“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. THE INCREDULOUS VEERY Two hunters chanced one day to meet Near by a thicket wood; They paused each other there to greet, Both in a playful mood. Said one, “I had to wade a stream, Now, this you must not doubt, And when I reached the other shore My boots were full of trout.” _Whew!_ cried a Veery perched in view To hear if what they said were true. _Whew!_ The other’s wit was now well whet. Said he, “Let me narrate: I bought three hundred traps and set For fur both small and great; Now, when next morning came, behold, Each trap contained a skin; And other disappointed game Stood waiting to get in.” The astonished Veery whistled, _Whew!_ I hardly think that story true. _Whew!!!_ —Florence A. Van Sant, in _Bird-Lore_. * * * * * THE BROWN THRASHER “Also called _Brown Thrush_, _Red Mavis_, _Planting Bird_. Brown of back, with his white throat and belly speckled with black arrow marks, a long, curved bill, and long, restless tail, whose thrashing gives the bird his name, this bird combines the markings of the Thrush with the general build of a true Mockingbird, while in varied and rich song it rivals the Catbird, its shorter song season, however, leaving its gray-backed neighbour in the lead. “This spring Brown Thrasher came to the bushy end of the orchard the last of April, and scratched about in the leaves like a Grouse. In a few days I saw him in the back of the garden, where Jacob had a great pile of pea-brush. This the bird looked at favourably. Birds know how to get in and out of pea-brush, but cats are afraid of the sharp twigs. “For a couple of weeks or more I heard him singing every day in the tree-tops, and I wondered where he would locate. “Jacob, one morning, told me that he wished to use the pea-brush, but that a ‘pair of great brown birds that beat their tails and “sassed” him when he came near’ had built a nest of twigs in the back of the heap. ‘My friends, the Thrashers,’ said I, ‘will need that brush for a couple of months. Have you no more in the lot?’ Jacob had plenty with only the trouble of carting. “Now hardy vines have grown over the brush and tangled into what Goldilocks calls a lovely ‘Thrashery’ that will last for several years.”