278 PERCHERS AND SINGERS 



Strange to say, this bird not only sings in the daytime, 

 but there are periods, especially during the breeding season, 

 when the male sings at night. 



As usual, man's destructiveness reaches out for this the 

 greatest of all American singers. Thousands of nestlings are 

 caged, the majority of them in Louisiana. Those that do 

 not die in the process of rearing live for brief periods in 

 wretched little 12 by 14 inch cages, and die without having 

 known one happy, joyous hour. It is reported that in most 

 portions of the South the Mockingbirds are rapidly de- 

 creasing in number, especially in Arkansas. The killing of a 

 bird of this species, on any pretext, should be made a penal 

 offence. 



THE DIPPER FAMILY 

 Cinclidae 



The Water Ouzel, or Dipper, 1 is one of the most re- 

 markable little birds on this continent. It is a genuine 

 water elf, and the things it can do are almost beyond belief. 

 I first saw it in late November, on the strip of ice which 

 fringed the edge of the roaring, swirling, icy-cold water which 

 plunges into the Shoshone Canyon at the forks of the Shoshone 

 River. Man or beast stepping into that foaming torrent 

 would have been crushed against the rocks, and drowned at 

 the same moment — two deaths in one. In that grim and 

 terrible solitude, fast in the embrace of early winter, we saw 

 on the snow-white brink of the ice-bank a tiny dark object, 

 which closer inspection revealed to be a bird. It looked like 

 a large gray wren. 



1 Cin'clus mex-i-can'us. Length, about 8 inches. 



