352 BULLETIN 195, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



brown thrasher may find a congenial home, and here it may build its 

 nest close to a house; but such cases are exceptional in New England, 

 so far as I can learn; as a rule, our thrashers are shy, retiring birds 

 of the more open countryside. 

 Miss Sherman (1912) writes: 



In eastern Massachusetts it is said to be a nesting bird of the woodlands, 

 rarely coming close to the homes of men to build its nest. This may in part 

 be due to the pruned, trimmed and shaven condition of trees, shrubs and lawns. 

 I remember once seeing a pair nesting in a hedge quite near a house at Quaker 

 Hill in eastern New York. It is a bird that seeks a bit of thick and tangled 

 growth in which to build, but in Iowa it finds such places to its taste in the 

 man-planted trees and shrubs that grow upon prairie soil, usually not far 

 from human homes. It is eminently a house-yard bird, although it sometimes 

 nests in patches of bushy second growth that have sprung up on clearings made 

 in the woods. 



Dr. W. G. Erwin (1935) made his extensive studies of the brown 

 thrasher on the campus of George Peabody College for Teachers, in 

 Nashville, Tenn., where several pairs nested near the buildings and 

 in the shrubbery, in spite of much human activity. At Fairmount 

 Hill, a suburb of Wichita, Kans., Dwight Isely (1912) found tliis 

 bird ''in large numbers all over the city, and in the parks. Its nests 

 are very abundant in osage orange hedges. In May and June the old 

 birds, followed by the young, may be seen on the lawns everywhere, 

 pulling worms out of the ground. They feed also in the fields and a 

 few follow the plow." And, in Kansas City, Mo., according to Harry 

 Harris (1919) , "they breed freely within the city in the same districts 

 and in the same kind of brushy cover as the Catbird. The two species 

 do not nest close together, however, as they are mortal enemies during 

 the breeding season and have been known to battle to the death over a 

 disputed nesting site." Similar habitats are frequented in other west- 

 ern and southern States, which are quite different from our conception 

 of the haunts of the brown thrasher in New England ; perhaps, if we 

 had more neglected brush heaps and tangles of unkempt shrubbery 

 and vines about our grounds, we might tempt the thrasher to be 

 more sociable and nest near our homes. 



Spring. — Many of the early-spring birds, the bluebird, the robin, the 

 phoebe, the grackle, and others, have come to Massachusetts during 

 March and the early April days; they have advanced and they have 

 retreated as gentle spring struggled to overcome relentless winter; 

 but, during the last 10 days of April, when the pussy willows are 

 decorated with golden tassels, the swamp maples are glowing with 

 bright red blossoms, and the shadbush and the cherry trees are in full 

 bloom, it seems as if spring had really come, with nature awakening 

 all about us. Then we may look for the coming of the brown thrasher. 

 As we walk along some country road on a bright spring morning, 

 warmed by the rising sun and the soft south wind, we may see him 



