. ae. ae 
CATBIRD. 173 
he has the stage to himself, for he is one of our few birds 
who sing regularly and freely during the night, moonlit 
nights being most often selected. 
The Chat is a rather southern bird in its distribution, 
being found north of Connecticut only locally and rarely. 
It winters in the tropics, coming to us about May 1 and 
departing early in September. Its well-made nest of 
grasses, leaves, and strips of bark is generally placed in 
the crotch of a sapling within three feet of the ground. 
Its three to five eggs are white, rather evenly speckled 
and spotted with reddish brown. 
THRASHERS, WRENS, ETC. (FAMILY TROGLODYTID2.) 
The Eastern representatives of this family are appar- 
ently too unlike to be classed in the same group, but when 
all the two hundred members of the family are studied, it 
is evident that the extremes are connected by intermedi- 
ate species possessing in a degree the characters of both 
Wrens and Thrashers. 
The Catbird belongs to the subfamily Mimine, which 
contains also the Mockingbirds and Thrashers, number- 
Catbird, ing some fifty species, all being re- 
Gelecwcoptee oH stricted to North America. 
The Catbird is one of the most 
familiar feathered inhabitants of the denser shrubbery 
about our lawns and gardens. The sexes are alike in 
color, both being slaty gray, with a black cap and tail, 
and brick-red under tail-coverts. They arrive from the 
South about April 29, and remain until October. Their 
nest is usually placed in thickets, shrubbery, or heavily 
foliaged trees, and the deep greenish blue eggs are laid 
: the fourth week in May. 
It is unfortunate that the Catbird’s name should have 
originated in his call-note rather than in his song. The 
