BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 413 
SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. - 
Third quill lengest; first shorter than the sixth; the pre- 
vailing color dark plumbeous; tail greenish-black; the lateral 
feathers obscurely tipped with plumbeous; the under tail cov- 
erts dark brownish-chestnut. 
Length, 8.85; wing, 3.65; tail, 4; tarsus, 1.05.’ 
Habitat, eastern United States and British Provinces, includ- 
ing Rocky Mountains. 
HARPORHYNCHUS RUFUS (L.). (705.) 
BROWN THRASHER. 
The Brown Thrush like the Robin, must have arrived during 
exceedingly rough weather if he escapes the instantaneous 
recognition of the waiting, vigilant observer of the migration 
of the birds. Under all ordinary circumstances, he will 
announce his presence unmistakably by mounting the top-most 
limb of some isolated tree, and pouring forth his clear, strong, 
liquid song in a prolonged strain, embracing twenty or more 
elementary modulations, rearranging their order at each voluble 
repetition. The air seems literally burdened with his melody. 
All creation is summoned to witness his joy that he has once 
more reached the very spot in all the earth wherein he would 
spend the golden summer in rearing a new family of his own. 
There is however considerable difference in the strength and 
* sweetness of different birds of the species, a fact as patent to 
other species of wild bird warblers as to domestic songsters. 
This delightful bird is one of the most welcome of all the hosts 
which return to us in spring, but he is seldom heard after 
incubation has been completed, except by those whose ears are 
earliest open to the songs of birds in the mornings. About the 
third week in May they build their nests of twigs, leaves, 
strips of bark, and fibrous roots, and line them with fine roots 
and hair. The nests are deeply hollowed, and variously 
placed on the ground, or in a bush, a low evergreen, a brier 
patch, &c, but usually not more than four feet above the ground. 
They lay five eggs, of a pale-bluish color, thickly spattered 
with fine dots of reddish-brown. T'wo broods are successively 
brought out in a season as a rule, the latter of which is the 
first to leave us in the autumn. 
The parent birds are the last to depart, about the first week 
in October, yet a resolute few linger in occasional years a week 
or two later. 
