1907
Aug. 20
(No 2)
Concord, Mass.
  This I inferred from the fact that it was 
exceptional to hear more than one of them in
any given direction at any one time and equally
so for many minutes to expose when some were
noted. Not infrequently the last faint call of one
that was just passing out of earshot to the southward
would be almost immediately followed by the first
audible cry of another, approaching from the northward.
Flying thus singly, at widely spaced intervals, yet perhaps
within distant hearing of one another, mingling their
crisp, incisive voices with the feeble lisping ones of
innumerable migrating Warblers, the mysterious birds 
would journey almost ceaselessly southward along aerial
pathways lighted only by the moon or by myriads 
of twinkling stars. Their calls, which were seldom given oftener
than once every eight or ten seconds and sometimes
much less frequently, reminded me by turns of those
of certain of our waders, of the autumnal note of
the Rose-breasted Grosbeak and of the loud, explosive
cry of the Crested Flycatcher. On the whole, however,
they resembled most closely the night calls of the Hermit Thrush.
Indeed I was inclined for a time to refer them to that species
until I heard that the birds making them habitually departed
for the South before many, if any, of the Hermits had left their 
breeding grounds. This consideration ruled out Swainson's Thrush,
also. The Veery I did not think of ever as a possibility, for it
is the least common of the Thrushes which breed about Lake
Umbagog and I have hitherto had no reason to suspect that
it ever occurs this northwardly in autumn as a migrant
from regions still further north. That this must be the case,
however, will appear from what I am about to add concerning
the experience referred to in the opening sections of this entry in my journal.
Night call of Veery