LITTLE OR HERMIT THRUSH. 
347 
This species, so much like the Nightingale in color, 
is scarce inferior to that celebrated bird in its powers of 
song,* and greatly exceeds the Wood Thrush in the 
melody and sweetness of its lay. It inhabits the United 
States, from the lofty alpine mountains of New Hamp- 
shire to Florida. It is also met with on the table land 
of Mexico, and in the warmer climate of the Antilles, 
In Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New England, at the 
close of autumn, it appears to migrate eastward to the 
sea-coast in quest of the winter berries, on which it now 
feeds ; in spring and summer it lives chiefly on insects 
and their larvae, and also collects the surviving berries of 
the Mitchella repens. 
Like the preceding species, it appears to court solitude, 
and lives wholly in the woods. In the Southern States, 
where it inhabits the whole year, it frequents the dark 
and desolate shades of the cane swamps. In these, almost 
Stygian regions, which, besides being cool, abound prob- 
ably with its favorite insect food, we are nearly sure to 
meet our sweetly vocal hermit flitting through the settled 
gloom, which the brightest rays of noon scarcely illumine 
with more than twilight. In one of such swamps, in the 
Choctaw nation, Wilson examined a nest of this species, 
which was fixed on the horizontal branch of a tree, form- 
ed with great neatness and without using any plastering 
of mud. The outside was made of a layer of coarse 
grass, having the roots attached, and intermixed with 
horse-hair ; the lining consisted of green filiform blades 
of dry grass, very neatly wound about the interior. The 
eggs, 4 to 6, of a pale greenish blue, were marked towards 
the great end with specks and blotches of olive. 
* My friend, Mr. C. Pickering, remarks, that the song of this species is far superior 
to that of the Wood Thrush. Wilson considered it mute. 
