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Updated: June 21, 2025
A few robins were about the hotel, and I saw a single veery in the woods, but the only members of the thrush family that were present in large numbers were the hermits. These sang everywhere and at all hours. On the summit, even at mid-day, I was invariably serenaded by them.
That day his brookside singer became the Song-sparrow; the brown triller, the Veery Thrush. The Trilliums, white and red, the Dogtooth Violet, the Spring-beauty, the Trailing Arbutus all for the first time got names and became real friends, instead of elusive and beautiful, but depressing mysteries.
It was still and dark and oh, so peaceful! Peter liked that place and sat down under a big fern to rest. He didn't hear a sound excepting the beautiful silvery voice of Veery the Thrush. Listening to it, Peter fell asleep, for he was very tired. By and by Peter awoke. For a minute he couldn't think where he was. Then he remembered.
And you might think he would have felt the least bit uncomfortable. But he only laughed loudly and replied that if he didn't have a good time it wouldn't be his fault. Then Valentine Veery bowed politely which was more than Jasper Jay had done and announced that "Good-night, Ladies!" would be the first song. So all the company began to sing, including Jasper Jay.
The depths of a wood holds its undiscovered secrets; the mysterious call of the veery lends a wildness that even to-day has not ceased to pervade the old wood. There are spots overgrown with fern and carpeted with velvety wet moss; here also the skunk cabbage and cowslip grow rank among the alders.
Henceforth, every morning we went up the veery road, and before each little nursery we sat us down to watch and study. It was necessary to be very quiet, the birds in the saplings were so nervous; but keeping still in the woods in summer is not the easy performance it is elsewhere, though great are the inducements.
Finally, among these unfamiliar forms was a veery, and the sight of the rufous- olive back and faintly spotted throat of this singer of our northern Junes made us almost homesick. Next day was brilliantly clear. The mules could not be brought in until quite late in the morning, and we had to march twenty miles under the burning tropical sun, right in the hottest part of the day.
Before this year the hermit had always been with them. The song of the veery was my morning and evening inspiration, but his shy brother had apparently taken his departure for parts unknown. "We will go to Sunset Hill," said my friend. "We always hear them there at sunset." That evening after an early tea, we started for the promised land.
While I stood there admiring the brave little bush that kept on living and blooming, though lifted into an unnatural position by the tree at whose feet it had grown, some mysterious drawing made me look closely at a spot beside the road which we had passed many times without special notice. There I found our third veery nest, the mother bird sitting.
He was little and inconspicuous in shades of brown, with tail stuck pertly up, wren fashion, foraging among the dead leaves and on old logs, entirely unconscious that he was one of the three distinguished singers of the wood; none but the hermit thrush and the veery being comparable to him.
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