Why it should ever have been called a thrush blackbird is one of those inscrutable mysteries peculiar to the naming of birds which are so frequently called precisely what they are not. In spite of the compliment implied in associating the name of one of our finest songsters with it, the rusty blackbird has a clucking call as unmusical as it is infrequent, and only very rarely in the spring does it pipe a note that even suggests the sweetness of the redwing's.
End of Chapter