388 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



breast. Not infrequently in spring, and occasionally in autumn, also, we hear 

 its measured, impressive song, usually given sotto voce, although in the evening 

 twilight, or when the trees are dripping just after a shower, a bird will sometimes 

 sing steadily and with full vigor for fifteen or twenty minutes at a time. In my 

 own experience, this has happened oftenest in our garden, where Swainson's 

 Thrush occurs very regularly in May and where it makes itself so much at home 

 that I have known a bird to remain with us continuously for three consecutive 

 weeks. 



246. Hylocichla guttata pallasii (Cab.). 

 Hermit Thrush. Hermit. 



Very common transient visitor in early spring and mid-autumn ; occasionally seen in 

 winter ; one instance of occurrence in summer. 



SEASONAL OCCURRENCE. 



April 8, 1890, one seen, singing, East Lexington, VV. Faxon. 



April 15 — May 5. (Summer.) 

 May II, 1900, one seen, Cambridge, W. Deane. 



September 23, 1894, one seen, Arlington, W. Faxon. 

 October 5 — November 15. (Winter.) 

 November 22, 1869, one male taken, Cambridge, W. Brewster. 



A few pairs of Hermit Thrushes breed every season in Concord and Bille- 

 rica, as well as at various places in Essex County, and once (in 1867 or 1868) I 

 heard a male singing late in June on a wooded hilltop on the Trapelo Road 

 about a mile to the westward of Sherman's Pond. The locality last mentioned 

 is the only one actually within the Cambridge Region, where I have ever known 

 the Hermit to be noted in summer. It visits us regularly at its seasons of 

 migration, occurring most numerously in April and October, when as many as 

 ten or a dozen birds may be met with in the course of a single day. In spring 

 they are most likely to be found in dry upland woods, sometimes among white 

 pines, pitch pines, hemlocks or red cedars, but oftenest where the prevailing 

 growth is of oaks, maples, birches or other deciduous trees and where the ground 

 is covered deep with fallen leaves. In autumn they frequently resort to 

 swampy thickets to feed on the berries of the nightshade and black alder, and to 

 the borders of fields and country roadsides where they eat the fruit of the bar- 

 berry, privet, woodbine and poison ivy. At both seasons we often see them in 



