AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. 



297 



Photo by R. H. Beebe. 



YOUNG CATBIRD. 



his anger will be aroused and a series of cat-calls, stutterings and 

 screeches will be hurled at you as rapidly as he can utter them. 



Their song is a remarkably sweet and varied one. It is an interpre- 

 tation of the songs of all the feathered inhabitants of the neighborhood 

 interspersed with various notes peculiar to the Catbird. At frequent 

 intervals they will pause and utter their plaintive "meouw" and various 

 duckings and peepings suggestive of a hen with chickens. In fact this 

 last mimicry is so natural that on several occasions when I did not 

 know of the Catbird's presence, I have been fooled into looking for the 

 venturesome fowl which has strayed so far from home. 



While singing, their favorite perch is the extreme tip of some bush 

 or the end of a branch on a tree, from which for minutes at a time 

 pours forth a melody that for variety is not equalled in the bird world, 

 in fact if it were not for their feline calls, they would have received the 

 name of Mockingbird in preferrence to their more southerly relative 

 who now bears the name. 



Their food consists entirely of insects from the opening of the sea- 

 son until fruits begin to ripen when they like to feed on cherries, straw- 

 berries, etc., to the disgust of the farmers who think only of the pres- 

 ent evil, without regard to the former good that the birds have wrought 

 them. 



