198 PRAIRIE BIRDS OF SOUTHERN ILLINOIS. 
stream was followed by a narrow line of thickets with a few large 
trees interspersed. Around us were the tangled thickets which 
we have before described, while the small, but growing trees 
which sprang up among them gave plain evidence of the gradual 
encroachment of the woods upon the original prairie. The herds 
of horses and cattle which dotted the gently undulating surface of 
the prairie, and an occasional neat frame farmhouse, with its 
attendant fields and orchard, made us realize that we were yet 
within the bounds of comfortable and advanced civilization. Just 
before us the prairie was intersected by a ravine, through which 
ran a small stream whose narrow valley was filled with a thicket 
of varied shrubbery, and the brook itself bordered by a few large- 
sized trees, which were chiefly the white elm, several kinds of 
oaks, and an occasional cottonwood. 
The day was a delightful one; the sky without a cloud, and, 
though the heat ranged above 80°, the fresh prairie breeze tem- 
pered it to a delightful mildness. As we rested in the shade of a 
large elm tree in the hollow, and reclined on the cool soft sward, 
our ears were delighted by such a chorus of bird-songs as we have 
heard nowhere else. Among the leafy branches overhead the 
orioles (Icterus Baltimore) whistled their mellow flute-like notes, 
and the little greenlets ( Vireosylvia gilva and V. olivacea) cheered 
us with a softer warble or richer chant. The birds of the meadow 
were chanting their several ditties all around us on the open 
prairie, while the frequent soft refreshing prairie breeze wafted to 
us from the groves the songs of the woodland species. 
In the tangled thickets and scrubby jungle near the border of 
the woods the finest songsters were found. There the mocking 
birds (Mimus polyglottus) fairly filled the air with their rich med- 
ley of inexhaustibly varied notes, the singers leaping in restless 
ecstasy from branch to branch, with drooping wings and spread 
tail, or flitting from thicket to thicket as they sang. The brown 
thrasher (Harporhynchus rufus) poured forth a sweet and ceaseless 
accompaniment, as he sat perched sedately upon the summit of a 
vine-canopied tree— a contrast in bearing to the restless, sport- 
ive Mimus, his rival in song. The yellow-breasted chat (Jcteria 
wirens), a very abundant and characteristic species, appeared to 
: _ be straining himself to produce the oddest and most unusual notes 
he could invent, the singer often going through grotesque and ex- 
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