GOING TO BED AND GETTING UP. 119 
worm, if you please,” or, “One more flight to the 
highest tree.” 
While you are watching them in the soft twilight, 
there is a sudden hush and not a bird is in sight. If 
you have not been paying close attention, with your 
eyes wide open, it will be impossible for you to tell 
what has become of the birds, they go to bed so quickly 
and silently. Not a sound will break the stillness, 
unless a merry mocking-bird wakes you out of your 
sleep. 
These mocking-birds sing to us all night long at 
some parts of the year. You know these birds came 
by their name because they deserve it. They mock or 
mimic every bird they hear, including the hens and 
turkeys. We have wondered why they do not talk as 
well, but we have never known them to. 
One mocker in our yard gives us the postman’s 
whistle every afternoon an hour before it is due. 
Strangers rush to their gates, thinking their mail has 
come, while the mocker laughs at them from the tip- 
top branch of a eucalyptus tree, seventy or eighty feet 
above them. 
If you have just come to California, you are likely 
to be waked up in the middle of the night by the sound 
of your pet chickens peeping, or the turkeys crying as 
if in distress, and you imagine all the fowls in the 
coops are being carried off. 
Perhaps you will snatch a broom or an apron and run 
out quickly, sure of finding the marauder. From the 
