The chickadees resume their winter ways before the winter comes.

October 15

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

A smart frost, which even injured plants in house. Ground stiffened in morning; ice seen. 

River lower than for some months. Banks begin to wear almost a Novemberish aspect.

The black willow almost completely bare; many quite so. It loses its leaves about same time with the maples. 

The large ferns are now rapidly losing their leaves except the terminal tuft. Other species about the edges of swamps were turned suddenly dark cinnamon-color by the frost of yesterday. 

The water is very calm and full of reflections. Large fleets of maple and other leaves are floating on its surface as I go up the Assabet, leaves which apparently came down in a shower with yesterday morning's frost. Every motion of the turtles is betrayed by their rustling now.

Mikania is all whitish woolly now. Yet many tortoises are still out in the sun. 

An abundance of checkerberries by the hemlock at V. Muhlenbergii Brook. A remarkable year for berries. Even this, too, is abundant like the rest. They are tender and more palatable than ever now. I find a little pile of them, maybe fifteen or twenty, on the moss with each a little indentation or two on it, made apparently by some bird or beast. 

The chickadees are hopping near on the hemlock above. They resume their winter ways before the winter comes. 

A great part of the hemlock seeds fallen.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 15, 1856

A smart frost . . .  Ground stiffened in morning; ice seen.  See 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, 1853 ("And now . . .how the leaves come down in showers after this touch of the frost! "); See also  October 16, 1856 ("Ground all white with frost."); October 17, 1851 ("A severe frost this morning, which puts us one remove further from summer"); October 17, 1859 ("A smart frost this morning. Ground stiffened. Hear of ice in a tub.")

Large fleets of maple and other leaves. . .came down in a shower with yesterday morning's frost.  See October 15, 1853 (“[H]ow the leaves come down in showers after this touch of the frost!.”);   October 15, 1857 (“There has been a great fall of leaves in the night on account of this moist and rainy weather”) See also October 13, 1860 ("Now, as soon as the frost strips the maples, and their leaves strew the swamp floor and conceal the pools"); October22,1854 (“Pretty hard frosts these nights. Many leaves fell last night, and the Assabet is covered with their fleets.”)

The chickadees . . .resume their winter ways before the winter comes. See October 15, 1859 (The chickadees sing as if at home. They are not travelling singers hired by any Barnum. Theirs is an honest, homely, heartfelt melody.""). See also  October 11, 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 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 winterish.”); 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. They day-day 'd and lisp their faint notes alternately, and then, as if to make me think they had some other errand than to peer at me, they peck the dead twigs with their bills — the little top-heavy, black-crowned, volatile fellows.")

 

The chickadee

Hops near to me.

November 8, 1857

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 (“[T]he little chickadees . . . 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.”) and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

A great part of the hemlock seeds fallen. See October 13, 1859 ("The hemlock seed is now in the midst of its fall, some of it, with the leaves, floating on the river."); October 31, 1853 ("The hemlock seeds are apparently ready to drop from their cones.”); November 1, 1853 ("Showers of their fresh winged seeds come wafted down")

October 15. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, October 15

Chickadees hop near –

they resume their winter ways 

before winter comes.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Chickadees resume their winter ways

 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-561015

A cold and windy Sunday.

February 3

Analyzed the crow blackbird’s nest from which I took an egg last summer, eight or ten feet up a white maple by river, opposite Island. Large, of an irregular form, appearing as if wedged in between a twig and two large contiguous trunks. From outside to outside it measures from six to eight inches; inside, four; depth, two; height, six. The foundation is a loose mass of coarse strips of grape-vine bark chiefly, some eighteen inches long by five eighths of an inch mikania stems, a few cellular river weeds, as rushes, sparganium, pipe-grass, and some soft, coarse, fibrous roots. The same coarse grape-vine bark and grass and weed stems, together with some harder, wiry stems, form the sides and rim, the bark being passed around the twig. The nest is lined with the finer grass and weed stems, etc. The solid part of the nest is of half-decayed vegetable matter and mud, full of fine fibrous roots and wound internally with grass stems, etc., and some grape bark, being an inch and a half thick at bottom. Pulled apart and lying loose, it makes a great mass of material. This, like similar nests, is now a great haunt for spiders. 

P. M. — Up North Branch. A strong northwest wind (and thermometer 11°), driving the surface snow like steam. About five inches of soft snow now on ice.

See many seeds of the hemlock on the snow still, and cones which have freshly rolled down the bank.

Track some mice to a black willow by riverside, just above spring, against the open swamp; and about three feet high, in apparently an old woodpecker’s hole, was probably the mouse-nest, a double handful, consisting, four ninths, of fine shreds of inner bark, perhaps willow or maple; three ninths, the greenish moss, apparently, of button-bush; two ninths, the gray-slate fur, apparently, of rabbits or mice. Half a dozen hog’s bristles might have been brought by some bird to its nest there. These made a very warm and soft nest. 

Get some kind of vireo’s nest from a maple far up the stream, a dozen feet high, pensile; within, almost wholly rather coarse grape-vine shreds; without, the same and bark, covered with the delicate white spider-nests (?), birch-bark shreds, and brown cocoon silk. 

Returning, see near the Island a shrike glide by, cold and blustering as it was, with a remarkably even and steady sail or gliding motion like a hawk, eight or ten feet above the ground, and alight in a tree, from which at the same instant a small bird, perhaps a. creeper or nuthatch, flitted timidly away. The shrike was apparently in pursuit. 

We go wading through snows now up the bleak river, in the face of the cutting northwest wind and driving snow-steam, turning now this ear, then that, to the wind, and our gloved hands in our bosoms or pockets. Our tracks are obliterated before we come back. 

How different this from sailing or paddling up the stream here in July, or poling amid the rocks! Yet still, in one square rod, where they have got out ice and a thin transparent-ice has formed, I can see the pebbly bottom the same as in summer. 

It is a cold and windy Sunday. 

The wind whistles round the northwest corner of the house and penetrates every crevice and consumes the wood in the stoves, — soon blows it all away. An armful goes but little way. Such a day makes a great hole in the wood-pile. It whisks round the corner of the house, in at a crevice, and flirts off with all the heat before we have begun to feel it. 

Some of the low drifts but a few inches deep, made by the surface snow blowing, over the river especially, are of a fine, pure snow, so densely packed that our feet make hardly any impression on them. 

River still tight at Merrick’s. 

There comes a deep snow in midwinter, covering up the ordinary food of many birds and quadrupeds, but anon a high wind scatters the seeds of pines and hemlocks and birch and alder, etc., far and wide over the surface of the snow for them. 

You may now observe plainly the habit of the rabbits to run in paths about the swamps. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 3, 1856

See many seeds of the hemlock on the snow still, and cones which have freshly rolled down the bank. See January 14, 1857 ("Up Assabet on ice. . . . Hemlock seeds are scattered over the snow."); January 20, 1860 ("The snow and ice under the hemlocks is strewn with cones and seeds and tracked with birds and squirrels."); January 24, 1856 (" A great many hemlock cones have fallen on the snow and rolled down the hill."); January 31, 1856 ("More hemlock cones also have fallen and rolled down the bank. ').

There comes a deep snow in midwinter, covering up the ordinary food of many birds and quadrupeds, but anon a high wind scatters the seeds of pines and hemlocks and birch and alder, etc., far and wide over the surface of the snow for them.  See January 20,1860 ("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. The snowy ice and the snow on shore have been blackened with these fallen cones several times over this winter.")

I can see the pebbly bottom the same as in summer. See July 5, 1852 ("We are favored in having two rivers, flowing into one, whose banks afford different kinds of scenery, the streams being of different characters; one a dark, muddy, dead stream, full of animal and vegetable life, with broad meadows and black dwarf willows and weeds, the other comparatively pebbly and swift, with more abrupt banks and narrower meadows. To the latter I go to see the ripple, and the varied bottom with its stones and sands and shadows; to the former for the influence of its dark water resting on invisible mud, and for its reflections . . . We have become accustomed to the summer. It has acquired a certain eternity");  November 23, 1850 (“I lay down on the ice and look through at the bottom.”) See also Walden (“The first ice is especially interesting and perfect, being hard, dark, and transparent, and affords the best opportunity that ever offers for examining the bottom where it is shallow; for you can lie at your length on ice only an inch thick, like a skater insect on the surface of the water, and study the bottom at your leisure, only two or three inches distant, like a picture behind a glass.”); December 19, 1856 ("The ice is now from two and a half to three inches thick, a transparent green ice, through which I see the bottom "); Walden, Where I lived and what I lived for ("While I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars")

You may now observe plainly the habit of the rabbits to run in paths about the swamps. See January 1, 1856 ("I see the tracks apparently of a white rabbit, afterward many tracks of gray rabbits . . . Many have run in one course."); January 9, 1856 ("The rabbits have run in paths about the swamp."); January 10, 1856 ("A few rabbits have run in a path amid the blueberries and alders about the edge of the swamp.); see also November 24, 1860 ("Though a slight touch . . . The rabbits in the swamps enjoy it, as well as you.”); December 22, 1850 ("I see more tracks in the swamps than elsewhere.”); December 22, 1853 ("Last night's sprinkling of snow does not now whiten the ground, except that here in the swamp it whitens the ice and already I see the tracks of rabbits on it."); December 22, 1858 ("I see where a rabbit has hopped across [Walden] in the slosh last night, making a track larger than a man’s ordinarily is."); February 17, 1854 ("The track of the white rabbit is gigantic compared with that of the gray one.")

February 3. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 3

Thin transparent ice –

I see the pebbly bottom 

same as in summer. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A cold and windy Sunday.

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 ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560203

A new leaf of Nature’s Album.

January 31

P. M. —Up North Branch. 

There are a few inches of light snow on top of the little, hard and crusted, that I walked on here last, above the snow ice. The old tracks are blotted out, and new and fresher ones are to be discerned. It is a tabula rasa. 

These fresh falls of snow are like turning over a new leaf of Nature’s Album. At first you detect no track of beast or bird, and Nature looks more than commonly silent and blank. You doubt if anything has been abroad, though the snow fell three days ago, but ere long the track of a squirrel is seen making to or from the base of a tree, or the hole where he dug for acorns, and the shells he dropped on the snow around that stump. 

The wind of yesterday has shaken down countless oak leaves, which have been driven hurry-scurry over this smooth and delicate and unspotted surface, and now there is hardly a square foot which does not show some faint trace of them. They still spot the snow thickly in many places, though few can be traced to their lairs. 

More hemlock cones also have fallen and rolled down the bank. 

The fall of these withered leaves after each rude blast, so clean and dry that they do not soil the snow, is a phenomenon quite in harmony with the winter.

Perhaps the tracks of the mice are the most amusing of any, they take such various forms and, though small, are so distinct. Here is where one has come down the bank and hopped meanderingly across the river. Another an inch and a quarter wide by five, six, or seven apart from centre to centre. 

The tracks of the mice suggest extensive hopping in the night and going a-gadding. They commence and terminate in the most insignificant little holes by the side of a twig or tuft, and occasionally they give us the type of their tails very distinctly, even sidewise to the course on a bank-side.

But what track is this, just under the bank? 

It must be a bird, which at last struck the snow with its wings and took to flight. There are but four hops in all, and then it ends, though there is nothing near enough for it to hop upon from the snow. The form of the foot is somewhat like that of a squirrel, though only the outline is distinguished. The foot is about two inches long, and it about two inches from outside of one foot to outside of the other. Sixteen inches from hop to hop, the rest in proportion. Looking narrowly, I see where one wing struck the bank ten feet ahead as it passed. A quarter of a mile down-stream it occurs again, and near by still less of a track, but marks as if it had pecked in the snow.

Could it be the track of a crow with its toes unusually close together? Or was it an owl? [Probably a crow. Vide Feb. 1st. Hardly a doubt of it.]   

Some creature has been eating elm blossom-buds and dropping them over the snow. 

See also the tracks, probably of a muskrat, for a few feet leading from hole to hole just under the bank.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 31, 1856

More hemlock cones also have fallen and rolled down the bank. ... See January 24, 1856 (“A great many hemlock cones have fallen on the snow and rolled down the hill.”); February 3, 1856 ("See many seeds of the hemlock on the snow still, and cones which have freshly rolled down the bank.")

The track of a crow with its toes unusually close together.  See January 22, 1856 ("See the track of a crow, the toes as usual less spread and the middle one making a more curved furrow in the snow than the partridge as if they moved more unstably,"); January 24, 1856 (“The tracks of a crow, like those of the 22d, with a long hind toe, nearly two inches. The two feet are also nearly two inches apart.”);  February 1, 1856 ("I have but little doubt that yesterday's track was a crow's .The two inner toes are near together; the middle, more or less curved often."); See also  January 19, 1859 ("The inner toe is commonly close to the middle one. It makes a peculiar curving track (or succession of 'curves), stepping round the planted foot each time with a sweep.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

But what track is this – 

the track of a crow with its 

toes close together?

February 1, 1856

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A new leaf of Nature’s Album.

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 ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560131

I walk with a peculiar sense of freedom over the snow-covered ice.

January 24

the sun just peeping 

o’er the ridge in the south–east 

while it snows lightly

January 24. 2025

A journal is a record of experiences and growth, not a preserve of things well done or said. The charm of the journal must consist in a certain greenness, though freshness, and not in maturity. Here I cannot afford to be remembering what I said or did, but what I am and aspire to become. 

I knew that a crow had that day plucked the cedar berries and barberries by Flint’s Pond and then flapped silently through the trackless air to Walden, where it dined on fisherman’s bait, though there was no living creature to tell me. 

P. M. -- Up Assabet. 

Even the patches of shining snow-crust between those of dry white surface snow are slightly blue, like ice and water. 

You may walk anywhere on the river now. Even the open space against Merrick’s, below the Rock, has been closed again, and there is only six feet of water there now. I walk with a peculiar sense of freedom over the snow-covered ice, not fearing that I shall break through. 

I have not been able to find any tracks of muskrats this winter. I suspect that they very rarely venture out in winter with their wet coats. 

I see squirrel-tracks about the hemlocks. They are much like rabbits, only the toes , are very distinct. From this they pass into a semicircular figure sometimes. Some of the first are six inches from outside to outside lengthwise with one to two feet of interval. Are these the gray or red? 

A great many hemlock cones have fallen on the snow and rolled down the hill. 

Higher up, against the Wheeler Swamp, I see where many squirrels —perhaps red, for the tracks appear smaller—have fed on the alder cones on the twigs which are low or frozen into the ice, stripping them to the core just as they do the pine cones. 

Here are the tracks of a crow, like those of the 22d, with a long hind toe, nearly two inches. The two feet are also nearly two inches apart. I see where the bird alighted, descending with an impetus and breaking through the slight crust, planting its feet side by side.

How different this partridge-track, with its slight hind toe, open and wide-spread toes on each side, both feet forming one straight line.  The middle toe alternately curved to the right and to the left, and what is apparently the outer toe in each case shorter than the inner one. 

I see under a great many trees, black willow and swamp white oak, the bark scattered over the snow, some pieces six inches long, and above see the hole which a woodpecker has bored. 

The snow is so deep along the sides of the river that I can now look into nests which I could hardly reach in the summer. I can hardly believe them the same. They have only an ice egg in them now. 

Thus we go about, raised, generally speaking, more than a foot above the summer level. So much higher do we carry our heads in the winter. What a great odds such a little difference makes! When the snow raises us one foot higher than we have been accustomed to walk, we are surprised at our elevation! So we soar. 

I do not find a foot of open water, even, on this North Branch, as far as I go, i.e. to J. Hosmer’s lot. The river has been frozen unusually long and solidly. 

They have been sledding wood along the river for a quarter of a mile in front of Merriam’s and past the mouth of Sam Barrett’s Brook, where it is bare of snow, — hard, glare ice on which there is scarcely a trace of the sled or oxen. They have sledded home a large oak which was cut down on the bank. Yet this is one of the rockiest and swiftest parts of the stream. Where I have so often stemmed the swift current, dodging the rocks, with my paddle, there the heavy, slow paced oxen, with their ponderous squeaking load, have plodded, while the teamster walked musing beside it. 

That Wheeler swamp is a great place for squirrels. I observe many of their tracks along the riverside there. The nests are of leaves, and apparently of the gray species. 

There is much of the water milkweed on the little island just above Dove Rock. It rises above the deep snow there. 

It is remarkable how much the river has been tracked by dogs the week past, not accompanied by their masters. They hunt, perchance, in the night more than is supposed, for I very rarely see one alone by day. 

The river is pretty low and has fallen within a month, for there has been no thaw. The ice has broken and settled around the rocks, which look as if they had burst up through it. Some maple limbs which were early frozen in have been broken and stripped down by this irresistible weight. 

You see where the big dogs have slipped on one or two feet in their haste, sinking to the ice, but, having two more feet, it did not delay them. 

I walk along the sides of the stream, admiring the rich mulberry catkins of the alders, which look almost edible. They attract us because they have so much of spring in them. The clear red osiers, too, along the riverside in front of Merriam’s on Wheeler’s side. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 24, 1856



Things well done or said. See March 11, 1859 "There is always some accident in the best things, whether thoughts or expressions or deeds. The memorable thought, the happy expression,the admirable deed are only partly ours."_)

You may walk anywhere on the river now. See February 5, 1856 ("I have walked much on the river this winter")

I have not been able to find any tracks of muskrats this winter. I suspect that they very rarely venture out in winter with their wet coats. See  January 31, 1856  ("See also the tracks, probably of a muskrat, for a few feet leading from hole to hole just under the bank");  February 6, 1856 ("He [Goodwin] thinks that what I call muskrat-tracks are mink-tracks by the Rock, and that muskrat do not come out at all this weather.  I saw a clamshell opened, and they say minks do not open them (?)"); February 28, 1857 (" I see the track, apparently of a muskrat (?), — about five inches wide with very sharp and distinct trail of tail. . . It is interesting to see how every little rill like this will be haunted by muskrats or minks. Does the mink ever leave a track of its tail?"); January 3, 1860 (“Melvin . . . speaks of the mark of the [muskrat] tail, which is dragged behind them, in the snow, — as if made by a case-knife.”)

 A great many hemlock cones have fallen on the snow and rolled down the hill. SeeDecember 31, 1859 ("There is a great deal of hemlock scales scattered over the recent snow (at the Hemlocks), evidently by birds on the trees, and the wind has blown them south east, — scales, seeds, and cones, — and I see the tracks of small birds that have apparently picked the seeds from the snow also."); January 14, 1857 ("Up Assabet on ice . . . Hemlock seeds are scattered over the snow."); January 20, 1860 ("The snow and ice under the hemlocks is strewn with cones and seeds and tracked with birds and squirrels.") January 31, 1856 ("More hemlock cones also have fallen and rolled down the bank."); February 3, 1856 ("See many seeds of the hemlock on the snow still, and cones which have freshly rolled down the bank"); March 6, 1853 ("The hemlock cones have shed their seeds, but there are some closed yet on the ground."); April 13, 1860 ("Crossbills – male and female. They are very busily eating the seeds of the hemlock, whose cones are strewn on the ground.")

Here are the tracks of a crow, like those of the 22d, with a long hind toe, nearly two inches. See January 22, 1856 ("See the track of a crow,

the toes as usual less spread and the middle one making a more curved furrow in the snow than the partridge as if they moved more unstably . . .The inner toe a little the nearest to the middle one."); February 1, 1856 ("The two inner toes are near together; the middle, more or less curved often."); January 19, 1859 ("The inner toe is commonly close to the middle one. It makes a peculiar curving track (or succession of 'curves), stepping round the planted foot each time with a sweep. You would say that it toed in decidedly and walked feebly. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

The snow is so deep along the sides of the river that I can now look into nests which I could hardly reach in the summer . . .They have only an ice egg in them now. See December 24, 1851 (Now and long since the birds' nests have been full of snow.“); December 30, 1855 (“He who would study birds’ nests must look for them in November and in winter as well as in midsummer, for then the trees are bare and he can see them, and the swamps and streams are frozen and he can approach new kinds”);  February 16, 1860 ("Also all the birds' nests in the blueberry bushes are revealed, by the great snow-balls they hold.")

When the snow raises us one foot higher than we have been accustomed to walk, we are surprised at our elevation! See February 8, 1852 ("I now walk over fields raised a foot or more above their summer level, and the prospect is altogether new.")

The rich mulberry catkins of the alders, which look almost edible . . . attract us because they have so much of spring in them. See  January 10, 1859 ("The alder is one of the prettiest of trees and shrubs in the winter, it is evidently so full of life, with its conspicuous pretty red catkins dangling from it on all sides.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

The clear red osiers, too, along the riverside in front of Merriam’s on Wheeler’s side.  See January 3, 1856 ("Now, when all the fields and meadows are covered deep with snow, the warm-colored shoots of osiers, red and yellow, rising above it, remind me of flames") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Osier in Winter and early Spring

Many hemlock cones 

have fallen on the snow 

and rolled down the hill.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, I walk with a peculiar sense of freedom

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

When we ripple the surface, the undulating light is reflected from the waves.

October 31

It is a clear, cool, November-ish morning, reminding me of those peculiarly pleasant mornings in winter when there is a slight vapor in the atmosphere. On the hill, I see flocks of robins, flitting from tree to tree and peeping. The hemlock seeds are apparently ready to drop from their cones. 

It is a beautiful, warm and calm Indian-summer afternoon. The river is so high over the meadows, and the water is so smooth and glassy withal, that I am reminded of a calm April day during the freshets. The coarse withered grass, and the willows, and button-bushes with their myriad balls, and whatever else stands on the brink, are reflected with wonderful distinctness. This shore, thus seen from the boat, is like the ornamented frame of a mirror. 


When we ripple the surface, the undulating light is reflected from the waves upon the bank and bushes and withered grass.

Is not this already November, when the yellow and scarlet tints are gone from the forest ?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 31, 1853

See also October 31, 1853 ("A gossamer day.)

Spring fog.

March 6.

Sunday. Last Sunday I plucked some alder twigs, some aspen, and some swamp willow, and put them in water in a warm room, Immediately the alder catkins were relaxed and began to lengthen and open, and by the second day to drop their pollen; like handsome pendants they hung round the pitcher, and at the same time the smaller female flower expanded and brightened. In about four days the aspens began to show their red anthers and feathery scales, being an inch in length and still extending. March 2d, I added the andromeda; March 3d, the rhodora.

This morning, the ground being still covered with snow, there was quite a fog over the river and meadows, which I think owing to a warm atmosphere over the cold snow.

The hemlock cones have shed their seeds, but there are some closed yet on the ground. 

Part of the pitch pine cones are yet closed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 6, 1853

See : A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, I Have Seen Signs of the Spring

• Catkins expanding

 

Part of the pitch pine cones are yet closed. See April 19, 1856 (“As dryness will open the pitch pine cone, so moisture closes it up again. “); March 3, 1855 ("I find a cone which was probably dropped by a squirrel in the fall, [and] buried by the snow till now, for it has apparently just opened, and I shake its seeds out.”); March 1, 1856 ("I see a pitch pine seed with its wing, far out on Walden.”); February 27, 1853 (“ Each scale, which is very elaborately and perfectly constructed, is armed with a short spine, pointing downward, as if to protect its seed from squirrels and birds. That hard closed cone, which defied all violent attempts to open it has thus yielded to the gentle persuasion of warmth and dryness. The expanding of the pine cones, that, too, is a season.”); February 22, 1855 (“Pitch pine cones must be taken from the tree at the right season, else they will not open or “blossom” in a chamber.” ); February 1, 1856 ("I see a pitch pine seed, blown thirty rods from J. Hosmer’s little grove.”); January 25, 1856 (“A closed pitch pine cone gathered January 22d opened last night in my chamber.”); January 22, 1856 ("I find that many of those young pines are now full of unopened cones, which apparently will be two years old next summer, and these the squirrel now eats. “); January 8, 1856 ("All of the pitch pine cones that I see, but one, are open.”); November 20, 1855 ("the whole cone opens its scales with a smart crackling."); November 14, 1855 (“ . . . It is a general and sudden bursting or expanding of all the scales with a sharp crackling sound and motion of the whole cone, as by a force pent up within it. I suppose the strain only needed to be relieved in one point for the whole to go off..”); October 24, 1854 (" he chickadees are picking the seeds out of pitch pine cones.”) and Seasons of the Pitch Pine

White oak and potatoes

October 13. 

So far as I have observed, if pines or oaks bear abundantly one year they bear little or nothing the next year.  This year, so far as I observe, there are scarcely any white pine cones (were there any ?) or hemlock or larch, and a great abundance of white oak acorns in all parts of the town.

This is a white oak year, not a pine year. I should think that there might be a bushel or two of acorns on and under some single trees.

October 13, 2020

It is also an apple and a potato year.

I rejoice when the white oaks bear an abundant crop. I speak of it to many whom I meet, but I find few to sympathize with me. They seem to care much more for potatoes. 

The Indians say that many acorns are a sign of a cold winter. It is a cold fall at any rate.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 13, 1860

It is also an apple and a potato year. See  October 3, 1860 ("Gathered to-day my apples at the Texas house. . . .between ten and eleven barrels."); see also October 13, 1852 ("It is a sufficiently clear and warm, rather Indian-summer day, and they are gathering the apples in the orchard."); October 21, 1857 ("Those who have put it off thus long make haste now to collect what apples were left out and dig their potatoes before the ground shall freeze hard.") October 16, 1856 ("The ground was so stiff on the 15th, in the morning, that some could not dig potatoes. Bent is now making haste to gather his apples."); October 20, 1857 ("Apples are gathered; only the ladders here and there, left leaning against the trees.")

I rejoice when the white oaks bear an abundant crop. See October 7, 1852 ("There must be in abundance of mast this year. I could gather up nearly a bushel of acorns under one white oak, out of their cups, and, I think, quite good to eat . . . It is encouraging to see a large crop of acorns, though we do not use them. "); October 11, 1860 ("There is a remarkably abundant crop of white oak acorns this fall, also a fair crop of red oak acorns; but not of scarlet and black, very few of them. T."); October 14, 1859 ("The ground is strewn also with red oak acorns now, and, as far as I can discover, acorns of all kinds have fallen.")

October 13. See  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 13

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

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

Up the Assabet to look at the sweet-gale.

April 13

Paddling past the uppermost hemlocks I see two peculiar birds near me on the bank. They are new to me, and I guess that they are crossbills – male and female. They are very busily eating the seeds of the hemlock, whose cones are strewn on the ground. They are very fearless, allowing me to approach quite near.

While I sit in my boat close under the south bank the two hop within six feet of me, and one within four feet. Coming still nearer, as if partly from curiosity nibbling the cones all the while, the wind shakes the boat, -- and they fly off.

At first I had felt disinclined to make this excursion up the Assabet, but it distinctly occurred to me that, perhaps, if I came against my will, as it were, to look at the sweet-gale as a matter of business, I might discover something else interesting.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  April 13, 1860

It distinctly occurred to me that, perhaps, if I came against my will, as it were, to look at the sweet-gale as a matter of business, I might discover something else interesting. See March 18, 1858 ("Going by the epigaea on Fair Haven Hill, I thought I would follow down the shallow gully through the woods from it, that I might find more or something else. "); May 3, 1858 (" Ride to Flint's Pond to look for Uvularia perfoliata . . See no signs of the Uvularia perfoliata yet . . . see and hear a new bird to me . . . it may be the white-eyed [solitary] vireo (which I do not know") See also note to September 8, 1858 ("So, in my botanizing or natural history walks, it commonly turns out that, going for one thing, I get another thing.”)

To look at the sweet-gale.  See .April 22, 1855 ("The blossoms of the sweet-gale are now on fire over the brooks, contorted like caterpillars").  See also  December 31, 1859 ("To the sweet-gale meadow or swamp up Assabet. . . .The oblong-conical sterile flower-buds or catkins of the sweet-gale, half a dozen at the end of each black twig, dark-red, oblong-conical, spotted with black, and about half an inch long, are among the most interesting buds of the winter. ")

Crossbills – male and female. . . busily eating the seeds of the hemlock, whose cones are strewn on the ground. See March 8, 1859 ("I see, under the pitch pines on the southwest slope of the hill, the reddish bud-scales scattered on the snow . . . and, examining, I find that in a great many cases the buds have been eaten by some creature and the scales scattered about. . .I am inclined to think that these were eaten by the red squirrel; or was it the crossbill? for this is said to visit us in the winter. Have I ever seen a squirrel eat the pine buds?")

April 13. P. M. – I go up the Assabet to look at the sweet-gale, which is apparently [?] out at Merrick's shore. It is abundantly out at Pinxter Swamp, and has been some time; so I think I may say that the very first opened April 1st (q. v.). This may be not only because the season was early and warm, but because the water was so low, — or would that be favorable?

At first I had felt disinclined to make this excursion up the Assabet, but it distinctly occurred to me that, perhaps, if I came against my will, as it were, to look at the sweet-gale as a matter [of] business, I might dis cover something else interesting, as when I discovered the sheldrake.

As I was paddling past the uppermost hemlocks I saw two peculiar and plump birds near me on the bank there which reminded me of the cow black bird and of the oriole at first. I saw at once that they were new to me, and guessed that they were crossbills, which was the case --male and female. The former was dusky-greenish (through a glass), orange, and red, the orange, etc.; on head, breast, and rump, the vent white; dark, large bill; the female more of a dusky slate color, and yellow instead of orange and red. They were very busily eating the seeds of the hemlock, whose cones were strewn on the ground, and they were very fearless, allowing me to approach quite near.

When I returned this way I looked for them again, and at the larger hemlocks heard a peculiar note, cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep, in the rhythm of a fish hawk but faster and rather loud, and looking up saw them fly to the north side and alight on the top of a swamp white oak, while I sat in my boat close under the south bank. But immediately they recrossed and went to feeding on the bank within a rod of me. They were very parrot like both in color (especially the male, greenish and orange, etc.) and in their manner of feeding, — holding the hemlock cones in one claw and rapidly extracting the seeds with their bills, thus trying one cone after another very fast. But they kept their bills a-going [so] that, near as they were, I did not distinguish the cross. I should have looked at them in profile.

At last the two hopped within six feet of me, and one within four feet, and they were coming still nearer, as if partly from curiosity, though nibbling the cones all the while, when my chain fell down and rattled loudly, — for the wind shook the boat,-and they flew off a rod.

In Bechstein I read that "it frequents fir and pine woods, but only when there are abundance of the cones.” It may be that the abundance of white pine cones last fall had to do with their coming here. The hemlock cones were very abundant too, methinks .