MOCKINGBIRD. 47 
or with trumpet creeper to their very tops, while many others are picturesquely draped 
with festoons of gray Spanish moss. Among these groups of trees we often find large 
spots covered with grass and small thickets—so-called ‘‘bosquets’’—consisting of a few 
small trees, usually elms, soap-trees, prickly ash or oaks, dog-wood thickly intertwined 
with clematis, honey-suckle, Carolina jasmine, supple-jack, blackberry, trumpet-creeper, 
grape vines, and poison ivy. A wreath of dense bushes, generally viburnum, surrounds 
the larger trees and shrubs. Evergreen thorny smilax, honey-suckle and passion-flower 
vines spread out like a protecting roof and cover the outer shrubbery. It is no easy 
matter to penetrate such thickets as these, especially when the edge of the underwood 
is defended by blackberry bushes, or by the evergreen tangled Cherokee roses armed 
with horrible thorns. It is only with great pains and perseverance that these thickets 
can be traversed. Here we find hundreds of Cardinal Redbirds, many Painted Finches, 
Blue Grosbeaks, Chats, Orchard Orioles, Carolina Wrens, White-eyed Vireos, and Mock- 
ingbirds. There seems to be a pair of the latter in every one of these clusters of thickets 
during the breeding season, and this pair will not allow the intrusion of others of its 
own species. Other birds, however, are often found breeding in the same thicket. Several 
times I discovered nests of the Cardinal Redbird only a few steps from a Mockingbird’s 
nest. As early as the first week of March the Redbirds commence nestbuilding, but 
when the delicate partridge-berry' had unfolded its sweet-scented white blossoms, I knew 
that it was time to look for the moss and lichen-covered purse-shaped nests of the 
White-eyed Vireo, which were usually placed in small viburnum bushes on the borders of 
the thickets: At this time the Mockingbirds began to select nesting sites. They usually 
built in trees covered with climbing plants, in Cherokee-rose bushes, and in the bushy 
thickets described above. I found the first nest here on the 9th of April, but it was not 
until the last week of that month and the first week of May that I found a greater 
number of nests. The Mockingbird settles with preference in the neighborhood of man. 
I found it unusually common in the orange groves of Florida, and in southern Louisiana. 
Even in the villages and cities of the South it is acommon bird. I found it common also 
in the orchards of south-western Missouri, where it lives on the best terms with Catbirds, 
Brown Thrushes, and Robins. The Mockingbird is so lively, fearless, and affectionate, 
that it becomes attached to man wherever it finds him a friend and protector. As soon 
as the settler builds his plain log-cabin in the midst of the virgin forest, the Mocking- 
bird welcomes this first step of civilization with jubilant song. When protected the bird 
will build its nest often in the immediate neighborhood of a dwelling in a small tree or 
in climbing roses and dense shrubbery. It will nest even in the horribly spiny prickly 
pear? so common in Texas. The nest is often placed in the corners of rail fences or 
on a tree, in so exposed a spot as to be seen from a distance. These rather bulky 
structures were always built in the vicinity of houses. Still the bird knows how to 
conceal the nest with great care when necessary, and to protect it from unwelcome 
intruders. It may frequently be found in cacti, yuccas, in the interior of the most thorny 
and most densely foliaged bushes. I sometimes found it on large horizontal limbs of: 
forest trees covered with Spanish moss, where it was impossible to see anything of the 
structure or the bird. It was only when I accidentally shook such a bough and the 
1 Michella repens. 2 Opuntia. 
