IN THE WOODS. 



THIS is the Thrush famed for his vocal powers, whose song the poets 

 have immortaHzed. It is smaller than the Wood Thrush, and not so 

 robustly built. The color, beginning at the head, is a fine olive, which 

 extends on the neck and back, shading into cinnamon brown and bright red- 

 dish brown on the tail. The spotting on the throat and under parts, which 



u -^ -T-i- u 3.re white with a buffy suffusion, is not so defined or 

 Hermit Thrush. / ' 



Turdus aonaiaschka: paiiasii extensive as lu the Wood I hrush. These spots are of 



^*^^'''' two kinds, being arrow shaped at the ends of the feathers, 



on the sides of the throat, and round in the centre of the feathers of the 

 breast. The sides and flanks are brownish olive gray, and indistinct spots 

 appear on some of the feathers, where the color of the sides shades into the 

 pure white of the body. The sexes are alike. The young are more pro- 

 fusely and obscurely spotted below and have the feathers of the upper parts 

 streaked with light buff or dull white. Adult birds are about seven inches 

 long. 



The nest is built of leaves and coarse grasses lined with finer material. 

 It is placed on the ground, and three or four pale greenish blue eggs are 

 laid. These are nearly nine tenths of an inch long and about two thirds of 

 an inch in their smaller diameter. The bird while perhaps the most abun- 

 dant of our thrushes during its migrations, the earliest to come in the spring, 

 and remaining the latest of the group in the fall, is retiring in its habits, pre- 

 ferring the solitude of the deep woods, and is therefore not so well known or 

 so often seen. 



It is found throughout Eastern North America, breeds from the North- 

 ern United States northward, and southward in the higher Alleghanies into 

 Pennsylvania. It winters from southern New Jersey and southern Illinois 

 to the Gulf States. 



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