MOCKERS AND THRUSHES
“How many of you know the Wood Thrush, or, if you do not know his name, can recognize him by aid of these verses?”
“I know it,” answered little Clary; “I know his colour and the way his song tinkles, but up at our house we call him Song Thrush. Why, Gray Lady, he doesn’t live in the woods; we haven’t any woods. He stays right around the garden and orchard, and last summer they made a nest in the crotch of a sugar-maple so low that I could see into it by standing on the fence. It looked just like Robin’s nest, and it had some rags woven into it, and the eggs are like the Robin’s, too.
“Mother said that I mustn’t watch too long, or they might not come back next year, but that if we didn’t bother them, they might come back, and the children, too, and bring their wives.
“This pair seemed real tame; they used to hop all round on the grass where the clothes dry, and they drank out of Roy’s dish. He’s a Collie dog, you know, and they don’t bother birds at all the way bird-dogs will sometimes.
“The Thrushes did eat some strawberries and currants, but mother said to credit those to company, for they pleasured her when she sat sewing on the porch of afternoons more than all the company she ever had to tea, for they had to have sugar and cream on their berries, and left plates and spoons to wash up, and the Thrushes cleared up after themselves and gave a concert every night.
“You know, Gray Lady, it isn’t nice to have company and not give them any lunch, so mother says if you have nice garden birds, why should you expect more of them than of folks?”
E. Van Alterna, Photo.
WOOD THRUSH AND NEST
“Why, indeed,” said Gray Lady. “I will go and see your mother and ask her to come to Birdland. A mother in a community who thinks as she does is better than half a dozen bird wardens.”
“I know that bird, too,” said Dave, “but on the hill where I live he stays in the river woods and only comes out to the lane edge to get wild cherries and blackcaps and shadberries. We call it Wood Robin, ’cause it’s shaped like a Robin and runs on the ground like one, only it’s different in colour. Do you suppose they are the same bird? Or are there two that seem alike, like the Nighthawk and Whip-poor-will?”
“Wood Thrush, Song Thrush, Wood Robin, are all one; the shy bird of river woods or the lovely musician of gardens and home grounds, where they are protected and dogs reign instead of cats. This place is vocal with them all through May, June, and well into July. Not only Birdland and the orchard, but the garden and trees on the lawn.
“One afternoon last June, when Goldilocks lay in her hammock under the spruces, four were singing where I could see all at once,—and oh, that song! As the bird sits in a tree-top with head thrown back and pours it forth,
‘the song of the Wood Thrush is one of the finest specimens of bird music that America can produce. Among all the bird songs I have ever heard, it is second only in quality to that of the Hermit Thrush. Its tones are solemn and serene. They seem to harmonize with the sounds of the forest, the whispering breeze, the purling water, or the falling of raindrops in the summer woods.’
—E. H. Forbush.
“This Thrush has a sharp alarm note, ‘Pit! Pit!’ and a sort of whistle that he seems to use as a signal. Fruit he does eat at times, but he has as long a list of evil insects to his credit as the Robin himself. Unfortunately, owing to his size and plumpness, southern vandals shoot him in the fall and winter. Fancy silencing his heavenly voice for a pitiful mouthful of meat.
“There is another Thrush that lives in your river woods, Dave, smaller than the Wood Thrushes, tawny of back, and a buffy breast with faint arrow-shaped spots upon it, the Wilson’s Thrush, or Veery. It has not so long and varied a song as either the Wood Thrush or the more northern Hermit Thrush, is really but an echo song, wonderfully pure and spiritual in quality. One of the Wise Men gives in syllables this ‘Ta-weel-ah-ta-weel-ah,’ pronounced in whispering head tones, and then repeated a third lower, ending with the twang of a stringed instrument.
“At evening and until quite late into the night these birds echo themselves and each other. It is not a song to hear amid laughter and talking, but for the heart that is alone, even if not lonely. To at least one of our poets, he who best interprets the song-life of birds, it rivals the famous English Nightingale.
“Aside from its musical value, the Veery, feeding as it does almost altogether on insects, has a practical side as a neighbour. It also has a most penetrating call-note, a ‘Whew! Whew!’ heard after the song is over, that is at once resentful, critical, and challenging, as if questioning your right to be in its woodland retreat in the nesting time, and condemning your persistence. Many people, who do not know the bird by sight, know both its echo song and its note of alarm and challenge.