156 BY-WAVS AND BIRD-NOTES. 
leafless trees. It is a good nest-builder, and 
provides for its young with a great show of 
affection and industry It customarily keeps 
near the ground, but I have observed large 
flocks high up in the air, migrating southward 
in autumn. 
Turning from a provokingly dual subject— 
the paradoxical nature of our jay—one feels 
relieved in speaking of the genial and melodi- 
ous life of the brown-thrush. Next to the 
mocking-bird the most famous singer of our 
woods, this beautiful little fellow, with his 
snuff-colored coat and dappled vest, is welcome 
wherever he goes. My observations of his 
habits extend over a wide area reaching from 
Northern Indiana to Florida, and I have no 
vicious trait of his character to record. In 
the mountains of East Tennessee, and among 
the hills of North Carolina and Georgia, 
brown-thrushes are almost as common as are 
blackbirds in the flat fields of Illinois. The 
thickets that rim the glades, especially the wild 
orchards of haw and crab-apple, plum and 
honey-locust, are the favorite nesting-places 
of this bird; but he chooses the topmost tuft 
of the tallest tree for his perch while singing. 
His song, full-toned, loud, clear, varied, is 
often mistaken by casual listeners for that of 
the mocking-bird, though really far inferior to 
it in both volume and compass, and scarcely 
to be compared with it in purity of resonance. 
In the far South, where all birds are given to 
greater latitude of habit than in the North, the 
brown-thrush now and then sings in the night, 
a low, dreamy, lulling song, warbled as if with 
a sleepy throat. In this too he follows, but 
does not equal, the mocking-bird. I have 
