that he is noisy and demonstrative; he hurries away or rises to a branch with an angry note, and flirts his wings in ill-bred suspicion.  The mavis, or red thrush, sneaks and skulks like a culprit, hiding in the densest alders; the catbird is a coquette and a flirt, as well as a sort of female Paul Pry; and the chewink shows his inhospitality by espying your movements like a Japanese.  The wood thrush has none of theses underbred traits.  He regards me unsuspiciously, or avoids me with a noble reserve,—­or, if I am quiet and incurious, graciously hops toward me, as if to pay his respects, or to make my acquaintance.  I have passed under his nest within a few feet of his mate and brood, when he sat near by on a branch eying me sharply, but without opening his beak; but the moment I raised my hand toward his defenseless household, his anger and indignation were beautiful to behold.

What a noble pride he has!  Late one October, after his mates and companions had long since gone south, I noticed one for several successive days in the dense part of this next-door wood, flitting noiselessly about, very grave and silent, as if doing penance for some violation of the code of honor.  By many gentle, indirect approaches, I perceived that part of his tail-feathers were undeveloped.  The sylvan prince could not think of returning to court in this plight, and so, amid the falling leaves and cold rains of autumn, was patiently biding his time.

The soft, mellow flute of the veery fills a place in the chorus of the woods that the song of the vesper sparrow fills in the chorus of the fields.  It has the nightingale’s habit of singing in the twilight, as indeed have all our thrushes.  Walk out toward the forest in the warm twilight of a June day, and when fifty rods distant you will hear their soft, reverberating notes rising from a dozen different throats.

It is one of the simplest strains to be heard,—­as simple as the curve in form, delighting from the pure element of harmony and beauty it contains, and not from any novel or fantastic modulation of it,—­thus contrasting strongly with such rollicking, hilarious songsters as the bobolink, in whom we are chiefly pleased with tintinnabulation, the verbal and labial excellence, and the evident conceit and delight of the performer.

I hardly know whether I am more pleased or annoyed with the catbird.  Perhaps she is a little too common, and her part in the general chorus a little too conspicuous.  If you are listening for the note of another bird, she is sure to be prompted to the most loud and protracted singing, drowning all other sounds; If you sit quietly down to observe a favorite or study a new-comer, her curiosity knows no bounds, and you are scanned and ridiculed from every point of observation.  Yet I would not miss her; I would only subordinate her a little, make her less conspicuous.