday. They, then, do not go into winter quarters till the ground is covered with snow.

The partridges go off with a whir, and then sail a long way level and low through the woods with that impetus they have got, displaying their neat forms perfectly.

The yellow larch leaves still hold on, — later than those of any of our pines.

I noticed the other day a great tangled and netted mass of an old white pine root lying upon the surface, nearly a rod across and two feet or more high, too large even to be turned up for a fence. 

It suggested that the roots of trees would be an interesting study. There are the small thickly interwoven roots of the swamp white oaks on the Assabet.

At evening the snow turned to rain, and the sugaring soon disappeared. 

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, November 8, 1853 

Our first snow. The children greet it with a shout. See November 24, 1860 ("Though a slight touch, this was the first wintry scene of the season. The rabbits in the swamps enjoy it, as well as you.”) See also note to November 29, 1856 ("This the first snow I have seen")

The snow begins to whiten the plowed ground now, but it has not overcome the russet of the grass ground.  See December 3, 1856 ("The sight of the sedgy meadows that are not yet snowed up while the cultivated fields and pastures are a uniform white.") See also November 24, 1858 ("Plowed ground is quite white.); November 24, 1860 (“The plowed fields were for a short time whitened”);  October 19, 1854 (“The country above Littleton (plowed ground) more or less sugared with snow,”); December 16, 1857 ("Plowed grounds show white first.”)

Perchance I heard the last cricket of the season. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in November

And the last striped squirrel, too, perchance, yesterday. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Striped Squirrel

Three larks rise from the sere grass on Minott’s Hill before me, the white of their outer tail-feathers very conspicuous. See October 13, 1855 ("Larks in flocks in the meadows, showing the white in their tails as they fly, sing sweetly as in spring."); October 18, 1858 ("See larks, with their white tail-feathers, fluttering low over the meadows these days"); November 1, 1853  ("I see and hear a flock of larks in Wheeler's meadow on left of the Corner road, singing exactly as in spring and twittering also, but rather faintly or suppressedly.");  See also June 30, 1851 ("The lark sings a note which belongs to a New England summer evening."); August 4, 1852 ("I must make a list of those birds which, like the lark and the robin, if they do not stay all the year, are heard to sing longest of those that migrate."); October 6, 1851 ("I hear a lark singing this morn (October 7th ), and yesterday saw them in the meadows. Both larks and blackbirds are heard again now occasionally, seemingly after a short absence, as if come to bid farewell")

Birds generally wear the russet dress of nature at this season. . . and they flit past like withered leaves in rustling flocks. The sparrow is a withered leaf. See January 24, 1860 ("These birds, though they have bright brown and buff backs, hop about amid the little inequalities of the pasture almost unnoticed, such is their color and so humble are they.")

Birds in russet dress now flit past like withered leaves in rustling flocks.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The snow begins to whiten the plowed ground

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-531108

Think I hear the very faint gnah of a nuthatch

October 20. 

October 20.

P. M. — To Hill, to look for ground squirrel nests.

The river-banks have now assumed almost their November aspect. The button-bushes are nearly bare. The water is smooth, the sun warm, and the reflections particularly fine and distinct; but there are reflected now, for the most part, only gray twigs and a few sere and curled brown leaves, wool-grass, etc. 

Land at Hemlocks, in the eddy there, where the white bits of sawdust keep boiling up and down and whirling round as in a pot. 

Amid the young pitch pines in the pasture behind I notice, as elsewhere of late, a great many brownish-yellow (and some pink) election-cake fungi, eaten by crickets; about three inches in diameter. Some of those spread chocolate-colored ones have many grubs in them, though dry and dusty. 

Think I hear the very faint gnah of a nuthatch. Thus, of late, when the season is declining, many birds have departed, and our thoughts are turned towards winter (began to have a fire, more or less, say ten days or a fortnight ago), 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. 

Owing to the great height of the river, there has been no Bidens Beckii nor Polygonum amphibium to my knowledge this year, nor have I found any myrio- phyllum. 

I dig into two or three squirrel-holes under a black oak, and in a rotten stump trace them a foot or more and lose them, or else they come to an end? Though I saw a squirrel enter the ground, I dug and lost it. They are apparently very busy now laying up their stores. I see a gray one making haste with waving tail across the field from the nut trees to the woods. 

Looking up the side of the hill toward the sun, I see a little gossamer on the sweet-fern, etc.; and, from my boat, little flocks of white gossamer occasionally, three quarters of an inch long, in the air or caught on twigs, as if where a spider had hauled in his line.

I think that all spiders can walk on water, for when, last summer, I knocked one off my boat by chance, he ran swiftly back to the boat and climbed up, as if more to avoid the fishes than the water. This would account for those long lines stretched low over the water from one grass stem to another. I see one of them now five or six feet long and only three or four inches above the surface, and it is remarkable that there is no perceptible sag to it, weak as the line must be. 

The pin-weeds are now bare, and their stem and fruit turned a dark brown. 

The thorns on the hill are all bare. 

There are fewer turtles, now and for some time, out sunning. A very little Solidago nemoralis in one place from the axil. 

I hear from my chamber the note of myrtle-birds [White-throat sparrow] mingled with sparrows, in the yard, especially in the morning, quite like a clear, sweet squeaking wheel barrow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 20, 1856

A great many brownish-yellow (and some pink) election-cake fungi.  See October 20, 1857 ("I see the yellowish election-cake fungi."); See also  October 29, 1855 ("There are many fresh election-cake toadstools amid the pitch pine”); July 29, 1853 (“ . . .small, umbrella-shaped (with sharp cones), shining and glossy yellow fungi, like an election cake atop,. . .”). See also Concord: A Sense of Place, Octoberr 20, 2015, Election-cake Fungus Mystery.

 Thus, of late, when the season is declining, many birds have departed, and our thoughts are turned towards winter . . . the nuthatch is heard again. See November 26, 1860 ("I hear the faint note of a nuthatch . . .a phenomenon of the late fall or early winter; for we do not hear them in summer that I remember. ...”); December 1, 1857 ("I thus always begin to hear this bird on the approach of winter, as if it did not breed here, but wintered here.([but] Hear it all the fall (and occasionally through the summer of ’59).)”) Compare July 12, 1860 ("Hear a nuthatch in the street. So they breed here."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch

Nuthatch heard again

and the small woodpecker seen 

amid the bare twigs.