48 THE CONDOR Vol. XIX 



again, the lovely Russet-backed Thrushes were almost always within sight or 

 hearing, hunting for worms in the garden or along the edge of the bracken bor- 

 dering it, sitting on the fence or the logs that lay half hidden by the ferns. 

 They even perched on the tip of a large pevee used to warp over the great logs 

 that seemed to promise an inexhaustible supply of fire wood, much needed in 

 that north country mornings and evenings even in June. One sat on the pevee 

 fluffed out, looking around for a long time one day, its saffron throat and the 

 lightly spotted upper part of its breast suggesting the Veery Thrush, whose 

 calls and song seem nearest to its own. 



As the Thrushes were almost as tame as Robins, I had ample opportunity 

 to study their calls and songs. The call notes, varied and striking, were at 

 times soft, rich, and liquid — as hoipe, whoipe, or whoite, the whoite occasionally 

 having the inflection of a query. At other times the notes were startlingly 

 loud and whistled, as a peremptory hoy'-it, sounding as was suggested "as if 

 some one was calling a dog." A common alarm note was a single call, but an 

 alarm note sometimes given for a cat was a low whistled double note, whee-ee. 

 The bleat, the counterpart of that of the Yeery, I never heard used in alarm, 

 but it was occasionally interlarded with the song, as whee-hiter'r'r, whee- 

 hiter'r'r. It was also given by itself, with emotion, apparently being answered 

 by another bleat. The split Thrush round that suggested the Veery song was 

 generally preluded by the call notes and may be brought to mind by the sylla- 

 bles, hoipe, ivhoipe, tra-la-la-la-ree, the second and last syllables given with ris- 

 ing inflection. Sometimes the split round was given softly without prelude. 

 As the birds sang all day long, their songs often lacked inspiration, and in such 

 cases the preliminary call notes were doubled, giving an amusingly perfunc- 

 tory effect, as if the bird were working himself up to his song — hoipe, hoipe, 

 whoipe, whoipe, tra-la-la-la-ree. Another phrasing of the song with quite differ- 

 ent rhythm was ivhat, tvhat, ha-ivhee'-ah, ha-whee f -ah. 



When a Thrush was sitting on a stub in front of the house it would some- 

 times raise its tail and flip its wings like a Robin, as if with the arrested inten- 

 tion of moving on, and on rare occasions one would raise and lower its tail like 

 a Hermit Thrush, though with a quick rather than a deliberate motion. But in 

 the main, the Russets seemed peculiarly quiet Thrushes, with little motion of 

 wings or tail. 



The last week in June a pair were seen going about the garden collecting 

 green worms and carrying them in their bills to a thick clump of young spruce 

 and hemlock, only two or three rods from the front porch. The trees were so 

 dense that it was only after long search that a chink was finally discovered by 

 the carpenter's wife through which the nest could be dimly seen about twelve 

 feet from the ground, a bulky mass with moss on the outside, supported by a 

 branch. The nest tree was in plain view from the porch and as we sat there 

 with Goldilocks playing near, and the good woman told me about crossing the 

 plains, and about a Burrowing Owl that had lived in their prairie dugout, 

 and a pet Sandhill Crane that had run races with her when she was a girl, we 

 watched the old Thrushes go back and forth to the nest. Used to seeing us 

 about the yard, they had little fear, and when I went and stood close under 

 their evergreen, came in at the back of it. As they made their way up to the 

 nest I saw pink salmonberries in their bills and heard the bee-like buzz of greet- 

 ing from the young. Between the visits of the parents the young could be 

 heard moving around and one sturdy little fellow fluttered up and stood on the 



