The Hermit Warbler 



to each, in turn, of those morning stars of song, the Wood Warblers. 

 There is Audubon with his hastening melody of gladness. There is 

 Black-throated Gray with his still drowsy sonnet of sweet content. 

 Then there is Hermit hidden aloft in the shapeless greenery of the under- 

 dawn, — his note is sweetest, gladdest, most seraphic of them all, Lilly, 

 lilly, lilly, lee o leet. It is almost sacrilege to give it form- — besides it 

 is so hopeless. The preparatory notes are like the tinkle of crystal 

 bells and when our attention is focused, lo! the wonder happens, — 

 the exquisite lilt of the closing phrase, lee-oleet. 



"In broad daylight it is the same. The singers remain in the tree- 

 tops and tease the imagination with thoughts of a domestic life lived 

 upon a higher plane than that of earth, an exalted state where all is 

 beatific and serene. And try you never so hard, with glasses of a high 

 power, it is a good hour's work to obtain a satisfactory sight of one 

 of the uplifted creatures. 



"In despair, one day, I determined to penetrate this supramundane 

 region where the Hermit is at home, and selected for the purpose a well 

 branched tree in the center of the forest and some hundred and fifty feet 

 in height. The tree was, fortunately, of the tougher sort, and permitted 

 ascent to a point where the stem might be grasped with the finger and 

 thumb of one hand. It was a treat to see the forest as a bird does. 

 The surface viewed from above was surprisingly uneven. Here and 

 there strong young trees, green and full of sap, rose to the level of mine, 

 but the majority were lower, and some appeared like green rosettes set 

 in a well of green. Others still, rugged and uneven as to limb, towered 

 above my station by fifty or seventy-five feet. My first discovery upon 

 reaching the top was that the bulk of the bird chorus now sounded from 

 below. But a few singing Hermits did occupy stations more lofty than 

 mine. One I marked down — rather, up — fifty feet above and a hundred 

 yards away. He sang away like a contented eremite from a single 

 twig, and I was reverently constructing his high biography and trying 

 to pick out his domicile from the neighboring branches, when flash! 

 he pitched headlong two hundred feet and was seen no more." 



In marked contrast with this lofty conduct, is the behavior of the 

 Hermit Warbler during migrations. In common with most other species 

 of Mniotiltidce, the Hermits will not scruple at such times to descend 

 upon fences or wayside willows, or even upon the ground. We had 

 them in 19 12 — the year of the great warbler wave — fairly swarming 

 over the Santa Barbara coast up till May 10th. On the 27th of April 

 we found them, together with ten other varieties of warblers, at a single 

 observation post near the city. Elsewhere and ordinarily, the appearance 

 of the bird at all, anywhere outside of its Sierran breeding range, is 



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