Burroughs tells an unusual anecdote about a catbird as follows:
“A friend of mine who had a summer home on one of the trout-streams of the Catskills discovered that the catbird was fond of butter, and she soon had one of the birds coming every day to the dining-room, perching on the back of the chair, and receiving its morsel of butter from a fork held in the mistress’s hand. I think the butter was unsalted. My friend was convinced after three years that the same pair of birds returned to her each year because each season the male came promptly for his butter.”[115]
Many other incidents might be related concerning this interesting bird,—of its unusual intelligence and its remarkable power of mimicry. One catbird in Tennessee learned to imitate the songs of all the birds that nested near him. His rendering of the red-eyed vireo’s song was as good as that of the vireo himself. His listeners felt that it was wearisome enough to have the red-eye preaching constantly, but to have the catbird reiterating it was more than they could endure.
THE BROWN THRASHER
Mockingbird Family—Mimidæ
Length: About 11 inches, larger than the robin; tail 5 inches long.
General Appearance: A large bird with a bright brown back, white breast streaked with brownish-black, and a very long tail which is moved or “thrashed” about incessantly.
Male and Female: Reddish-brown above; white underneath, becoming buff after the August molt; throat indistinctly marked with dark streaks; breast and sides heavily streaked; wings with two indistinct white bars; tail almost half the length of the bird; bill long (about 1 inch), sharp and curving.
Notes: A “smacking” sound and a sharp whew.
Song: A loud, clear, beautiful song. It consists of several phrases, each composed of two or more similar notes. Thoreau interpreted it as follows: “cherruit, cherruit, cherruit; go ahead, go ahead; give it to him, give it to him.”[116] The song is generally sung from the tops of trees or bushes.
Habitat: Like the catbird, the thrasher is found frequently in shrubbery, where it scratches among dead leaves for its food. Its brown color protects it admirably.
Nest: Made of twigs, leaves, and root-fibers, placed in thickets or on the ground.
Eggs: White, evenly speckled with fine brown spots.
Food: Wild fruit and berries (30 kinds), and insects, especially beetles and caterpillars. Professor Beal says: “The farmer has nothing to fear from depredations on fruit or grain by the brown thrasher. The bird is a resident of groves and swamps rather than of orchards and gardens.”[117]
BROWN THRASHER
Range: Eastern United States and southern Canada, westward to the Rocky Mts.; winters in south-eastern United States.
Because of his brown color and his speckled breast, the Brown Thrasher has often been erroneously called the Brown Thrush. Careful observation reveals many points of difference. He is three or four inches longer than our common thrushes—in fact, his tail alone is only about 2½ inches shorter than the entire body of the veery or the hermit thrush; his bill is almost four times as long as theirs and is decidedly curved. Instead of dark, thrush-like eyes, he has pale yellow ones that give him an uncanny appearance.
He is not a dweller in woods, but, like the catbird, prefers thickets. Burroughs says: “The furtive and stealthy manners of the catbird contrast strongly with the frank open manners of the thrushes. Its cousin the brown thrasher goes skulking about in much the same way, flirting from bush to bush like a culprit escaping from justice. But he does love to sing from the April treetops where all the world may see and hear, if said world does not come too near.”[118]
His song is a brilliant, delightful performance, admirable in technique, but lacking in a quality of tone that moves the heart. It is often of long duration. One May afternoon, I heard a thrasher singing so long that I was moved to time him. He sang without stopping for fifteen minutes by my watch, and his entire song must have lasted nearly half an hour.
The brown thrasher, like the other members of his family, has power of mimicry. In the north, he is sometimes called the “Northern Mocker”; in some regions where he and the mockingbird both live, he is known as the “Sandy Mocker.” There is sufficient similarity in the songs of the catbird, the thrasher, and the mockingbird to make a listener pause a moment to distinguish them when in a locality where the three birds are to be found. The catbird’s mew betrays him; the thrasher’s song is more brilliant and sustained; the mocker’s more varied. Thoreau says, “The thrasher has a sort of laugh in his strain that the catbird has not.”[119] His song resembles decidedly that of the English thrush, famed in poetry. Browning’s description of the latter is equally applicable to our thrasher:
“He sings each song twice over,