344 Bird -Lore 



humid mountain-forest never ceases to have a hushing, even oppressive, 

 effect. Awed and tense, I find myself a foreign and discordant note in the giant 

 stillness. With this half -guilty feeling, and hushed by the stern green silence, 

 hypnotized, as it were, into a sort of subjective identity with the Sunday-like 

 vacuum of sound and keyed to a nervous expectancy in tune with the heavy 

 odorous stillness, the sudden singing of any of these brilliant-voiced wood 

 Wrens is sufficiently startling to make one recoil, lumpy-throated, and it is 

 often more than a mere second or two before the readjustment into the normal 

 frame of mind can be made. 



The Wrens of the genus Thryophilus, which are closely allied to our Carolina 

 Wren, deserve a high place in the scale of singers. I think the Colombian 

 species* are the most versatile and surprising singers in the entire family; and 

 this is indeed high praise, for few if any birds, of their size, can surpass the 

 Wrens in volume and brilliancy of tone. 



*Thryophilus rufalbus, T. leucolis, and T. albipectus 



A Hermit Thrush in Winter 



Forsaken in a cold, unfriendly land, 



Alone and watchful, striving hard to live, 



To juncos' merry twitter sensitive; 



No happy company helps thee to withstand 



The frost, no cheerful mate nor singing band. 



The melody which thy rich throat can give, 



Its poignant loveliness, is fugitive; 



Thy soul was for a gentler climate planned. 



As when a youth, in whose young heart 

 The love of beauty only now has sprung, 

 Compelled to live in some unlovely place, 

 Midst lonely hills, from all his friends apart, 

 Grows inarticulate, thy voice, which rung 

 Through summer woods, is silent for a space. 



— George Lear. 



