HERMIT THRUSH 101 



searching for and triumphantly seizing their 

 food, and eating it with watchful glances in all 

 directions between bites, the Waxwings are 

 creatures of elegant leisure. They have all the 

 time there is. Having fed to repletion on great 

 quantities of juniper and sumach berries, farkle- 

 berries, wild cherries, worms, and various in- 

 sects, they retire to the top of a chosen tree to 

 sit nearly motionless for a long time digesting 

 their meal and enjoying a low-toned lisping con- 

 versation. They are a gentle race, taking life 

 easily, in a gracious and ample spirit that may 

 well be the envy of those less nobly bred. 



HERMIT THRUSH 



This is one of the world's famous singers who 

 comes to winter with us, unheralded and almost 

 unsuspected. He is not on tour; scarcely a note 

 of his wonderful summer performance does he 

 vouchsafe to the most patient and eager listener, 

 even in early spring. By the time his singing 

 season opens he is gone to his New England or 

 Canadian home. 



During the cold months we may account him 

 as the most elegant in appearance and refined in 

 bearing of all our winter visitors. Smaller and 

 less distinctly marked than the Wood Thrush, he 

 slips like a lovely brown bit of shadow between 

 lichened boulder and Christmas-fern, over mossy 



