102 Sketches of Some Common Birds. 



frequently, though at limes while the female is sitting the 

 male mounts to a convenient perch and cheers his mate 

 with his sweetest strains, more expressive but less forcible 

 than the earlier songs. By the time the eggs are hatched, 

 the males have become silent and their songs are heard 

 no more in their fulness of rich melody, the end of the 

 first week of July being the limit of the vocal season in 

 central Illinois. 



However, one who is rambling along the hedgerow in 

 July or August may frequently come upon an individual 

 in the bush, or sitting low in the hedge, uttering portions 

 of his song in a low monologue, scarcely audible to the 

 eager listener a dozen feet away from the performer. 

 This tender crooning of the brown thrasher, like that of 

 the catbird and mockingbird, is heard chiefly at early 

 morning or late evening in the summer, and is the love 

 plaint of some late householder whoso early home was 

 harried, or who is rearing a second brood to cheer the 

 lonely hours of the moulting season. These subdued and 

 saddened songs of summer are more appreciable from the 

 fact that they are the feeble flickerings of the expiring 

 flame of melody which so brightly illumined the early 

 weeks of spring, and we turn our ears to catch the sounds 

 now dear to us from their rarity, as remembrances of the 

 perfect days whose music we slighted because of its very 

 omnipresence. 



The nests arc made externally of hedge sticks, corn 

 husks, strips of bark, and other coarse materials. I have 

 found pieces of maple bark woven into nests which were 

 fully half a mile from the nearest maple trees. Dried root 

 fibers are usually made to serve as lining for the nests. 

 The common situation is in a crotch in the central part of 

 the hedge, thorn-bush, or scrubby tree, at distances from 

 the ground varying in all degrees under six feet. Some- 

 times nests are found on the ground beside fallen brush, 

 and once I found a nest on the ground in an open meadow, 

 set in the grass like the home of an ordinarily ground- 

 nesting species. Another time I found a nest of the brown 

 thrasher in an apple tree, placed on a platform of inter- 

 secting twigs of horizontal boughs about twelve feet from 

 the ground. Nests placed in the hedges are usually well 



