10 My GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 



For my own part, I would rather have his cheerfulness and 

 kind neighbourhood than many berries. 



For his cousin, the catbird, I have a still warmer regard. 

 Always a good singer, he sometimes nearly equals the brown 

 thrush, and has the merit of keeping up his music later in the 

 evening than any bird of my familiar acquaintance. Ever 

 since I can remember, a pair of them have built in a 

 gigantic syringa, near our front door, and I have known 

 the male to sing almost uninterruptedly during the even 

 ings of early summer till twilight duskened into dark. 

 They differ greatly in vocal talent, but all have a delightful 

 way of crooning over, and, as it were, rehearsing their song 

 in an undertone, which makes their nearness always unob 

 trusive. Though there is the most trustworthy witness to 

 the imitative propensity of this bird, I have only once, 

 during an intimacy of more than forty years, heard him 

 indulge it. In that case, the imitation was by no means so 

 close as to deceive, but a free reproduction of the notes of 

 some other birds, especially of the oriole, as a kind of 

 variation in his own song. The catbird is as shy as the 

 robin is vulgarly familiar. Only when his nest or his 

 fledglings are approached does he become noisy and almost 

 aggressive. I have known him to station his young in a 

 thick cornel-bush on the edge of the raspberry-bed, after 

 the fruit began to ripen, and feed them there for a week or 

 more. In such cases he shows none of that conscious guilt 

 which makes the robin contemptible. On the contrary, he 

 will maintain his post in the thicket, and sharply scold the 

 intruder who ventures to steal his berries. After all, his 

 claim is only for tithes, while the robin will bag your entire 

 crop if he get a chance. 



Dr. Watts s statement that &quot;birds in their little nests 

 agree,&quot; like too many others intended to form the infant 

 mind, is very far from being true. On the contrary, the 

 most peaceful relation of the different species to each other 

 is that of armed neutrality. They are very jealous of 

 neighbours. A few years ago, I was much interested in 

 the housebuilding of a pair of summer yellow-birds. They 



