Brown, Olive or Grayish Brown, and Brown and Gray Sparrowy Birds 



English poets have lavished upon the nightingale ? Undoubtedly 

 because it lifts up its heavenly voice in the solitude of the forest, 

 whereas the nightingales, singing in loud choruses in the moon- 

 light under the poet's very window, cannot but impress his 

 waking thoughts and even his dreams with their melody. 



Since the severe storm and cold in the Gulf States a few win- 

 ters ao-o, where vast numbers of hermit thrushes died from cold 

 and starvation, this bird has been very rare in haunts where it 

 used to be abundant. The other thrushes escaped because they 

 spend the winter farther south. 



Alice's Thrush 



(Turdus alicice) Thrush family 



Called also: GRAY-CHEEKED THRUSH 



Length — 7.5 to 8 inches. About the size of the bluebird. 



Male and Feinale — Upper parts uniform olive-brown. Eye-ring 

 whitish. Cheeks gray; sides dull grayish white. Sides of 

 the throat and breast pale cream-buff, speckled with arrow- 

 shaped points on throat and with half-round dark-brown 

 marks below. 



Range — North America, from Labrador and Alaska to Central 

 America. 



Migrations — Late April or May. October. Chiefly seen in migra- 

 tions, except at northern parts of its range. 



One looks for a prettier bird than this least attractive of all 

 th-e thrushes in one that bears such a suggestive name. Like the 

 olive-backed thrush, from which it is almost impossible to tell it 

 when both are alive and hopping about the shrubbery, its plu- 

 mage above is a dull olive-brown that is more protective than 

 pleasing. 



Just as Wilson hopelessly confused the olive-backed thrush 

 with the hermit, so has Alice's thrush been confounded by later 

 writers with the olive-backed, from which it differs chiefly in 

 being a trifle larger, in having gray cheeks instead of buff, and in 

 possessing a few faint streaks on the throat. Where it goes to 

 make a home for its greenish-blue speckled eggs in some low 

 bush at the northern end of its range, it bursts into song, but 

 except in the nesting grounds its voice is never heard. Mr. 



126 



