The Hermit Thrushes 
deficiencies, tempers, conceits, and waywardnesses. And above all things 
else, they show as between themselves those psychological differences 
which connote individuality. They are always bird persons. As such 
their conduct is unique, variable, unpredictable-and therefore interesting. 
In some such light the incident related below 1 by Dr. William Fred¬ 
eric Bade must be regarded. The professor had an Ouzel home under 
observation behind a waterfall in a small canyon tributary to Kern. 
After a da} 1 or so of peaceful overtures under the guise of a fisherman, he 
set a camera near the nest. “Such close approach again excited suspicion 
and alarm. For considerably more than an hour they (the parents) 
refused to carry food to their nestlings. Then the female began to 
reconnoitre. Seeing that I was apparently whipping her home pool as I 
had whipped many another pool in the neighborhood, she decided to risk 
a visit to her nest with a load of tidbits. The distribution must have 
been made with unseemly haste, for she immediately appeared again 
through her doorway of spray. She was, however, in no haste to 
leave the neighborhood, but lit on a boulder a few feet away and warbled 
the equivalent of a ‘Coast clear’ to her lubberly husband, who was still 
nursing his suspicions on a distant rock in the spring. He would not come. 
His bill was full of May-flies. A second and a third time she signalled, 
and now he very circumspectly approached the cascade that hid the 
nest, flitting hesitatingly from rock to rock until he was almost beside 
her. But suddenly his fears again overcame his courage and he darted 
precipitately back to the place from which he had started. He wasn’t 
going to risk his neck, not he! This churlish behavior seemed to rouse 
the ire of his spouse. Instantly she lit beside him and running her bill 
several times vigorously into his fluffy plumage she took his catch of May¬ 
flies from him and carried them to the hungry nestlings. Her example 
no less than the little explosion of wifely indignation seemed to recall 
him to a sense of his duty. My presence was soon ignored and he came 
and went as regularly as she.” 
No. 148 
Hermit Thrush 
No. 148 Alaska Hermit Thrush 
A. O. U. No. 759. Hylocichla guttata guttata (Pallas). 
Synonym. — Kadiak Dwarf Thrush (Ridgway). 
Description. — Adult: Upperparts plain grayish brown (hair-brown to near 
broccoli brown), changing on rump to dull cinnamon-brown of upper tail-coverts and 
1 “The Water Ouzel at Home,” Sierra Club Bulletin, Vol. V., No. 2, p. 105. 
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