UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



and much softer- voiced. Besides, he is a bird of the 

 streets and dooryards, very noticeable everywhere, 

 and, so far as I can learn, has no tastes or habits that 

 incur the enmity of the farmer or the fruit-grower. 

 I pass within a few feet of him and his duller-colored 

 mate walking about the smooth lawns, picking some 

 minute insects from the ends of the grass-blades. 

 This seems to be his chief occupation. Like all 

 blackbirds, these are social and gregarious, and at 

 times, when in flocks, their musical instincts are 

 stimulated. I have heard a band of them in the later 

 afternoon discourse a wild, pleasing music much 

 superior to the crude, harsh cackle and split whistles 

 of the related species with us. 



The birds here are abundant both in kinds and 

 in numbers. The white-crowned sparrows are fa- 

 miliar about the houses and the gardens, and they 

 sing most sweetly, but the song is not quite equal to 

 the song they sing along the Hudson for a brief day 

 or two in May. Here they sing for weeks. 



The mockingbirds are as common as robins are 

 at home — all about the lawns and gardens and 

 streets, flitting, flirting, attitudinizing, and singing 

 — on the housetops, on the telegraph and telephone 

 wires, on the curbstones, on the lawn. In the face 

 of this bird's great fame as a songster, I wonder why 

 I am so indifferent to it. It pleases me less than 

 do its cousins, the catbird and the brown thrasher. 

 I detect little or no music — sweet tones — in it. It 



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