BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 437 



hour, when several in different directions could be heard in 

 successive responses, and more weird melody I never heard. 

 Sometimes seemingly almost over my head, and sometimes so 

 far away as to seem to come from another world. 



Nothing in bird life ever so appealed to w^hat hovers upon the 

 borderland of superstition in my own experience. The Great 

 Horned Owl's melancholic hootings awaken other sensations, 

 perhaps a little cowardice withal, for they suggest memories 

 of fallen Babylon and spirits lost, while these delightful, 

 though mystic melodies seemed more like the vesper bells of 

 invisible wood nymphs summoning one to prayer." 



The Veery Bird, as this is often called, is a fairly common 

 species here, and is apparently widely distributed over the 

 State. My correspondents have uniformly given it as common 

 in their locality. 



Mr. Washburn found it so in the valley of the Red river, and 

 and at Mille Lacs, as did Dr. Hvoslef in southern Minnesota. 

 Mr. Grant makes no mention of this, or any other of the 

 Thrushes in his list of birds observed in northern Minnesota. 



Note. Few, if any other of the Thrushes, have elicited 

 more popular interest than this so far as my own observation 

 extends. One of my early friends, who was a close observer 

 of nature, used to tell me much about a bird whose song had 

 made a deep impression on his memory in his boyhood while 

 residing in Sherburne, Chenango Co., N. Y., which he had not 

 heard sing in forty years. While visiting me at Minneapolis, 

 we were riding near Lake Calhoun, when upon hearing this 

 bird he exclaimed: "'There is the Wilderness Bird again!" He 

 had never known it but by its song, but had heard it called by 

 that local name. As far back as 1865, Colonel J. B. Clough 

 (afterwards assistant engineer who located much of the North- 

 ern Pacific railroad) used to describe, or try to describe, the 

 song of a bird familiar to him (by its song only) in Massachu- 

 setts, desiring me to find it here, as he had heard it himself in 

 this locality. Descriptions by their songs is a very uncertain 

 method of extending the knowledge of ornithology. Bat I 

 found several years later that this was the bird, to his own and 

 my delight. 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 



Third quill longest; fourth a little shorter; second nearly a 

 quarter of an inch longer than fifth. Above and on side of 

 head and neck, nearly uniform light reddish-brown, with a 

 faint tendency to orange on the crown and tail. Beneath white; 

 forepart of throat and breast (paler on chin) tinged pale brown- 

 ish yellow; sides of throat and forepart of breast marked with 

 small triangular spots of light brownish; a few obsolete blotches 



