THRUSHES 



625 



inside three inches. The eggs are plain pale greenish blue and 

 measure 0.84 x 0.65, 0.86 x 0.63, 0.84 x 0.63, 0.81 x 0.61. 

 Three to five, more often four eggs are laid. The nests are 

 often placed on top of the stub of a small tree around 

 which the sprouts have started at heights of not over six feet 

 from the ground. Other nests are placed in small evergreen 

 bushes, in low alders and on dead stumps, in general two or 

 three feet from the ground. 



Nest building begins in late May, and in general it takes 

 from a week to ten days to complete a nest. Full sets of eggs 

 may be found at varying dates, usually the seventh to the 

 tenth of June, rarely earlier than this and sometimes as late 

 as the first of July. Though second broods have been recorded 

 as being reared by this species, I have reasons for believing 

 that only one brood is reared in Maine, and the so called 

 second broods are really belated sets laid by birds which for 

 some reason or other had not previously reared young that 

 season. 



When feeding the birds are almost entirely terrestrial, 

 scratching and probing among the dead leaves and decaying 

 vegetation on the ground. Here they find beetles, worms, 

 grubs, ants, flies and a variety of similar insects which they 

 subsist upon. Very rarely indeed in late summer they will 

 eat a few dogwood berries, occasionally a few blackberries. 

 It is quite probable that they eat a greater range of wild 

 berries, though I have no evidence that they eat anything of 

 this nature save that enumerated. 



757. Hylockhla alicice (Baird.). Gray-cheeked Thrush; 

 Alice's Thrush; Arctic Thrush. 



Plumage of adults : uniform olive above ; eye ring whitish ; lores grayish ; 

 sides of throat and breast faintly tinged with cream buff; middle of throat 

 and middle of belly white ; breast and throat spotted with black ; sides 

 brownish gray. Immature plumage : in general differs from that of adults 

 in being with buffy white linear shaft streaks to the feathers. Wing 4.07 ; 

 tail 3.00 ; culmen 0.55. 



