DELAWARE VALLEY ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 23 



earlier nesting ventures have ended in disaster will sometimes 

 try and try again even into late July. One year (1907) I 

 heard a wandering Wood Thrush, evidently in quest of a mate, 

 sing on August 13, and as beautifully, with phrases full and 

 undeteriorate, as though it were mid-May. This bird I heard 

 sing in the morning near my home and later in the day I heard 

 him sing again and as fully nearly a mile away. I am pretty 

 sure that it was the same bird for not only were most of his fel- 

 lows silent, but his song was individualized and easily recog- 

 nizable. 



Nesting begins about two weeks after the arrival of the Wood 

 Thrushes, and the young begin to appear on the lawn about the 

 end of the first week in June. In my experience, if the early 

 brood is successfully reared a second brood is not attempted. 

 The Wood Thrush, like all his kind with which I am familiar, 

 like Bluebird and Kobin, and Hermit Thrush and Veery, is a 

 good husband and father. He takes his place on the eggs to 

 relieve his mate and he helps in the feeding of the young. He 

 is valiant in resisting attacks on his brood and capable of creat- 

 ing as great a hubbub over the presence of marauders as Red- 

 breast himself. Head feathers raised into almost a crest, wings 

 beating and drooped, and tail uptilting, all of him aquiver and 

 jerked about by his excitement, he will scold from some low 

 limb at skulking cat or persistently threatening squirrel until 

 he has driven ofif the enemy or the nest is rifled. Before the 

 latter happens, however, the thief must run a gauntlet of daunt- 

 less swoops and dashes from both male and female bird. 

 These sometimes carry the excited bird so close that its beating 

 wings may force the thief to jump from the limb he is following 

 toward the nest. I am afraid that Chickaree when once he has 

 found a nest will watch his chance and return when it is un- 

 guarded, but a cat so discomfited will often not return. 



Not less alarmed is the Wood Thrush when you climb up to 

 his nest for the joy of looking at those eggs of darker than 

 Robin' s-egg blue. Near to the house as he will build, and close 

 to you as he will come to pick beetles from the grass or moth 

 millers from the shrubs he never adjusts himself to familiarities 

 as does Robin. I may look out of the little third-story window 



