18 BICKNELL'S THRUSH. 
listening for the awakening of the birds. The first songs heard were those of the 
Hermit Thrush, Snowbird, and Yellow-bellied Flycatcher, which began almost simulta- 
neously, followed a little later by those of the Olive-backed Thrush and the Mourning 
Warbler, but T. aliciae bicknelli was not heard, or at least not near enough to be dis- 
tinguished among the other species. ‘ 
The increasing light upon the mountain seemed to attrac the birds from below, 
whither, perhaps, they had retired for the night, and soon many different notes were to 
be heard about the camp; not, however, in that boisterous chorus with which the day 
is often announced about our homes, in which the notes of many individuals of many 
species are blended in such confused medley that separate voices are almost sindistin- 
guishable, but simply the association of a few vocalists, the very isolation of whose 
position endowed their voices with an additional interest and charm. 
After those already mentioned the Black-poll Warbler? began its unpretending 
notes, which almost to me suggest a short dotted line, and this song, with that of the 
Black-and-Yellow Warbler, occasionally alternated about us in agreeable contrast. Now 
and then a Canada Nuthatch, on its morning tour, tarried to inspect some dead trunk 
or thinly clothed tree, upon the projecting apex of which, or that of some companion, 
a solitary Purple Finch occasionally alighted, and with a few wild fugitive notes was 
gone, to other mountain tops or the forests of the descending slopes. 
But to revert to the Thrushes. The two specimens of the new form which were 
obtained were both males, and were unquestionably breeding, though no ‘nest known 
to belong to their species was found.” * 
In the following year, 1882, Mr. Wm. Brewster found this new race among the 
White Mountains, especially in the forests covering the slopes of Mt. Washington. He 
gives a very attractive and interesting account of the Alpine fauna and flora of that 
famous mountain.in the January Number of the ‘Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological 
Club” for 1883 p. 12—17, though the article to which I refer treats especially of Bick- 
nell’s Thrush. : 
Mr. Langille found the nest of this Thrush in the almost impenetrable evergreen 
thickets of the Mud and Seal Islands southwest of Nova Scotia. “Placed a few feet from 
the ground, and against the trunk of an evergreen tree, the nest was composed exter- 
nally of various kinds of mosses, including a few fine sticks, weed-stems and rootlets, and 
was lined with fine grasses well bleached; so that, outside, the nest was as green as a 
btinch Of fréSh moss, and the inside was light brown. The eggs, .87X.63 of an inch, are 
light bluish-green, speckled with brown. About the Mud and Seal Islands dense fogs pre- 
vail almost continually throughout the summer. This excessive moisture, so productive 
to mosses, causes the moss in the walls of the Thrushes’ nests to grow; hence the nests 
of the previous years, well protected from the weather by dense evergreens, become 
elegant moss-baskets finely ornamented within and without with living cryptogams.” t 
In coloration the bird is very similar to Alice’s Thrush and only to be distinguished 
from that form by the scientific ornithologist. 
1 Dendroica striata. 
“ “Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club.” 1883, p. 152—159. 
i “The Auk. A Quarterly Journal of Ornithology." 1884, p, 268—270. 
