CATBIRD. 55 
rare shortia!, a small herbaceous perennial is also known to flourish. In the shade of tall 
kalmias and rhododendrons, every little brooklet is lined with it. The mass of glossy 
green and white, once seen, can never be forgotten. Here we also find the beautiful 
Stuartia pentagyna, the tree huckle-berry, the fringe-tree, the sweet-scented calycan- 
thus, the trailing arbutus, and a host of beautifully developed ferns. No wonder that 
we here find many northern and southern birds together; no wonder that our familiar 
Catbird is perfectly at home here. 
If not molested by ignorant people, by cats and other enemies, the Catbird will 
return each year to the same thicket in the woods, to the same shrubbery in the garden. 
Some peculiarities of the song are almost always sure to tell whether the old habitation 
has been taken up by its former owners or by new-comers. 
The nest is always situated a few feet from the ground in a shrub or small tree. 
It is a familiar object to every friend of nature who enjoys out-door life. Every pair of 
Catbirds inhabits a group of ornamental shrubs, or a small thicket in the woods, by 
itself, and allows no intrusion into the home it has selected. On the Desplaines, in 
northern Illinois, near River Forest and Maywood, I once found seven nests in a bushy 
spot covering an area of about two acres, besides several nests of the Wood Thrush, 
Thrasher, Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, and Towhee. Though the area 
appropriated by each pair of birds in such places is limited, all usually live together in 
perfect harmony. The structure is rarely more than from two to four feet from the 
ground. . It is always placed in the interior of a bush where it is protected above, below, 
and on all sides, by dense foliage, from the sun and rain, and especially from the keen 
eyes of all enemies.” Nevertheless, the Catbird’s nest is one of the most easily found and 
best known of all birds’ nests, for its position is only too often betrayed by their peculiar 
mewing cries. Then one needs only to bend aside the branches of the bush, and the 
structure, with its glossy bluish-green eggs, lies exposed. The nest is very characteristic. 
Those which I found in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Texas, were alike in every particular, so 
that the description of one applies to all. Only those found in southwestern Missouri 
differed from the others in building materials. Almost all the northern nests consist 
of plant-stems, small twigs, bark strips, grass blades, and dead leaves; the cup is very 
often made of a layer of mud, lined with fine rootlets. All the material is of a gray or 
dark color, and I have never found a nest in the North in which the lining of fine black 
rootlets was lacking. In the structures found in southwestern Missouri the layer of 
mud is usually substituted by decayed wood, and instead of dark rootlets those of a cin- 
namon brown color are used. The four—rarely five—glossy greenish-blue eggs are in 
strong contrast with the dark back-ground of rootlets on which they rest. In the North 
usually one brood is reared; further south, however, two are raised under favorable 
circumstances. Only the female incubates, the male meanwhile singing and standing 
guard at no great distance. As soon as anything of a suspicious nature approaches 
the nest, the bird utters its loud and very peculiar mewing notes, which sound like 
“day-ee, day-ee,”” and hops about the intruder in great fear and anxiety. It flutters and 
skips through the bushes, in its screaming endeavoring to rid itself of the foe. These 
curious notes of pleading and alarm somewhat resemble the mewing of a kitten, and 
1 Shortia galacifolia. 
