A BROWN THRASHER 
He sings each song twice over, 
Lest you should think he never could recapture 
That first fine careless rapture. 
Robert Browning. 
T he brown thrasher, or sandy mock- 
ing-bird ” of Virginia, is one of the 
best loved but least understood birds of 
our northwestern avifauna. The term 
thrush '' so often applied to him does 
him an injustice, for no bird has greater 
individuality than he, or stands out more 
distinctly from the rest of the bird world 
when once you have come to know him. 
To be sure, he is the hero of the children’s 
rhyme, — 
** There ’s a merry brown thrush sitting up in the tree ; 
He’s singing to you, he ’s singing to me,” — 
but he really belongs to the mocking-bird 
and wren family, and has not a single char- 
acteristic in common with thrushes. His 
224 
