HAUNTS OF THE MOCKING-B/RD. 21 
found no birds elsewhere to compare with 
those in that belt of country about thirty miles 
wide, stretching from Live Oak in Florida, by 
way of Tallahassee, to some miles west of Mo- 
bile. Nor is there anywhere a more interest- 
ing country to him who delights in pleasant 
wildwood rambles, unusual scenery, and a 
wonderful variety of birds and flowers in their 
season. 
Most of our descriptive ornithologists have 
taken great pains to assure their readers that 
the American mocking-bird is very plain, if 
not positively unattractive in its plumage. But 
to my eye the graceful little fellow, especially 
when flying, is an object of real beauty. 
There is a silver-white flash to his wings, along 
with a shimmer of gray, and a dusky, shadowy 
twinkle, so to speak, about his head and shoul- 
ders, as you see him fluttering through the top 
of an orange tree or climbing, in his peculiar 
zigzag way, the gnarled boughs of a fig-bush. 
His throat and breast are the perfection. of 
symmetry, and his eyes are clear pale gold, 
bright and alert. The eggs of the mocking- 
bird are delicate and shapely, having a body 
color of pale, ashy green tinged with blue and 
blotched with brown. The eggs of the shrike 
closely resemble those of the mocking-bird, so 
that the amateur naturalist is often deceived. 
The nests of the two birds are also very much 
alike in shape and materials, and the places in 
which they are usually found are exactly simi- 
lar, a lonely thorny tree being preferred, if in 
the wildwood, and a pear-tree or a plum-tree 
if in an orchard. 
I am quite sure that every one who has 
studied, or who hereafter may study, the 
