102 Bird - Lore 
distance and constructed a second, that the accident had befallen the bird so 
lately that she had barely succeeded in completing the new nest. I was exceed- 
ingly anxious to know if I had been wise enough to read a tragedy and its sequel 
aright from these few facts, so I visited the knoll each day; the fourth day, there 
was the egg of a Hermit Thrush. Two days later, at noon, the bird was sitting 
on three eggs. On the twelfth day, July 10, two birds were out of the eggs by 
noon. They were large birds, covered with a sparse growth of burnt-umber 
down about one-fourth long. On the fifth day, the birds had quills on the wings 
and pin-feathers on the back. The eleventh morning, July 20, the last nestling 
left the nest in the afternoon. 
A space for the nest was hollowed in a bit of decayed root or log, under a fir 
tree, beside a stump in the top of a knoll, overgrown with bird wheat moss and 
boulder fern. For foundation, the nest had a mass of dead wood, dead leaves, 
moss, roots, and fern stipes; for lining, pine needles and black hair-like plant 
fiber. 
The diameters within were two and one-half inches by three and one-fourth 
inches, depth three inches. The thickness of the walls at the top was one inch, 
at the bottom one-half inch. Nearly all these measurements were taken before 
the eggs were laid. 
June 2, 1908, I flushed from the nest a most gentle Hermit Thrush, incubat- 
ing four eggs. 
June 7, there were three nestlings in the nest, burnt-orange in color, marked 
with long, very dark-brown down. On the third day the eyelids of the young 
Thrushes were parted in the center one-sixteenth of an inch. The feather tracts 
were of the hue of gunpowder, the spaces between the feather tracts a tone of 
burnt-orange. 
The fifth day the eyes of the young birds were well open; very dark brown 
pin-feathers were beginning to show through all the feather spaces; the pin- 
feathers were longest in the center of the tract and shortest on the edges; they 
looked, at this stage, like horse-hairs slightly overlapping each other. 
The sixth day the quills were longer and fuller. The seventh day the tips 
of the quills and pin-feathers had burst, so that in the morning the tips of the 
speckled, olive-brown and golden-buffy feathers showed. : 
The tenth day the young Thrushes opened their mouths wide for food, as 
usual, at my approach, but on the eleventh day, the nestlings did not attempt 
to open their beaks for food in the morning or afternoon. This was the first time 
they showed any indication of fear. 
On the twelfth day. The young Thrushes were gone by 9 o’clock this morn- 
ing. The nest was immaculate, save for the quill scales that filled the inter- 
stices. It was placed in a knoll, under a miniature fir, just off a street not much 
frequented, in an open space in a growth where firs, pines and spruces pre- 
dominate. 
Generally, I find my nests of the Hermit Thrush by turning over trees and 
