Page:Birdcraft-1897.djvu/134

 rust-red which covers his entire back, his habit of twitching and thrashing his tail when feeding on the ground, and his bold, swinging flight are certain marks of identification. His song is heard early in the morning from the bushes of some pasture or thickly brushed waste, but later in the day he usually perches on the topmost twig of a tree, and with swelling breast and drooping tail pours forth his freest music; and under no circumstances does he sing when near his nest.

The song has the same colloquial quality as the Catbird's, without its extreme rapidity, and one frequently detects in it the pauses peculiar to the Wood Thrush. I have tried in vain to reduce it to syllables, and find the result is mislead-ing; but the song is always bold and ejaculatory, as Thoreau describes it: "Upon the topmost spray of a tree sings the Brown Thrasher, or Red Mavis, as some love to call him, — all the morning glad of your society (or, rather, I should say, of your lands), that would find out another farmer's field if yours were not here. While you are planting the seed he cries, 'Drop it, drop it, — cover it up, cover it up, — pull it up, pull it up, pull it up.'"

A different mood, that of a reflective shoemaker whom Wilson Flagg knew, wove the song into other words, but with the same accented value: "Look up, look up!-Glory to God, glory to God! — Hallelujah, Amen, Videlicet!"

The Thrasher is something of a fruit thief, and I encountered one this June, in a very picturesque attitude, swooping directly toward me, wings extended, while from his beak, hanging by their twin stalks, were a pair of luscious, ripe cherries. His fruit and corn eating proclivities are much exaggerated, however, and are inconsiderable, in view of his usefulness as an insect-destroyer. The Thrasher's period of song ends with June, or, at the latest, during the first week in July, and Mr. Bicknell says that it does not seem to have a second singing period after the moulting.