198 



TJic Brown TJirasher. 



ingbird or Sandy Mockingbird, to distin- 

 guish it from the true mockingbird. In 

 summer it proceeds as far north as Canada, 

 Audubon having seen it in Nova Scotia, 

 ■while it has been reported as occurring at 

 Lake Winnipeg and along the Saskatche- 

 wan River. 



This sweet songster breeds throughout 

 its whole range. In Louisiana, according 

 to Audubon, its nest is built in March, 

 ■while in New York and Connecticut, where 

 it arrives from the South about the last of 

 April, it does not accomplish its house 

 building much before the middle of May, 

 and further to the North it is still later. 



The courtship of the female by the male 

 is accompanied by curious and interesting 

 actions. The eager suitor for favor struts 

 about the female with his tail dragging on 

 the ground and bows before her in his 

 efforts to win her favor. If she is kind to 

 him, his whole form quivers with delight 

 and he gives vent to his happiness in bursts 

 of song which are only excelled in beauty 

 and variety by the notes of the famed 

 mockingbird. 



Audubon tells us that in the Southern 

 States " the nest is found close to the house 

 of the planter, along with that of the mock- 

 ingbird," but in our Northern and Eastern 

 States this is, we think, never the case. 

 Here the Brown Thrasher is quite a shy 

 bird and much prefers to build its nest far 

 from the home of man, choosing hedgerows 

 along fields or low bramble bushes at the 

 edges of thickets. The nest is usually 

 placed on, or close to, the ground, and is 

 composed without of coarse twigs, sticks 

 and weed stalks, mingled with dried leaves, 

 strips of bark, and sometimes grass, and is 

 almost always lined with fibrous roots, and 

 occasionally with horse hair. Usually it is 

 a coarse, bulky structure with no preten- 

 sions whatever to beauty or elegance. Al- 

 though the nest is commonly placed on the 

 ground or within a few inches of it, it is 

 sometimes built in a bush, and Mr. Allen 



has given us an interesting note of a case 

 where the birds in self-defense were obliged 

 to quite depart from their usual custom in 

 locating their nests. Speaking of this 

 species in Kansas he says: "We found its 

 nests, containing full sets of eggs, at 

 Leavenworth during the first week of May. 

 Here the nests were built in low bushes, the 

 soil being clayey and damp; but at Topeka, 

 toward the end of May, we found nests on 

 the ground, the soil being dry and sandy. 

 At Ft. Hayes its nests were usually placed 

 in trees, sixteen to twenty feet from the 

 ground, to avoid the contingency of floods. 

 The trees here grow principally along the 

 bed of Big Creek; and the stream being 

 subject in summer to sudden freshets, the 

 scattered undergrowth, as well as the low 

 branches of the trees, are thus often sub- 

 merged, so that any nests built on or near 

 the ground would be liable to be destroyed 

 by the rise of the stream. The driftal 

 dibris adhering to the trees serves to mark 

 the ' high water' line, and we rarely found 

 a bird's nest below this limit. These birds, 

 that usually breed near the ground, in 

 bushes or on the low branches of trees, thus 

 modified their habits to suit the exigencies 

 of the locality." 



The eggs of this species are from four to 

 six in number, and are yellowish or greenish 

 in color, thickly sprinkled with fine dots of 

 brown. The young are readily reared by 

 hand, and do well in captivity, and being 

 such sweet songsters they are a favorite 

 cage bird. They begin to sing in the 

 autumn and by the following spring have 

 attained their full powers. 



Their habits in captivity are quite inter- 

 esting, and we may quote quite fully on 

 this point from Audubon and Nuttall. The 

 former says: "My friend Bachman, who 

 has raised many of these birds, has favored 

 me with the following ])articulars respect- 

 ing them: 'Though good-humored toward 

 the person who feeds them, they are always 

 savage toward all other kinds of birds. I 



