32 LAND-BIRDS AND GAME-BIRDS 



S 



(B) FUCESCENS. Wilson's Thrush. Tawny Thrush. Com- 

 mon Thrush. "Cheeury." "Veery." ("Nightingale") 



(In Massachusetts the most common of the wood thrushes, 

 A-E.) 



(a). 7-7 \ 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. 



(6). 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, 



