OF NEW ENGLAND. 35 
ground, occasionally in swamps, but more often on sunny, 
sloping, and shrubby banks near them. It is much like that 
of the Wilson’s Thrush (B), though usually rather larger, 
coarser, and more loosely constructed. The Hermit Thrushes 
often lay two sets of three or four eggs, one in the first week 
of June, and one about a month later. Their eggs are very 
much like those of the *‘ Veeries” (B), but are larger, averag 
ing -90 X ‘65 of aninch. They are light greenish blue, never 
spotted. 
(c). In the woods about Boston (and of course in other 
woods), whether swampy or dry, and also along the wooded 
roadsides, from the middle of April until the first of May, one 
may see a great number of Hermit Thrushes. During their 
stay here, these birds, often in pairs, and sometimes in small 
parties (a fact, which shows that their name is not altogether 
an appropriate one), spend their time, for the most part in 
silence, busied among the dead leaves and underbrush, occas- 
ionally resting on a low perch, and rarely fiying far when dis- 
turbed. They are quiet birds, and, though often easily ap- 
proached, prefer those places where they are not likely to be 
intruded upon. On leaving this State in the spring, they pass 
on to northern New England and to Canada, where they spend 
the summer and rear their young, being in some localities the 
most common thrushes. In October, they return to Massachu- 
setts in the course of their journey to their winter-homes in 
the South, and a few linger until November is well advanced.® 
During their sojourn here in autumn, they frequent the ground 
much less than in spring, and feed largely on various kinds of 
berries, many of which they find in swamps. 
These birds are to be associated with October, when the 
roads, hardened by frost, are neither muddy nor dusty, when 
the paths through the woods are strewn with the soft fallen 
5 Mr. Maynard, writing of the Hermit Thrush in the “ Naturalist’s Guide,” 
says that he has ‘“‘taken it in Coos County, New Hampshire, on October 81st, al- 
though the ground was covered with snow, six inches deep at the time; also in 
Oxford County, Maine, as late as November 6th.” He adds that ‘‘a few undoubt- 
edly breed here.” 
