32 LAND-BIRDS AND GAME-BIRDS 
(B) Fucescens. Wilson’s Thrush. Tawny Thrush. Oom- 
mon Thrush. ‘*Cheeury.” ‘Veery.” (‘‘Nightingale.”) 
(In Massachusetts the most common of the wood thrushes, 
A-E.) 
(a). 7-73 inches long. Above, soft, bright reddish-brown 
(or ‘‘tawny”). Beneath, white; breast strongly tinged with 
fulvous (or a pinkish brown), and, together with the sides of 
the throat, sparsely—sometimes almost imperceptibly—streaked 
with small dusky spots. 
(b). The nest is usually placed on the ground, and rarely 
in a bush or low tree. It is generally composed of grasses 
and dead leaves, to which grape-vine bark is sometimes added, 
and it is often lined with finer grasses and roots, or even 
- horse-hairs. I have commonly, but not always, found it in 
tussocks of grass or hillocks of moss, in swamps or near them. 
The eggs average *85 X ‘60 of an inch, and are light blue, 
green-tinted. In Massachusetts, the first annual set (of four 
or five) generally appears in the last week of May, or the first 
of June; a second set (of three or four) is sometimes laid in 
July. : 
(c). The Wilson’s Thrushes are in Massachusetts the most 
common of the so-called ‘* wood thrushes,’ but in northern 
New England are rare, being generally much less common 
than the Hermit or Swainson’s Thrush in New Hampshire and 
Maine. They reach the neighborhood of Boston, in their an- 
nual spring-migrations, almost invariably on or about the 
eighth day of May, and very often before pear-trees have blos- 
somed,— a fact which I mention, because the blossoming of 
those trees has frequently been spoken of as coincident with 
the arrival of these birds from their winter-homes in the South. 
Their first appearance is in those haunts where they pass the 
summer; and in the swamps three or four sometimes collect 
and engage in the quarrels entailed by courtship, previous to 
mating. The Wilson’s Thrushes, though not so fond of soli- 
tude as the Wood Thrush, are rather shy, and yet they often 
wander in quest of food to the orchard, garden, and the im- 
mediate neighborhood of man or his dwellings. They prefer, 
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