The Brown Thrasher, East a-xd West. 191 



proof of the openness of the Brown Thrasher's conduct and 

 habits is given by note-books, devoted to detailed records of 

 all observations on the home life of the birds of the door- 

 yard, which show ten pages filled with notes on the life of 

 the Brown Thrasher, to every page recording the doings 

 of that familiar bird, the Robin. This has come about with- 

 out neglecting the Robin, simply because the Brown Thrasher 

 affords that much more for noting and recording. 



So much in sight are the actions of the Brown Thrasher, 

 that they may be read as plainly as an open book, even more 

 easily by some of us, who can translate them without the 

 aid of spectacles, which we must use for reading books. To 

 be s^re when the nest has received its first egg one of the 

 pair, crouching low, in an attitude very suggestive of slyness, 

 probably will slip along the top board of the fence for some 

 distance, but he is only acting a part, there being no real 

 skulking in the boldness with which he thus tries to draw the 

 intruder from the neighborhood of his nest treasure. 



By the openness of his activities we have come to recog- 

 nize the incipient signs of nidification, to know when to look 

 for the first egg, the hatching of the young, also when he 

 begins to " whirr " at the cat that his young are ready to 

 leave the nest, and that it is time to imprison his feline 

 enemy, and to ask the neighbors to shut up their cats ; we 

 know when to expect him to show his offspring how to pull 

 up the new blades of sweet corn for in this bad trick he does 

 not indulge until the second planting of corn begins to ap- 

 pear above ground ; when with a May beetle in his bill for 

 feeding a well-grown young one, he pauses to utter a snatch 

 of song, we know that is is time to watch for the beginning 

 of his second nest. Thus openly he passes his life until 

 the moulting time comes when little is seen of him, but 

 be cannot be called much more of a skulker than the other 

 birds about him. 



