95 



HERMIT THRUSH. 

 TURDUS SOLITARIUS. 

 [Plate XLHI.— Fig. 2.] 



Little Thrush, Catesby, I, 31. — Edwards, 296. — Brown Thrush, Arct. Zool. 337, 



No. 199.— Peale's Museum, No. 3542. 



THE dark solitary cane and myrtle swamps of the southern 

 states are the favorite native haunts of this silent and recluse spe- 

 cies, and the more deep and gloomy these are, the more certain we 

 are to meet with this bird flitting among them. This is the spe- 

 cies mentioned in the first volume of this work, while treating of 

 the Wood Thrush, as having been figured and described more than 

 fifty years ago by Edwards, from a dried specimen sent him by my 

 friend Mr. William Bartram, under the supposition that it was the 

 Wood Thrush (Turdus melodus). It is however considerably less, 

 very differently marked, and altogether destitute of the clear voice 

 and musical powers of that charming minstrel. It also differs in 

 remaining in the southern states during the whole year; whereas 

 the Wood Thrush does not winter even in Georgia; nor arrives 

 within the southern boundary of that state until some time in April. 



The Hermit Thrush is rarely seen in Pennsylvania, unless for 

 a few weeks in spring and late in the Fall, long after the Wood 

 / Thrush has left us, and when scarcely a summer bird remains in 



the woods. In both seasons it is mute, having only, in spring, an 

 occasional squeak like that of a young stray chicken. Along the 

 Atlantic coast in New Jersey they remain longer and later, as I 

 have observed them there late in November. In the cane swamps 

 of the Chactaw nation they were frequent in the month of May, 

 on the twelfth of which I examined one of their nests on a horizon- 



