44 A WINTER BIRD-STUDY. 



evening approaches, even — in winter — so 

 early as four o'clock, he begins to throw un- 

 easy glances around the room, and peer anx- 

 iously into the shaded corners as though in 

 search of some terrible bugaboo. Should it 

 chance to be cloudy and dark even at noonday, 

 he will display great nervousness, starting at 

 the slightest sound, and stretching his neck to 

 look in every obscure place with an air so mys- 

 terious that one cannot but turn to see if there 

 be really nothing there. Many birds show 

 dread of the shadowy corners of a room, but 

 none that I have seen is so sensitive as the song 

 thrush. For this reason, at four P. M. his door 

 is closed for the night, and a little later, as the 

 darkness grows, begins a curious performance, 

 apparently an attempt to try all possible ways 

 of going over and under and around his five 

 perches. He will first descend to the floor by 

 means of three perches like a flight of steps, 

 run madly across the cage and spring to the 

 upper perch from the outside, where there is 

 hardly room next to the wires, then jump ex- 

 citedly back and forth on the two upper perches, 

 down the steps again and up the other side, 

 sometimes omitting the middle perch alto- 

 gether, as a boy likes to pass over every alter- 

 nate step in hastening down stairs, and this 

 exercise varied in every imaginable way for an 



