DELAWARE VALLEY ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 25 



My neighborhood's Thrushes now spend much of their time in 

 a nearby woods, in which the trees are far enough apart for the 

 ground to be densely thicketed. They visit the lawn rather 

 seldom now, until the wild cherries ripen. Then the Wood 

 Thrushes come often, clinging to the fruited sprays and feeding 

 there like the Redbreasts, and at times even fluttering before 

 the little bunches like Hummingbird before trumpet flower and 

 gathering the fruit on the wing. They will descend, too, to the 

 ground to pick up the cherries that are scattered there. 



The Wood Thrushes are generally in all but full plumage 

 again by the end of September, and not long afterwards they 

 steal away quietly, without flocking, to the South. In 1909, 

 however, at least one Wood Thrush of our lawn lingered on in 

 the neighboripg wood's-edge until almost the middle of October, 

 and was very noisy in the last days of his stay, scolding loudly 

 early in the mornings at I know not what. 



To me the Wood Thrush is the bird of birds. I am no fonder 

 of him than of Robin or Wren, of Barn Swallow or Wood 

 Pewee, of Song Sparrow or Whitethroat, the other birds that 

 I have at once known best and cared for most through long 

 years. But very fond of him I am. His quiet ways that reveal 

 something that in men we call breeding is perhaps as large a 

 cause of my fondness as the associations that sight and sound 

 and thought of him bring up, and as his beauty of plumage 

 and of voice. This fondness for him is, I think, general. Not 

 only have we the testimony of many lovers of birds from the 

 time of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Wilson that they hold 

 his song first among the songs of our country's birds, but the 

 stronger testimony there is in the popular name for him in the 

 general neighborhood of Philadelphia — Wood Robin. He is to 

 villager and countrymen, and to the children who fill the towns, 

 the Robin of the woods, the wood bird that is loved as is loved 

 the Redbreast of the home-yard. Not that the Wood Thrush 

 is distinctively a wood bird, for as my evidence has it he is not, 

 but that of birds that visit the environs of suburban and coun- 

 try homes he is most often recognized by appearance and by 

 song when met in the woods he also frequents. 



The Wood Thrush is a handsome bird in his wood-brown and 



