In John Burroughs' "Birds and Poets" this master singer is described
as the most melodious of our songsters, with the exception of the Wood
Thrush, a bird whose strains, more than any other's, express harmony and
serenity, and he complains that no merited poetic monument has yet been
reared to it. But there can be no good reason for complaining of the
absence of appreciative prose concerning the Hermit. One writer says:
"How pleasantly his notes greet the ear amid the shrieking of the wind
and the driving snow, or when in a calm and lucid interval of genial
weather we hear him sing, if possible, more richly than before. His
song reminds us of a coming season when the now dreary landscape will be
clothed in a blooming garb befitting the vernal year--of the song of the
Blackbird and Lark, and hosts of other tuneful throats which usher in
that lovely season. Should you disturb him when singing he usually drops
down and awaits your departure, though sometimes he merely retires to a
neighboring tree and warbles as sweetly as before."
In "Birdcraft" Mrs. Wright tells us, better than any one else, the story
of the Hermit. She says: "This spring, the first week in May, when
standing at the window about six o'clock in the morning, I heard an
unusual note, and listened, thinking it at first a Wood Thrush and then
a Thrasher, but soon finding that it was neither of these I opened the
window softly and looked among the near by shrubs, with my glass. The
wonderful melody ascended gradually in the scale as it progressed, now
trilling, now legato, the most perfect, exalted, unrestrained, yet
withal, finished bird song that I ever heard. At the first note I caught
sight of the singer perching among the lower sprays of a dogwood tree.
I could see him perfectly: it was the Hermit Thrush. In a moment he
began again. I have never heard the Nightingale, but those who have say
that it is the surroundings and its continuous night singing that make
it even the equal of our Hermit; for, while the Nightingales sing in
numbers in the moonlit groves, the Hermit tunes his lute sometimes in
inaccessible solitudes, and there is something immaterial and immortal
about the song."
The Hermit Thrush is comparatively common in the northeast, and in
Pennsylvania it is, with the exception of the Robin, the commonest of
the Thrushes. In the eastern, as in many of the middle states, it is
only a migrant. It is usually regarded as a shy bird. It is a species of
more general distribution than any of the small Thrushes, being found
entirely across the continent and north to the Arctic regions. It is
not quite the same bird, however, in all parts of its range, the Rocky
Mountain region being occupied by a larger, grayer race, while on the
Pacific coast a dwarf race takes its place. It is known in parts of New
England as the "Ground Swamp Robin," and in other localities as "Swamp
Angel."
True lovers of nature find a certain spiritual satisfaction in the song
of this bird. "In the evening twilight of a June day," says one of
these, "when all nature seemed resting in quiet, the liquid, melting,
lingering notes of the solitary bird would steal out upon the air and
move us strangely. What was the feeling it awoke in our hearts? Was
it sorrow or joy, fear or hope, memory or expectation? And while we
listened, we thought the meaning of it all was coming; it was trembling
on the air, and in an instant it would reach us. Then it faded, it was
gone, and we could not even remember what it had been."
[Illustration: From col. F. M. Woodruff.
HERMIT THRUSH.
Copyrighted by Nature Study Pub. Co., 1897, Chicago.]