Brown, Olive or Grayish Brown, and Brown and Gray Sparrowy Birds 
Hermit Thrush 
(Turdus aonalaschkce pallasii) Thrush family 
Called also: SWAMP ANGEL; LITTLE THRUSH 
Length — 7.25 to 7.5 inches. About one-fourth smaller than the 
robin. 
Male and Female — Upper parts olive-brown, reddening near the 
tail, which is pale rufous, quite distinct from the color of the 
back. Throat, sides of neck, and breast pale buff. Feathers 
of throat and neck finished with dark arrow-points at tip ; 
feathers of the breast have larger rounded spots. Sides 
brownish gray. Underneath white. A yellow ring around 
the eye. Smallest of the thrushes. 
Range — Eastern parts of North America. Most common in the 
United States to the plains. Winters from southern Illinois 
and New Jersey to Gulf. 
Migrations — April. November. Summer resident. 
The first thrush to come and the last to go, nevertheless the 
hermit is little seen throughout its long visit north. It may 
loiter awhile in the shrubby roadsides, in the garden or the parks 
in the spring before it begins the serious business of life in 
a nest of moss, coarse grass, and pine-needles placed on the 
ground in the depths of the forest, but by the middle of May its 
presence in the neighborhood of our homes becomes only a mem- 
ory. Although one never hears it at its best during the migra- 
tions, how one loves to recall the serene, ethereal evening hymn! 
“The finest sound in Nature,” John Burroughs calls it. “It is 
not a proud, gorgeous strain like the tanager’s or the grosbeak’s,” 
he says; “it suggests no passion or emotion — nothing personal, 
but seems to be the voice of that calm, sweet solemnity one 
attains to in his best moments. It realizes a peace and a deep, 
solemn joy that only the finest souls may know.” 
Beyond the question of even the hypercritical, the hermit 
thrush has a more exquisitely beautiful voice than any other 
American bird, and only the nightingale’s of Europe can be com- 
pared with it. It is the one theme that exhausts all the ornithol- 
ogists' musical adjectives in a vain attempt to convey in words 
any idea of it to one who has never heard it, for the quality of 
the song is as elusive as the bird itself. But why should the 
poets be so silent ? Why has it not called forth such verse as the 
125 
