42 Birds Every Child Should Know 
long-tailed brown thrasher for a thrush because 
he has a rusty back and a speckled white breast, 
which they seem to think is an exclusive thrush 
characteristic, which it certainly is not. The 
oven-bird and several members of the sparrow 
tribe, among other birds, have speckled and 
streaked breasts, too. The brown thrasher is 
considerably larger than a thrush and his 
habits are quite different. Watch him ner- 
vously twitch his long tail, or work it up 
and down like one end of a see-saw, or sud- 
denly jerk it up erect while he sits at attention 
in the thicket, then droop it when, after mount- 
ing to a conspicuous perch, he lifts his head to 
sing, and you will probably “guess right the 
very first time” that he is a near relative of the 
wrens, not a thrush at all. As a little sailor- 
boy once said to me, “ He carries his tell-tail 
on the stern.” 
Like his cousin, the catbird, the brown thrasher 
likes to live in bushy thickets overgrown v/ith 
vines. Here, running over the ground among 
the fallen leaves, he picks up with his long slen- 
der bill, worms. May beetles and scores of other 
kinds of insects that, but for him, would soon 
find their way to the garden, orchard, and fields. 
Yet few farmers ever thank him. Because 
they don’t often see him picking up the insects 
in their cultivated land, they wrongly conclude 
that he does them no benefit, only mischief, 
