56 CATBIRD. 
have given this familiar songster its name and are the cause of its being disliked by 
ignorant people who do not appreciate its good qualities. It is too often persecuted 
by thoughtless and rude boys and ungrateful men, who, unmindful of the good it is ever 
doing in the world, hate it for no good reason, are deaf to its varied song, and heed 
not its affectionate disposition or its many social virtues. It is true, the cries are not 
very pleasant, but they are so plaintive and pleading that the kind-hearted observer 
gives the nest and eggs a hasty glance and hurries to leave the thicket. Sometimes it 
is only necessary to brush the bushes which conceal the nest to move the birds to utter 
their mewing notes. Once, in the first part of May, while I was passing through the 
woods on Spring Creek (Harris County, Texas), I heard a subdued ‘‘day-ee,”’ which con- 
vinced me that among the moss-draped branches there must be a Catbird, a bird which 
I had never seen in Texas during the breeding season. Advancing a few steps, I again 
heard the cry but could nowhere catch sight of the bird, for the woods were dense and 
all the branches draped with Spanish moss. While I stood peering into the foliage on 
all sides, I discovered in a young oak about ten feet from the ground a nest which on 
closer examination proved to be a Catbird’s. It contained only one egg, and was in 
every way like the nests I have described. The birds were so shy that they did not 
dare approach the nest closely. Their cries, too, were more rarely uttered and more 
subdued than is customary with northern birds. It seems hardly credible that the Cat- 
bird, so affectionate and familiar among the shrubberies of our northern gardens, should 
be so suspicious, shy, and retiring as it is in the South. I saw an old nest very near 
the one just described, proving that the birds had built there during the preceding year. 
—I have never found a Cowbird’s egg in a Catbird’s nest, but Mr. Otto Widmann 
informs me that he once found the egg of a Yellow-billed Cuckoo in the nest of a 
Cathird. . 
As soon as the young are hatched, the male assists in their bringing up. It is 
astonishing what a number of worms, caterpillars, grasshoppers, moths, beetles, 
spiders, etc., the parents are obliged to bring to the young continually. In more south- 
ern localities, the old birds often commence preparing for a second brood, a few days 
after the first has left the nest. The old male watches, warns, feeds, and guides the 
young till he is called upon to attend to the second brood, by which time the young of 
the first are able to care for themselves. That the parents love their young exceedingly 
is evident on one’s approaching the nest. With anxious cries, with ruffled plumage, and 
drooping wings they flutter about the intruder. They even courageously and self. 
sacrificingly defend their offspring from smaller enemies, such as snakes, cats, Blue Jays, 
Shrikes, and Grackles. 
In Missouri, a pair of Catbirds nested every year in a dense twining yellow honey- 
suckle! and a second pair in a fine snowberry-thicket*® in the corner of my garden. Here 
I had an opportunity of observing with what acuteness these birds can. distinguish be- 
tween friends and foes. They would allow even the children to look at their eggs and 
young without becoming in the least uneasy and frightened. They certainly -knew that 
they were protected and that the children, too, loved them. But as soon as a stranger 
approached the structure they screamed so loudly and evinced such noisy distress that 
t Lonicera fava. 2 Symphoricarpus glomeratus. 
