A Book of the Seasons, Geese in Autumn

 I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures

completes the world.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

Few live so far outdoors

as to hear the first geese go over.

September 13, 1859

The sonorous, quavering sounds 

of the geese are the voice of this cloudy air . . .

So they migrate . . . 

from latitude to latitude, from State to State,

steering boldly out into the ocean of the air . . .

Now if ever, then, we may expect a change in the weather. 

November 8 , 1857 

Geese in three harrows gradually shift to one – now out of sight.

November 13, 1855 

September 23. When we had put out our bayberry fire, we heard a squawk, and, looking up, saw five geese fly low in the twilight over our heads. We then set out to find our way to Gloucester over the hills, and saw the comet very bright in the northwest. September 23, 1858

October 23. Geese go over Wayland the 17th. October 23, 1858

October 24. A northeast storm, though not much rainfalls to-day, but a fine driving mizzle or “drisk.”  This, as usual, brings the geese, and at 2.30 P. M. I see two flocks go over. I hear that some were seen two or three weeks ago (??), faintly honking. A great many must go over to-day and also alight in this neighborhood. This weather warns them of the approach of winter, and this wind speeds them on their way. October 24, 1858

October 27.  I hear that Sammy Hoar saw geese go over to-day. The fall (strictly speaking) is approaching an end in this probably annual northeast storm. Thus the summer winds up its accounts.  October 27, 1857 

November 8.  A warm, cloudy, rain-threatening morning. About 10 A.M. a long flock of geese are going over from northeast to southwest, or parallel with the general direction of the coast and great mountain-ranges. The sonorous, quavering sounds of the geese are the voice of this cloudy air, – a sound that comes from directly between us and the sky, an aerial sound, and yet so distinct, heavy, and sonorous, a clanking chain drawn through the heavy air. 

I saw through my window some children looking up and pointing their tiny bows into the heavens, and I knew at once that the geese were in the air. It is always an exciting event. The children, instinctively aware of its importance, rushed into the house to tell their parents. 

These travellers are revealed to you by the upward-turned gaze of men. And though these undulating lines are melting into the southwestern sky, the sound comes clear and distinct to you as the clank of a chain in a neighboring stithy. 

So they migrate, not flitting from hedge to hedge, but from latitude to latitude, from State to State, steering boldly out into the ocean of the air. 

It is remarkable how these large objects, so plain when your vision is rightly directed, may be lost in the sky if you look away for a moment, - as hard to hit as a star with a telescope. 

It is a sort of encouraging or soothing sound to assuage their painful fears when they go over a town, as a man moans to deaden a physical pain. The direction of their flight each spring and autumn reminds us inlanders how the coast trends. 

In the afternoon I met Flood, who had just endeavored to draw my attention to a flock of geese in the mizzling air, but encountering me he lost sight of them, while I, at length, looking that way, discerned them, though he could not. 

This was the third flock to-day. Now if ever, then, we may expect a change in the weather. November 8 , 1857 

November 11.  Minott heard geese go over night before last, about 8 P. M. Therien, too, heard them “yelling like anything” over Walden, where he is cutting, the same evening. November 11, 1854

November 13. In mid-forenoon, seventy or eighty geese, in three harrows successively smaller, flying southwest—pretty well west—over the house. A completely overcast, occasionally drizzling forenoon. I at once heard their clangor and rushed to and opened the window. The three harrows were gradually formed into one great one before they were out of sight, the geese shifting their places without slacking their progress. November 13, 1855 

November 13. A large flock of geese go over just before night. November 13, 1858 

November 14. I was remarking to-day to Mr. Rice on the pleasantness of this November thus far, when he remarked that he remembered a similar season fifty-four years ago, and he remembered it because on the 13th of November that year he was engaged in pulling turnips and saw wild geese go over,  when one came to tell him that his father was killed by a bridge giving way . . . Minott hears geese to-day.  November 14, 1855

 

November 14. This morning it was considerably colder than for a long time, and by noon very much colder than heretofore, with a pretty strong northerly wind. The principal flight of geese was November 8th, so that the bulk of them preceded this cold turn five days.  November 14, 1857  

November 17

November 18. Sixty geese go over the Great Fields, in one waving line, broken from time to time by their crowding on each other and vainly endeavoring to form into a harrow, honking all the while.  November 18, 1854

November 19. Speaking of geese, [Minott]says that Dr. Hurd told a tough story once. He said that when he went out to the well there came a flock of geese flying so low that they had to rise to clear the well-sweep. M. says that there used to be a great many more geese formerly; he used to hear a great many flocks in a day go "yelling" over. November 19, 1855

November 20. Minott said he heard geese going south at day break the 17th, before he came out of the house, and heard and saw another large flock at 10 A. M. Those I heard this afternoon were low and far in the western horizon. I did [not] distinctly see them, but heard them farther and farther in the southwest, the sound of one which did the honking guiding my eyes. I had seen that a storm was brewing before, and low mists already gathered in the northeast. It rained soon after I got home. The 18th was also a drizzling day. Methinks the geese are wont to go south just before a storm, and, in the spring, to go north just after one, say at the end of a long April storm.  November 20, 1853

November 22. Geese went over yesterday, and to-day also.   November 22, 1853

November 23.  At 5 P. M. I saw, flying southwest high overhead, a flock of geese, and heard the faint honking of one or two. They were in the usual harrow form, twelve in the shorter line and twenty four in the longer, the latter abutting on the former at the fourth bird from the front. I judged hastily that the interval between the geese was about double their alar extent, and, as the last is, according to Wilson, five feet and two inches, the former may safely be called eight feet. I hear they were fired at with a rifle from Bunker Hill the other day.   This is the sixth flock I have seen or heard of since the morning of the 17th , i. e. within a week.  November 23, 1853  

November 24. Geese went over on the 13th and 14th, on the 17th the first snow fell, and the 19th it began to be cold and blustering. November 24, 1855 

November 25.  At Walden. — I hear at sundown what I mistake for the squawking of a hen —  but it for proved to be a flock of wild geese going south.  November 25, 1852 

 November 27. The principal flight of geese is said to have been a few days before the 24th. I have seen none. November 27, 1859

November 30. A still, warm, cloudy, rain-threatening day. The air is full of geese. I saw five flocks within an hour, about 10 A. M., containing from thirty to fifty each, and afterward two more flocks, making in all from two hundred and fifty to three hundred at least, all flying southwest over Goose and Walden Ponds. The former was apparently well named Goose Pond. You first hear a faint honking from one or two in the northeast and think there are but few wandering there, but, looking up, see forty or fifty coming on in a more or less broken harrow, wedging their way southwest. I suspect they honk more, at any rate they are more broken and alarmed, when passing over a village, and are seen falling into their ranks again, assuming the perfect harrow form. Hearing only one or two honking, even for the seventh time, you think there are but few till you see them. According to my calculation a thousand or fifteen hundred may have gone over Concord to-day. When they fly low and near, they look very black against the sky. November 30, 1857 

December 1.  I hear of two more flocks of geese going over to-day. December 1, 1857 

December 6. 10 P. M. — Hear geese going over. December 6, 1855 

December 15. Saw a small flock of geese go over. December 15, 1852

See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring, Geese Overhead

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Geese in Autumn

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

Geese go over in the spring about 10 o'clock in the morning,

March 26.

There is a large specimen of what I take to be the common alder by the poplar at Egg Rock, five inches in diameter. It may be considered as beginning to bloom to-day.

Some white maples appear still as backward as the red.

Saw about 10 A. M. a gaggle of geese, forty-three in number, in a very perfect harrow flying northeasterly. One side the harrow was a little longer than the other. They appeared to be four or five feet apart.

At first I heard faintly, as I stood by Minott's gate, borne to me from the southwest through the confused sounds of the village, the indistinct honking of geese.

I was somewhat surprised to find that Mr. Loring at his house should have heard and seen the same flock. I should think that the same flock was commonly seen and heard from the distance of a mile east and west.

It is remarkable that we commonly see geese go over in the spring about 10 o'clock in the morning, as if they were accustomed to stop for the night at some place southward whence they reached us at that time.

Goodwin saw six geese in Walden about the same time.

The scales of the alder run to leaves sometimes.

P. M. Up Assabet to stone-heaps, in boat.

A warm, moist, April-like afternoon, with wet-looking sky, and misty.  For the first time I take off my coat.

Everywhere are hovering over the river and floating, wrecked and struggling, on its surface, a miller-like insect, without mealy wings, very long and narrow, six- legged with two long feelers and, I believe, two long slender grayish wings, from my harbor to the heaps, or a couple of miles at least, food for fishes. This was the degree and kind of warmth to bring them forth.

The tortoises, undoubtedly painted, drop now in several instances from the limbs and floating rails on which they had come out to sun.

I notice by the Island a yellow scum on the water close to the shore, which must be the pollen of the alders just above. This, too, is perhaps food for fishes.

Up the Assabet, scared from his perch a stout hawk, -- the red-tailed undoubtedly, for I saw very plainly the cow-red when he spread his wings from off his tail (and rump?).

I rowed the boat three times within gunshot before he flew, twice within four rods, while he sat on an oak over the water,-- I think because I had two ladies with me, which was as good as bushing the boat. Each time, or twice at least, he made a motion to fly before he started.

The ends of his primaries looked very ragged against the sky.

This is the hen-hawk of the farmer, the same, probably, which I have scared off from the Cliff so often. It was an interesting eagle-like object, as he sat upright on his perch with his back to us, now and then looking over his shoulder, the broad-backed, flat-headed, curve-beaked bird.

Heard a pewee. This, it seems to me, is the first true pewee day, though they have been here some time.

What is that cress-like weed in and on the edge of the river opposite Prescott Barrett's? A fresher and more luxuriant growth of green leaf than I have seen yet; as if it had grown in winter.

I do not perceive any fresh additions to the stone-heaps, though perhaps I did not examine carefully enough.

Went forth just after sunset.

A storm gathering, an April-like storm. I hear now in the dusk only the song sparrow along the fences and a few hylas at a distance. And now the rattling drops compel me to return.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 26, 1853

There is a large specimen of what I take to be the common alder by the poplar at Egg Rock. See December 30, 1855 ("For a few days I have noticed the snow sprinkled with alder and birch scales. I go now through the birch meadow southwest of the Rock. The high wind is scattering them over the snow there. ")

Saw about 10 A. M. a gaggle of geese, forty-three in number, in a very perfect harrow flying northeasterly. See March 24, 1859 (" C. sees geese go over again this afternoon."); March 25, 1853 ("A Lincoln man heard a flock of geese, he thinks it was day before yesterday."); March 27, 1857 ("Farmer says that he heard geese go over two or three nights ago."); March 27 and 28, 1860 (" Louis Minor tells me he saw some geese about the 23d."); March 28, 1859 ("I suspect it will be found that there is really some advantage in large birds of passage flying in the wedge form and cleaving their way through the air, — that they really do overcome its resistance best in this way, — and perchance the direction and strength of the wind determine the comparative length of the two sides . . .Undoubtedly the geese fly more numerously over rivers which, like ours, flow northeasterly, — are more at home with the water under them.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring, Geese Overhead

Everywhere are hovering over the river and floating, wrecked and struggling, on its surface, a miller-like insect . . the degree and kind of warmth to bring them forth. See March 7, 1859 ("Their appearance is a regular early spring, or late winter, phenomenon"); April 25, 1854 ("Many shad-flies in the air and alighting on my clothes. The summer approaches by almost insensibly increasing lieferungs of heat,  . . Each creature awaits with confidence its proper degree of heat.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Insect Hatches in Spring (millers, perla, shad-flies or ephemera)

Up the Assabet, scared from his perch a stout hawk, -- the red-tailed undoubtedly See March 6, 1858 ("I see the first hen-hawk, or hawk of any kind, methinks, since the beginning of winter. Its scream, even, is inspiring as the voice of a spring bird."); . March 2, 1855 ("Hear two hawks scream. There is something truly March-like in it, like a prolonged blast or whistling of the wind through a crevice in the sky. which, like a cracked blue saucer, overlaps the woods. Such are the first rude notes which prelude the summer’s quire, learned of the whistling March wind") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: the Hawks of March

The first true pewee day, though they have been here some time. See March 16, 1854.  ("The first phoebe near the water is heard.");  April 2, 1852 ("For a long distance, as we paddle up the river, we hear the two-stanza'd lay of the pewee on the shore, - pee-wet, pee-wee, etc. Those are the two obvious facts to eye and ear, the river and the pewee.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Phoebe

I do not perceive any fresh additions to the stone-heaps, See April 19, 1854 ("Yesterday, as I was returning down the Assabet, . . . I was surprised to find the river so full of sawdust from the pail-factory and Barrett's mill that I could not easily distinguish if the stone-heaps had been repaired"); May 3, 1855 ("Sitting on the bank near the stone-heaps, I see large suckers rise to catch insects,—sometimes leap."): June 11, 1858 (""Examine the stone-heaps. One is now a foot above water and quite sharp. They contain, apparently freshly piled up, from a wheelbarrow to a cartload of stones; but I can find no ova in them. "); July 31, 1859 ("A man fishing at the Ox-Bow said without hesitation that the stone-heaps were made by the sucker,")

A Book of the Seasons, Signs of the Spring. Geese Overhead

 

No mortal is alert enough 

to be present at the first dawn of the spring. 

Henry Thoreau, 

March 17, 1857

As it grew darker,

I was startled by the honking of geese

flying low over the woods . . .

Standing at my door,

I could hear the rush of their wings;

when … they suddenly … and with hushed clamor

wheeled and settled in the pond.

Walden (Spring)

Every year 

the geese, returning, 

do this, I don't 

know how.

~ Mary Oliver 

February 18. I hear that geese went over Cambridge last night. February 18, 1857

February 21. Can it be true, as is said, that geese have gone over Boston, probably yesterday? It is in the newspapers. February 21, 1855

February 23. I have seen signs of the spring. February 23, 1857

March 10. The weather is almost April-like. We always have much of this rainy, drizzling, misty weather in early spring, after which we expect to hear geese. March 10, 1854

March 14. From within the house at 5.30 p. m. I hear the loud honking of geese, throw up the window, and see a large flock in disordered harrow flying more directly north or even northwest than usual. Raw, thick, misty weather. March 14, 1854

March 16. Saw a large flock of geese go over Cambridge and heard the robins in the College Yard. March 16, 1852

Walden (Spring) ("As it grew darker, I was startled by the honking of geese flying low over the woods . . . Standing at my door, I could hear the rush of their wings; when … they suddenly … and with hushed clamor wheeled and settled in the pond. So I came in, and shut the door, and passed my first spring night in the woods. In the morning I watched the geese from the door through the mist, sailing in the middle of the pond, fifty rods off . . . But when I stood on the shore they at once rose up with a great flapping of wings at the signal of their commander, and when they had got into rank circled about over my head, twenty-nine of them, and then steered straight to Canada.")

March 24. C. sees geese go over again this afternoon. How commonly they are seen in still rainy weather like this! He says that when they had got far off they looked like a black ribbon almost perpendicular waving in the air. March 24, 1859

March 25. A Lincoln man heard a flock of geese, he thinks it was day before yesterday. March 25, 1853

March 27 Farmer says that he heard geese go over two or three nights ago. March 27, 1857

March 27 Louis Minor tells me he saw some geese about the 23d. March 27 and 28, 1860

March 28 10.15 P. M. — The geese have just gone over, making a great cackling and awaking people in their beds. They will probably settle in the river. Who knows but they had expected to find the pond open? March 28, 1852

March 28 After a cloudy morning, a warm and pleasant afternoon. I hear that a few geese were seen this morning. March 28, 1858

March 28 We see eight geese floating afar in the middle of the meadow, at least half a mile off, plainly (with glass) much larger than the ducks in their neighborhood and the white on their heads very distinct. When at length they arise and fly off northward, their peculiar heavy undulating wings, blue-heron-like and unlike any duck, are very noticeable. . . . When walking about on the low east shore at the Bedford bound, I heard a faint honk, and looked around over the water with my glass, thinking it came from that side or perhaps from a farmyard in that direction. I soon heard it again, and at last we detected a great flock passing over, quite on the other side of us and pretty high up. From time to time one of the company uttered a short note, that peculiarly metallic, clangorous sound. These were in a single undulating line, and, as usual, one or two were from time to time crowded out of the line, apparently by the crowding of those in the rear, and were flying on one side and trying to recover their places, but at last a second short line was formed, meeting the long one at the usual angle and making a figure somewhat like a hay-hook. I suspect it will be found that there is really some advantage in large birds of passage flying in the wedge form and cleaving their way through the air, — that they really do overcome its resistance best in this way, — and perchance the direction and strength of the wind determine the comparative length of the two sides. . . .We see these geese swimming and flying at midday and when it is perfectly fair. If you scan the horizon at this season of the year you are very likely to detect a small flock of dark ducks moving with rapid wing athwart the sky, or see the undulating line of migrating geese against the sky. Perhaps it is this easterly wind which brings geese, as it did on the 24th.

. . .Undoubtedly the geese fly more numerously over rivers which, like ours, flow northeasterly, — are more at home with the water under them. Each flock runs the gantlet of a thousand gunners, and when you see them steer off from you and your boat you may remember how great their experience in such matters may be, how many such boats and gunners they have seen and avoided between here and Mexico, and even now, perchance (though you, low plodding, little dream it), they see one or two more lying in wait ahead. They have an experienced ranger of the air for their guide. The echo of one gun hardly dies away before they see another pointed at them. How many bullets or smaller shot have sped in vain toward their ranks! Ducks fly more irregularly and shorter distances at a time. The geese rest in fair weather by day only in the midst of our broadest meadow or pond. So they go, anxious and earnest to hide their nests under the pole. March 28, 1859

March 30. At dusk I hear two flocks of geese go over. March 30, 1858

March 31. Just after sundown I see a large flock of geese in a perfect harrow cleaving their way toward the northeast, with Napoleonic tactics splitting the forces of winter. March 31, 1858

So I came in and

shut the door and passed my first

spring night in the woods.

Walden, Spring

See also Signs of the Spring:

• A Change in the Air
• A Sunny Nook in Spring
• Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding
• Braided Ripples of Melting Snow Shine in the Ruts
• Bright Blue Water
• Buzzing Flies
• Ducks Afar, Sailing on the Meadow
• Frogs, and Turtles Stirring
• Geese Overhead
• Greening Grasses and Sedges
• I begin to think that my wood will last.
• Insects and Worms Come Forth and are Active
• Listening for the Bluebird
• March is famous for its Winds
• Mosses Bright Green
• My Greatcoat on my Arm
• Perla-like Insects Appear
• Red Maple Sap Flows
• Ripples made by Fishes
• Skunks Active
• The Anxious Peep of the Early Robin
• The Crowing of Cocks, the Cawing of crows
• The Days have grown Sensibly Longer
• The Eaves Begin to Run
• The Gobbling of Turkeys
• The Grackle Arrives
• The Hawks of March
• The New Warmth of the Sun
• The Note of the Dark-eyed Junco Going Northward
• The Red-Wing Arrives
• The Skunk Cabbage Blooms
• The Softened Air of these Warm February Days
• The Song Sparrow Sings
• The Spring Note of the Chickadee
• The Spring Note of the Nuthatch
• The Striped Squirrel Comes Out
• The Water Bug (Gyrinus)
• The Woodchuck Ventures Out
• Walking without Gloves
• Woodpeckers Tapping

 <<<<< Signs of Spring                                                          Early Spring >>>>>

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring;

 Geese Overhead

 

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

<<<<<<<< Geese in Autumn                                                                                         Ice out >>>>>>>>

A Book of the Seasons: November 24 (lichens contrast with first slight snow, geese migrating , the Andromeda phenomenon, cold Thanksgiving weather, acorns , last flower, winter begins)

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

November 24.

Snow sugars the ground

to reveal a cow-path in

the distant landscape.

November 24, 1858

Looking from the sun

the andromeda is a 

 uniform pale brown.

November 24, 1857

Looking toward the sun,

the andromeda is a

very warm red brown.

November 24, 1857

Clear and freezing cold 

with a strong northerly wind – 

the winter begins.

November 24, 1853

November 24, 2020

At this time last year the andromeda in the Ministerial Swamp was red. Now it has not turned from brown. November 24, 1852

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. November 24, 1857

The first or northernmost Andromeda Pond. . . is filled with a uniformly dense and level bed of brown andromeda, in which I detect nothing else from the hills except some white cotton-grass waving over it.  November 24, 1857

Between the andromeda and the hills, there is a border, from one to two rods wide, of coarse and now yellowish sedge all the way round, November 24, 1857

On the dry hillside next the water, there is another belt, i.e. of lambkill, pretty dense, running apparently quite round the pond a rod or more in width. . .  here it is a thick growth and has relation to the swamp. November 24, 1857

Geese went over on the 13th and 14th, on the 17th the first snow fell, and the 19th it began to be cold and blustering. November 24, 1855

The last three or four days have been quite cold, the sidewalks a glare of ice and very little melting. November 24, 1855

To-day has been exceedingly blustering and disagreeable, as I found while surveying. November 24, 1855

At noon, after a drizzling forenoon, the weather suddenly changes to clear and wintry, freezing cold with strong wind from a northerly quarter. November 24, 1853

Cold Thanksgiving weather again, the pools freezing. November 24, 1857

There is a slight sugaring of snow on the ground. November 24, 1858

When I looked out this morning, the landscape presented a very pretty wintry sight, little snow as there was. Being very moist, it had lodged on every twig, November 24, 1858

That first slight snow has not yet gone off! and very little has been added. November 24, 1855

On grass ground there is much the less, and that is barely perceptible, while plowed ground is quite white, and I can thus distinguish such fields even to the horizon. November 24, 1858

The plowed fields were for a short time whitened. November 24, 1860

I can not only distinguish plowed fields — regular white squares in the midst of russet — but even cart-paths, and foot or cow paths a quarter of a mile long, as I look across to Conantum. November 24, 1858 

It is pleasant to see thus revealed as a feature, even in the distant landscape, a cow-path leading from far inland down to the river. November 24, 1858

It is dark, drizzling still from time to time, sprinkling or snowing a little. I see more snow in the north and north west horizon November 24, 1858

It is a lichen day, with a little moist snow falling. November 24, 1858

The first spitting of snow — a flurry or squall – from out a gray or slate-colored cloud that came up from the west. November 24, 1860

This consisted almost entirely of pellets an eighth of an inch or less in diameter. November 24, 1860

These drove along almost horizontally, or curving upward like the outline of a breaker, before the strong and chilling wind. November 24, 1860

The hands seek the warmth of the pockets, and fingers are so benumbed that you cannot open your jack-knife. November 24, 1860

The air was so filled with these snow pellets that we could not not see a hill half a mile off for an hour. November 24, 1860

The green moss about the bases of trees was very prettily spotted white with them, and also the large beds of cladonia in the pastures. November 24, 1860

The great green lungwort lichen shows now on the oaks  . . . and the fresh bright chestnut fruit of other kinds, glistening with moisture, brings life and immortality to light. November 24, 1858 

That side of the trunk on which the lichens are thickest is the side on which the snow lodges in long ridges. November 24, 1858

They come to contrast with the red cockspur lichens on the stumps, which you had not noticed before. November 24, 1860

Striking against the trunks of the trees on the west side they fell and accumulated in a white line at the base. November 24, 1860

Though a slight touch, this was the first wintry scene of the season. November 24, 1860

The rabbits in the swamps enjoy it, as well as you. November 24, 1860

Ice forms in my boat at 5 p. m., and what was mud in the street is fast becoming a rigid roughness. November 24, 1853

Ice has frozen pretty thick in the bottom of my boat. November 24, 1855

Fair Haven Pond is closed still. November 24, 1858

It seems like the beginning of winter. November 24, 1853

The farmers now bring the apples they have engaged (and the cider); it is time to put them in the cellar, and the turnips. November 24, 1855

Under the two white oaks by the second wall south east of my house, on the east side the wall, I am surprised to find a great many sound acorns still, though everyone is sprouted, — frequently . . .with its radicle two inches long penetrated into the earth. November 24, 1860

But many have had their radicle broken or eaten off, and many have it now dead and withered. November 24, 1860

So far as my observation goes there, by far the greatest number of white oak acorns were destroyed by decaying (whether in consequence of frost or wet), both before and soon after falling. November 24, 1860

Not nearly so many have been carried off by squirrels and birds or consumed by grubs, though the number of acorns of all kinds lying under the trees is now comparatively small to what it was early in October. November 24, 1860

It is remarkable that all sound white oak acorns (and many which are not now sound) are sprouted, and that I have noticed no other kind sprouted. November 24, 1860

It will be worth the while to see how many of these sprouted acorns are left and are sound in the spring. November 24, 1860

It is true these two trees are exceptions and I do not find sound ones nearly as numerous under others. Nevertheless, the sound white oak acorns are not so generally and entirely picked up as I supposed. November 24, 1860

The bitter-sweet of a white oak acorn which you nibble in a bleak November walk over the tawny earth is more to me than a slice of imported pineapple. November 24, 1860

I hear a screech owl in Wheeler’s wood by the railroad, and I heard one a few evenings ago at home. November 24, 1858

The Fringilla hyemalis appear to be flitting about in a more lively manner on account of the cold. They go off with a twitter from the low weeds and bushes November 24, 1857

See, on the railroad-slope by the pond, and also some days ago, a flock of goldfinches eating the seed of the Roman wormwood. November 24, 1859

Nowadays birds are so rare I am wont to mistake them at first for a leaf or mote blown off from the trees or bushes. November 24, 1857

Setting stakes in the swamp (Ministerial). Saw seven black ducks fly out of the peat-hole. November 24, 1851

Saw there also a tortoise still stirring, the painted tortoise, I believe. November 24, 1851 

Found on the south side of the swamp the Lygodium palmatum, which Bigelow calls the only climbing fern in our latitude, an evergreen November 24, 1851

The Rubus hispidus is now very common and conspicuous amid the withered grass and leaves of the swamp, with its green or reddened leaves. November 24, 1858

How pretty amid the downy and cottony fruits of November the heads of the white anemone. November 24, 1859

At Spanish Brook Path, the witch-hazel (one flower) lingers.  November 24, 1859

November 24, 2016

A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Andromeda phenomenon

((Andromeda polifolia — bog-rosemary)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Blackberries

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Lichens and the lichenst studying lichens.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle (Emys picta)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the American Black Duck

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Geese in Autumn

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Screech Owl

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau the Goldfinch

  A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis)

A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, First Ice

A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  First Snow

 A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Witch-Hazel

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November days

November 24, 2018

March 2, 1858 (“ the snow is quite soft or damp, lodging in perpendicular walls on the limbs, white on black.”)

March 12, 1859 ("See two ducks flying over Ministerial Swamp.")

April 29, 1857 ("Sweet-fern at entrance of Ministerial Swamp.")

May 1, 1859 ("The climbing fern is persistent, i.e. retains its greenness still, though now partly brown and withered.") ;

May 19, 1860 (“At the Ministerial Swamp I see a white lady's-slipper almost out, fully grown, with red ones.”)

June 2, 1860 ("I soon hear its mournful scream. . . not loud now but, though within twenty or thirty rods, sounding a mile off.”);

June 25, 1860 ("At evening up the Assabet hear four or five screech owls on different sides of the river, uttering those peculiar low screwing or working, ventriloquial sounds.”)

July 7, 1854 ("See a pretty large hawk. . . circling over the Ministerial Swamp.")

August 14, 1854 (“I hear the tremulous squealing scream of a screech owl in the Holden Woods.”)

August 28, 1860 (" The Lycopodium inundatum common by Harrington's mud-hole, Ministerial Swamp.")

September 23, 1855 (" I hear from my chamber a screech owl about Monroe’s house this bright moonlight night, — a loud, piercing scream, much like the whinny of a colt perchance, a rapid trill, then subdued or smothered a note or two.”)

September 24, 1855 ("See coming from the south in loose array some twenty apparently black ducks, . . .At first they were in form like a flock of blackbirds, then for a moment assumed the outline of a fluctuating harrow. ); 

September 29, 1851 ("Scared up three black ducks, which rose with a great noise of their wings, striking the water. ");

 September 30, 1853 ("Saw a large flock of black ducks flying northwest in the form of a harrow."); 

October 2, 1859 (“The climbing fern is perfectly fresh, — and apparently therefore an evergreen, — the more easily found amid the withered cinnamon and flowering ferns.”);

October 7, 1860 ("I see one small but spreading white oak full of acorns just falling and ready to fall. . . . Some that have fallen have already split and sprouted.”);

October 8, 1860 ("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.")

October 11, 1860 ("There is a remarkably abundant crop of white oak acorns this fall.");

October 13, 1860 ("This is a white oak year")

October 14, 1856 (“[F]inger-cold to-day. Your hands instinctively find their way to your pockets”); 
October 19, 1854 (“The country above Littleton (plowed ground) more or less sugared with snow,”)

October 20, 1859 (“It is finger-cold as I come home, and my hands find their way to my pocket.”)
October 23, 1857 ("The ferns which I can see on the bank, apparently all evergreens, are polypody at rock, marginal shield fern, terminal shield fern, and (I think it is) Aspidium spinulosum,. . .The above-named evergreen ferns are so much the more conspicuous on that pale-brown ground. They stand out all at once and are seen to be evergreen; their character appears.”);
October 29, 1860 ("At some of the white oaks visited on the 11th, where the acorns were so thick on the ground and trees, I now find them perhaps nearly half picked up, yet perhaps little more than two thirds spoiled. The good appear to be all sprouted now.")

November 3, 1852 ("At Andromeda Pond, started nine black (?) ducks just at sunset, as usual they circling far round to look at me.")
November 3, 1853 (" I think it was the 27th October I saw a goldfinch. ")

November 4, 1855 ("See some large flocks of F. hyemalis, which fly with a clear but faint chinking chirp, and from time to time you hear quite a strain, half warbled, from them. They rise in a body from the ground and fly to the trees as you approach.”)
November 6, 1853 ("It is surprising how little most of us are contented to know about the sparrows which drift about in the air before us just before the first snows. These little sparrows with white in tail, perhaps the prevailing bird of late, have flitted before me so many falls and springs, yet they have been strangers to me. I have not inquired whence they came or whither they were going,")

November 8, 1853 ("The snow begins to whiten the plowed ground now, but it has not overcome the russet of the grass ground.")

November 8, 1853 (“Our first snow,. . . The children greet it with a shout when they come out at recess. ”)

November 8, 1858 ("Lichens . . .are the various grays and browns which give November its character.")
November 11, 1851 ("In the withered grass at Nut Meadow Brook, two black ducks, . . .rise black between me and the sun, but, when they have circled round to the east, show some silvery sheen on the under side of their wings. ")
November 11, 1851 (”A bright, but cold day, finger-cold. One must next wear gloves, put his hands in winter quarters.”)
November 11, 1853 ("Bracing cold, and exhilarating sunlight . . .I wear mittens now.”)
; November 11, 1858 (“Coming home I have cold fingers, and must row to get warm.”)

November 13, 1858 (“We looked out the window at 9 P. M. and saw the ground for the most part white with the first sugaring, which at first we could hardly tell from a mild moonlight, — only there was no moon. Thus it comes stealthily in the night and changes the whole aspect of the earth.”)
November 13, 1855 ("Seventy or eighty geese, in three harrows successively smaller, flying southwest—pretty well west—over the house. A completely overcast, occasionally drizzling forenoon.“);

November 14, 1851 ("Surveying the Ministerial Lot in the southwestern part of the town.")

November 14, 1855 ("A painted tortoise swimming under water and a wood tortoise out on the bank.")
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 ”)

November 17, 1855 ("Just after dark the first snow is falling, after a chilly afternoon with cold gray clouds, when my hands were uncomfortably cold.”) 

November 13, 1855 ("Seventy or eighty geese, in three harrows successively smaller, flying southwest—pretty well west—over the house. A completely overcast, occasionally drizzling forenoon.“)

November 13, 1851 ("A day when you cannot pluck a flower, cannot dig a parsnip, nor pull a turnip, for the frozen ground! What do the thoughts find to live on?")

 November 14, 1855 ("Mr. Rice . . . remembered a similar season fifty-four years ago, and he remembered it because on the 13th of November that year he was engaged in pulling turnips and saw wild geese go over, when one came to tell him that his father was killed by a bridge giving way ")

 November 15, 1853 ("Take up a witch-hazel with still some fresh blossoms.")
November 15, 1858 ("I go to look for evergreen ferns before they are covered up. The end of last month and the first part of this is the time.")

 November 16, 1858  ("Rubus hispidus leaves last through the winter, turning reddish.")

 November 17 1856 ("Winter is not all white and sere. . . . a few evergreen ferns scattered about keep up the semblance of summer still") 

November 17, 1859 (“How fair and memorable this prospect when you stand opposite to the sun, these November afternoons, and look over the red andromeda swamp”)

November 18, 1855 ("About an inch of snow fell last night, but the ground was not at all frozen or prepared for it. A little greener grass and stubble here and there seems to burn its way through it this forenoon.");

November 18,1851 ("Surveying these days the Ministerial Lot . . .I hear the hooting of an owl . . . Here hawks also circle by day, and chickadees are heard, and rabbits and partridges abound.")
November 18, 1858 ("I go along under the east side of Lee’s Cliff, looking at the evergreen ferns.")

November 20, 1857 ("I enter the Ministerial Swamp at the road below Tarbell’s. The water andromeda leaves are brown now, except where protected by trees. In some places where many of the bright-crimson shoots of high blueberry are seen together, they have a very pretty effect")

November 20, 1858  ("Tthe Rubus hispidus leaves last all winter like an evergreen.")
November 20, 1853 ("Methinks the geese are wont to go south just before a storm, and, in the spring, to go north just after one, say at the end of a long April storm.”)

November 20, 1860 ("Decidedly finger cold tonight.")

November 21, 1860 ("Another finger-cold evening, which I improve in pulling my turnips”)

November 22, 1853 (“Geese went over yesterday, and to-day also.”)

November 22, 1860 ("Though you are finger-cold toward night, and you cast a stone on to your first ice, and see the unmelted crystals under every bank, it is glorious November weather, and only November fruits are out.”)
November 23, 1850 ("To-day it has been finger-cold. Unexpectedly I found ice by the side of the brooks this afternoon nearly an inch thick. Prudent people get in their barrels of apples to-day. ")

 November 23, 1852 ("There is something genial even in the first snow, and Nature seems to relent a little of her November harshness.")

November 23, 1853 ("At 5 P. M. I saw, flying southwest high overhead, a flock of geese, and heard the faint honking of one or two. They were in the usual harrow form, . . . This is the sixth flock I have seen or heard of since the morning of the 17th , i . e . within a week .")

 November 23, 1852 ("I am surprised to see Fair Haven entirely skimmed over.")

November 25, 1850 ("I found Fair Haven skimmed entirely over, though the stones which I threw down on it from the high bank on the east broke through. Yet the river was open.")

November 25, 1857("This is November of the hardest kind, — bare frozen ground covered with pale-brown or straw-colored herbage, a strong, cold, cutting northwest wind which makes me seek to cover my ears, a perfectly clear and cloudless sky. . . . Ditches and pools are fast skimming over, and a few slate-colored snowbirds, with thick, shuffling twitter, and fine-chipping tree sparrows flit from bush to bush in the other wise deserted pastures. This month taxes a walker's resources more than any.")

November 25, 1852 ("At Walden. — I hear at sundown what I mistake for the squawking of a hen. . . but it proved to be a flock of wild geese going south")

November 27, 1856 ("Take a turn down the river. A painted tortoise sinking to the bottom, and apparently tree sparrows along the shore")

November 27, 1852 (“I find acorns which have sent a shoot down into the earth this fall.”)
November 29, 1856 ("This the first snow I have seen, ")

November 30, 1851 ("The Lygodium palmatum is quite abundant on that side of the swamp, twining round the goldenrods, etc., etc")

November 30, 1853 ("Now, first since spring, I take notice of the cladonia lichens")

December 2, 1854 ("Got up my boat and housed it, ice having formed about it.”)

December 2, 1857 ("Measuring Little Goose Pond, I observed two painted tortoises moving about under the thin transparent ice"); 

December 3, 1852 (" In a ditch near by, under ice half an inch thick, I saw a painted tortoise moving about.") 

December 8, 1850 ("The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible!”)

December 9, 1852 ("A few petals of the witch-hazel still hold on")

 December 21, 1851 (“As I stand by the edge of the swamp (Ministerial), a heavy-winged hawk flies home to it at sundown, just over my head, in silence.”);

December 13, 1857 ("I go this afternoon thinking I may find the stakes set for auction lots on the Ministerial Lot in December, '51")

December 14, 1859 (Snow-storms might be classified. . . .Also there is the pellet or shot snow, which consists of little dry spherical pellets the size of robin-shot. This, I think, belongs to cold weather.")

December 16, 1857 ("Plowed grounds show white first.")

December 22, 1858 ("I see in the cut near the shanty-site quite a flock of F. hyemalis and goldfinches together, on the snow and weeds and ground.")

December 23, 1850 ("I can discern a faint foot or sled path sooner when the ground is covered with snow than when it is bare")

December 24, 1856 ("The snow collects and is piled up in little columns like down about every twig and stem, and this is only seen in perfection, complete to the last flake, while it is snowing, as now.”)

December 26, 1853 ("It has fallen so gently that it forms an upright wall on the slenderest twig”)

 December 26, 1855 ("The scarlet fruit of the cockspur lichen, seen glowing through the more opaque whitish or snowy crust of a stump, is, on close inspection, the richest sight of all ”)

December 31, 1851 ("Nature has a day for each of her creatures, her creations. To-day it is an exhibition of lichens at Forest Hall.”)

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.")

January 7, 1855 (“It is a lichen day. . . . How full of life and of eyes is the damp bark!”)
January 10,1855 ("As I go toward the sun now at 4 P. M., the translucent leaves are lit up by it and appear of a soft red, more or less brown, like cathedral windows, but when I look back from the sun, the whole bed appears merely gray and brown or less reddish.”).

January 14, 1853 ("White walls of snow rest on the boughs of trees, in height two or three times their thickness.”)

January 26, 1858 (“This is a lichen day. The white lichens, partly encircling aspens and maples, look as if a painter had touched their trunks with his brush as he passed”) 

January 26, 1852 ("The lichens look rather bright to-day, . . .The beauty of lichens, with their scalloped leaves, the small attractive fields, the crinkled edge! I could study a single piece of bark for hour.”)

January 30, 1856 ("It has just begun to snow, — those little round dry pellets like shot. Stops snowing before noon, not having amounted to anything.”)

February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day. . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day, - a sudden humid growth.”)

February 16, 1854 ("That Indian trail on the hillside about Walden is revealed with remarkable distinctness to me standing on the middle of the pond, by the slight snow which had lodged on it forming a clear white line unobscured by weeds and twigs. (For snow is a great revealer not only of tracks made in itself, but even in the earth before it fell.) It is quite distinct in many places where you would not have noticed it before. A light snow will often reveal a faint foot or cart track in a field which was hardly discernible before, for it reprints it, as it were, in clear white type, alto-relievo.”)

November 24, 2020

If you make the least correct

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

November 23 <<<<<<<<  November 24  >>>>>>>> November 25

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November 24

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 ©  2009-2022

;

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