Hermit Thrush

Late one October afternoon I took the ax from its concealed nook in the work shop (it is a one-man ax and I wouldn't lend the keen blade to Diana herself even if she pleaded for it kneeling — ten years ago a flaunt of her copper tresses and I'd have given her a carload but now the fire has sunk to embers like the leaves along the woodroad where I walked hillward). I had no intention of using it — just took it along for company, as naturally as I'd slip on an old coat.

I sat down and leaned back against the barkless trunk of a great chestnut, dead many years, looking thru the contorted limbs into a pale cadmium western sky.

A clear bell rang, remotely intoned as infinity. The opening note of the HERMIT'S song! Here in October! Never had I heard them sing in Autumn. Would he finish? — I waited, tense and eager but the single tone was all and after that the silence seemed deeper, more poignant. The note focused my wandering thots: I was back on the border of a nameless lake in the far hills of Maine, tranquil in the placid light of approaching sunset. Jo was busy at the fire before a ruff shack he used on his winter trap line and a faint familiar perfume from his pan mingled with the odors of spruce and pine. From the forest-darkened hills emanated that mysterious sense of quiet expectancy with which they accept the dramatic changes of day and night. Slowly, rose tint overlaid the gold. The sun was gone, leaving a bewildering chaos of iridescence — crimson, flame, orange, pale transparent greens near shore, in sky and lake. Voicing it all were Hermits singing from darkening aisles. The elusive colors merged into purples and Night stood over those ancient hills like an old god, the dark mountains a cloak on his shoulders. Still the Hermit Thrushes sang. . . . .

"You hungry?"

Life would be as fleeting as Art if we didn't eat, so I joined Jo at the slab table. Desultory performers continued the concert and the last thing I remember of that night was a burst of exquisite music coming thru the open door as the minstrels called up the June moon.

Doctor Dwight writes as follows:

The range of the Hermit Thrush coincides very closely with that of the Oliveback, altho its distribution is slightly more southern except it does not entirely desert the lower border of the United States in winter. It dwells in the same coniferous forests with perhaps a preference for the deciduous bits scattered thru it. In song and manner it is more sluggish than the Oliveback. Nevertheless it bears the palm as the most gifted songster of North America and his sweet measured notes poured forth in many stanzas of different keys have been the theme of poetic writers.

The Hermit is less tidy in appearance than the Oliveback, becoming more frayed and worn in plumage because of its terrestrial habits. This may be why so many subspecies have been described, but in my opinion four races is the limit of recognizable variation. This conclusion may not meet with general favor, not being in complete accord with commonly-accepted ideas. The deduction is made from facts derived from personal examination of a large number of specimens. I am satisfied that recognition of more races will simply mean that all winter specimens will be named by guesswork. Light and dark, large and small may be sorted into series to which names may be applied but no one can feel sure by this process of matching that some of the birds in different rows did not come originally from the same nest!

To which I add a hearty Just so! Amen!