Widmann — A Preliminary Catalog of the Birds of Missouri. 245 



latitude, appearing in May and going south the latter part of 

 July." 



*704. Galeoscoptescarolinensis (Linn.). Catbird. 



Mimus carolinensis. Orpheus carolinensis. Muscicapacarolinenais. Mimus 

 felivox. Turdus lividis. 



Geog. Dist. — Eastern North America, north to Nova Scotia, 

 Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Sas- 

 katchewan, and through British Columbia to the Pacific; west 

 to and including the Rocky Mountains. Breeds from the Gulf 

 States northward. Winters in the Southern States, Cuba, 

 Central America to Panama. 



In Missouri a very common summer resident in all parts of 

 the state except the southeast where it is a rare breeder, but 

 occasionally winters (Dunklin Co., January 15, 1896). The 

 earliest arrivals are reported from the southwest, April 8, 1894, 

 Vernon Co., April 10, 1903, Jasper Co. At Festus, Jefferson 

 Co., it was seen as early as April 15, 1903; at St. Louis, the 

 earliest are April 16 and April 18, but the majority of dates of 

 a long series of years fall in the fourth week of the month, at 

 which time the first Catbirds are usually reported from several 

 stations in central Missouri and during the last days of April 

 also from the northern border. The last days of April and first 

 few days of May is the time when the bulk, the great army, 

 of Catbirds, invade the whole state and become common and 

 conspicuous songsters where before only silent and solitary 

 birds have been seen. Numbers of transient individuals are 

 present, sometimes in small flocks, during the first half of May, 

 when our own Catbirds already have nests and eggs, often be- 

 ginning to build immediately after the arrival of the female 

 at the close of April. Like its cousin, the Mockingbird, the 

 Catbird is availing itself more and more of the protection which 

 close proximity to human habitation affords, and though its 

 original haunts are the edge of the forests and the fringe along 

 watercourses, it is now found nesting mostly about farmhouses 

 and in gardens and park-like places even in the midst of towns 

 and cities. The return movement of birds from the north sets 

 in about the first of September, when for several weeks Catbirds 

 are again plentiful, but after the middle of the month their 

 numbers vary, some days few are seen, then again many, until 

 the end of the month, when the species becomes rare. At St. 

 Louis the last are noted during the first week of October, rarely 



