266 Bird - Lore 



One of the saddest sights in the bird world is to witness the dejected move- 

 ments, and hear the piteously mournful notes, of a pair of Brown Thrashers 

 whose nest has been despoiled by a grimalkin. 



Some years ago, a pair of these birds constructed their nest in a thorn- 

 bush growing on the lawn of a residence where the writer chanced to be visit- 

 ing. The members of the household became much interested 

 in watching the fortunes of this bird family, and especially 

 were we impressed with the frequency with which the parents 

 fed their young. At this work they were busy all day long. The birds seemed 

 to gather food for the little ones entirely from the lawn of the residence adja- 

 cent and the two gardens in the rear, rarely going off this territory. 



In approaching the nest, they would advance flying low over the grass 

 until within about ten feet of the thorn-bush. Alighting on the ground, they 

 would look around for a moment, to see if any danger was near, and then hop 

 rapidly along to the lower branches, which came down to the ground. Then, 

 from limb to limb they would jump, ascending a sort of irregular stairway to 

 the nest, when we could hear the eager clamor of the four little ones as they 

 received their nourishment. We soon noticed that one bird always went up 

 the right-hand side of the bush, and the other invariably hopped up through 

 the limbs on the left side. 



I became curious to know just how often they brought food, and, one 

 morning, with notebook in hand, sat for an hour on the veranda watching the 

 movements of our little brown neighbors. Through my field-glasses I could 

 see that they brought one, and at times apparently two or three, insects or 

 their larvae at each trip. Every time a bird came to the nest, I made a mark 

 with my pencil. In the middle of the day I made the same observations for an 

 hour, and repeated the records in the evening. 



The bird which went up the right-hand side of the bush made a trip on an 

 average of every two and a half minutes, and the bird which went up the left- 

 hand side, made a trip every ten minutes. The young were in the nest in 

 the neighborhood of two weeks. If the birds took only one insect a 

 trip, it would mean that during this interval these Brown Thrashers fed to 

 their young 5,180 soft-bodied worms and insects. This, of course, does not 

 take into consideration what the old birds ate during this time; nor what 

 they consumed during the period of incubation ; nor all those delectable morsels 

 which the male fed to the female during the blissful days of courtship. Suppose 

 we include all these, and also what the family of six ate after the young had 

 left the nest and flown off into the bushes; it is a most conservative estimate 

 to say that this pair of Brown Thrashers and their young were responsible, 

 that summer, for the destruction of the lives of over fifty thousand insects, 

 many of which were injurious to the vegetation of the region. 



There are some birds which are of such great value to mankind that, even 

 if there were no laws on the statute books to protect them, every man, woman 



