BROWN THRASHER. 



with that remarkable and lively medley, strenuously 

 continued at times for two or three minutes, which is 

 indeed his love song. He is a bird with an uneasy and 

 restless disposition, shifting his perch, dodging between 

 the leaves, bobbing his tail up and down, raising his 

 crest, puffing out his feathers, and otherwise showing 

 his disapprobation of the intrusion on his private grounds 

 whenever you approach to watch him. His only note at 

 such a time is the harsh and nasal meou so suggestive of 

 the cat. 



Brown The Thrasher, sometimes called the 



Thrasher Brown Thrush, is one of our finest singers 



/um" whose music is a medtey of rapidly re- 



L. 1 1. as inches peated tones not unlike those of the Cat- 

 May ist bird. His color is a refined and delicate 

 brown. Upper parts, wings, and tail light sienna 

 brown; wing-coverts tipped with dull white; under 

 parts white heavily streaked with black-sepia except on 

 the throat and extreme under parts; eyes yellow. Fe- 

 male similarly marked. Nest built of coarse twigs, 

 grasses, and leaves, lined with fine rootlets and plant 

 fibres; it is generally placed on or near the ground, but 

 sometimes high in bushes, and not infrequently in low 

 branches of trees. Egg blue-white finely speckled with 

 sienna brown. This bird is distributed through eastern 

 North America as far north as New Brunswick; it breeds 

 from the Gulf States northward, and winters from Vir- 

 ginia southward. 



The voice of the Brown Thrasher is so similar to that 

 of the Catbird that one might be easily mistaken for 

 the other; but there is an unvarying difference between 

 the songs of the two birds: the Thrasher repeats his 

 notes and the Catbird does not. Hence, we find the 

 report in various books that the Thrasher advises the 

 farmer about his various duties in emphatic insistence, 

 thus: 



" Shuck it, shuck it; sow it, sow it; 

 Plough it, plough it; hoe it, hoe itl " 



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