IMITATION AND MIMICRY. 321 



had in shooting one. He observed also that it is 

 no less adroit at dancing, than in the varied modula- 

 tions of its voice. It is, says Wilson, in a highly 

 characteristic sketch, " a very singular bird. In its 

 voice and manners, and the habit it has of keeping 

 concealed while shifting and^vociferating around you, 

 it differs from most other birds with which I am 

 acquainted, and has considerable claims to origin- 

 ality of character. It arrives in Pennsylvania about 

 the first week in May; its term of residence here 

 being scarcely four months. When he has once 

 taken up his residence in a favourite situation, which 

 is almost always in close thickets of hazel, brambles, 

 vines, and thick underwood, he becomes jealous of 

 his possessions, and seems offended at the least in- 

 trusion ; scolding every passenger as soon as they 

 come in view, in a great variety of odd and uncouth 

 monosyllables, which it is difficult to describe, but 

 which may be readily imitated so as to deceive the 

 bird himself, and draw him after you for a quarter of 

 a mile at a time, as I have sometimes amused myself 

 in doing, and frequently without once seeing him. 

 On these occasions his responses are constant and 

 rapid, strongly expressive of anger and anxiety ; and 

 while the bird itself remains unseen, the voice shifts 

 from place to place, among the bushes, as if it pro- 

 ceeded from a spirit. First are heard a repetition of 

 short notes, resembling the whistling of the wings of 

 a duck or teal, beginning loud and rapid, and falling 

 lower and slower till they end in detached notes ; 

 then a succession of others, something like the bark- 

 ing of young puppies, is followed by a variety of 

 hollow guttural sounds, each eight or ten times 

 repeated, more like those proceeding from the throat 

 of a quadruped than that of a bird ; which are suc- 

 ceeded by others not unlike the mewing of a cat, but 

 considerably hoarser. All these are uttered with 

 great vehemence* in such different keys, and with 



