46 LAND-BIRDS AND GAME-BIRDS 



life, I have thought it best not to attempt their biography in 

 this volume. For an enthusiastic and splendid description, I 

 refer my readers to the second volume of Wilson's Ornithology. 



(B) CAROLINENSIS. Cat-bird. 



(A common summer-resident.) 



(a). 8J-9 inches long. Slate-colored. Crown and tail, 

 black. Under tail-coverts, chestnut-red. 



(6). The nest of the Cat-bird, which in Massachusetts is 

 usually finished in the last week of May, is generally placed 

 in a bush, thicket, or briar, and is composed outwardly of 

 sticks (and sometimes one or two rags intermixed), being 

 lined with strips of bark from the grape-vine or cedar, dead 

 leaves, rootlets, and other things of the same sort. The eggs 

 of each set are 3-5, usually four, of a fine dark green, bluish- 

 tinted, and measure about -95 X '70 of an inch. Two broods 

 are sometimes raised in the summer. 



(c). The Cat-birds are in summer very common in the old 

 "Bay State," and are familiar to many of its inhabitants, usual- 

 ly appearing in their haunts here in the first week of May, 

 some returning to the South in September, others waiting until 

 the middle of October. Though very numerous in the culti- 

 vated districts of Massachusetts, they are rather rare in the 

 northern parts of New England ; and yet u they have been 

 met with in Arctic countries," as have Robins also. They for 

 the most part prefer the neighborhood of man and of culti- 

 vated soil, though one may often find their nests in wild spots, 

 far from any house, since they roam over all the open country. 

 Though never properly gregarious, individuals do the work of 

 a host in destroying injurious insects ; eating the caterpillars, 

 which they find in orchards, shrubbery, bushes, and thickets, 

 and feeding upon " cut- worms," which they obtain in ploughed 

 lands. This fare they vary by occasionally catching winged 

 insects, as they fly through the air, but more often by eating 

 berries of various kinds, chiefly such as grow in swamps. 



From the nature of their usual employment, they rarely have 

 occasion to perch very far above the ground, or to take other 



