THE CATBIRD. — 
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sides have their share; but they also display a decided preference for the 
vicinage of man, and, if allowed to, will frequent the orchards and the rasp- 
berry bushes. ‘They help themselves pretty freely to the fruit of the latter, 
but their services in insect-eating compensate for their keep, a hundred-fold. 
Nests are placed almost anywhere at moderate heights, but thickety places are 
preferred, and the wild rosebush is acknowledged to be the ideal spot. The 
birds exhibit the greatest distress when their nest is disturbed, and the entire 
neighborhood is aroused to expressions of sympathy by their pitiful cries. 
My friend, Dr. James Ball Naylor, of Malta, Ohio, tells the following 
story in answer to the oft-repeated question, Do animals reason? The poet’s 
house nestles against the base of a wooded hill and looks out upon a spacious 
well-kept lawn which is studded with elm trees. The place is famous for 
birds and the neighborhood is equally famous for cats. Robins occasionally 
venture to glean angle worms upon the inviting expanses of this lawn, but for 
a bird to attempt to cross it unaided by wing would be to invite destruction 
as in the case of a lone soldier climbing San Juan hill. One day, however, a 
fledgling Catbird, overweening and disobedient, we fear, fell from its nest 
overhead and sat helpless on the dreaded slopes. ‘The parents were beside 
themselves with anxiety. The birdie could not fly and would not flutter to 
any purpose. There was no enemy in sight but it was only by the sufferance of 
fate, and moments were precious. In the midst of it all the mother disap- 
peared and returned presently with a fat green worm, which she held up to 
baby at a foot’s remove. Baby hopped and floundered forward to the juicy 
morsel, but when he had covered the first foot, the dainty was still six inches 
away. Mama promised it to him with a flood of encouragement for every 
effort, but as often as the infant advanced the mother retreated, renewing 
her blandishments. In this way she coaxed her baby across the lawn and up, 
twig by twig, to the top of an osage-orange hedge which bounded it. Here, 
according to Dr. Naylor, she fed her chitd the worm. 
Comparing the scolding and call notes of the Catbird with the mewing of 
a cat has perhaps been a little overdone, but the likeness is strong enough to 
lodge in the mind and to fasten the bird’s “trivial name” upon it forever. Be- 
sides a mellow phut, phut in the bush, the bird has an aggravating mee-a-a, 
and a petulant call note which is nothing less than Ma-a-ry, Cautious to a 
degree and timid, the bird is oftener heard in the depth of the thicket than 
elsewhere, but he sometimes mounts the tree-top, and the opening “Phut, phut, 
coquillicot’—as Neltje Blanchan hears it—is the promise of a treat. 
Generalizations are apt to be inadequate when applied to singers of such 
brilliant and varied gifts as the Catbird’s It would be impertinent to say: 
Homo sapiens has a cultivated voice and produces music of the highest order. 
Some of us do and some of us do not. Similarly some Catbirds are “self- 
conscious and affected,” “pause after each phrase to mark its effect upon the 
