60 BROWN THRASHER. 
Our bird loves the dense thickets near water. The more thorny and interwoven 
with grape-vines these are, the more they are preferred by the Thrasher. As the bird 
is somewhat awkward in its flight it is best protected from its many enemies in these 
places; and here, too, it is sure to find an abundance of food. During spring and summer 
its haunts are peopled with insects in great numbers, and later there is no dearth of 
different kinds of berries, so that the Brown Thrush never has to suffer from want of 
food. It is not to be found during the breeding season in the deep interior of the 
woods and in extensive swamps. In Wisconsin it is rarer than in Illinois. In south- 
western Missouri I found it to be one of the most abundant birds. In Texas, where it 
is common during the winter only, it was especially numerous along the Buffalo Bayou 
near Houston, in the dense thickets which skirt the Brazos and Colorado, and on the 
West Yegua Creek, where it lived in great concealment in the densest evergreen shrubs. 
Here, as in the Northern States, it finds plenty of food during the whole winter, for 
there are many insects on the ground and berries on the bushes. In its winter home 
it invariably avoids the neighborhood of man, and is so shy that it rarely leaves the 
tangled undergrowth. In its breeding haunts, too, it is rather shy and careful, building 
its nest in gardens only. when set with clumps of dense ornamental shrubs. It always 
prefers, for a nesting site, such trees and shrubs as have branches reaching down to 
the very ground. 
The Brown Thrasher is a hardy bird. It arrives in its breeding haunts rather 
early, in northern Illinois and in Wisconsin, even before the beginning of May. Its arrival, 
however, is easily overlooked, as the bird keeps itself concealed at first. According to 
Mr. Otto Widmann’s observations, it reaches St. Louis at a time when the landscape is 
still wintry, in the last part of March or the beginning of April, while the Catbird 
arrives considerably later.—In southwestern Missouri, near Freistatt, 1,200 feet above 
the sea level, some Thrashers usually make their appearance by the beginning of April, 
and all the individuals arrive by the middle of the same month. I have never seen 
them in companies even in their winter home. 
The Thrasher’s full song is heard a few days after its arrival, if the weather bé 
bright and the air balmy. At first it is heard only at rare intervals; but, as soon as 
the spring has poured out its wealth of blossoms and warm breezes, and all the more 
delicate songsters have arrived, the Brown Thrushes’ song reverberates from all sides. 
For some weeks it is the most prominent and feverishly eager of all songsters. The lay 
is rich in quality, being full of feeling—at first soft, whispering, delicately plaintive, then 
loud, powerful and sonorous, wonderful in the variety of its notes and the manner in 
which the strophes melt into one another. It flows along like a clear, powerful stream, 
occasionally sinking into soft complaint as of longing, then changing suddenly and _ be- 
‘coming louder, fuller, livelier, till the air fairly resounds with the birds’ exultant joy.— 
This song, most eager toward the end of May and the beginning of June, is indescrib- 
ably charming and beautiful. It consists entirely of original notes, those of other birds 
never entering into the composition. Only he who has listened to the notes of the 
Thrasher, when all the landscape buds and blossoms, when every living being is im- 
passioned, and the feathered hosts of songsters hold high carnival in the labyrinth of 
trees and bushes, can form an adequate idea of the lofty, melting andante of the song. 
