Toxostoma rufum
Order Passeriformes
Family Mimidae
Adult.— Upper parts reddish-brown; wing-bars white; bill long, slightly curved; tail very long; under parts white; breast, belly, and sides of the throat spotted with black.
Nest, of coarse twigs, on the ground, or in a low bush.
Eggs, white, thickly speckled with reddish-brown.
The Brown Thrasher, or Brown Thrush, is a common summer resident of southern New England and the lower Hudson Valley; it becomes less common on the upland of central New England and is absent from all the less cultivated northern portions of New York and New England. It arrives toward the middle of April and remains till October. It frequents dry, scrubby growth, roadside thickets and overgrown pastures, scratching on the ground and slipping into the bushes when alarmed, with the ease of its companion the Chewink; it may often be seen running in the roads. When a pair have a nest or a young bird hidden in a thicket, they manifest great excitement at the approach of an intruder, uttering a loud smack and a mournful ti-yoo-00, or a puffing or hissing sound. The yellow eye seems to glare at such times. The male sings from a high perch, often the uppermost spray of a tall tree, with tail depressed. The song is the most brilliant performance given by our New England birds, a succession of finely executed phrases, very often in pairs, and of great variety. Thoreau’s phrasing of it is, “Drop it, drop it, cover it up, cover it up, pull it up, pull it up, pull it up.”
A Brown Thrasher is readily told by the reddish-brown color of its upper parts and by its long tail.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)