THE BROWN THRUSH. 257 



THE BROWN THRUSH. 



As I Stroll along the edge of the woods during the fore- 

 noon, I am greeted by a clear, voluble song, quite varied, 

 and very musical, having an overflowing spontaneity, al- 

 together peculiar. The singer is the Brown Thrush {Harp- 

 orhynchus riifus). Bearing a decided resemblance in song to 

 its near relative, the Catbird, it has nothing whatever of the 

 marvelous mimicry of its other near relative, the Mocking- 

 bird, all of them being related to the Thrushes proper. 

 The spirited and very rapid warble of this so-called Thrush 

 is exceedingly animating, and is susceptible of a great 

 variety of interpretations. To Thoreau, while planting his 

 beans, it seemed to say: "Drop it, drop it — cover it up, 

 cover it up — pull it up, pull it up, pull it up;" Audubon 

 compared it to "the careful lullaby of some blessed mother 

 chanting her babe to repose;" while Wilson was led to say, 

 "we listen to its notes with a kind of devotional ecstasy, 

 as a morning hymn to the great and most adorable Creator 

 of all." It has a novel and most pleasing sweetness to me, 

 as this bird is but a rare resident in this part of the coun- 

 try. A nest before me, found near Lockport, corresponds 

 well with the description given by Wilson and other au- 

 thors — quite flat, made outside of sticks and coarse stalks of 

 herbs, then dry leaves, and inside, of rootlets, contains four 

 or five bluish-tinted eggs, 1.05 X .78, well specked all over 

 with reddish-browm and pale lilac. It is placed in a bush, 

 sometimes in a tree or hedge, occasionally on the ground, 

 never far from it, in a thicket or bushy pasture along or near 

 the woods, such being the chosen places of its residence. 

 In some parts of the west, where it keeps to the narrow 

 strips of wood which skirt the streams of the prairies, and 

 which are frequently quite deeply overflowed in summer, 

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