94 IN BIRD LAND. 
birds are adepts at concealment, while others build 
in places where you would not think of looking. 
However, I have had but little difficulty in finding 
the nests of the brown thrasher, which erects an 
inartistic platform of sticks, bound together by a few 
grass fibres, and thus is easily descried in the bushes, 
where it is usually placed. Early in the spring I 
found the nest of a pair of these birds in a thick 
clump of bushes near the edge of a woodland, and 
resolved to keep watch over it until the young 
family had left their home. ‘The parent birds in 
this case were very solicitous for the safety of their 
young. Every time I called they set up a pitiful 
to-do, which invariably made me hurry away, after 
a timid peep into the cradle. There is as much 
difference in the temperaments of birds of the same 
species as there is among persons belonging to the 
same family. While the thrashers in question 
seemed to be terrified at my presence, others 
driven from their nests displayed little or no fear, 
but sat quietly on a perch near by and allowed me 
to examine their domicile without so much as a 
chirp. 
The brown thrasher has surprised me by the 
variety of places he selects for building his log 
house. Wilson Flagg in his book, “A Year with 
the Birds,” says that this bird usually builds on the 
ground; and Mr. Eldridge E. Fish, who writes 
pleasantly about the birds of western New York, 
bears similar testimony. Perhaps thrasher-fashion 
in New England and New York differs from 
