.
Varied Thrush (Zoothera naevia) (Male), Black Creek, Northern Vancouver Island, British Columbia: photo by Elaine R. Wilson, 2011
He was a heath-cutter's child, the eldest of seven children! They were very poor, but he could earn nothing himself, except by gathering whortleberries in their season; then he said, all seven of them turned out with their parents, the youngest in its mother's arms. I questioned him about the birds of the district; he stoutly maintained that he recognised only four, and proceeded to name them.
"Here is another," said I, "a fifth you didn't name, singing in the bushes half a dozen yards from where we stand -- the best singer of all."
"I did name it," he returned, "that's a thrush."
It was a nightingale, a bird he did not know. But he knew a thrush -- it was one of the four birds he knew, and he stuck to it that it was a thrush singing.
W. H. Hudson: from A Surrey Village, in A Traveller in Little Things, 1921
W. H. Hudson: from A Surrey Village, in A Traveller in Little Things, 1921
