180 Sketches of Some Common Birds. 



to 24th, the earliest and latest dates for the years 1863-'66, 

 inclusive. After their arrival, their songs can be heard 

 regularly from their chosen resorts, their preference being 

 thickets of dwarf trees and shrubbery. They have no 

 decided liking for the woods, away from human habita- 

 tions ; but with an easy confidence, they are at home in 

 the gardens, orchards, and door-yard bushes, as well as 

 among the wild woodland bushes and swamps. I knew a 

 pair to fix their home in the top of a large spreading lilac 

 bush overhanging the sidewalk of a busy thoroughfare, 

 there constructing their habitation and caring for it and 

 their brood almost within reach of many who passed it 

 daily from early m orning till late at night. 



Like the robin, t he catbird does not reserve its music 

 for occasions only when other songsters are filling the 

 morning air with melody. In warm summer afternoons, 

 when perchance you are sitting on the shady bank of 

 some lazy stream, listening to the tireless cadenzas of a 

 song sparrow among the dry branches of a fallen tree, a 

 dark-gray form may flit out from the adjacent shrubbery 

 and alight among the branches of the tree containing the 

 melodious sparrow. The first performer ceases his ditty, 

 and presently flies with undulating movement farther 

 down the stream. The newcomer, after several harsh 

 calls, begins a sweetly modulated medley, executing with 

 quiet ease occasional brilliant strains, now raising his 

 voice in a series of ringing notes and imitations, and then 

 uttering notes scarcely audible, yet sweet and touching. 

 This gentle, subdued singing or talking is quite charac- 

 teristic of the catbird as well as some other songsters. 

 When the rose-breasted grosbeak is observed in the execu- 

 tion of its loudly mellow song, it will frequently lower its 

 voice and continue its melody in a strain as soft and 

 sweet as the last faint lullabies of the mother to her babe 

 just quieted in sleep. The warbling vireo has the same 

 ^habit, as well as the brown thrasher in the later portion 

 of the nesting season. The catbird, however, often falls 

 into this retrospective, sympathetic mood early in the 

 season. In the summer, long after many of the other birds 

 have become noticeably silent, the soft melody of the cat- 

 bird will come to your ears, if you have approached quite 



