﻿igo Bird -Lore 



obtain food during the breeding season on the river-beds would more than 

 compensate them for any slight inconvenience they may experience during 

 the winter. The whole bird is so entirely adapted to a life on the shingle 

 that it seems quite probable that the winter migration is a recent develop- 

 ment, and that at one time the bird stayed on the river-bed all the year. 



The bird, as I have said, is getting very rare. The reason for this is not 

 plain, as its natural enemies, the Hawk* and the big Gull t are, at any rate 

 no more numerous than they used to be ; floods, we may say, are no more 

 frequent ; while its natural haunts are left practically unmolested. And yet 

 it is dying out, and I fear that in the near future it will, together with many 

 other of the native birds, become as extinct as the gigantic Moa. 



* Circus go uldi, the only Hawk frequenting the river-beds. 



t Larus dominicanus, a large black-backed Gull which would doubtless eat any young 

 Wry-bills it came across. 



Our Garden Mockingbird 



By MRS. F. W. ROE* 



DURING the past four or five winters, one of my greatest pleasures has 

 been watching the Mockingbirds in our grounds at Port Orange, 

 Florida. Their graceful way of running over the lawn, every now 

 and then stopping to uplift their wings, and their striking poses on trees and 

 fences, was a never-ceasing joy to me. Their great pluck in attacking birds 

 twice their size, including the strong-billed Woodpeckers, won my admira- 

 tion, too. As is well known, this bird of wonderful song takes possession 

 of a certain territory, usually where fruits and other foods can easily be 

 obtained, and there he will make his home year after year, jealously guard- 

 ing it from all intruders. Sometimes this territory will adjoin that of his 

 friends, but quite as often it will be a long distance from any of his species. 

 Over five years ago, a Mockingbird — we call him "Sir Roger de Coverley" 

 — took possession of the grounds in front of our cottage, and ever since 

 has laid claim to every tree, shrub, insect and worm that grows or lives 

 there. We have often wondered at his choice of a home, for we are on the 

 banks of the Halifax river, and the tree he makes his nightly home in is 

 exposed to east and northeast winds direct from the ocean, which are often 

 both cold and severe. In the back part of the grounds another Mocking- 

 bird lives, that has been named "Pirate" by a neighbor, whose white pansies 

 he devours by the dozen, and these two birds have a boundary line that is 

 never disregarded by either; that is, if one enters the territory of the other, 

 there is a fight at once, unless the proprietor happens to be from home. 



* Readers of Bird-Lore will recall Mrs. Roe's admirably illustrated article on Florida 

 birds in the number for December, 1904. 



