294 REPORT OF NEW JERSEY STATE MUSEUM. 



703 Mimus polyglottos (Linnaeus). 

 Mockingbird. 



Adults. Length, 9-11. Wing, 4.60. Upper parts, ashy-gray, wings and tail 

 more brownish ; basal portion of primaries, white ; three outer tail feathers 

 largely white; under parts, white, tinged with gray. 



Young in first summer. Similar, but speckled below with dusky. 



Nest of twigs, grass, rootlets, etc., in a bush ; eggs, four to six, pale bluish, 

 spotted and blotched with reddish-brown, .95 x .72. 



Very rare summer resident. 



The Mockingbird at the beginning of the last century seems to have 

 been of regular occurrence in the vicinity of Philadelphia, and, ac- 

 cording to Dr. B. S. Barton, was a resident bird, though Wilson says 

 they arrived about April 20th from the south. A significant state- 

 ment which is also made by the latter (writing about 1810) is that 

 "the eagerness with which the nest of the Mockingbird is sought after 

 in the neighborhood of Philadelphia has rendered this bird extremely 

 scarce for an area of several miles around the city. The continued 

 popularity of the species as a cage bird down to the present time has 

 almost effected its extermination north of southern Delaware." Turn- 

 bull in 1869 says, "It is now rare." 



Its decrease in New Jersey was doubtless coincident with its reduc- 

 tion in Pennsylvania. Jacob Green 1 mentions it as apparently a 

 familiar bird at Princeton in 1817, and in 1868 Dr. C. C. Abbott 

 says : "Have seen but few specimens during the past seven years, and 

 found but one nest." Mr. G. N". Lawrence states that they bred on 

 Barnegat Beach in 1866. 2 



Mr. F. M. Chapman, 3 on authority of Mr. Martin, reports a nest at 

 Tenafly, three miles north of Englewood, about 1876. The female 

 was killed, however, and nothing more was seen of the species until 

 1884, when a pair nested in the same garden; the young were taken 

 and reared in confinement, and although the male bird returned in 

 the spring of 1885, nothing was seen of them after that date. 



Rev. Samuel Lockwood 4 states that Mockingbirds were plentiful 

 about Keyport in 1832, but had entirely disappeared by 1880, though 



1 Doughty's Cab. Nat. Hist., II., pp. 7-10. 



2 Ann. Lye., N. Y., VIII., p., 279. 



3 Auk, 1889, p. 304. 

 *Amer. Nat., 1892, p. 635. 



