BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. ^62 



227. Galeoscoptes carolinensis (Linn.). 

 Catbird. 



Abundant summer resident ; occasionally found in winter. 



SEASONAL OCCURRENCE. 



April 29, 1902, one seen, Belmont, R. Hoifmann. 



May 6 — October i. (Winter.) 

 October 16, 1892, one seen, Arlington, W. Faxon. 



NESTING DATES. 



May 22 — 30. 



From early in May to about the first of October the Catbird is found more 

 or less numerously throughout the Cambridge Region, wherever the local con- 

 ditions are suited to its requirements. Its favorite haunts are bushy swamps 

 and moist thickets bordering streams, meadows and country roadsides. It also 

 nests sparingly in upland pastures sprinkled with red cedars and clusters of bar- 

 berry bushes, and by no means infrequently among currant, raspberry or black- 

 berry bushes near farm buildings or in ornamental shrubbery on the outskirts of 

 towns and villages. Within my personal recollection it has never been really 

 common nor at all generally distributed in the more densely populated parts of 

 Cambridge, although it used to regularly pass the summer in Norton's Woods, 

 at Elmwood, in the lilacs in front of the old Longfellow house, and in those 

 about our own place. Of these stations that last named is, I believe, the only 

 one where the Catbird has bred within the past decade. In 1894 our birds 

 reared the young of their first brood successfully, but those of the second were 

 devoured by a marauding cat. Early the next spring our garden was sur- 

 rounded by a fence over which no cat, however agile and persistent, has ever 

 succeeded in clambering, but the Catbirds did not come back to us until 1900, 

 when they brought up two families of young in peace and security. In 1901 

 they got out their first brood safely, but the second clutch of eggs was 

 destroyed by rats. In 1902 they again reared two broods ; in 1903 they were 

 not seen after the close of migration ; in 1904 they were present during the 

 entire season but bred only once, rearing a full brood; in 1905 they reared two 

 broods. 



Unlike most thicket-haunting species the Catbird is at all times fearless and 

 confiding to a remarkable degree, showing almost no fear of man and seldom 



