ther bird that I know of that can chip with such emphasis and
military decision as this yellow-eyed songster. It is like the click
of a giant gun-lock. Why is the thrasher so stealthy? It always seems
to be going about on tiptoe. I never knew it to steal anything, and
yet it skulks and hides like a fugitive from justice. One never sees
it flying aloft in the air and traversing the world openly, like most
birds, but it darts along fences and through bushes as if pursued by a
guilty conscience. Only when the musical fit is upon it does it come
up into full view, and invite the world to hear and behold.

The chewink is a shy bird also, but not stealthy. It is very
inquisitive, and sets up a great scratching among the leaves,
apparently to attract your attention. The male is perhaps the most
conspicuously marked of all the ground-birds except the bobolink,
being black above, bay on the sides, and white beneath. The bay is in
compliment to the leaves he is forever scratching among,--they have
rustled against his breast and sides so long that these parts have
taken their color; but whence come the white and black? The bird seems
to be aware that his color betrays him, for there are few birds in the
woods so careful about keeping themselves screened from view. When in
song, its favorite perch is the top of some high bush near to cover.
On being disturbed at such times, it pitches down into the brush and
is instantly lost to view.

This is the bird that Thomas Jefferson wrote to Wilson about, greatly
exciting the latter's curiosity. Wilson was just then upon the
threshold of his career as an ornithologist, and had made a drawing of
the Canada jay, which he sent to the President. It was a new bird, and
in reply Jefferson called his attention to a "curious bird" which was
everywhere to be heard, but scarcely ever to be seen. He had for
twenty years interested the young sportsmen of his neighborhood to
shoot one for him, but without success. "It is in all the forests,
from spring to fall," he says in his letter, "and never but on the
tops of the tallest trees, from which it perpetually serenades us with
some of the sweetest notes, and as clear as those of the nightingale.
I have followed it for miles, without ever but once getting a good
view of it. It is of the size and make of the mocking-bird, lightly
thrush-colored on the back, and a grayish white on the breast and
belly. Mr. Randolph, my son-in-law, was in possession of one