52 Cameron, Birds of Custer & Dawson Counties, Mont. [^an 



In liis list of Birds of Fort Custer ' Dr. Mearns gives the Sage Thrasher as 

 ""Common." Captain Thorne saw two on Tongue River in August, 1890, 

 and secured one. Neither I nor any of my correspondents have met with 

 this bird. 



180. Galeoscoptes carolinensis. Catbird. — Common summer visitor 

 along the rivers and creeks. Rare or casual in the pines. More nests 

 of this species were to be found on my ranch near Terry than of any other 

 bird. 



181. Toxostoma rufum. Brown Thrasher. — Common along the 

 rivers of both counties; scarce in the pines. Dr. J. A. Allen found the 

 Thrasher "more or less common everywhere in the thickets along the 

 streams from the Missouri to the Musselshell." 



This splendid songster arrives about the first week of May and begins 

 to sing in the middle of the month. As far as my observations go the 

 Thrasher is silent wliile the female is incubating, and, as she is usually 

 sitting hard in the second week of June, the song can be heard only for a 

 period of about three weeks. Thrashers nest in the wild plum and choke 

 cherry thickets here, or in the willows along the banks of the Yellowstone. 

 They bred regularly on my ranch in Custer County, and in June, 1894, 

 there was a nest in the bushes at my north window. Four eggs are laid. 



The Thrasher is the only singer in Eastern Montana wliich can vie with 

 the Old World Thrush or Blackbird — even with Philomela herself, but 

 for a harsh note produced after the most beautiful passages. Like the 

 Nightingale, the Thrasher sings at night, when other birds are silent, as 

 well as by day, although several species do so occasionally — notably 

 the Meadowlark. As may be inferred from the above, the Thrasher has a 

 powerful and melodious voice, which is equally entrancing when heard 

 from the topmost branches of a pine or from the lowest depths of some 

 tangled copse. Although considered as only an aberrant Thrush by orni- 

 thologists the Thrasher's song cannot fail to remind the pilgrim of the 

 Song Thrush (Turdus musicus), which, according to Dixon, is the finest 

 of British feathered musicians.^ Comparisons are frequently made between 

 the song of the Old World Thrush and that of the Nightingale and I have 

 referred the point to my brother who has had considerable opportunities 

 for hearing both. He says: "The Song Thrush is frequently heard in 

 full song after sim-down, and in the stillness of night tliis song is frequently 

 mistaken for that of the Nightingale by those who have heard both. 

 Obviously, therefore, the two may be compared. On the other hand, if 

 the two birds be heard simultaneously, no possible mistake can be made 

 as to which is Thrush and which Nightingale, and, in my opinion, no com- 

 parison seems reasonable at such a moment. We yield at once to the 

 magic spell of 'the thrilling song which has been the theme of poets of all 

 ages.' When at Trinity College, Oxford, in the seventies, I had the good 



» Condor, Vol. VI, 1904, p. 21 



2 See as quoted in ' Briti.sh Birds' by Henry Seebolm, Vol. I, p. 216. 



