n6 Birds of Buzzard's Roost 



and English mocking bird. Wilson called it the ferruginous 

 thrush, turdus rufous, and classed it in the family turdidse, and 

 it is now commonly called the brown thrush. This is an er- 

 ror. He has, however, some of the characteristics of the 

 thrushes, namely, their tawny coloring and spotted breast, and 

 like them, he is a fine singer. And "certainly," as Miss Blan- 

 chan says, "his bold, swinging flight and habit of hopping over 

 the ground would seem to indicate that he is not very far re- 

 moved from the tree thrushes. But he has one undeniable 

 wren-like trait, that of twitching, wagging and thrashing his 

 long tail about to help express his emotions. It swings like 

 a pendulum as he rests on a branch, and thrashes about in a 

 most ludicrous way as he is feeding on the ground upon the 

 worms, insects and fruit that constitute his diet." 



The bill of the brown thrasher is very long, heavy at the 

 base, curved, pointed, black above and yellowish below, and 

 much like that of the cuckoo, except that it is beset with strong 

 bristles at the base ; iris of the eye, brilliant yellow ; region 

 about the eyes, light brown ; chin, white ; upper parts of the 

 body, reddish brown, darkest on the wings ; wings, short, 

 heavy and reaching back only to the base of the tail ; lesser 

 and greater wing coverts tipped with white ; tail very long, 

 well rounded, of a reddish brown, droops below the wings and 

 opens and shuts like a fan ; underparts of the body white with 

 black spots forming longitudinal streaks ; tarsi, long and 

 strong; feet, long and well adapted to a life of scratching for 

 a living among the leaves in the thickets. In appearance the 

 male and female are much alike ; the latter may be distin- 

 guished from the former by the white on the wing being nar- 

 rower, and the spots fewer on the breast. 



The brown thrasher is a migrant whose range extends 

 from the Gulf States north to Manitoba, Maine and Ontario 

 and west to the Rocky Mountains. It comes north in the lat- 

 ter part of March and in April and returns south in the latter 

 part of September and the first part of October. It is most 

 common in the Carolinian zone, where it rears two broods in a 

 season. Those that come north usually nest in May. The 

 nest is built on the ground or near to it in a bush. At Somer- 

 leaze we have had a pair of them for several years. A favorite 



