CAL BIRD. 159 
free, nowise embarrassed by the presence of a spectator even within 
a few yards of him. On attentively listening for some time to him, 
one can perceive considerable variety in his performance, in which he 
seems to introduce all the odd-sounds and quaint passages he has 
been able to collect. Upon the whole, though we cannot arrange him 
with the grand leaders of our vernal choristers, he well merits a 
place among the most agreeable general performers. 
This bird, as has been before observed, is very numerous, in sum- 
mer, in the Middle States. Scarcely a thicket in the country is with- 
out its Cat Birds; and were they to fly in flocks, like many other 
birds, they would darken the air with their numbers. But their migra- 
tions are seldom observed, owing to their gradual progress and reccs- 
sion, in spring and autumn, to and from their breeding places. They 
enter Georgia late in February, and reach New England about the 
' beginning of May. In their migrations, they keep pace with the 
progress of agriculture; and the first settlers in ed parts of the 
Gennesee country, have told me, that it was several years after they 
removed there, before the Cat Bird made his appearance’ among them. 
With all these amiable qualities to recommend him, few people in the 
country respect the Cat Bird; on the contrary, it is generally the 
object of dislike ; and the boys of the United’ States entertain the 
same prejudice and contempt for this bird, its nest and young, as 
those of Britain do for the Yellow Hammer, and its nest, eggs, and 
young. I am at a loss to account for this cruel prejudice. -Even 
those by whom it is entertained, can scarcely tell you why ; only they 
“hate Cat Birds ;” as some persons tell you they hate Frenchmen, 
they hate Dutchmen, &c.,— expressions that bespeak their own nar- 
rowness of understanding, and want of liberality. Yet, after rumi- 
nating over in my own mind all the probable causes, I think I have at 
last hit on some of them; the principal of which seems to me to be a 
certain similarity of taste, and clashing of interest, between the Cat 
Bird and the farmer. The Cat Bird is fond of large, ripe garden 
strawberries; so is the farmer, for the good price they bring in 
market: the Cat Bird loves the best and richest early cherries ; -so 
does the farmer, for they are sometimes the most profitable of his 
early fruit: the Cat Bird has a particular partiality for the finest, ripe, 
mellow pears ; and these are also particular favorites with the farmer. 
But the Cat Bird has frequently the advantage of the farmer, by 
snatching off the first fruits of these delicious productions; and the 
farmer takes revenge, by shooting him down with his gun, as he finds 
old hats, windmills, and scarecrows, are no impediments in his way to 
these forbidden fruits ; and nothing but this resource — the ultimatum 
of farmers as well as kings— can restrain his visits. The boys are 
now set to watch the cherry-trees with the gun: and thus commences 
a train of prejudices and antipathies, that commonly continue through 
life. Perhaps, too, the common note of the Cat Bird, so like the 
mewing of the animal whose name it bears, and who itself sustains no 
small share of prejudice, the homeliness of his plumage, and even his 
familiarity, so proverbially known to beget contempt, may also con- 
tribute to this mean, illiberal, and persecuting prejudice; but, with 
the generous and the good, the lovers of nature and of rural charms, 
the confidence which this familiar bird piaces in man by building in 
