346 CHAPTERS ON THE NATURAL HISTORY 



an unrivaled chapter upon the life history of this species, and 

 stands to-day as the most complete account, apart from its anat- 

 omy, upon record. He seems to have overlooked nothing in all 

 that goes to make up the history of this, to me, one of the loveli- 

 est representatives of the entire group of birds in America. 



During the months of May, June, and July of the summer just 

 past, there were an unusual number of catbirds bred in the vicin- 

 ity of the City of Washington, D. C. Without special search for 

 them, as many as fifty nests of this species must have been seen 

 by me during the period mentioned. As usual, the birds built in 

 the brier and bramble thickets, in the dense vine of the honey- 

 suckle, in the hedge-rows of the osage orange, or in the saplings 

 of the scrub oaks or other trees found in this section of the coun- 

 try. 



Last summer a pair of catbirds built a fine nest in the honey- 

 suckle that grows over my porch, close to the dining-room win- 

 dow, and .reared five young ones ; but I regret to say they did not 

 repeat the performance this year, although the same pair appar- 

 ently returned and inspected the site of their former home, and 

 then for some reason or other changed base, and built in a thick 

 honeysuckle vine at the foot of the garden. Here they met with 

 dire misfortune, however, for when their eggs were about half 

 incubated, a huge black snake came along one day and devoured 

 them. The pair, assisted by a friend or two of the same species, 

 made it lively for his snakeship for a few moments, in an open 

 space in the garden, but it could be nothing more than by way 

 of retaliation, for the damage had been done then, and the reptile 

 made good his escape through the grass and leaves beneath the 

 thick brush beyond the fence. 



When June came about I selected for study a particularly 

 pretty nest of a pair of these birds, with the intention of making 

 photographs of it and of the young it contained. They had laid 

 four eggs when the nest was first discovered, and they were, as 

 usual, of a uniform greenish-blue color, and unspotted. Later, 

 one of these eggs disappeared, and but three of the birds were 

 hatched out. 



Nearly every day I visited the small oak sapling in the piece 

 of woods where the pair had built, and one morning toward the 

 latter part of the month it became evident that my brood in gray 

 meant very soon to quit the premises. The moment had arrived 

 for the capture, but this, owing to the denseness of the shrubbery. 



