How to Make a Thrashery 363 



when I tried to pull them away, a sharp barberry thorn plucked me by the 

 sleeve. 



As I stopped to free myself, something whispered in my ear: "Here is what 

 you are looking for, a perfect Thrashery, all ready made and waiting. All 

 you have to do is to protect this place near the ground from cats, for they 

 will not be able to force themselves through higher up." 



Instead of cutting and pruning, I called the man-of-all-garden-work to 

 help me build, and some lengths of fence netting with a barbed wire top 

 and bottom were pushed between the bushes close to the ground and wired 

 together, until a space of some twenty feet was enclosed. The meshes of the 

 wire were sufficiently wide to admit a large bird, but nothing more. 



The first season nothing happened; perhaps because there was still a large 

 white cat about the garden, who hunted only by moonlight, or before dawn, 

 and was therefore a difficult mark. Early this spring, however, she fell a vic- 

 tim to an irate chicken-raiser, and by the last of May I was aware that my 

 thrashery was being prepared for summer residents, even though the singer of 

 the family had moved from the ash to the tip-top of a cedar in an adjoining 

 field. 



I respected the Thrasher's desire for seclusion, and did not meddle; but 

 what was my surprise, one morning about the fourth of July, to see hopping 

 about on the lawn close under the shelf of bird food, five Thrashers, three 

 unmistakably young birds, all showing no more fear than so many Robins. 

 In a very few days they came to the shelf itself, and from the variety they 

 chose softened dog biscuit, berries (we always put on the bird-shelf the ber- 

 ries rejected when picking them over for the table), and bits of cake. 



This feeding was kept up all through the August molt, during which one 

 of the old birds, entirely bereft of its tail, would come daily and, when satis- 

 fied, flop back into the bushes as if ashamed. In middle September they dis- 

 appeared for a time, but returned for a week, not leaving for good until the 

 first frost that came with the full of the October moon. 



So tame they became that, one morning, a Blue Jay, Starling, Robin, Cat- 

 bird, Song Sparrow, and two Thrashers were feeding side by side on the shelf 

 within a few feet of the dining-room window. Ah, yes, we feed the Jays, and 

 by keeping them well fed their thieving temperament is held in check. As a 

 proof of this, — before we fed them they were set upon by other birds, now they 

 are accepted on an equal footing. 



This autumn, when you are tempted to be very neat and to drive away 

 your plant gypsies by pruning, stay your hand and bind them into cat-proof 

 thrasheries instead; for in there you may also entertain, quite unawares, a 

 pair of Maryland Yellow-throats, or that tantalizing ventriloquist, the Yellow- • 

 breasted Chat. 



