“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.