THE HERMIT-THRUSH
Thrush, thrush, have mercy on thy little bill;
I play to please myself, albeit ill;
And yet--though how it comes to pass I cannot tell--
My singing pleases all the world as well.
Montgomery.
Hermit that it is, this little thrush is known and loved in nearly
all of North America. True, there are several of its relatives about
in fields and woods, which are taken for the hermit by those who have
not compared the different birds; the plain, deep olive-brown above,
with dotted creamy vest, being a popular dress with the thrushes.
The hermit answers to several names, suiting the location in which it
is found. In low parts of the South it is known as the swamp-robin.
You meet it in the damp, shady places where it is always twilight, in
the fascinating grounds of the snails and water-beetles.
It likes such clammy, silent neighbors, with their retiring habits
and proper manners, for the reason that it is able to turn them to
some account at meal-time, which, as is the case with most birds,
is all the time, or any time. (It is said to resemble in habits and
notes the English song-thrush, which is known to spend most of its
time at certain periods of the year hunting snails, which it has
learned to dress for eating by slapping them against a stone. It will
choose a stone of the proper shape, to which it carries its snails as
often as it has good luck in the hunt, leaving little heaps of shell
by the stone to mark its picnic-ground.)
[Illustration: HERMIT THRUSH.]
Family affairs bring little labor to a pair of hermits, for they have
not far to go in search of nesting materials. They take what is close
at hand, little dry twigs, lichens, and last year's leaves crumbled
and moist, which soon lose their dampness and adhere together in a
thick mass.
But few have found it, this nest of the hermit, hidden under the
bushes where it is always shadowed, and where the fledglings may help
themselves to rambling insects without so much as stepping out of the
door. They are supposed to take advantage of this nearness to food
by remaining about the nest later than most birds; or if they run,
returning on foot of course, having tardy use of their wings, but
learning to stretch their legs instead. And well may they learn to
"stretch their legs," as they will come to their fortunes by "footing
it" mostly, when they are not migrating on the wing.
Like the thrashers, the hermit must scratch for a living when berries
are not ripe. By listening one may hear the bird at its work, and by
slipping quietly in the dusk of the early morning to the lowlands, or
the thick woods, and standing stock-still for a while, even see it.
But nearly always it is under cover on the edge of thickets, where
the leaf-mold is unstirred and richest. And always by its own self
is the hermit, as if it loves nature better than the company of its
fellows, listening now and then for underground or overhead sounds,
and dwelling on the beauty of the leaf skeletons it overturns like a
botanist.
Lace-work and dainty insertion in delicate threads does Madam Hermit
find in her resorts--fabric so marvelous and fascinating she could
admire it forever; cast-off finery of such insects as outgrow their
clothes, grasshopper nymphs, and whole baskets full of locusts' eggs
hidden in half-decayed logs, and making a nourishing breakfast, "rare
done" and delicious. She delights in the haunts of the praying-mantis
at egg-laying season, surprising the wonderful insect in her
devotions, who scarcely has time to turn her head on her foe before
she disappears from sight.
It is well for her thus to disappear suddenly, for she is spared
witnessing the fate of her newly laid eggs just above her on the
twig, their silken wrapper being no obstruction in the way of Madam
Hermit finishing her meal on them.
These habits of the hermit-thrush mark the dwarf-hermit in southern
California. We see it in the orange-groves after irrigation or during
a wet winter. Plenty of mulching in the orchards invites the dwarf
(where it is a hermit like its relative), and we find it scratching
away in the litter, overturning frail little toadstool huts and
umbrellas, and exchanging greetings with its neighbor, the varied
thrush, under the next tree.
Here in the cañons, where the brooks turn right side up for one brief
season in the long, dry year, we see the little olive-brown bird
with its speckled breast. Its sight and hearing are keen, so that it
detects the whereabouts of the stone-flies, lingering among the moist
rocks until they come out for a drink or a bath, when--that is the
last of them.
The dwarf brown beauty, which, of course, must have victuals by hook
or crook, never breaking a single law in either case, loves the
watery haunts of the dragon-flies.
It passes by the pupa-skin drying on its leaf-stalk just as it was
outgrown, with perchance a glance at the reflection in the water; but
the cunning bird neglects not to take in the pupa itself, making its
own breakfast on undeveloped mosquitoes in the water's edge.
All winter long about our home lives the dwarf hermit, eating
crumbs at the garden table and looking for belated raspberries on
the ever-green canes. Early, before the sun is up, the bird runs
along under our windows, where the myrtle covers the tracks of night
insects, and rings its tinkling notes. These resemble the familiar
bell-notes that belong to the wood-thrush, cousin of the hermit and
the dwarf hermit.
Not so numerous as its relatives, the wood-thrush is seen only
in Eastern North America. It nests in trees or bushes, packing
wet, decaying leaves and wood fiber into a paste, which dries and
resembles the mud nest of the robin. It, too, gets its food in
the litter of leaves and wet places, choosing fens and cranberry
bogs in the pastures. All the thrushes delight in berries, and any
berry-patch, wild or cultivated, is the bird's own patch of ground.
The sadder the day the sweeter the song of the wood-thrush.
Nature-lovers who stroll into the thickest of the woods of a cloudy
day on purpose to make the acquaintance of the thrush will find
"The heart unlocks its springs
Wheresoe'er he singeth."
The notes of all the thrushes are singularly sweet, and may be
recognized by their low, tinkling, bell-like tones.
At the funeral of Cock Robin, who did not survive his wedding-day
in the legend, it was the thrush who sang a psalm, and he was well
qualified, "as he sat in a bush," if such a thing were possible, no
doubt bringing tears to his feathered audience.
The "throstle with his note so true" in the garden of Bottom, the
fairy in "Midsummer Night's Dream," was the thrush of Shakespeare's
own country. No fairy's garden is complete without this sweet singer
described so truly by Emily Tolman.
"In the deep, solemn wood, at dawn I hear
A voice serene and pure, now far, now near,
Singing sweetly, singing slowly.
Holy; oh, holy, holy;
Again at evening hush, now near, now far--
Oh, tell me, art thou voice of bird or star?
Sounding sweetly, sounding slowly.
Holy; oh, holy, holy."