The California Thrasher 
“That's the wise thrush; he sings the song twice over 
Lest you think he never could recapture 
The first fine careless rapture.'' 
But Browning wrote of an English bird, Turdus musicus , 
doubtfully a very distant relative of our American 
Thrashers. Now and then a singing Thrasher 
borrows from his neighbors, and we have unques¬ 
tionable imitations, of Wren-Tit, Flicker, or Jay, 
interspersed with his own improvisations. The 
effect is rarely as convincing as in the case of 
our true Mockingbird, breathless, hurried, 
and disguised rather; but here, as always, 
it is individual ability which counts. 
These common powers bring Thrash¬ 
er and Mocker into frequent comparison, 
and some of us have been privileged 
to hear the two species comparing 
notes on their own account, with no 
little suspicion of jealousy in the 
premises; but we shall decline a de¬ 
cision. It is the age-old question of 
country-mouse and town-mouse, and 
such are settled by prejudices, not 
judgments. 
Nests of the California Thrasher 
are rather casual affairs of masses of 
twigs lined with coarse rootlets or 
brittle weed-stalks, and placed in the 
depths of the denser bushes, or, more 
rarely, in live oaks. Nesting begins early, 
March or April, in southern latitudes, and 
continues with varying fortunes well into 
June. Being from the nature of its food 
rather independent of season, the bird makes 
also unseasonable nesting records. Mr. H. 
J. Lelande, the genial clerk of Los Angeles 
County, took two incubated eggs near Pasadena 
on the 27th of January, 1897; Mr. Grinnell broke 
all California records by taking, near 
Azusa, a set of three eggs in which incu- Taken in Pasadena Photo by Dickey 
bation had begun, on the fifteenth day of portrait of California thrasher 
December, 1899. 
