The Brown Thrasher 117 



place for their nest has been on a lower limb, covered by an 

 overhanging one of silver spruce which stands on the front 

 lawn. The nest is roughly made of small sticks, twigs and 

 rootlets and lined with finer rootlets and hair. By the latter 

 part of May three to five eggs have been laid. The ground- 

 work of the eggs varies from a white or creamy color to a very 

 pale greenish blue and are speckled over the entire surface 

 with reddish brown. My observation confirms Mr. Dugmore's 

 statement that, "while on the nest these birds, like their rela- 

 tives the wrens, sit very close, allowing themselves to be al- 

 most caught, but once they leave the nest their manner 

 changes and they become intensely noisy, making a great pre- 

 tense of attacking the intruder, uttering repeatedly their harsh, 

 scolding notes." One afternoon I attempted to show my lit- 

 tle grandson the young birds in the nest, by holding him up in 

 my arms and lifting the overhanging limb so that he could 

 look in upon them. The old birds discovered what I was do- 

 ing and made a fierce attack upon us by repeatedly flying into 

 our faces and striking at our eyes with their beaks, and fear- 

 ing that they might injure the lad, I retreated. 



When feeding, the brown thrasher runs over the ground 

 very much like a robin and scratches among the leaves and 

 other debris very much like the chickens do, and sometimes 

 they throw the leaves and other debris up and over their 

 backs. We are indebted to Sylvester D. Judd, assistant orni- 

 thologist, U. S. Department of Agriculture, for quite a full 

 knowledge of their food. He says, "the proportions of the 

 different elements of their food, as determined by an examina- 

 tion of 121 stomachs collected from Maine to Florida and as 

 far west as Kansas, is as follows : Animal matter, 63 per cent. ; 

 vegetable, 35 ; mineral, 2 ;" and that "the economic relation of 

 the brown thrasher to agriculture may be summed up as fol- 

 lows : Two-thirds of the bird's food is animal ; the vegetable 

 food is mostly fruit, but the quantity taken from cultivated 

 crops is offset by three times that volume of insects. In de- 

 stroying insects they are helping to keep in check organisms 

 the undue increase of which disturbs the balance of nature and 

 threaten our welfare." 



As we have already said, the brown thrasher is a ground 



