SUMMER BIRDS OF SHAW'S GARDEN. 71 



states to southern Canada, and is a common breeder in Mis- 

 souri. 



MOCKINGBIRD. Mimus polyglottus. 



St. Louis has been fortunate the last few years in harboring 

 quite a few Mockingbirds within her precincts. In University 

 City there were so many of these songsters in the summer of 

 1907 that people complained of being kept from sleeping at 

 nights and asked through the newspapers for advice how to 

 get rid of them. Calvary Cemetery, Washington University, 

 Forest Park and Shaw's Garden are among the localities fav- 

 ored by them. More are in the suburbs and in the region of 

 the truck gardeners. Mockingbirds like gardens and build 

 their nests as near as possible to dwellings in a bush or vine, 

 although the whiskered pet of the household is often their un- 

 doing, less so of the old ones than of their young just out of 

 nest. The greatest nest robber is man himself and, if not 

 well guarded on private grounds, the young are almost always 

 stolen from the nest by persons who want to raise and sell 

 them. Some catch even the old ones and put them into cages, 

 only to see them pine away and die. As the Mockingbird is 

 partly a permanent resident, pairs are found on their breeding 

 grounds in winter, and in Shaw's Garden the species is one of 

 the few which may be met with in that season. Their song 

 is not heard before March and docs not become general before 

 the latter part of April, when those which have left us in fall 

 are returning. May and June is the time when the songsters 

 are in their glory, apparently in great excitement, hopping 

 about, bounding with widely spread tail and wings into the 

 air, or flying from one favorite perch to another, singing all 

 the while. This is the period when singing at night or in the 

 dawn of morning they are said to become a nuisance to per- 

 sons who prefer sleep to music. 



CATBIRD. Galeoscoptes carolinensis. 



From the twentieth of April to the first of October we are 

 always sure to meot with at least one Catbird in the Garden, 

 but we are more likely to find several of them in the different 



