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Updated: June 22, 2025
Peter sat right where he was, content to just listen and feel within himself the joy of being alive and happy in the beautiful spring season which Veery was expressing so wonderfully. The Black Shadows grew blacker. One by one the little stars came out and twinkled down through the tree tops. Finally from deep in the Green Forest sounded the hunting call of Hooty the Owl. Veery's song stopped.
I had nearly reached the "Sunset Corner," where I had a half-formed intention of resting and then turning back, when my eyes fell upon but hold! I will not describe it, lest I enlighten one more collector, and aid in the robbery, perhaps the death, of one more bird-mother. Suffice it to say what I saw resembled, though not perfectly, the surroundings of a veery's nest as described in the books.
Then, at length, a Veery's delicious note rose in a fountain of liquid melody from beneath me; and when it was ended, the clear, calm, interrupted chant of the Wood-Thrush fell like solemn water-drops from some source above I am acquainted with no sound in Nature so sweet, so elevated, so serene. Flutes and flageolets are Art's poor efforts to recall that softer sound.
The birds were already there. The robin came on to the rail fence, and with rain pouring off his sleek coat, bade us "Be cheery! be cheery!" the bluebird sat silent and motionless on a fence post; the "veery's clarion" rang out all the evening from the valley below; many little birds sang and called; and "The gossip of swallows filled all the sky." But the bluejays? The bluejays, too, were there.
I waved my green bough in triumph above my head, and with the other hand I beckoned. "A veery's nest!" she thought at once. Away went paper and pen, and in a moment she joined me. Together we stood beside the beautiful sitting thrush, so brave, though no doubt suffering from deadly terror. Then we slowly walked away, rejoicing.
I am not sure that all members of the species possess this power, and I have never seen the performance alluded to in print; but I have heard it when the illusion was complete, and the effect most beautiful. Music so devout and unostentatious as the veery's does not appeal to the hurried or the preoccupied. If you would enjoy it you must bring an ear to hear.
Simple-hearted worshiper that he is, he has never dreamed of winning praise for himself by the excellent manner in which he praises his Creator, an absence of thrift, which is very becoming in thrushes, though, I suppose, it is hardly to be looked for in human choirs. And yet, for all the unstudied ease and simplicity of the veery's strain, he is a great master of technique.
The veery's mood is not so lofty as the hermit's, nor is his music to be compared for brilliancy and fullness with that of the wood thrush; but, more than any other bird-song known to me, the veery's has, if I may say so, the accent of sanctity. Nothing is here of self-consciousness; nothing of earthly pride or passion. If we chance to overhear it and laud the singer, that is our affair.
In one of the temporary pauses in our wild career, I was startled by the flight of a bird from the ground very near us, and, searching about, I soon found a veery's nest with one egg. It was daintily placed in a clump of brakes or big ferns, resting on a fallen stick, over and around which the brakes had grown. The bird was not so pleased with my discovery as I was.
Their existence blooms again in these violet-petals, glitters in the burnished beauty of these golden beetles, or enriches the veery's song. It is only out of doors that even death and decay become beautiful.
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