THE ORNITHOLOGISTS’ AND OOLOGISTS’ SEMI-ANNUAL. 39 
THE MOCKINGBIRD. 
Mimus polyglottos. 
BY J. A. SINGLEY, GIDDINGS, TEXAS. 
This prince among the feathered songsters is very commonly 
dressed : upper parts ashy gray ; lower parts soiled white. The wings 
are dark with a large white space on the primaries ; length, about 10 
inches ; extent, about 14 inch- 
es. During the winter, the 
“Mocker’ will be found most- 
ly in the bottoms, where they 
feed on the various berries 
found there. A few remain in 
their summer quarters. A red 
cedar tree in my yard is the 
» bedroom of one jaunty fellow, 
he roosting with the chickens. 
The ‘‘Mocker” is rather an ov- 
erbearing kind of a fellow. I have never-seen him attack other birds ; 
but he takes especial delight in alighting on a limb where some bird 
of another species may be resting, and crowding up to it (exactly as 
a “bully” among the genus “Homo” may often be seen to do) he will 
make it take to flight, when he follows after, until the other bird 
leaves in disgust. . 
During the winter, 1/zmus warbles only his own ditty (mot an 
elaborate performance) ; but when the breeding season arrives every- 
thing is changed. Then he is so full of music that he don’t lose a 
moment. I have whiled away many an hour, watching “my” bird, 
as I call the one that nests at my door. He will fly on the housetop 
and deliver a few notes, then to an outbuilding, singing as he flies, 
then perhaps to the woods, and you hardly miss him until he is back 
again to the tree where his wife is incubating. Alighting on one of 
the lower limbs, he rises, half flying, half hopping, until the top of 
the tree is reached, then flying straight up five or ten feet and flut- 
tering back again. All this time he is singing the notes of every bird 
he ever heard. Sometimes, to vary his tune, he’ll imitate the mewing 
SV 
MOCKINGBIRD. 
