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Some years ago I made a number of experiments in rearing young birds taken as early as possible from the nest. Among them were meadowlarks, red-winged blackbirds, brown thrashers, blue jays, wood thrushes, catbirds, flickers, red-headed woodpeckers, and several other species. Nearly all of them were secured some time before they were naturally ready to leave their natal places.
One day my attention was arrested by the angry notes of a pair of brown thrashers that were flitting from bush to bush along an old stone wall in a remote field. Presently I saw what it was that excited them, three large red weasels, or ermines, coming along the stone wall, and leisurely and half playfully exploring every tree that stood near it. They had probably robbed the thrashers.
Besides, you'll have had your fill of cooking before you have finished with the thrashers." This proved correct enough, for when the men came in with the thrasher and the homestead vibrated to its hum, others whose harvests were garnered came too, out of good-will, and Harry was cooking and baking all day long.
Beneath the thickets the under-wood world was very busy, where squirrels squatted or prowled and cunning fox-sparrows avoided the starlings and blackbirds; and the big cinnamon-tinted, speckle-breasted thrashers scuffled among last year's leaves or, balanced on some leafy spray, carolled ecstatically of this earthly paradise.
Sailed on steamship Chile with about thirty passengers, all Spanish Americans, bound for Equador, Peru or Chile. December 3rd. Reached the Equator, and I donned warmer clothes. We saw whales, sharks, porpoises, rays and thrashers. Entered the Guayaquil River. Here was where Pizarro first landed and obtained a footing. The steamer anchored in quarantine a mile below the city.
Brown thrashers in the thicket it is past their time of singing respond with a strange, sibilant sound, a mingled hiss and whistle, far different from his ringing songs of May, now only memories; different also from her scoldings when she was disturbed on her nest and from her tender crooning calls to her babies during June.
A friend told me of a small party of blue jays that she saw playing this kind of a joke on a flock of birds of several kinds, robins, catbirds, thrashers, and others. These birds were gathering the cherries on the top branches of a big cherry tree. The jays sat quietly on another tree till the cherry eaters were very busy eating.
After passing the home of the thrashers, on my usual morning walk toward the north, my next temptation to linger came from a fern-lined path to the spring, abode of other Young Americans.
All through the wheat season, she told us, Ambrosch hired his sister out like a man, and she went from farm to farm, binding sheaves or working with the thrashers. The farmers liked her and were kind to her; said they would rather have her for a hand than Ambrosch.
Proceed we now to treat of the Inhabitants of the Watry Element, which tho' we can as yet do but very imperfectly; yet we are willing to oblige the Curious with the best Account that is in our Power to present them withal. The Fish in the salt, and fresh Waters of Carolina, are, Whales, several sorts. Thrashers. Divel-Fish. Sword-Fish. Crampois. Bottle-Noses. Porpoises. Sharks, two sorts.
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