Xhe Hermit Thrush {HylodcUa guttata pallasi) 

 By Joseph Grinnell 



Length: 6>2 to 7>^ inches. 



Range: Eastern United States to the Rocky Mountains including Mexico 

 and Alaska. 



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. 



Harmjit 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.) 



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 



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