THE PASSING 61 



harmonious. It is a piping, querulous monotone, 

 more in accord with the rising stridulations of the 

 cicada than with the full, rich whistling of its 

 bright-eyed parents. By the same token, it is a sin- 

 gular thing that the sweet-voiced adult Grey 

 Thrush, so far from being always harmonious, at 

 times utters a succession of screaming notes sug- 

 gestive of one of the Parrots. I had, in fact, 

 ascribed the bar to the familiar Rosella Parrot until 

 a Thrush was seen, on a day in the late Spring, 

 uttering the wild, half -sane shout; and endorse- 

 ment came from John Burroughs' record of a simi- 

 lar trait in the disposition of an American Thrush. 

 That scream, I suspect, is only emitted when the 

 bird puts aside the spotless traditions of the gentle 

 Thrush clan, and gives play to the Shrike side of 

 its nature. Similarly, it is probably under an here- 

 ditary (Shrike) impulse that the soft-eyed Har- 

 monica occasionally despoils the nests of smaller 

 birds of either eggs or callow young. In one of the 

 old orchards upon which these notes chiefly centre 

 a sturdy bush woman was engrossed one day in be- 

 wailing the many little homes of her bird friends 

 which a strangely degenerate Thrush had wrecked. 

 (Babblers and Honey-Birds, she related, had been 

 forced to combine against the marauder.) Sud- 

 denly one of the handsome grey birds flew to a tree 

 close by, clapped its wings imperiously, and fluted 

 with clear emphasis: "Dick, Dick, Dick's a pret-ty 

 boy!" The suggested words were accepted with a 

 quaint seriousness. "Pretty boy be blowed !" rapped 

 out the offended woman. "I'll 'pretty boy' you if 

 you rob any more nests!" 



