7 2 
Ingersoll on Common Names of American Birds. 
[April 
Setophaga ruticilla (A.) Sw. May 3 I noticed a single fe- 
male ; the 5th, a pair ; the 8th, three males in different flocks, 
and the 9th I found them very numerous. After this date and 
until the 15th, they rather outnumbered the other species, when 
the number rapidly diminished. I found it breeding here very 
abundantly, the first egg being taken the 3rd of June. 
THE COMMON NAMES OF AMERICAN BIRDS. 
BY ERNEST INGERSOLL. 
The Thrush family — here regarded in its broadest sense, for 
the sake of convenience — does not present a wide range of ver- 
nacular synonyms except in respect to two or three species, nor 
are these difficult of explanation. 
The word Thrush is very old, appearing in substantially the 
same shape — the u sound having superseded an older y or 6 — 
in the Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon languages. I believe that the 
origin of the word was a reference to the throat, or in other 
words to the singing powers of this family, whose voice is prob- 
ably their most notable trait ; and this view is strengthened when 
it is remembered that the old German word drozzd coming from 
the same root as our English throat gives drossel in modern 
German as the word for “throat,” “throttle,” and also for 
“thrush.” Under Thrasher I shall adduce a further argument. 
From the earliest times, then, the Thrushes have been consid- 
ered preeminently the song-birds of the world. 
Taking up the list in regular order, the first to present itself is 
Turdus mustelimis. Its common names are : Wood Thrush , 
Wood R()bin , Swamp Robin , Swamp Angel (Adirondacks) , 
Bogtrot (South Carolina), Alondra del Monte (Mexico). All 
of these evidently refer to its habitual forest-resort and its Thrush- 
or Robin-like (for frequently these words are confused) character. 
The terms Song Thrush and Grive des Bois Flute (Canada) 
point to the striking music of this bird, the French literally 
meaning “the flute-voiced Thrush of the woods.” Referring to 
