(_Turdus aliciA|_) Thrush family
_Called also_: GRAY-CHEEKED THRUSH
_Length_--7.5 to 8 inches. About the size of the bluebird.
_Male and Female_--Upper parts uniform olive-brown. Eye-ring
whitish. Cheeks gray; sides dull grayish white. Sides of the
throat and breast pale cream-buff, speckled with arrow-shaped
points on throat and with half-round dark-brown marks below.
_Range_--North America, from Labrador and Alaska to Central
America.
_Migrations_--Late April or May. October. Chiefly seen in
migrations, except at northern parts of its range.
One looks for a prettier bird than this least attractive of all the
thrushes in one that bears such a suggestive name. Like the
olive-backed thrush, from which it is almost impossible to tell it
when both are alive and hopping about the shrubbery, its plumage above
is a dull olive-brown that is more protective than pleasing.
Just as Wilson hopelessly confused the olive-backed thrush with the
hermit, so has Alice's thrush been confounded by later writers with
the olive-backed, from which it differs chiefly in being a trifle
larger, in having gray cheeks instead of buff, and in possessing a few
faint streaks on the throat. Where it goes to make a home for its
greenish-blue speckled eggs in some low bush at the northern end of
its range, it bursts into song, but except in the nesting grounds its
voice is never heard. Mr. Bradford Torrey, who heard it singing in the
White Mountains, describes the song as like the thrush's in quality,
but differently accented: "_Wee-o-wee-o-tit-ti-wee-o!_"
In New England and New York this thrush is most often seen during its
autumn migrations. As it starts up and perches upon a low branch
before you, it appears to have longer legs and a broader, squarer tail
than its congeners.
[Illustration: VEERY OR WILSON'S THRUSH]
[Illustration: WOOD THRUSH]