'34 



Hints to Audubon Workers. 



pleasure of hearing himself talk. He is a 

 first cousin of the mockingbird — whom he 

 resembles in person much more than in 

 voice — and the relationship may account 

 for the overweening confidence he has in 

 his vocal powers. As a matter of fact, his 

 jerky utterance is so strikingly harsh that 

 some one has aptly termed it asthmatic. 



The catbird is unmistakably a Bohemian. 

 He is exquisitely formed ; has a beautiful 

 slate-gray coat, set off by a black head and 

 tail; by nature he is peculiarly graceful; and 

 when he chooses, can pass for the most pol- 

 ished of the cultured Philistine aristocracy. 

 But he cares nothing for all this. With the 

 laziness of a self-indulgent Bohemian, he 

 sits by the hour with relaxed muscles, and 

 wings and tail drooping listlessly. If he 

 were a man, you are convinced that he 

 would sit in his shirt sleeves at home, and 

 go on the street without a collar. 



And his occupation? His cousin is an 

 artist, but he — is he a wag as well as a cari- 

 caturist, or is he in sober earnest when he 

 tries to mimic a Wilson's thrush ? If he is 

 a wag, he is a successful one, for he de- 

 ceives the unguarded into believing him a 

 robin, a cat, and — "a bird new to science!" 

 How he must chuckle to himself over the 

 enthusiasm with which his notes are hailed 

 in their different characters, and the be- 

 wilderment and crestfallen disgust that 

 come to the more diligent observer when 

 he finally catches a glimpse of the garrulous 

 mimic. 



He builds his nest as he does everything 

 else. The great loose mass of coarse twigs, 

 heaped together and patched up with pieces 

 of newspaper or anything that happens to 

 come in his way, looks as if it would hardly 

 bear his weight. He lines it, however, with 

 fine bits of dark roots, and when the beau- 

 tiful green eggs are laid in it, you feel 

 sure that such an artistic looking bird must 

 take a peculiar pleasure in the contrasting 

 colors. 



High trees have an unsocial aspect, and 



so we find him in low bushes on the edge 

 of a river, or even by the side of the gar- 

 den, enjoying the sun and his own com- 

 pany. 



In "Wake Robin," in the chapter on the 

 "Return of the Birds," Mr. Burroughs gives 

 an interesting instance of the maternal in- 

 stinct of the catbird. 



CUCKOO ; RAIN CROW. 



A third larger than a robin, the cuckoo 

 is a long, slender, olive-brown bird with 

 a white breast, and white spots known as 

 "thumb marks" on the under side of his 

 tail. 



Unless you follow him to his haunts you 

 rarely see him. Now and then, perhaps, 

 you catch a glimpse of his long brown 

 body, as he comes silently out of a clump 

 of bushes to disappear with swift straight 

 flight in a heavily leaved tree or mass of 

 shrubbery where he suspects a fresh supply 

 of insects. 



His presence is generally remembered 

 by the proverbially prophetic call to which 

 he owes the name "rain crow." 



His nest and eggs resemble those of the 

 catbird, but in general a greater contrast 

 could not be imagined than between the 

 two birds. 



Mr. Burroughs gives an especially happy 

 description of him in his " Return of the 

 Birds." He says: "The cuckoo is one of 

 the most solitary birds of our forest, and 

 is strangely tame and quiet, appearing 

 equally untouched by joy or grief, fear or 

 anger. Something remote seems ever 

 weighing upon his mind. His note or call 

 is as of one lost or wandering, and to the 

 farmer is prophetic of rain. Amid the gen- 

 eral joy and the sweet assurance of things, 

 I love to listen to the strange clairvoyant 

 call. Heard a quarter of a mile away, 

 from out the depths of the forest, there is 

 something peculiarly weird and monkish 

 about it. Wordsworth s lines upon the 



