The Catbird 
and eye the intruder sternly at six feet, while the rightful owner hovered 
in the background wailing pichoori. 
This association of Thrashers is always interesting. At one spot 
in the open desert in middle Arizona we found these four species within 
a stone’s throw of camp, Bendire, Palmer, Crissal, and Western Mocker. 
“Open” desert hardly expresses the case, either, for Crissal, for where 
the others nested starkly in the scattered bushes of the level, Crissal had 
found a tiny sink-hole crowded with thorn-bushes. Here the lack of 
distant cover forced an unwonted audacity upon crissalis, and I saw a 
Crissal, a Leconte, and a Mockingbird so closely associated on a sparsely 
foliaged mesquite limb that one might have gathered in the group with 
a sweep of the arm. 
To my mind, the most interesting thing about the Crissal Thrasher 
is that its egg is bluish green (pale to light niagara green), unmarked. 
In this respect it stands alone among the eggs of the Toxostomata (I have 
not, however, seen the eggs of T. ocellatum from southern Mexico), 
although the markings of T. lecontei are often very light and occasionally 
absent. This immaculateness has, no doubt, a considerable phylogenetic 
significance, if we could only read it. If crissalis were the lightest of the 
Thrashers instead of the darkest, we should say that the egg of crissalis 
was the logical evolution of the lecontei tendency; but the bird relates 
itself rather with redivivum , whose eggs are emphatically spotted. The 
threads of developmental history are here, and the clew is a big one; 
but we are not wise enough yet to follow it out. 
Perhaps the neottologist (that is, the student of young birds) will be 
able to help us out. For his guidance I may say that young Crissal 
Thrashers are covered at an incredibly early age with a heavy blackish 
down, and that their mouth-linings are light wax-yellow. 
No. 144 
Catbird 
A. O. U. No. 704. Dumetella carolinensis (Linnaeus). 
Description.— Adult: Slate-color, lightening almost imperceptibly below; black 
on top of head and on tail; under tail-coverts bay, sometimes spotted with slaty. Bill 
and feet black. Length 203.2-237.5 (8.00-9.35); wing 91.2 (3.59); tail 92.7 (3.65); 
bill 15.8 (.62). 
Recognition Marks.—Towhee size; almost uniform slaty coloration with 
thicket-haunting habits distinctive; lithe and slender as compared with Water Ouzel. 
Nesting.—(Does not breed in California). Nest: Of twigs, coiled bark-strips, 
weed-stalks, vegetable fibers, and trash; carefully lined with fine rootlets; placed at 
indifferent heights in bushes or thickets. Eggs: 4 to 5; deep niagara green (the most 
JI2 
