The squirrel lives in a hazel grove.

September 3. 

P. M. — Up Assabet a-hazelnutting. 

I see a small striped snake, some fifteen or eighteen inches long, swallowing a toad, all but the head and one foreleg taken in. It is a singular sight, that of the little head of the snake directly above the great, solemn, granitic head of the toad, whose eyes are open, though I have reason to think that he is not alive, for when I return some hours after I find that the snake has disgorged the toad and departed. 

The toad had been swallowed with the hind legs stretched out and close together, and its body is compressed and elongated to twice its length, while the head, which had not been taken in, is of the original size and full of blood. The toad is quite dead, apparently killed by being so far crushed; and its eyes are still open. The body of the snake was enlarged regularly from near the middle to its jaws. It appeared to have given up this attempt at the eleventh hour. Probably the toad is very much more elongated when perfectly swallowed by a small snake. It would seem, then, that snakes undertake to swallow toads which are too big for them. 

I see where the bank by the Pokelogan is whitewashed, i. e. the grass, for a yard or two square, by the thin drop pings of some bird which has roosted on a dead limb above. It was probably a blue heron, for I find some slate-blue feathers dropped, apparently curving breast feathers, broadly shafted with white. 

I hear a faint warble from time to time from some young or old birds, from my window these days. Is it the purple finch again, — young birds practicing?

Zizania still. 

The hazelnut bushes up this way are chiefly confined to the drier river-bank. At least they do not extend into the lower, somewhat meadowy land further inland. They appear to be mostly stripped. The most I get are left hanging over the water at the swimming-ford. 

How important the hazelnut to the ground squirrel! They grow along the walls where the squirrels have their homes. They are the oaks that grow before their doors. They have not far to go to their harvesting.  These bushes are generally stripped, but isolated ones in the middle of fields, away from the squirrel-walks, are still full of burs. 

The wall is highway and rampart to these little beasts. They are almost inaccessible in their holes beneath it, and on either side of it spring up, also defended by the wall, the hazel bushes on whose fruit the squirrels in a great measure depend. Notwithstanding the abundance of hazelnuts here, very little account is made of them, and I think it is because pains is not taken to collect them before the squirrels have done so. Many of the burs are perfectly green yet, though others are brightly red-edged. 

The squirrel lives in a hazel grove. There is not a hazel bush but some squirrel has his eye on its fruit, and he will be pretty sure to anticipate you. As we say, “The tools to those who can use them,” so we may say, “The nuts to those who can get them.” 

That floating grass by the riverside whose lower leaves, so flat and linear, float on the surface of the water, though they are not now, at least, lake-colored, is apparently the Glyceria fluitans, floating fescue grass, still blooming and for a good while. I got it yesterday at Merrick’s shore. 

At the sand-bar by the swimming-ford, I collect two small juncuses, not knowing but I have pressed them before. One appears to be Juncus scirpoides (?), small as it is; the other, Juncus articulates (? ?). 

At Prichard’s shore I see where they have plowed up and cast into the river a pile of elm roots, which interfered with their laying down the adjacent field. One which I picked up I at first thought was a small lead pipe, partly coiled up and muddy in the water, it being apparently of uniform size. It was just nineteen feet and eight inches long; the biggest end was twenty-one fortieths of an inch in diameter, and the smallest nineteen fortieths. This difference was scarcely obvious to the eye. No doubt it might have been taken up very much longer. It looked as if, when green and flexible, it might answer the purpose of a rope, — of a cable, for instance, when you wish to anchor in deep water. The wood is very porous. 

The narrow brown sheaths from the base of white pine leaves now strew the ground and are washed up on the edge of puddles after the rain.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 3, 1858

See a small striped snake, some fifteen or eighteen inches long, swallowing a toad, all but the head and one foreleg taken in. See May 19, 1856 (“Saw a small striped snake in the act of swallowing a Rana palustris, within three feet of the water. The snake, being frightened, released his hold, and the frog hopped off to the water. ”)

The narrow brown sheaths from the base of white pine leaves now strew the ground. September 5, 1857 ("I now see those brown shaving like stipules of the white pine leaves, which are falling, i.e. the stipules, and caught in cobwebs.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The October Pine Fall

The narrow brown sheaths from the base of white pine leaves now strew the ground

September 5. 

Saturday.

I now see those brown shaving like stipules of the white pine leaves, which are falling, i.e. the stipules, and caught in cobwebs.

River falls suddenly, having been high all summer.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 5, 1857

I now see those brown shaving like stipules of the white pine leaves, which are falling. See September 1, 1860 ("Many pine stipules fallen yesterday. Also see them on Walden to-day. "); September 3, 1858 ("The narrow brown sheaths from the base of white pine leaves now strew the ground and are washed up on the edge of puddles after the rain.")

The dispersion of seeds.

September 1

P. M. – To Walden . Saw a fish hawk yesterday up the Assabet . In one position it flew just like a swallow ; of the same form as it flew . and We could not judge correctly of distances on the mountain , but greatly exaggerated them . That surface was so novel , - suggested so many thoughts , also so uneven , a few steps sufficing to conceal the least ground , as if it were half a mile away , that we would have an impression as if we had travelled a mile when we had come only forty rods . We no longer thought and reasoned as in the plain . 

Now see many birds about E. Hubbard's elder hedge , - bobolinks , kingbirds , pigeon woodpeckers , and not elsewhere.

Many pine stipules fallen yesterday. Also see them on Walden to-day. 

* * *

See how artfully the seed of a cherry is placed in order that a bird may be compelled to transport it. It is placed in the very midst of a tempting pericarp, so that the creature that would devour a cherry must take a stone into its mouth. The bird is bribed with the pericarp to take the stone with it and do this little service for Nature. Thus a bird's wing is added to the cherry-stone which was wingless, and it does not wait for winds to transport it.

Cherries are especially birds' food, and the consequence is that cherries not only grow here but there. Many kinds are called birds' cherry, and unless we plant the seeds occasionally, I shall think the birds have the best right to them.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 1, 1860

Many pine stipules fallen yesterday. See September 3, 1858 ("The narrow brown sheaths from the base of white pine leaves now strew the ground and are washed up on the edge of puddles after the rain."); September 5, 1857 ("I now see those brown shaving like stipules of the white pine leaves, which are falling.");

See how artfully the seed of a cherry is placed. See The Succession of Forest Trees ("As for the heavy seeds and nuts which are not furnished with wings, the notion is still a very common one that, when the trees which bear these spring up where none of their kind were noticed before, they have come from seeds or other principles spontaneously generated there in an unusual manner, or which have lain dormant in the soil for centuries, or perhaps been called into activity by the heat of a burning. I do not believe these assertions, and I will state some of the ways in which, according to my observation, such forests are planted and raised. Every one of these seeds, too, will be found to be winged or legged in another fashion. 

Surely it is not wonderful that cherry-trees of all kinds are widely dispersed, since their fruit is well known to be the favorite food of various birds. Many kinds are called bird-cherries, and they appropriate many more kinds, which are not so called. Eating cherries is a bird like employment, and unless we disperse the seeds occasionally, as they do, I shall think that the birds have the best right to them. 

See how artfully the seed of a cherry is placed in order that a bird may be compelled to transport it — -in the very midst of a tempting pericarp, so that the creature that would devour this must commonly take the stone also into its mouth or bill. If you ever ate a cherry and did not make two bites of it, you must have perceived it — right in the centre of the luscious morsel, a large earthy residuum left on the tongue. 

We thus take into our mouths cherry-stones as big as peas, a dozen at once, for Nature can persuade us to do almost anything when she would compass her ends. Some wild men and children instinctively swallow these, as the birds do when in a hurry, it being the shortest way to get rid of them. 

Thus, though these seeds are not provided with vegetable wings, Nature has impelled the thrush tribe to take them into their bills and fly away with them; and they are winged in another sense, and more effectually than the seeds of pines, for these are carried even against the wind. The consequence is, that cherry-trees grow not only here but there. The same is true of a great many other seeds.")

See how artfully the seed of a cherry is placed . . .Thus a bird's wing is added to the cherry-stone which was wingless, and it does not wait for winds to transport it. See September 1, 1859 ("The cherry-birds and robins seem to know the locality of every wild cherry in the town."):See also July 14, 1856 ("While drinking at Assabet Spring in woods, noticed a cherry-stone on the bottom. A bird that came to drink must have brought it half a mile. So the tree gets planted!"); February 4, 1856. ("I have often wondered how red cedars could have sprung up in some pastures which I knew to be miles distant from the nearest fruit-bearing cedar, but it now occurs to me that these and barberries, etc., may be planted by the crows, and probably other birds.") see also September 21, 1860 ("I suspect that . . . those [seeds] the wind takes are less generally the food of birds and quadrupeds than the heavier and wingless seeds."); October 16, 1860 (Looking from a hilltop, I observe that pines, white birches, red maples, alders, etc., often grow in more or less regular rounded or oval or conical patches, while oaks, chestnuts, hickories, etc., simply form woods of greater or less extent, whether by themselves or mixed, and do not naturally spring up in an oval form. This is a consequence of the different manner in which trees which have winged seeds and those which have not are planted")