228 IN BIRD LAND. 
the species, however, could not be determined at 
the time for lack of my opera-glass, as the bird was 
perched rather high in a tree. In the brief time at 
my disposal just then, I saw a number of other 
birds, and resolved to spend a day on the mountain 
studying them, as soon as other duties would permit. 
That day came in good time. An early morning 
hour found me skirting the steep sides of the moun- 
tain, alert for feathered dwellers. It was the tenth 
of July, too late for the best songs and for finding 
birds in the nest, and yet I felt fairly well satisfied 
with the results of the day’s excursion. Presently 
the song of the thrush, whose identity I had come 
to settle, was heard in the copse. A look at him 
with my glass proved him to be the veery, or Wilson’s 
thrush, only a migrant in my State, and one that 
pursues his pilgrimage both to the north and south 
in patience-trying silence. 
To my ear the song was sweet, almost hauntingly 
so. Some notes were quite like certain strains of 
the wood-thrush’s rich song, but others seemed more 
ringing and bell-like, and the whole tune was more 
skilfully and smoothly rendered, — that is, with less 
labored effort. Still, I am loath to say that the 
general effect of this bird’s song is more pleasing 
than that of the wood-thrush, for there is something 
far-away and dreamy about the minstrelsy of the 
latter that one does not hear in the song of any 
other species. 
The veeries evidently had nests or younglings 
among the bushes, for they called in harsh, alarmed 
