362 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIEDS 



It is a bird that appears to make a business of singing 

 for its own amusement. There is great variety in its 

 strains. It is not easy to detect any repetition. 



June 24, 1853. The brown thrasher's nest has been 

 robbed, probably by some other bird. It rested on a 

 branch of a swamp-pink and some grape-vines, effect- 

 ually concealed and protected by grape-vines and 

 green-briar in a matted bower above it. The foundation 

 of pretty stout twigs, eight or nine inches in diameter, 

 surmounted by coarse strips of grape bark, giving 

 form to the nest, and then lined with some harsh, wiry 

 root-fibres ; within rather small and shallow, and the 

 whole fabric of loose texture, not easy to remove. 



April 30, 1856. A fine, morning. I hear the first 

 brown thrasher singing within three or four rods of me 

 on the shrubby hillside in front of the Hadley place. I 

 think I had a glimpse of one darting down from a sap- 

 ling-top into the bushes as I rode by the same place 

 on the morning of the 28th. 



This, I think, is the very place to hear them early, 

 a dry hillside sloping to the south, covered with young 

 wood and shrub oaks. I am the more attracted to that 

 house as a dwelling-place. To live where you would 

 hear the first brown thrasher! First, perchance, you 

 have a glimpse of one's ferruginous long brown back, 

 instantly lost amid the shrub oaks, and are uncertain 

 if it was a thrasher, or one of the other thrushes ; and 

 your uncertainty lasts commonly a day or two, until 

 its rich and varied strain is heard. Surveying seemed 

 a noble employment which brought me within hearing 

 of this bird. I was trying to get the exact course of a 



