330 BIRDS OF ALABAMA 



General habits. — The brown thrasher is found in thickets, 

 brier patches, wooded bottoms, and dense hedges about culti- 

 vated lands. Always rather shy, he seems in winter to be 

 particularly averse to showing himself. With the first sunny 

 days of spring, however, he mounts to the topmost twig of 

 some tall tree and pours forth a rich, musical medley which 

 compares very favorably with the song of his famous cousin, 

 the mockingbird. His relationship to the latter bird is ex- 

 pressed in the popular name of "sandy mocker," prevalent 

 in some parts of the South. The song is often continued with- 

 out interruption for an extended period. 



Thrashers were singing freely at Auburn the first week in 

 March and at Leighton the last week in that month. The 

 alarm note of the thrasher is a sharp smacking tshat which 

 reminds one of the click of a pair of hedge shears. This is 

 often followed by a mournful, whistled, whee-u. The nest is 

 placed usually in a thick hedge, a brush pile, or a clump of 

 vines or briers, sometimes on the ground or in a bush. 



Food habits. — The food of the brown thrasher, as shown 

 by a study of 266 stomachs in the Biological Survey, is com- 

 posed of both vegetable and animal matter, the vegetable mat- 

 ter comprising about 63 per cent and animal matter about 

 37 per cent of the total food.* 



Mast, chiefly acorns, constitutes nearly one-fourth (23.7 

 -per cent) of the food of the year, wild fruit composes about 

 one-fifth, and cultivated fruit about 12 per cent. The wild 

 fruits eaten include huckleberries, elderberries, poke berries, 

 and the fruit of the sour gum, holly, hackberry, and Virginia 

 creeper. Domestic fruits eaten by the thrasher comprise 

 blackberries, strawberries, currants, grapes and cherries, 

 some of which, of course, grow also in a wild state, and in 

 such cases should not be charged against the bird as damage 

 to crops. 



Grain — chiefly corn, with a little wheat — was eaten to a 

 slight extent and was probably in the main waste. The animal 

 food consists for the most part of insects, of which beetles 

 (including the boll weevil. May beetles, and cucumber beetles) 



•Beal, F. K L., in Farmers' Bulletin 755, p. 14, "Common Birds of Southeasteriv 

 United States in Relation to Aerioulture," rev. ed., June, 1923. 



