WHAT BIRDS SAY AND SING 253 



to a faint whisper of sound when he chooses. His 

 second difference from the catbird lies in the 

 fact that, while he starts in to give a public re- 

 cital he presently becomes so entranced with his 

 own remarkable performance that he grasps the 

 twig upon which he perches, presses his wings 

 tight to his sides, ruffles the feathers of his breast 

 and back until his wings are obscured, and tucks 

 his tail until a line dropped from the point of his 

 beak straight down would very nearly touch the 

 tail tip. From a widely parted beak he pours out 

 a rolling volume of song that even the most expert 

 collector of birds' records never succeeds in truth- 

 fully reproducing. His is a more colourful and 

 spectacular performance than the catbird's, but to 

 me the little grey bird, hanging on an elder over the 

 spring, doing all nature from the goldfinch coast- 

 ing on waves of summer air above him to the soft 

 gurgle of the running water below, is the more 

 finished performer. To the brown thrasher has 

 been attributed the following advice to farmers : 



"Shuck it! Shuck it! Sow it! Sow it; 

 Plovv it ! Plow it ! Hoe it ! Hoe it ! " 



and by some this has been elaborated to include 

 starting in a hurry, harrowing, seeding, covering, 

 raking in, pushing in, weeding, pulling up, end- 

 ing with, "Leave it alone!" 



The choicest singer that belongs to my personal 

 choir of birds at the Cabin, north, is the wood 



