The Mockingbird 47 



yard provides a very popular restaurant, not 

 only for the song birds among the branches, 

 but for the scratchers on the ground floor. 



Like the yellow-breasted chat, the catbird 

 likes to hide its nest in a tangle of cat brier along 

 the roadside undergrowth and in bushy, wood- 

 land thickets. Last winter, when that vicious 

 vine had lost every leaf, I counted in it eighteen 

 catbird nests within a quarter of a mile along 

 a country lane. Long before the first snow- 

 storm, the inmates of those nests were enjoying 

 summer weather again from the Gulf States to 

 Panama. If one nest should be disturbed in May 

 or June, when the birds are raising their families, 

 all the catbird neighbours join in the outcry of 

 mews and cat-calls. Should a disaster happen 

 to the parents, the orphans will receive food and 

 care from some devoted foster-mother until they 

 are able to fly. You see catbirds are something 

 far better than intelligent, musical dandies. 



THE MOCKINGBIRD 



What child is there who does not know the 

 mockingbird, caged or free ? In the North you 

 very rarely see one now-a-days behind prison 

 bars, for, happily, several enlightened states 

 have made laws to pimish people who keep our 

 wild birds in cages or offer them for sale, dead or 



