BROWN THRASHER 369 



red-winged blackbird, Baltimore oriole, vesper sparrow, and field 

 sparrow. 



"The song of the brown thrasher is similar to those of the mocking- 

 bird and catbird. Although the songs of the three eastern species are 

 much alike in form, there are great differences in the seasons of 

 song. The brown thrasher has the shortest period of all. The song 

 ceases, according to mj? records, on an average date of July 11. The 

 earliest date is July 6, 1921, and the latest July 18, 1940. When nest- 

 ing begins individuals stop singing, so that the song is never so abun- 

 dant late in May and in June as it is late in April and early in May. 

 Birds usually sing until the eggs are laid and then cease until the 

 young are out of the nest. Sometimes the second-brood nesting fol- 

 lows the first so quickly that there is no singing between broods. 



"The limits of pitch in the songs in my records are B ' ' to C ' ' ' ', 

 one octave and three tones, and curiously just a half tone lower, in 

 both lowest and highest limits, than my catbird records. 



"Alarm notes about the nest consist of a loud call much like the 

 sound of a kiss, a whistled call lite teeola^ and a series of harsh, slurred 

 calls, like teea teea^ repeated six to ten times, gradually becoming 

 higher in pitch and louder." The kiss note is a loud smack, or suck- 

 ing kiss, something like the soimd made by the clicking of a heavy 

 pair of pruning shears, a most startling sound for a bird to make 

 and perhaps effective in frightening away small enemies. The 

 thrasher also makes a local hissing sound about its nest. 



Amelia K. Laskey writes to me from Tennessee : "There are lovely 

 'whisper' songs given in both spring and autumn. The late songs 

 of the season are given in August and September. For September 

 10, 1935, I have the following note: A brown thrasher sang almost 

 an hour in very soft tone. It consisted mostly of low warblings but 

 often contained phrases similar to spring songs, all very clear, but 

 inaudible a few feet away from the singer. September 14: The 

 'whisper' songs continue. The bird was perched today in shrubs about 

 3 or 4 feet from the ground. It sang with closed beak. The song 

 had overtones with undertones of soft warbling, giving the impression 

 at times of a duet." 



The soft courtship songs, given while the birds are hunting nesting 

 sites, have been referred to under "Courtship." Mrs. Laskey has ob- 

 served this twice when she could see both birds. 



There are very few birds whose songs can be well expressed, or 

 accurately recalled to mind, by the use of human words or phrases, 

 but it seems to me that the brown thrasher is one of them. The oft- 

 quoted words, "drop it, drop it — cover it up, cover it up — pull it up, 

 pull it up, pull it up," first written, I believe, by Thoreau in his 

 "Walden," as fancied advice to a farmer planting his corn, recall 



