HAUNTS OF THE MOCKING-B/RD. 9 
hence in some neighbcrhoods, I have found a 
strong prejudice existing against the mocking- 
bird on account of the fiendish habits of the 
shrike. 
A mountain lad once led me over a con- 
siderable mountain and down into a wild dell 
to show me a nest in a thorn tree, where he 
was sure I should find every evidence that a 
mocking-bird was a soulless monster, murder- 
ing little pee-wee fly-catchers and warblers, 
and impaling them on thorns out of sheer 
wantonness. I felt sure it was a shrike, but 
the boy said he knew better. Didn’t he know 
a mocking-bird when he saw it? He had 
heard it sing and “mock” all the birds in the 
thickets around, and had also seen it doing its 
brutal work. Boys are sometimes very close 
and reliable in their observations, and this one 
was an inveterate hunter, and so stoutly as- 
serted his knowledge that I was induced to 
test his accuracy by going with him to the 
place he called Mocking-Bird Hollow. Of 
course the nest was that of a shrike, but a 
number of mocking-birds were breeding in the 
immediate vicinity, hence the mistake. 
The mocking-bird does not appear to be a 
strictly migratory bird, its range being much 
narrower than that of the brown-thrush, the 
cat-bird, and the wood-thrush. I have never 
been able to find it a regular visitant in the 
West north of Tennessee, though I have no 
reason to doubt that it comes at times much 
farther, even into the Ohio valley. In the 
mountain valleys it is extremely wary and shy, 
its habits approaching very close to those 
attributed to the nightingale of England. It 
chooses lonely and almost inaccessible nest: 
