18 EVERYDAY BIRDS 
should feel sorry for the boy who could hear it 
without pity. 
Besides this mournful whistle, the thrasher 
has a note almost exactly like a smacking kiss, 
— very realistic, — and sometimes, especially at 
dusk, an uncanny, ghostly whisper, that seems 
meant expressly to suggest the presence of some- 
thing unearthly and awful. So far as I am 
aware, there is no other bird-note like it. I have 
no doubt that many a superstitious person has 
taken to his heels on hearing it from the bushes 
along a lonesome roadside after nightfall. 
Except in the spring, indeed, there is little 
about the thrasher’s appearance or behavior to 
suggest pleasant thoughts. To me, at any rate, 
he seems a creature of chronic low spirits. The 
world has used him badly, and he cannot get 
over it. He is almost the only bird I ever see 
without a little inspiration of cheerfulness. Per- 
haps I misjudge him. 
Let my young readers make his acquaintance 
on their own account, if they have not already 
done so, and find him a livelier creature than I 
have described him, if they can. 
