The Birds’ Calendar 
direction I soon found it perching in a low 
bush, furtively looking about and jerking its 
tail like a cat-bird. I mentally requested him 
to hold his head still for examination, for the 
characteristic markings of a bird radiate from 
the seat of intelligence. A shrike’s bill is 
stout, and curved at the end, and a black stripe 
passes through the eye; this one’s bill was 
straight and slender, and the side of the face of 
uniform color ; while in flying off again it dis- 
closed pure white outer tail-feathers, with much 
white on the remainder,—no shrike, but the 
mocking-bird !—the genius of the thrush fam- 
ily,—the cat-bird, before the latter fell from 
grace. But what brought him to New York 
the last of December? It is a thoroughly 
Southern species, and it is quite the thing to 
explain its occasional appearance in the North- 
ern States, and especially in winter, by calling 
it an escaped caged specimen; an inference 
that seems somehow to detract not a little from 
the credit of finding it. But I am convinced - 
that in the present instance such a supposition 
is an injustice both to the bird and to myself. 
Without any doubt, this particular specimen 
wandered up from the South entirely of its own 
volition, and lingered about the Park for my 
334 
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