Evening star., 1946-05-02
This and That
By Charles E. TraceDeH.

Our first wood thrush of the season
came in at 6:35 o'clock on the morning
of April Is, three days ahead OF the
usual time in our neck of the woods.
How familiarly beautiful his loud
notes sounded on the rainy air!
How beautifully familiar
There is no bird quite like the thrush,
especially in his singing. He is loud but
sweet, clear as a bell, sounding in both
heart and mind of his listeners.
Not all bird songs have that effect,
perhaps. Their singing is more for
each other than for man, the listener
to all things.
But here, in the thrush song, we have
an air and an intonation directed
squarely at the human listener, as much
so as if the bird did it deliberately.
Maybe he does, who can tell?
There is today, as in times past, much
disputation as to why birds sing. The
how is reasonably well known. The
hundreds of different birds grouped to-
gether for convenience in the classi-
hcation of songbirds all sing with a
throat formation of much the same
kind, and using the same or nearly the
same number of muscles.
Not all of them, by any means, sing
their way directly into the human heart,
although every listener, undoubtedly,
has his fayorites.
The wood thrush appeals to every
listener, his song is so different in con-
struction, being composed Of four groups
of three notes, varied from time to time,
and so much louder and clearer than
many another singer.
He, too, sings on the ground, as well as
from perch in tree or shrub.
There are some persons who claim,
almost viciously, that birds do not sing
from the ground. What rot! OF course
they do, and why not? The other morn
ing we watched white-throated SPAR
row standing squarely on the ground
beneath some rohododendrons. He sang
continuously for almost an hour, time
after time, scarcely moving from his
chosen spot. 1t was one of the best
bird concerts we have ever been privi-
legged to hear. If that fellow could have
been put on the stage and good price
charged for admission, some one might
have made a great deal of money, and
all listeners would more than have had
their moneys worth, for this bird was
in good fettle for singing; he never
missed a note, he threw his perfect
sounds into the air, one after the other,
mourning for poor Canada" as some
one has put it, time after time. with
such insistence and beauty that the
whole world might have stood in de-
lighted amazement at the lovely mis-
fortune of our sister country to the
North.
y y X X
The wood thrush, designated as the
official bird of the District of Columbia,
is even more at home in nearby Mary
land and Virginia.
He delights in shrubbery of all kinds,
he loves open lawns, and he Is seldom
afraid of human beings, their dogs or
/ their cats
The thrush is the ,cleanest looking of
sill birds, and is endowed with all the
perfection of those immaculate ones
which always look as If they had just
stepped out of bath.
The thrush loves, above all things, to
sing in the evening. This is his favorite
concert time. He sings invariably from
perch at this time, liking nothing bet
ter than tree branch about 20 feet
from the ground.
Usually there is another wood thrush
in the neighborhood, and he answers
| back to the first singer SO that all the
beauty Of one birds singing Is more than
doubled, in that peculiar way OF which
birds alone seem to possess the secret.