The Mocking BinL 241 



Jdhh them, and many other birds, with a plentiful repast. Insects, 

 worms, grasshoppers, and larvae, are the food on which they prin- 

 cipally subsist, when so eminently vocal, and engaged in the task 

 of rearing their young. In the Southern States, where they are 

 seldom molested, with ready sagacity they seem to court the soci- 

 ety of man, and fearlessly hop around the roof of the house, or fly 

 before the planter's door. When a dwelling is first settled in the 

 wilderness, this bird is not seen sometimes in the vicinity for the 

 first year; but) at length, he pays his welcome visit to the new 

 comer, gratifjeii- with the little advantages he discovers around him, 

 and seeking out also the favor and fortuitous protection of human 

 spciety. He becomes henceforth familiar, and only quarrels with 

 the cat and dog, whose approach he instinctively dreads near his 

 nest, and never ceases his complaints and attacks until they retreat 

 irom his sight. 



On the 26th of February 1 first heard the mocking bird, that 

 season, in one of the prairies of Alabama. He began by imitating 

 the Carolina woodpecker, tshooai tshooai^ Hshow 'tshow Hshow; 

 then, in the same breath, the sioee^oofstceefooi of the Carolina wren; 

 by and bye, woolit woolit 'tu 'tu of the cardinal bird, and the peto 

 peto peto of the tufted titmouse, with connecting tones of his own, 

 uttered with an expression so refined and masterly, as if he aimed, 

 by this display of his own powers, to make those inferior vocalists 

 ashamed of their own song. It was truly astonishing what a ten- 

 der sweetness he contrived to blend amidst notes so harsh and 

 dissonant as those of the woodpecker, which ever aild anon, made, 

 now, the chorus of his varied and fantastic song. In the lower 

 parts of Georgia, by the beginning of March, they are already 

 heard vying with each other, and with the brown thrush, render- 

 ing the new-clad forest vocal with the strains of their powerful 

 melody. 



Like the ferruginous thrush, to which he is so nearly related, 

 the mocking bird chooses a solitary briar bush or a thicket for hi's 

 nest; sometimes an orchard tree contiguous to the house is select- 

 ed for the purpose, at little more than the height of a man from 

 the ground. The composition of this cradle of his species is, gen- 

 erally, an external mass of dry twigs, leaves, and grass, blended 

 with bits of decayed wood, and then surmounted with a thick lay- 

 er or fining of root fibres of a fight-brown color. The eggs are 

 about four or five, pale green, with blotches of brown scattered 

 fiearly all over. The female sits fourteen days, usually producing 

 two broods in a season, and is often assiduously fed, while so en- 

 gaged, by the attentive male. She is jealous of her nest, and 

 Complains with a mournful note, their usual low call, when her 

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