WESTERN BIRDS Mockingbird 



smaller but is not easily differentiated from the male. 

 The young birds have white breasts which are much 

 bespecked with brown. 



This bird, which is not only a real mocker of other 

 feathered life, is also a tease and a scold as well as a 

 jolly good fellow. Being extremely sociable in disposi- 

 tion he chooses the cultivated valleys and the city gar- 

 dens for his home rather than the solitude of the moun- 

 tains, and in most of his range he may be seen and heard 

 throughout the entire year. 



Although the Chat has been called the clown of the 

 bird world, surely his actions are not more spectacular 

 than are those of the Mocker when he is feeling his best. 

 From the top of the highest available pole, chimney-top, 

 or the tip-top branch of the highest tree, he pours forth 

 his soul in ecstatic rapture. So full of the joy of life is 

 he that every few minutes he leaps several feet into the 

 air, and still singing, comes tumbling down again to his 

 perch. I recall no other bird in the west that so expresses 

 its delight. 



One summer I saw a singing Mockingbird leave a 

 hillside and fly into the top of a tall tree which grew in 

 the valley below. After singing from this high pinnacle 

 for a few minutes, he flung himself into the air, and with 

 legs dangling, wings flapping as if on pivots, he came 

 tumbling to earth like a dead leaf, all the time singing 

 like mad. Just before reaching the ground he caught 

 himself, flew into the tree, and stopped singing. It was, 

 indeed, a marvelous exhibition of what is sometimes 

 called the dropping song. 



A pretty attitude in which this bird indulges is to 

 pause on the ground, or sometimes its perch, and raise 

 its wings high above the body like a huge butterfly, thus 

 exposing the big white patches. Two or three times the 

 bird will raise and close the wings in this graceful way. 

 Not only at the courting time is this movement indulged 



297 



