382 GRAY LADY AND THE BIRDS 
eral build of a true Mockingbird, while in varied and rich 
song it rivals the Catbird, its shorter song season, how- 
ever, leaving its gray-backed neighbour in the lead. 
“This spring Brown Thrasher came to the bushy end 
of the orchard the last of April, and scratched about in 
the leaves like a Grouse. In a few days I saw him in 
the back of the garden, where Jacob had a great pile of 
pea-brush. This the bird looked at favourably. Birds 
know how to get in and out of pea-brush, but cats are 
afraid of the sharp twigs. 
“For a couple of weeks or more I heard him singing 
every day in the tree-tops, and I wondered where he would 
locate. 
“ Jacob, one morning, told me that he wished to use the 
pea-brush, but that a ‘pair of great brown birds that beat 
their tails and ‘‘sassed’”’ him when he came near’ had built 
a nest of twigs in the back of the heap. ‘My friends, the 
Thrashers,’ said I, ‘will need that brush for a couple of 
months. Have you no more in the lot?’ Jacob had 
plenty with only the trouble of carting. 
“Now hardy vines have grown over the brush and 
tangled into what Goldilocks calls a lovely ‘Thrashery’ 
that will last for several years.”’ 
“T know them,” said Jack Todd; ‘they are mockers 
and jeerers for certain; when Dad and I plant the big 
south field with corn every spring, they come in the berry- 
bushes by the fence and tell us how to do it, and that if 
we’re smart and take their advice, we won’t cut the fence 
brush until they are done with nesting. 
“But can’t they pick cherries to beat the band? Last 
summer I was up in the ox-heart tree and they came in 
